Rolling Stones – We Love You

This is one Stones song that you hear John Lennon and Paul McCartney singing backup on. Mick Jagger would sing backup on the Beatles “Baby I’m A Rich Man.”

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote this after they were arrested along with Brian Jones on drug charges stemming from a raid on Keith’s house, Redlands, on February 12, 1967. This song was a thank you message to the fans who supported Jagger and Richards through their arrest – note the jail door shutting at the first. 

I somehow had the original single to this when I was a kid…I haven’t a clue how I got it. 

This is just a personal opinion but I do believe Mick and Keith edited this video and Brian came out looking terrible in it. I have to wonder if they did it on purpose. I’m probably way off base but things were not going well for Brian Jones at this time…and yes he made a lot of his own trouble. He was being hounded by the police…with some of it not justified. Mick and Keith could have left those bad shots of Brian high out of the video…it couldn’t have help him out.

The song peaked at #8 in the UK and #50 in the Billboard 100 in 1967.

From Songfacts

This was also a “Thank You” to The Beatles, The Who and the editorial page of the London Times, who supported and spoke out in favor of the Stones after Jagger, Richards and Jones were arrested on drug charges. The Who recorded and released a double A-side of the Stones’ “The Last Time” and “Under My Thumb” to keep the Stones’ music alive while they were going through their court and prison difficulties. 

The Rolling Stones lead guitarist at the time, Brian Jones, played a Mellotron, which was an early synthesizer, on this track. Jones was a founding member of the band, but the more popular they got, the more his drug habit affected him. By 1969 he was out of the band’s good graces and was fired, then found dead in his swimming pool less than a month later. “We Love You” is a testament to his influence on the band. “Despite being off his head on Mandrax by this time, Brian manages to arrange the track with that syncopated layer of psychedelic madness,” says Nick Reynolds, co-producer of the documentary Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones. “Pure genius.”

The Stones made a promotional film for this song that was banned by the BBC but shown elsewhere. It was directed by Peter Whitehead and based on The Trials Of Oscar Wilde with Mick Jagger as Oscar, Keith Richards as the Marquis and Marianne Faithfull as Bosie. 

We Love You

We don’t care if you only love we
We don’t care if you only love we
We love you, we love you, and we hope
That you will love we too
We love they, we love they, and
We want you to love they too
Ah

We don’t care if you hound we and
Love is all around we
Love can’t get our minds off
We love you, we love you

You will never win we
Your uniforms don’t fit we
We forget the place we’re in
‘Cause we love you
We love you, of course, we do

I love you, I love you
And I hope that you won’t prove wrong too
We love you, we do, we love you, we do

Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

33 thoughts on “Rolling Stones – We Love You”

    1. Yea all the rumors just wore her down.

      I didn’t like what they did to Brian. I mean yea he shouldn’t have done all of that but to show that could not have been a good thing at the time.

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  2. One of the better songs from the Stones. Also interesting the video about “We Love You” (with Marianne Faithful, among others), in which the Stones, especially Brian Jones, made a drugged impression. The rattle of chains, the slamming door and the piano in the intro give the song a threatening atmosphere right from the start.

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    1. Yea that sucks…he was 86 but still. The most consistent hitter you could get. Never a season with 50 or more homeruns but still did what he did.

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      1. first thing I read in MLB blurb about it was “25 time all star.” Wow… that’s consistency. Him & Rose, a few others back then… might not have been the greatest at any given time but to play at such a level, year in , year out, over 20 years… that’s something.
        I’m gonna try to look at your video above now… had all types of internet problems earlier and only could get about 20 seconds in.

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      1. Don Sutton, Tom Lasorda, and now Aaron which sucks…but Lasorda was 93, Aaron was 86…even Sutton was 75

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  7. There is almost a middle eastern flavor to this at the end. Maybe they wanted to show Brian as he really was in hopes of it being a wake-up call for him. Maybe the title has a double meaning, like “Brian, we love you, please get help for your addiction.” Just theories. The song is chaotic good.

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    1. They were not getting along at that time but you never know.
      It’s weird picking out Lennon’s voice on the chorus in a Stones song. I love the piano to it.

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  8. You can hear John & Paul pretty damn clearly. No mistaking their voices.

    Brian Jones looks so sick and pitiful.

    Yep. Those drug busts…that came about after Donovan’s arrest. The film makers and/or journalists were feeding info back to the cops.

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    1. Yea I can really hear John…yea I don’t think Mick and Keith should’ve showed Brian like that. I’m sure they had their moments…the police were watching and probably loving it.

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  9. I love the psychedelic flair of the tune. The piano part is cool, as is Bill Wyman’s bassline.

    As for the depiction of Brian Jones in the video, I have to agree with you it’s rather tasteless. Only two years later, Brian was found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool at the age of 27. Obviously, his alcohol and drug addiction led to this.

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    1. Yea I know he shouldn’t have done that but that was almost like they were targeting him…somethings stay behind closed doors. That gave the police more ammunition.

      That piano Christian…I love the sound of it.

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  11. I’ve actually never heard this one before. I gotta say, as someone who suffers from dyslexia, the font on the cover gives me anxiety. It reads like they are Rolling the Stones instead of The Rolling Stones, lol

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