The Rolling Stones Release 'Flowers'

Flowers is an American compilation album by The Rolling Stones, released in 1967.

The songs either appeared as singles, had been omitted from the American versions of Aftermath and Between the Buttons, were collected from studio sessions dating back to 1965, or are reissues of songs recently released on other albums.

Three tracks had never been released. "My Girl" from the Out of Our Heads sessions, and "Ride On, Baby" and "Sittin' On A Fence" from the Aftermath sessions.

The title refers to the album's cover, with flower stems underneath the portrait of each band member. Bassist Bill Wyman claims that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards deliberately arranged the stem of Brian Jones's flower so that it had no leaves, as a prank. The portraits are from the British version of Aftermath.

Flowers reached #3 in the US during the late summer of 1967 and went gold. In August 2002 it was remastered and reissued on CD and SACD digipak by ABKCO Records.

Dismissed as a rip-off of sorts by some critics as it took the patchwork bastardization of British releases for the American audience to extremes, gathering stray tracks from the U.K. versions of Aftermath and Between the Buttons, 1966-1967 singles (some of which had already been used on the U.S. editions of Aftermath and Between the Buttons), and a few outtakes. Judged solely by the music, though, it's rather great.