In Canada, it peaked at number two on the RPM chart. Faithfull performed the song on the television show Hullabaloo, in the segment presented by Beatles manager Brian Epstein from London. It is unclear if the song was written especially for Faithfull or an out-take from the Stones' repertoire. Author Mark Hodkinson writes in his biography As Tears Go By that she contradicts herself. "All that stuff about how Mick wrote it for me was awfully nice but untrue" she told Penthouse in 1980, writes Hodkinson. "Ten years later, on the sleeve notes for the Blazing Away album Marianne contradicted herself by referring to the record as "the song that Mick Jagger and Keith Richard wrote for me," concludes Hodkinson. However, in her own autobiography, Faithfull (1994), written together with David Dalton, she says "'As Tears Go By' was not, contrary to popular folklore, written for me, but it fitted me so perfectly it might as well have been". Originally, the A-side of her first record should have been a song written by Lionel Bart, "I Don't Know (How To Tell You)." But that song was "awful", she writes. "It was one of those showbiz songs that needed the proper register. My voice was just plain wrong! We did take after agonizing take... but I could not simply do it. In desperation Andrew got me to try the song that originally had been planned for the B-side, 'As Tears Go By'." She admits that she "was never that crazy about 'As Tears Go By.'" "God knows how Mick and Keith wrote it or where it came from... In any case, it is an absolutely astonishing thing for a boy of 20 to have written a song about a woman looking back nostalgically on her life." The Rolling Stones recorded their own version of "As Tears Go By" in 1965, changing the arrangement from Faithful's 1964 version: her 1964 version features percussion and strings throughout; the Rolling Stones' version completely lacks percussion and opens with acoustic guitar followed by strings entering in the second verse. The string arrangement on the Stones' version was done by Mike Leander. Billboard described the Rolling Stones' version as a "beautiful folk- flavored ballad...baroque, semi-classical smash hit!" Cash Box said the Stones gave the song a "hauntingly, plaintive slow-moving laconic, classical-oriented style." The track was a surprise hit on the US Easy Listening chart. "As Tears