Records that Spun Me #3 - The Rolling Stones - Their Satanic Majesties Request - 1967
Choosing a Stones album to write about could go any which way from 12x5 to Exile. With Aftermath and Between the Buttons Mick and Keith had begun churning out a series of great songs, teeming with attitude and sizzling guitar riffs. And then there was Brian Jones’ multi-instrumental magic. His inventive/intuitive sonic embroidering was integral to each new Stones album.
For X-mas ’67 my father got me a set of big, clunky headphones. Not because he wanted to enhance my listening pleasure but, so he didn’t have to listen to “that crap.” I would lie on the living room couch for hours listening to the Kinks’ Face to Face, Small Faces’ Ogden’s Nut Flake, Cream, and the Doors, while Hendrix’s Are you Experienced, Satanic Majesties and Magical Mystery Tour were absolute sonic revelations…
Okay so here’s my brief tribute to an album, that despite everyone’s initial disappointment and tons of disparaging comments in the press, helped changed the way I listened to music – the Stones were no longer just recording songs with unexpected instrumental touches, they were, for just one brief album, creating mythical sonic dreamscapes which transported you out of your day to day time and place….
Hounded by the police in 1967 and enduring a series of sensationalized drug busts, which saw Jagger, Richard and Jones regularly hauled in and out of prison and brought before pompous magistrates determined to make an example out of them, the band needed something catchy to wrap their psychedelic misadventure Their Satanic Majesties Request in. Stunned by the fantastic imagery and detail of Sergeant Pepper, the Stones immediately hired Michael Cooper, the same photographer responsible for shooting the Beatles’ brilliant cover. But unlike the Beatles (who merely chose the personalities which comprised the colorful set and then posed for the famous photograph) the Stones actually built their own fantasy land over a three-day period, constructing a flimsy magic castle, shimmering mountain peaks, and a dangling Saturn from, as Keith recalled, “bits of Styrofoam and God knows what… millions of bits of sequins, rhinestones, and beads.” Photographed by Cooper with a 3-D camera, the image, when tilted caused the band’s faces to turn and look at one another, with the exception of Jagger, who sat stationary, center stage in his peaked wizard’s cap. Blurry pics of all four Beatles can be found hidden within the mounds of flowers that engulfed the band.
Originally dubbed The Cosmic Christmas, (at the end of side one, strains of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” can be heard, played on a woozy synthesizer by Brian Jones) Satanic Majesties, was released in December 1967, although Flower Power had already wilted and died on the vine. The Stones, despite their shaggy hair and exotic togs, had made lousy hippies. If they were any sort of “Flowers,” they were Venus Flytraps!
The album was mercilessly skewered by the press, as well as by John Lennon (who, along with McCartney sang on the record). While Lennon slagged the Stones, complaining that “Satanic Majesties was just Pepper,” one has to wonder if their loose, boozy cabaret number “On With The Show” wasn’t the inspiration for McCartney to write the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour.”
But no one was more brutal in their assessment of the Stones’ brief dalliance with psychedelia than Keith Richards, who dismissed the album as “a load of crap.” Even Charlie Watts’ mother, Lilian, took a shot at the record, claiming, “It was at least two weeks ahead of its time.”
Listening back to this beautiful mess is both rewarding and frustrating. The hits – “She’s A Rainbow” with its elegant string arrangement by Led Zep’s John Paul Jones is nothing short of radiant, while “2000 Light Years from Home” takes you down into the dark dungeon of despair that Jones, Jagger and Richards undoubtedly experienced when thrown into Wormwood Scrubs prison on charges of drug (mostly cannabis) possession. One of my favorite Stones’ numbers – the song features a classic Keith Richards grungy guitar hook, great drums from Charlie Watts, and atmosphere galore by Brian Jones, this time conjuring his sonic magic with backward piano and synthesizer instead of his usual arsenal of exotic folk instruments – from dulcimer, recorder and sitar. Bill Wyman’s bass growls like a demented tiger on absinthe while Keith and Charlie lay down a monster groove on “Citadel.” Not to be overlooked is Wyman’s brief moment in the spotlight with “In Another Land.” Over a sinister harpsichord, Bill’s voice, drenched in vibrato (I believe he beat Tommy James & the Shondells to the punch with their trippy “Crimson & Clover”) perfectly fit the tune’s loopy lyric. “Was this some kind of joke?” Jagger spits on the chorus. Speaking of jokes… while “Sing This All Together” sound like the Stones’ own shabby version of Hair – the reprise “Sing This All Together - See What Happens” remains to this day, their most enigmatic track – like a home movie of a strange late-night shamanic ritual taking place in Keith’s basement. “The Lantern” is a glorious and mystical moment – “If you are the first to go – leave a sign and let me know,” Mick pleads… Great guitar work from Keith and flutes from Brian while Nicky Hopkins piano holds it all together. And did the fluttering flute/swirling organ/tabla-driven jam of “Gomper” invent “World Music?”
How much better would this album have been had they substituted their single “Dandelion/We Love You” or “Child of the Moon” – a great Stones “lost track” they used for the B-side of their next single "Jumpin' Jack Flash," for “Sing This All Together - See What Happens? But there wasn’t much in the way of “clear” decision making going on between the haze of drugs and their manager/producer Andrew Loog Oldham’s abrupt departure.
Despite its sloppier, more unfocused moments, I love Satanic Majesties and don’t give a feather or a fig what Keith or Charlie Watts’ mother thinks.