The Rolling Stones – Their Satanic Majesties Request
In June of 1967 when The Beatles released the now defining Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, swinging London was in the kaleidoscopic throes of a psychedelic haze. This was the summer of love for those that could afford it and a hippy ideal of “peace and love”, culminating in the naive Flower Power movement shipped over from San Francisco, was rife amongst those fortunate enough not to have to work for a living.
Not to be outdone amidst this polychromatic swirl, The Rolling Stones, who all things aside were the only real contenders to The Beatles crown (justly or otherwise), recorded their answer – what was anticipated to be their very own Sgt. Pepper – Their Satanic Majesties Request.
Expectations were high and amidst such hopes it was a dead-cert that a certain faction would be left disappointed. Unfortunately for the Stones and the public at large who took press response as being gospel, the hostility from the critics was almost universal. For an album that kick-started The Rolling Stones’ golden period, its reception left a lot to be desired. Which is completely unfair.
Granted, the self-indulgent noodling exhibited on pretentious twaddle like ‘Sing this all Together (See What Happens)’ and the last three or so minutes of ‘Gomper’ – where what had been a half decent tune proceeds to derail spectacularly – are barely listenable, but cast these two musical indiscretions aside and you’re left with an album of good strong songs that, contrary to opinion back in 1967, does stand up to repeated listens.
One of the main criticisms levelled at Their Satanic Majesties Request (apart from it being contrived crap) was that in their efforts to sound like Sgt. Pepper, The Rolling Stones had dabbled in the psychedelic sound simply for the sake of it. A cynical exercise in bandwagon-jumping unfitting of a group at the cutting edge of their usual sound – blues-driven rock. That may well be the case, but comparisons with The Beatles much heralded album (clearly not the “Fab Four’s” best and possessing its own share of misses) are unfair, even if it was the driving force behind the ten songs offered here.
42 years on and in the cold light of morning, Their Satanic Majesties Request can be judged on its own merits. The opening track ‘Sing this all Together’ may struggle to go anywhere and eventually give up the ghost in favour of wishy-washy nothingness but once the throbbing guitar of ‘Citadel’ kicks in, it becomes clear that things are indeed on the up. Only the aforementioned ‘Sing this all Together (See What Happens)’, a different song to the opener and eight minutes of directionless noodling and random sounds rears its ugly head to spoil the proceedings halfway through.
This is the Stones at their most experimental and the fact that it was the band themselves producing Satanic Majesties (the only time in their long career) gave Brian Jones the opportunity to rope in a plethora of instruments and sounds, amongst them the mellotron, dulcimer, and concert harp. Even Bill Wyman gets his own song, the hauntingly outlandish ‘In Another Land’, featuring Small Faces Ronnie Lane and Steve Marriot on backing vocals.
Possibly the best known track off of this album aside from the astral ‘2000 Light Years From Home’ is ‘She’s a Rainbow’, which was released as a single in the US and most recently used on the soundtrack to a Sony Bravia advert. And quite rightly too, for it is a thing of sublime beauty. A memorable melody on the Mellotron tapped out by an ailing, drug-dependant, Brian Jones, accompanied by gentle piano from Stones regular Nicky Hopkins and a lustrous string arrangement by John Paul Jones (later of Led Zeppelin) are the perfect complement to Mick Jagger’s spirited, if a little fruity, lyrics. “She comes in colours everywhere, she combs her hair, she’s like a rainbow.”
If one was to pick a fault with Their Satanic Majesties Request other than the three duff tracks already mentioned, it would be the omission of the rather splendid ‘Child of the Moon’, which was recorded at the same time as the album. However, this would soon show up as the B-side to the Rolling Stones’ next single ‘Jumpin Jack Flash’, the song that brought the band’s brief flirtation with psychedelia to a crashing halt and set them back on course for the Blue-driven rock that would shape the next album, Beggar’s Banquet, and indeed the golden period of their career.
Their Satanic Majesties Request is released by ABKCO Records and available from Amazon.co.uk
See also:
The Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers
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