Their Satanic Majesties Request: The Devil Rides Out

Just come out of intense session writing about the Stones in the 70s so here's a bit of an epic on the much-derided psychedelic diversion that facilitated the coming transformation (Shindig! 2012)

‘If it wasn’t for the challenge of the music, we couldn’t have survived either as a group or as individuals.’

Brian Jones

AUGUST, 1967: For the first time since their meteoric rise to fame, time seemed to be on the Rolling Stones’ side after the grim reaper shadow of the Redlands bust was dispelled. The following year would see the band crank into their glorious next phase and complete the transformation from scream-age pop group into the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world.

In retrospect, that couldn’t have happened so perfectly without Their Satanic Majesties Request, the multi-hued, much-derided, tortuously created soundtrack to the Stones’ troubled 1967, which stands as another vital cog in the Stones‘ remarkable 50 years in the fray.

Recording had started earlier in the year, but the creative process was never going to produce a concise set of songs. Apart from the seismic changes occurring in music and society, the Stones’ inner machinations totally shifted in 1967 as the conveyor belt which had seen them squeeze recording sessions in between gruelling tours, was effectively shut down. After a studied freeze-out campaign, manager-producer Andrew Oldham, who had guided the Stones image since the start and produced their records, had walked a few weeks into the sessions. Now, having discovered a suitable studio base at Olympic in Barnes, the Stones could take their time recording, although the legal interruptions during the first months resulted in what Keith later called, ‘a fractured album.’

With copious amounts of marijuana and lysergic thrills replacing the amphetamine assembly line of previous albums, their next LP was always going to stretch its legs, even slide under the table a couple of times. As I said last month, TSMR was a snapshot of the Stones at that particularly tumultuous time and even the era itself. As Charlie Watts said, it’s a miracle they came out with ANYTHING that year. As I also said, the album was the vital watershed between two very different phases of the Stones‘ journey; a necessary release of the pressure bubble which had imprisoned them for the last three years. Without the hallucino-noodling of ‘Gomper‘ to exorcise the ghosts of pop past, they might not have arrived at the return to roots which reared so magnificently on Beggars Banquet the following year.

Their Satanic Majesties… was the first Stones album to be released with the same tracks in the same sleeve at the same time. In the wake of Sergeant Pepper, the eyes of the world would be peering to see what the Beatles’ supposed arch-rivals had come up with in this most seismic of years. Considering the pressure and events surrounding the Stones that year, an album of normal songs would have been out of the question anyway. ‘We Love You’ was perfect as their summer of love statement; the album [from which no UK singles were released] actually reflects all the uncertainty, interacting substances and, of course, an underlying desire to progress which would have battered the group’s collective psyche that year. It was the sound of the Stones letting their hair down and their minds fly [or fry].

“I can remember virtually nothing of those sessions,” confessed Keith. “It’s a total blank. We were pretty much the same way we look on the cover! So really it was a very stoned time.” Nonetheless, the Jagger-Richards songwriting craft can’t help shining through on outings such as ‘2,000 Light Years From Home’. ‘She’s A Rainbow’ and ‘Citadel’. The Stones’ brand of psych was a much darker beast than the Beatles’ or most others, for that matter. As has been pointed out over the years, if it had been made by anyone else it would have been hailed a masterpiece of the era. The Stones’ mastery of pop music, whether strident or elegiac, ran parallel with the experimentation throughout the album; sometimes merging beautifully, occasionally fighting within the same track. Few albums released in 1967 now seem flawless, as many featured artists either finding their feet or experimenting. By 1995, Mick could declare, “It’s a sound experience, rather than a song experience.” Brian Jones was a massive presence on the album, his mastery of exotic instruments, which had blossomed so beautifully on the likes of ’Lady Jane’ and ’Under My Thumb’, allowed the run free in the atmosphere of stoned bacchanal, despite some reports that he had favoured a return to the Stones’ blues roots. That would soon happen; the catalyst being Keith Richards’ discovery of the open G tuning favoured by old bluesmen, but Brian formed the Stones at a time when blues and the more far out jazz were the musical underground. Even during this much-documented times of hedonistic excess and trauma, his ongoing musical quest showed little sign of abating, although his fragile health continued to deteriorate under the relentless persecution seemingly being carried out by an establishment miffed that it hadn’t managed to cage Mick and Keith, who now had total control of the band he‘d started. The humiliated British establishment needed to make a killing to restore its credibility and self-worth, so homed in on the vulnerable Brian as their best bust target. At least, he had the chance to make his last grand statements in the wide open field of the next album.

By the time Their Satanic Majesties Request was released in December, 1967, the world had changed since the Stones started it the previous February, the summer of love’s idealism replaced by darker forces as harsh realities like the escalating carnage in Vietnam and police brutality kicked in. That would be reflected on the next album but there were still sinister undercurrents coursing in the undergrowth, partly from the supernatural forces which sometimes seemed to richochet around this band, uncannily recalling the hell-for-leather lifestyles of the bluesmen they admired.

In Crossfire Hurricane, Mick confesses that his personas, from pop star to Lucifer rising, were acting roles. As his relationship with Marianne Faithful grew, so did the esoteric nature of his reading material and liking for the finer things in life. Becoming a man of wealth and taste was a role he slipped effortlessly into. During the sessions, he was reading Taoist work, The Secret Of The Golden Flower and occult anthology, The Morning of the Magicians.

The creative methods of the Stones’ two main songwriters seemed transformed by the Redlands bust and the more chilled but chaotic creation of Their Satanic Majesties… . Talking to Melody Maker’s Chris Welch towards the end of the month, Mick mentioned the strain the court cases had imposed on the recording process. “We've been carrying on recording the album but it has taken so long because of all this trouble we've had. Even while we were recording it made us edgy, especially near the end.“

The Stones reconvened at Olympic in August, under pressure to finish the album in time for the Christmas market. When recording recommenced in this new atmosphere of stoned creative abandon amidst a non-stop party, Andrew Oldham’s old methods of speed-fuelled wham bam recording went out the window. Stoned all-night jams were simply not his way of working. While New York hotshot Allen Klein now controlled the Stones‘ finances, Oldham knew he’d lost control of the production process, his Spectoresque hit factory ideals dashed into an already dated era. Or as he put it in his book, 2Stoned, “Andrew’s rallying cry to volume and commerce was not inviting any more.”

The band later admitted they wilfully played up the psychedelicised buffoonery to annoy and “alienate” Oldham [although they’d recorded a piss-take track called ’Fuckin’ Andrew’ as far back as 1964]. Oldham’s presence with the Stones had retreated since the previous year as he became involved in launching his Immediate label, while struggling with depression [being treated weekly by electro-shock treatment]. His absence of support during the drug busts had also widened the gap. The final straw, after so many nights of being ignored while the party and untamed recording went on around him, came when the Stones elected to use their friend Michael Cooper to take the album’s cover photograph, instead of mainstay Gered Mankowitz.

In late August, while Keith hung out with Anita in Rome, where she was still filming her part as The Black Queen for Barbarella, Mick and Marianne accompanied the Beatles to Bangor, North Wales to join George Harrison’s guru, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the finer points of transcendental meditation. The visit was cut short when news came through that Beatles manager Brian Epstein had overdosed on sleeping tablets, closing a part of that band’s history too.

With the album nearing completion, the Stones dismissed calling it Cosmic Christmas and were denied Her Satanic Majesty Requests And Requires by the record company, instead parodying the UK passport inscription with Their Satanic Majesties Request. Decca also vetoed a nude photograph of Mick appearing in the centre of the maze in the centre gatefold, surrounded by Bosch, Indian and sci-fi images.

Michael Cooper had photographed the cover of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper‘s… . Cooper was one of the brightest lights in the new young aristocracy which had embraced the Stones. The remarkable pictures he took of them between 1963-73 were beautifully packaged in a book called The Early Stones. The fact that Keith, Marianne and Anita contributed the commenties is evidence of the affection he commanded. Unfortunately, he later became another casualty, his long-term heroin addiction and depression leading to suicide. “It was impossible to be with Michael for any length of time and not get turned on to his life as he got turned on to yours,” declared Keith in the book’s foreword. “After a while you’d start seeing things through his eyes…I mean, he turned me on to always looking at the odd little scenario in the street, and he devoted that same level of ability, intensity and skill to capturing the making of the Stones.”

On 13 September, the band and Cooper flew to New York for the £15,000 photo session in upstate Mount Vernon, Mick and Keith encountering immigration problems, eventually allowed to stay a few days. With most of the party on acid, they erected the paper planets and props for the shoot, which would be in 3D, renting costumes to dress up as wizards, warlocks and pixies.

“We were on acid doing the cover pic,” recalled Mick. “It was like being at school, sticking on the bits of coloured paper and things. It was really silly, but we enjoyed it. Also, we did it to piss Andrew off, because he was such a pain in the neck….We decided to go on this path to alienate him.”

When they returned, the Stones announced that they’d fired Andrew Oldham as manager and would be producing themselves. There were [ill-founded] rumours of a record company and management company being started by the Stones with the Beatles but, for the time being, Jagger took over, hiring Marianne’s assistant Jo Bergmann to run their new offices on Maddox Street, Mayfair. He also rented a house in Chester Square for him and Marianne, while paying £25,000 for Stargroves, a 16^th century mansion near Newbury, Berks. Marianne kept herself occupied filming Girl On A Motorcycle [beating off co-star Alain Delon but having a fling with the stills photographer], while Mick started talking to Donald Cammell about a screenplay he‘d written about a rock star and a gangster, then still called The Performers.

On 30 October, Brian attended Inner London Sessions with bust buddy Stash de Rowla; sporting a grey pinstripe suit and tie but a bit rough coming off the back of an all-night sesh with Hendrix at the Moody Blues gaff. While Stash’s case was dismissed, Brian pleaded guilty to allowing drugs to be used at his Courtfield Road flat and possessing hashish. His lawyers produced psychiatrists who vouched that prison would send Brian into psychotic depression and possibly spark suicide attempts. Unmoved, the judge imposed a year inside, Brian whisked off to Wormwood Scrubs before being bailed out. At the same time, the Glimmer Twins were flying to New York to remix the album.

The case came up for appeal on 12 December, when psychiatrists described Brian as ’an extremely frightened young man’ and ’a very emotional and unstable person’ . Taking pity, the judge commuted the sentence to three years probation and £1000 fine, provided he sought treatment. Two days later, Brian collapsed on downers at his new Chelsea flat, ending up in hospital.

Mick told the press his worries that the Stones wouldn’t be able to tour abroad, saying that Brian couldn’t get into Japan because he was ’a druggy’. On the outside, Brian was still the public image and spirit of the Stones, a musical genius and counter-culture figurehead being mercilessly pummelled by the authorities. He would be busted again the following May, still tripping after a screening of 2001; A Space Odyssey when stumbling home to a flat full of cops, who‘d found a ball of wool containing a lump of hash. Although Brian would get off with a fine, the offence further jeopardised the Stones’ chances of getting into the US to tour.

Brian could still be an articulate spokesman for his generation, as when he told one interviewer, “Our generation is growing up with us and they believe in the same things we do. Nearly all of them think like us and are questioning some of the basic immoralities which are tolerated in present day society - the war in Vietnam, persecution of homosexuals, illegality of abortion and drug taking. All these things are immoral. We’re making our own statement, others are making more intellectual ones. We believe there can be no evolution without revolution.”

Their Satanic Majesties was released in the UK on 8 December [having already done good business in the US]. When promos went out, Les Perrin‘s press release for Decca records declared, ‘It might best be described as a kind of show, a voyage into beyond, an abstract musical experience to capture the new dimension in music the Stones and Decca Records have come up with.’ Mick hinted at the same thing but, on the whole, downplayed the record in Melody Maker, saying, “It’s just another album. The work on this album is not a landmark or a milestone or anything pretentious like that. All we’ve tried to do is make an album we like, with some sounds that haven’t been done before.”

The derision seemed to come with hindsight as reviews were mainly positive, like Record Mirror’s Norman Jopling, the guy who’d written the first Station Hotel review, stating that it launched them into ‘a higher, better and altogether more satisfying musical level…The best album by far that the Rolling Stones have ever recorded.’

Long-time champion and NME confidante Keith Altham declared, ‘This is what the Mothers Of Invention have attempted, with a certain amount of derision, and the Beach Boys have tried with Smiley Smile. This is the trip to infinity – the journey to the dark spaces between the stars and beyond. The sounds are East and West and the lyrics both sane and insane. This is what the Beatles have been saying in part, and now the Stones have said it. The only outstanding question is how many know, and how many will want to know, about their brave album?

Disc & Music Echo ’s Mike Ledgerwood described it as, ‘An intensely interesting, musically marvellous masterpiece. A gem of production on the Stones’ part, and a credit to their hours of persistent enthusiasm. By far their best.’

The album reached number two in the UK, but almost immediately ignited a hail of scorn which saw it swept under the carpet like an unsightly dog turd in the catalogue for years, until more recent generations approached it as an artifact of the age in its own right, not to mention a compulsively enjoyable experience. Even as soon after release as 1968, Mick was pondering its rather bizarrely convoluted creation in Rolling Stone, reasoning, “There was no absolutely idea behind Satanic Majesties….no, there was, but it was all completely external. It was done over such a long period of time that eventually it just evolved. It took almost a year to make, not because it’s so fantastically complex that we needed a whole year, but because we were so strung out…We never knew if we would be in jail or not. Keith and I never sat down and played the songs to each other. We just made that album for what it is. I was happy it was finished. I breathed a sigh of relief because we finally completed it.”

While the album flummoxed their following even more than the Beatles’ seeming retreat from lysergic dabbling with the Magical Mystery Tour [‘I Am the Walrus’ obviously excluded], the Stones fled the country over the Christmas period. Keith and Anita joined fresh-out-of-jail Robert Fraser and Christopher Gibbs at a rented house in Marrakesh. Brian and Linda Keith travelled with Stash to Ceylon, where the Stone spent time with astrologer and novelist Arthur C. Clarke. Mick, Marianne and her son Nicholas went to Barbados and Brazil. In Bahia, they stumbled into the drumming and dancing of a Santeria street ceremony but, being the only white people there, were chased away with stones [the pulsating samba rhythms providing an idea to be rekindled for ‘Sympathy For The Devil’].

The Stones took a half-page ad in the post-Christmas NME featuring one of Charlie’s drawings and the message,

‘The future is a memory when playing with time. We wish your time is a happy one in 1968. Love from the Rolling Stones.’

The transformation of Keith Richards into the post-psych UK’s first rock ‘n’ roll star, as opposed to the pop idol Mick would try to escape by using the ‘acting’ roles of the next few years, began in summer, 1967. Any seasoned Stones-watcher will remark on the noticeable change in Keith from the shy, slightly gawky guitar-toter happily leaving the scream-stoking antics to Mick and Brian while sculpting the monster riffs for hits like ‘Satisfaction’. After the Redlands experience which, as Keith recounts in Crossfire Hurricane, gave him the licence to don the outlaw’s black hat and play the outlaw, he fell into his relationship with Anita Pallenberg and learned about the deeper, wilder side of relationships, while drugs became as much a part of daily life as a cup of tea. Under the developing crows-nest thatch which would launch countless ‘Keef cuts’, his face started gaining the lines and pallor which would feed the ‘elegantly wasted’ persona of a few years’ hence, accentuated by Anita‘s clothes, makeup and jewelry.

While the image which would soon be one of the most copied in rock ‘n’ roll for decades was shaping up nicely, his personal life with Anita made his former girlfriend Linda Keith running off with Hendrix a distant memory [even if he felt guilty about taking her from his band-mate Brian]. Musically, the biggest ructions to hoist the Stones started taking shape when country squire Keith sat for hours in his Fifth Dimension studio playground in a Redlands satellite cottage getting baked while discovering open G tuning, as played by old bluesmen such as Blind Blake, Skip James and Mississippi Fred McDowell. As he recalled, ‘”I started working things out on five string, and that got me back into studying and transferring ideas to and from six string tuning…Suddenly I was back into the guitar like a motherfucker!” The technique would be compounded when Keith jammed with visiting young American guitarist Ry Cooder [vital country elements added to his arsenal when he met Gram Parsons that June, but that’s another story].

Taping his tinkering on the early Phillips cassette recorder which constituted his ‘studio’, Keith knew he was on to something, recording his acoustic guitar into the mic so it overloaded. That’s how the ringing guitar scrub of ‘Street Fighting Man’ and ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ was born. Thus he started forging the fierce, serrated guitar tone which has steered every great Stones riff song since, first parading it on a track called ‘Child Of The Moon‘, which wouldn’t fit on the album but made a sublime b-side for their next single. While the Stones exorcised the acid out of their heads, Keith was making sure the comedown would collide with an even better high. His guitars had been toned down in 1967, but now he was writing again to return to the studio armed for the next album. Soon the Devil would be ready to ride out, while the blues galloped back in. Many more recordings had become available since the early 60s, when imports had to be ordered by post. Keith scoured the liner notes, particularly happy when a Robert Johnson bootleg presented ’Love In Vain’.

While Allen Klein was already proving difficult to get money out of for expenses and bills, Jimmy Miller was hired to produce the next Stones album. He had already proved himself with the Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, Family and could capture a live sound. The Stones spent two weeks in a Surrey studio in March, where they worked up new songs including ‘No Expectations’ and ‘Stray Cat Blues’, a groupie jailbait sleaze-holler whose droney resonance was, like several other tracks, influenced by ‘Heroin‘ off the first Velvet Underground album.

By March, roadie-pianist Ian Stewart [who, to his eternal credit, always kept the Stones moving whatever the obstacles, whether screaming fans or overdoses] had found a rehearsal space on Bermondsey Street, South London. ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ arose from some chords Bill was messing around with on bass while warming up at a March rehearsal, which Keith took away and pummelled into his trusty cassette recorder. The chorus was inspired by Keith‘s Redlands gardener Jack Dyer walking past the window when he was running through open blues chords with Mick. A mutual spark lit into one of the Stones’ quintessential songs. Keith described that most monumental of riffs as “Satisfaction in reverse” but, 44 years later, cites it as one of his very favourite Stones songs to play; “When I play that first riff in ‘Jumpin‘ Jack Flash‘, something happens in my stomach - a feeling of tremendous exhilaration, an amazing superhuman feeling. You just jump on that riff and it plays you. It‘s the one feeling I would say approaches the state of nirvana.”

In mid-March, the Stones entered Olympic and started laying down songs including ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’, ‘Parachute Woman‘, ‘Child Of The Moon‘ and ‘No Expectations’, which would boast Brian’s last major contribution to the Stones’ music in his exquisite slide guitar solo. A track which had started life in the Fifth Dimension as ‘Primo Grande’, now called ‘Everybody Pays Their Dues’, didn’t start gaining steam until Charlie set up a little antique toy drum and cymbal suitcase kit, which Keith played along to. Through the cassette-overdub process with acoustic guitar and keening Indian drone, the song started turning into ‘Street Fighting Man’, which wouldn’t get that title and lyric until after Mick and Marianne had attended the peace demonstration against the Vietnam war, which marched to the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, where riot police had steamed in with their truncheons.

‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ was promo’d at the end of April and caused a stir immediately. Everything seemed to have fallen into place perfectly; from Keith‘s open-tuned riff [and bass-playing] to Jagger‘s most luridly upfront vocal to date and Charlie‘s slingshot wallop, further elevated by Brian’s sitar and organ, Traffic‘s Dave Mason on shenhai and electric viola from Rik Grech of Family, who were in the next door studio recording their Music From A Doll‘s House debut album [which Miller part-produced]. For Mick, it was a defiant declaration of intent: “It’s about having a hard time…and a metaphor for getting out of the acid things.”

I still remember it being played by Peel and the electric buzz around it, boosted by the Stones’ surprise appearance at the annual NME Pollwinners’ concert. The Stones fan club were in enough of a lather to send out the US 45 sleeve to members. Michael Lindsay-Hogg filmed the proto-video, shown on Top Of The Pops, the band in war paint, bug-eyed shades, cloaked in demonic aura. The single spent three weeks at number one - their first since ‘Paint It Black’ in May, 1966.

The Stones were reflecting modern times again: the fleeting idealism of flower power trampled, with ’Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ just the opening shot. The next two years would see the Beggars Banquet triumph, Gram Parsons, Stones soul Brian Jones‘ tragic death, Performance wreak its dark havoc, Let It Bleed, return to touring with new guitarist Mick Taylor and the horror of Altamont to kiss off the 60s. The Stones were about to become undisputed leaders of their generation again and the Greatest Rock ‘N’ Roll Band In The World for the first time. Their Satanic Majesties Request can be seen as a crucial part of the evolutionary process which got them there.