The Psychedelic Stones: In defence of ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’
Revolution was rife back in the 1960s, whether those revolts be political, sexual, or cultural. While we don’t have enough time to delve into the vast range of factors for this rebellious social climate, the advent of LSD, or acid, certainly has a lot to answer for.
Acid blew the doors off. One minute, it was the Grateful Dead running wild with their acid tests; the next thing we knew, whole scenes were springing up across the map. Psychedelia spread fast, dragging in the likes of Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd, and anyone else game enough to follow the trip. Even The Beatles, once all tidy haircuts and matching suits, dipped in deep. That phase churned out some of their maddest, most forward-thinking tunes – and, whether they meant to or not, they ended up preaching the LSD gospel too.
Back in the 1960s, wherever The Beatles went, The Rolling Stones tended to follow. Although often pitted against each other by the press, the two bands had a fairly close relationship; the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership even gave the Stones their first top-20 hit in the form of ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, and the Jagger-Richards songwriting duo only started out as the band’s manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, wanted to emulate the success of The Beatles’ original material.
So, when The Beatles immersed themselves in the acid age, it was only a matter of time before The Rolling Stones followed suit. The rest of the Stones own jaunt into the world of far-out psychedelia was the 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request, but, nowadays, that record is very rarely hailed as being on the same level as, for instance, Sgt. Pepper’s, The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, or any other masterpiece album from Britain’s psychedelic age.
In fact, the album is often ridiculed for being, among other things, a pale imitation of the psychedelia being created by the likes of The Beatles around that same time. Even the band members themselves have long since disowned the album, with Mick Jagger claiming that the record lacked substance: “It’s not very good. It had interesting things on it, but I don’t think any of the songs are very good. There’s two good songs on it. The rest of them are nonsense”.
While Keith Richards gave the much more diplomatic view, calling the record “a load of crap”.
Admittedly, the album is quite the departure from The Rolling Stones’ typically blues-centric rock and roll style, which didn’t lend itself naturally to the expansive, flowing world of psychedelia, but that is precisely what makes the album so compelling. At the risk of sounding deliberately contrarian, I would even argue that the record is among the Stones’ greatest works; it’s certainly their most innovative.
Typically, whenever Their Satanic Majesties Request is discussed, the argument always arises that the Stones couldn’t pull off the expansive exploration of psychedelia due to their unshakable ties to traditional blues. While it is certainly true that the album pushed the band out of their comfort zone, as shown by the fact that they themselves aren’t too keen on the record in retrospect, I absolutely refute the idea that they couldn’t pull the style off.
Individual efforts like ‘2000 Light Years From Home’ and ‘Citadel’ are utterly groundbreaking in isolation, beautifully capturing the intergalactic exploration in a way that still feels incredibly raw and visceral decades later. The true genius of the record, however, comes when it is listened to in its entirety, from start to finish. Like every great psychedelic record, the album is adept at flowing from one effort to another, changing the mood like the changing of the tides. It is a true sonic journey, and perhaps one which the band’s rock-centric following weren’t ready to partake in back in 1967.
Given that the album was released the very same year as Sgt. Pepper’s, it is no surprise that it was somewhat upstaged within the realm of innovative, LSD-infused projects, but the prevailing view that Their Satanic Majesties was a misguided attempt for the Stones to embrace psychedelia is horrendously narrow-minded.
Aside from anything else, the creation of that album was utterly essential in the artistic development of the Rolling Stones. After all, you don’t go from creating adolescent blues-rock anthems like ‘The Last Time’ straight into profoundly political masterpieces like ‘Street Fighting Man’ or ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. Their Satanic Majesties opened up the band to new areas of inspiration and expression, allowing them to break free from the shackles of the blues-rock sound, which had made them a commercial powerhouse up until that point.
The Rolling Stones would soon return to that blues-centric sound, but there is a discernible difference in the composition style of the band’s work pre and post Their Satanic Majesties, and for that even the most blindly loyal of Stones fans must allow the album some degree of praise.
Of all the many albums that make up the Stones’ extensive discography, that 1967 effort stands entirely in a league of its own, reflecting a crucial moment in the cultural history of the 1960s, and one of the greatest psychedelic albums of that era. So, it might not be their most popular effort, but to dismiss the album out of hand is an absolute travesty.
