The best mistake The Rolling Stones ever made, according to Mick Jagger
There have been many ill-advised mistakes made by acclaimed artists that have seen them receive heavy criticism from fans for straying too far away from what they were previously celebrated for. While it is now looked upon much more favourably, Radiohead’s Kid A was slammed by some commentators as a commercial failure that did everything in its power to shrug off their alternative rock hero status by throwing in influences from Autechre and DJ Shadow. It’s a masterpiece, but it rubbed so many people up the wrong way at its time of release.
Many others have dared to be adventurous after releasing critically and commercially adored albums to varying degrees of success. Lou Reed was seemingly onto a hot streak after the back-to-back releases of Transformer and Berlin. Still, his decision to share the commercially successful Sally Can’t Dance in 1974 was one that he held deep regrets about for how uninspired it felt. In an effort to see out the remainder of his album contract with RCA, he handed over Metal Machine Music, an album so deliberately inaccessible that it was met with widespread derision from all angles. Neither were smart ideas on Reed’s part and could have derailed his entire career if it wasn’t for the fact that he followed up this weak run with Coney Island Baby.
At the time of its release, The Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request was regarded as a hollow attempt to emulate the success of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and received a veritable panning across the board for its pale imitation of the psychedelic pop movement that was in full bloom at the time. ‘She’s A Rainbow’ might be the most recognised song from the album, but it was never a hit in the UK and only reached the disappointing high of number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 despite the success of their earlier singles in the States.
However, historic reappraisals have been much kinder to Satanic Majesties and recognise that their ambitions with the album were not to be a carbon copy of their Liverpudlian counterparts but to push the sound of the band in a more adventurous direction. Having achieved their greatest successes as a group with a more blues-oriented sound, the drastic and sudden switch to psychedelia caught many off guard, and with it only being a brief foray into the genre, it could be argued that if they’d persisted with this style, they might have been able to reinvent themselves in this newfound light.
While this mixed reception is even present within the band, with various members both praising and criticising it, when asked about Satanic Majesties in a 1986 interview for The Old Grey Whistle Test, Mick Jagger had nothing but praise for the album, despite interviewer David Hepworth clearly probing him for a controversial remark.
While Hepworth said that Satanic Majesties is “one that everybody always says is an embarrassment”, Jagger’s response was to speak his mind, saying, “Love it, lovely record”. With Hepworth further prodding the singer for a quote of interest, asking if he looked back on it as “an appalling mistake,” Jagger would say that he believed “there should be a few more mistakes like that”.
Jagger would then further expand on his thoughts, stating, “If I’ve got a criticism of the Rolling Stones, and myself because I think it applies to me as much as anyone, is that I think they’re a little bit cautious.” While he’s also been known to be critical of the album in the past, saying that their extortionate LSD intake at the time ruined it and claiming that “it had interesting things on it, but I don’t think any of the songs are very good,” in a previous interview, this indication that the album was a happy mistake clearly presents it in a much greater light.
