The one band Mick Jagger said was too Satanic
From the minute The Rolling Stones started gaining traction, Mick Jagger wasn’t exactly known as the shining example of the sweetheart rock and roller.
He was every bit the bluesman that he was trying to be when they started making their first tunes, and there was always something appealing about bringing in a little bit of danger into the mix on all of their records. But for all of the nastiness that was on their records, Jagger felt that there were always a few that they shouldn’t touch.
For instance, Jagger was never going to deliberately go against the grain for the sake of being a contrarian. He knew to follow the trends of the time if he wanted to stay current, and while that did lead to some truly embarrassing moments in the 1980s, it’s not like he didn’t have a strong sense of what The Stones could be if they tried to make a more modern take on their classic sound.
If he was pushed a step too far, though, he was going to make his opinion abundantly clear whenever he got onstage. It’s not an accident that he was rolling his eyes all the way through the censored version of ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’ on The Ed Sullivan Show, and while parents may have been up in arms about the sexual innuendos that he sings about, it’s not like he was about to apologise for abiding by the sex, drugs and rock and roll mentality.
Then again, there are limits on where people should go, and Jagger did see that a few songs went too far. A tune like ‘Brown Sugar’ would definitely have been a bit too much if it were released today, but even if they made songs like ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, Jagger was hesitant about flirting too much with the occult. That could lead to some deadly moments, but that didn’t seem to stop Jimmy Page from leaning into it.
Page was never afraid of the mystical side of rock and roll, but his fixation with Aleister Crowley was enough for people to think that the band was out to control their fans. This might have been where the egregious backmasking cases were made by radical religious groups, but if you were to ask Jagger, Page made a critical error when he decided to get interested in the dark arts, since he didn’t have his guitar on.
To him, this was a step too far, and the frontman guaranteed that The Stones wouldn’t partake in that kind of behaviour, saying, “The satanic-imagery stuff was very overplayed [by journalists]. We didn’t want to really go down that road. And I felt that song was enough. You didn’t want to make a career out of it. But bands did that – Jimmy Page, for instance.” Granted, it’s not like Page was doing human sacrifices in his spare time, either.
There were a lot of mixed messages in a lot of Led Zeppelin tunes, but the true appeal was the fantastical element of their music. Keep in mind this was the same band that talked about the epic tales that JRR Tolkien wrote about, so it wasn’t out of the question for them to talk about demonic forces in the same way that the kids from Stranger Things talk about evil forces in their D&D campaigns.
It was all a part of the aesthetic, but Jagger preferred to let his music do the talking more often than not. He had no problem being one of the bad boys of rock and roll, but there’s only so far that persona can go before people actually start thinking that you’re a danger to society.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Led Zeppelin Newsletter
All the latest stories about Led Zeppelin from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.