The Rolling Stones album Keith Richards and Mick Jagger hated: “Nonsense”
Not every album can be a hit. Even the most esteemed and experienced bands are destined to make a creative blunder every now and again. Perhaps they stray a little too far from the style they’ve established for themselves, or they fall too far into their comfort zone and fail to inspire fans. They lose the faith of audiences or critics, and sometimes, they even lose faith in their own music. And even though they’re one of the biggest rock bands of all time, The Rolling Stones are no exception.
The Stones have some stellar albums to their name. Sticky Fingers remains truly iconic, spawning some of the band’s signature hits in ‘Brown Sugar’ and ‘Wild Horses’. The seminal Let It Bleed features some similarly big hitters, including ‘Gimme Shelter’ and ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’. But if you look a little further back in their catalogue, you’ll find a record that not even the band themselves were particularly impressed with.
Towards the end of 1967, the Stones followed up the success of Between the Buttons with Their Satanic Majesties Request. The record pushed away from the baroque stylings of its predecessor, leaning into the more psychedelic elements of the Stones’ sound. Now, it almost sounds like a parody of that late 1960s sound, a collage of the influence of The Beatles, burgeoning youth culture and excessive acid use.
Audiences and critics haven’t quite been able to make up their mind on the record, even decades after its release, with popular opinion flitting between positive and negative over the years. But the band’s comments surrounding Their Satanic Majesties Request have been a little more definitive, with many of the Stones sharing their dislike for the record.
Guitarist Keith Richards spoke about the record during a conversation with Esquire, acknowledging the parallels with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band, which the Fab Four had unveiled not long before. “If you’re the Beatles in the ‘60s, you just get carried away,” he commented. “You forget what it is you wanted to do. You’re starting to do Sgt. Pepper.”
Richards acknowledged that while some consider the Beatles’ record to be “genius”, he considers it to be a “mishmash of rubbish,” not dissimilar to Their Satanic Majesties Request. “Oh, if you can make a load of shit, so can we,” he stated. But Richards isn’t the only member of the Stones to retroactively hate on their 1967 release. His partner in songwriting, Mick Jagger, also shared his less than complimentary thoughts on the record.
Speaking with Rolling Stone, the frontman suggested that the band were taking too much acid at the time of making Their Satanic Majesties Request. “I probably started to take too many drugs,” he admitted, “Well, it’s not very good. It had interesting things on it, but I don’t think any of the songs are very good.”
Jagger picked out singles ‘She’s a Rainbow’ and ‘2000 Light Years From Home’ as two highlights from the record, but he concluded that the rest was “nonsense.” It’s easy to get on board with Richards and Jagger’s arguments. Their Satanic Majesties Request can seem like a nonsensical mishmash of influences at times, a derivative attempt to recreate the success of those psychedelic-influenced 1960s classics that had come before.
It’s certainly not the defining sound of the Stones, either. Few people, when prompted to think about the classic London rockers, think of the indulgently psychedelic stylings of Their Satanic Majesties Request. They’re far more likely to think of more rocking tunes like ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ and ‘Start Me Up’. And yet, there is something endearing about Their Satanic Majesties Request.
If you look past the comparisons to Sgt. Pepper’s and the band’s various comments on the record, Their Satanic Majesties Request can be enjoyed for what it is, a new direction for the band, a chance to experiment and delve further into psychedelia, and a fun experience for listeners, too. A nonsensical mishmash of an album doesn’t always have to be a bad thing.
