The Rolling Stones album Mick Jagger compared to Spinal Tap
Over the years, The Rolling Stones have been a circus, and controversy has never been far away from the band. They’ve gone through circumstances which would have made any other band collapse, but somehow The Stones have found a way to survive, such as when they made Their Satanic Majesties Request.
The album was a change of tone for The Rolling Stones, as they adapted to the new musical landscape, which had been affected by The Beach Boys releasing Pet Sounds, spurring on The Beatles to create Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club. After hearing these two albums, The Stones decided to get experimental and delve into the world of psychedelia on their next project.
The recording process for the album was a mess, but somehow they found a way to make an exceptional record amid the chaos. In his autobiography, bassist Bill Wyman wrote: “Every day at the studio it was a lottery as to who would turn up and what – if any – positive contribution they would make when they did. Keith would arrive with anywhere up to ten people, Brian with another half-a-dozen and it was the same for Mick. They were assorted girlfriends and friends. I hated it! Then again, so did Andrew (Oldham) and just gave up on it. There were times when I wish I could have done, too.”
Fortunately, The Stones didn’t give up on the project, but they had to work miracles to turn their recordings into a coherent album. With their deadline looming, they had to somehow scramble together their efforts at the last minute and present it as an LP, without traditional radio-friendly singles that fans had become accustomed to from the band.
Jagger once recalled: “It’s really like sort of got-together chaos. Because we all panicked a little, even as soon as a month before the release date that we had planned, we really hadn’t got anything put together. We had all these great things that we’d done, but we couldn’t possibly put it out as an album. And so we just got them together, and did a little bit of editing here and there.”
During an interview with Rolling Stone in 1995, Jagger was asked whether the process was like the mockumentary Spinal Tap and agreed with the interviewer’s assessment. He explained: “Absolutely no idea behind it. No, it’s wrong to say there is or was no idea at all, there was but it was all completely external. It was done over such a long period of time that eventually it just evolved. The first thing we did was ‘She’s a Rainbow,’ then ‘2000 Light Years From Home,’ then ‘Citadel’ and it just got freaker as we went along.”
Jagger added: “Then we did ‘Sing This Song All Together’ and ‘On With The Show,’ ‘The Lantern’ and then Bill’s one (‘In Another Land’),” he added. “It took almost a whole year to make, not because it’s so fantastically complex that we needed a whole year but because we were so strung out.”
Notably, the album was also their first attempt at self-producing an LP, which meant there was nobody in their camp to reign them in, and mayhem ensued. Theoretically, Their Satanic Majesties Request should have reflected the chaotic recording process, but The Stones found a way to create an experimentally beautiful mess.
