“There’s two good songs”: Drugs, conflictions, and why Mick Jagger surprisingly hates ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’
If we take it upon ourselves to ignore the 1980s, pretend that their constant devotion to putting out new music isn’t tarnishing their memories and wipe clean some of their less celebrated dirty moments, The Rolling Stones have hardly set a foot wrong since their formation in 1963.
Some fans would argue that there isn’t one misstep over the entirety of their career. However, Mick Jagger is spectacularly unfavourable towards one album, in particular, from their repertoire. The album in question, Their Satanic Majesties Request, is, according to the singer and host of fans, the least Rolling Stones-sounding record that they have ever made.
The psychedelic and experimental album saw the Stones wave goodbye to the bluesy brand of rock ‘n’ roll they had made their own in favour of dipping their toes into trippy, acid-fuelled waters. Many fans still view the record as an utter masterpiece that shows their impressive versatility and proves that they were a multi-faceted beast.
However, Mick Jagger told Rolling Stone in 1995 that the record wasn’t an epiphanic creative endeavour that they felt compelled to go after, and instead, was their bizarre way of pushing out their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. Critics accused the album of ripping off The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s and one man, in particular, was incensed by it: John Lennon. “Every fuckin’ thing we did, Mick does exactly the same – he imitates us,” he said. “And I would like one of you fuckin’ underground people to point it out, you know Satanic Majesties is Pepper, ‘We Love You,’ it’s the most fuckin’ bullshit, that’s ‘All You Need Is Love’.”
“The whole thing, we were on acid,” Jagger recalled to the publication. “We were on acid doing the cover picture. I always remember doing that. It was like being at school, you know, sticking on the bits of coloured paper and things. It was really silly. But we enjoyed it.” The band were clearly having fun and the allure of mirroring The Beatles success must have been hard to ignore, however, there may have been another reason for the group’s pursuit of the psychedelic side of rock.
“Also, we did it to piss Andrew off, because he was such a pain in the neck,” Jagger confessed. The ‘Satisfaction’ singer then added: “Because he didn’t understand it. The more we wanted to unload him, we decided to go on this path to alienate him.”
By 1967, the personal tensions between Andrew Loog Oldham and The Rolling Stones had reached their breaking point. Oldham, who was just as engulfed in the drug-fuelled lifestyle as the band, had drifted too far from them for the relationship to be salvaged. Despite his pivotal role in elevating the Stones to greatness, their partnership had become untenable. Oldham’s disdain for the sound of Their Satanic Majesties Request only pushed the band further toward completing the record—fueled not just by defiance, but perhaps even more significantly, by acid.
“I probably started to take too many drugs,” Jagger admitted about the record. “Well, it’s not very good. It had interesting things on it, but I don’t think any of the songs are very good. It’s a bit like Between the Buttons. It’s a sound experience, really, rather than a song experience. There’s two good songs on it: ‘She’s a Rainbow’, which we didn’t do on the last tour, although we almost did, and ‘2000 Light Years From Home’, which we did do. The rest of them are nonsense.”
The two tracks are rightly considered among the Stones’ best but do stick out on the LOP as perhaps the only viable ventures. He continued: “I think we were just taking too much acid. We were just getting carried away, just thinking anything you did was fun and everyone should listen to it.”
It’s not just Jagger who isn’t a fan of the record now that the acid has worn off, Keith Richards also looks back at the album without much fondness. In an interview with Esquire in 2015, the guitarist spoke about the famous comparison between the album and Sgt. Pepper, which it’s safe to say he holds equal disdain towards.
Richards noted: “If you’re the Beatles in the ’60s, you just get carried away—you forget what it is you wanted to do. You’re starting to do Sgt. Pepper.” It irks Richards that so many people give the record such high acclaim. “Some people think it’s a genius album,” he continued, “But I think it’s a mishmash of rubbish, kind of like Satanic Majesties—’Oh, if you can make a load of shit, so can we.'”
Even if The Rolling Stones collectively despise Their Satanic Majesties Request, it’s still the kind of album most bands would kill to have in their discography. While it may not be their finest hour, the record represents something far more significant—a turning point in their career when drugs took the reins and the recording process spiralled into unprecedented chaos. It remains, without a doubt, the most turbulent period in the band’s history. The fact that they not only survived this era of mayhem but also emerged with a record as audacious as Satanic Majesties is nothing short of miraculous.
