The Rolling Stones album ruined by drugs, according to Mick Jagger
The Rolling Stones have never claimed to be saints who have lived without committing any sinful activity. For a significant period, they were viewed by the masses as the wildest band in all of the land, which they wore as a badge of honour.
For the most part, the extracurricular activities that The Rolling Stones kept themselves occupied by exercising didn’t impact their work for the wrong reasons. As much as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards enjoyed revelling in rock ‘n’ cliches in their spare time, they still had a knack for producing songs of the highest calibre.
Nevertheless, it’s impossible to deny that drugs and The Rolling Stones are intrinsically linked. The connection was established during the group’s early days, and it famously caught the attention of the Metropolitan Police, who started a targeted campaign against the band, culminating with the Redlands bust in 1967, making them cartoonish tabloid villains.
The Rolling Stones weren’t the only folk in London who were experimenting with substances, but their notoriety placed a target on their back. The bust only enhanced their reputation for being lawless rulebreakers — a status which only made them more beloved by their fans. However, Jagger later confessed that he believed it hampered their creativity, and The Rolling Stones took their eyes off the ball. While his band did most of their best work while their mind wasn’t entirely focused on their craft, one album represents a significant regret for Jagger.
Immediately after the infamous bust, the Rolling Stones began work on Their Satanic Majesties Request. While the project could have provided the group with a source of sanctity during a challenging time, the album’s recording process was a convoluted mess from start to finish. The most damning insight into the making of Their Satanic Majesties Request came courtesy of Bill Wyman. After growing frustrated at his bandmates, he penned the song, ‘In Another Land’, as a thinly-veiled attack on the deterioration of his bandmates. He later commented: “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.”
Wyman added: “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.”
Admittedly, the chaotic circumstances that surrounded the creation of Satanic Majesties made the album sound somewhat incoherent. Nevertheless, there are far more high points on the record than low points, and the acerbic moments on the LP only contribute to its experimental charm. However, it’s a record that Jagger isn’t proud of as a complete entity. If he had an opportunity to make it again, there are various things he would have done differently.
“The whole thing, we were on acid,” Jagger told Rolling Stone in 1995. “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. Also, we did it to piss Andrew off, because he was such a pain in the neck”.
The Rolling Stones successfully accomplished their mission as their longtime producer, Andrew Loog Oldham, resigned during the album’s creation. Jagger explained why they deliberately pushed him to the brink: “He didn’t understand it. The more we wanted to unload him, we decided to go on this path to alienate him”.
Considering that The Rolling Stones and Oldham had previously pushed each other to great heights, their behaviour towards him was particularly unkind. In his defence, Jagger concluded that drugs were the simple reason for the band’s erratic behaviour, stating, “I probably started to take too many drugs. 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.”
Continuing, he added: “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.”
Looking back through sober eyes, Jagger isn’t alone in his thoughts on the album, and Keith Richards feels similar. Speaking to Esquire in 2015, the guitarist addressed the comparison between the album and The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s, which he had no love for either. “If you’re the Beatles in the ’60s, you just get carried away—you forget what it is you wanted to do,” he said.
Richards added: “You’re starting to do Sgt. Pepper. Some people think it’s a genius album, 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.'”
There are flickerings of brilliance splattered across Their Satanic Majesties Request, which perhaps might have been enabled by the vast substances they consumed, but this is also why the album didn’t fulfil its potential. While it is often stated that drugs can positively fuel the creative process, Jagger is no longer a believer in that stance.
