The Rolling Stones’ finest “acid” anthems, according to Keith Richards
When thinking about The Rolling Stones and drugs, it’s usually the hard stuff that comes to mind first. With a history of house raids and drug busts, it’s no secret that the band loved their gear, especially in a white powder form. But on one often underappreciated album, the group were going through a psychedelics phase.
In the story of The Rolling Stones, cocaine would have to play a leading role. Especially when it comes to Keith Richards’ life, the drug not only fueled the guitarist but threatened to take him down several times. It nearly got the band sent to prison after the infamous raid on Redlands, almost derailed their 1975 American tour as Richards somehow got out of a huge drug bust with only a driving ticket, and even came close to killing him several times as the player has somehow managed to cheat death many times.
But in 1967, cocaine wasn’t the substance of the moment. As the mid-1960s brought about Ken Kesey’s acid tests, The Beach Boys’ spiralling Pet Sounds, The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the entire psychedelic genre: LSD was the drug du jour, and The Stones were partaking.
Often overlooked in favour of the most straight-up rock and roll of Between the Buttons, which came before, or solidifying of The Stones’ signature sound on Beggars Banquet, which came after, 1967’s Their Satanic Majesties Request was the band’s nod to the trippy culture of the moment. Released the same year as Sgt Pepper’s marked a period when the UK’s music scene was clearly looking towards American counterculture for inspiration, morphing from adopting their folk or rock sounds into adopting their whole hedonistic approach to drugs and music and merging the two.
However, from the minute The Beatles dropped their own contribution a few months later, The Stones’ psychedelic offering has lived in its shadows. But even for Richards, it’s a record that stands out amongst their discography as something different or powered by something different.
“It’s always been an oddball album in the whole line-up, probably because of some of that acid,” he said. However, amongst the tracklist and the strange era in the band’s life, there are some songs that stand out to Richards as moments of greatness plucked from their trippy brains.
“‘She’s A Rainbow’, ‘2000 Light Years From Home’”, he picked out, naming the two as the band’s best acid anthems. While ‘She’s A Rainbow’ exists as one of the band’s biggest hits, often included on Greatest Hits compilations as one of the only selections from this early era in the band’s life, ‘2000 Light Years From Home’ is a more underrated track that Richards believes deserves to join the ranks as one of LSD’s finest musical offerings.
Realistically, it’s probably tough to find a Stones song that wasn’t made under the influence of something or another. But as the band dabbled in acid, the blues rock influence gave way for a second, adopting more of the traditionally spiralling and textural sounds most commonly associated with hallucinogenic.
