Their Satanic Majesties Request Song By Song Thread

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Zoot Marimba, Jul 29, 2017.

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  1. Shaddam IV

    Shaddam IV Forum Resident

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    By this criteria, "She's A Rainbow" doesn't fit either.
     
  2. California Couple

    California Couple dislike us on facebook

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    He even "killed" himself on the same day Brian died. The chances of that are 365 to 1.
     
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  3. The Doctor

    The Doctor Forum Resident

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    Even the same exact time, meaning, the night of July 2nd going into July 3rd. Both in pools of water, too. Eerie.
     
  4. The Doctor

    The Doctor Forum Resident

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    That one at least has the discordant string notes and odd outro to lend it a "weird" feel.
     
  5. California Couple

    California Couple dislike us on facebook

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    Eerie or planned?

    Another Jim Isn't Dead clue:

    "Remember when we were in Africa?"
     
  6. Zoot Marimba

    Zoot Marimba And I’m The Critic Of The Group Thread Starter

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    Please tell me you're being sarcastic
     
  7. The Doctor

    The Doctor Forum Resident

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    There's one big thing that people don't understand about TSMR - Beggar's Banquet.

    TSMR came out at the end of 1967. Beggar's at the end of 1968.

    During the course of 1968, an amazing transformation happened.

    It's the year Mick Jagger became the Mick Jagger we know today. He had tried on different faces as a rockstar until he finally found one that he felt comfortable with, and that stuck. It's the year Keith Richard became Keef.

    Seriously, go listen to an interview, or look at a photoshoot from 1967. Then compare it to one from 1968. Brian slowly falling out of orbit allowed for the other two to really become not only themselves, but...I think in a way they absorbed aspects of his real personality and incorporated it into their personas.

    In 1967, Brian was the hippest, most fashionable cat in town. The King of Monterey. In 1968, Keith and Mick had taken that place and they didn't NEED to be at Monterey. Brian at the end of 1968 was a shadow of his 1967 self, bloated from alcohol and mind dulled with pills. Mick was Turner; hair long and shoulder length, playing the part of the devil (Look at the Jumpin' Jack Flash video onward - he really began flirting with the 'Satanic' imagery)

    The transformative process of the film Performance happening in real time across three people.

    TSMR you see a band that is in a period of transition. Keith Richards is handling every guitar track on this album. Brian is taking the band to outer space and is on every track of TSMR, as vital as Keith but in a very different way. Two veering paths that easily could've been explored further. They've gotten rid of Andrew Loog Oldham, so there is perhaps, in 1967, no real leadership. Mick and Keith may be writing the songs but what do they know about leading a band?

    Mick Jagger is finally embracing his role as sex symbol and inventing this new, Performance inspired persona - the Turner persona. The band do not tour for all of 1968 and only do two shows the entire year. Brian's decadence I think influenced the other two in ways they may not have consciously understood.

    Think of the dynamics at play here. Think of the psychology. Brian had hired Mick and Keith initially, and in the first two years, he told them what songs they were going to play, he got them the gigs, etc. In 1967, Mick and Keith were truly emerging as songwriters and as people but they were still in a band that wasn't theirs. They were still guys in what was Brian's band. Imagine how awkward it was? For all parties involved, not just Brian. Mick and Keith becoming but not quite being the leaders of a band they didn't even form and were hired to play parts in. Brian no longer being the leader of but still being a much beloved member of a band he was increasingly losing day by day.

    As Brian began to lose interest in 1968, Mick and Keith were formed. They had to assert themselves as he removed himself more and more from the band. Keith even got Brian's fabled girl. The two basically became Brian: Mick became the sex symbol and shagger of countless women, the fashion and pop culture chasing Mick we know and who Keith lovingly calls Brenda. Pretentious. Keith became the druggie, the dark side of the band, with Anita on his arm. They in some strange, trans-formative way inherited Brian's two distinct characteristics that had defined the band. The sketch of a band was coming into color.

    Keith in 1966 was, if you listen interviews, a relatively nice and shy boy who had no aspirations of being a leader. He was just Keith. A guy who loved the blues. He was not this drugged out, too cool cat. Mick was a posh kid playing at an image Andrew Loog Oldham created. With ALO gone and Brian losing interest, some weird transition happens across 1967 to 1968; TSMR to Beggar's.

    On TSMR, Keith is almost a guest on what is, if not in songwriting, then in sound, a Brian Jones' Rolling Stones album. Mick and Keith may have written the songs, but the spirit is Brian. He is the one driving this weird direction. He is the one adding all these spacey parts that make these songs eerie. On Beggar's Banquet, Brian is a guest on what is a Keith and Mick Jagger sounding album. The battle and future for the band had been decided sometime during this long year. Maybe it was decided the moment Keith came back with Anita from Morocco, or maybe it was decided the moment Brian was busted for a second time and began his yearlong mental and physical decline. But it was decided in 1968.

    Brian would remain in the Stones until June 1969, but at some point in 1968, probably in the second half of that year, the Stones ceased being Mick, Keith, Brian, Bill and Charlie...and became Mick and Keith.
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2018
  8. Lk4605

    Lk4605 Forum Resident

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    Excellent analys of 1968 year
     
  9. California Couple

    California Couple dislike us on facebook

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    Jim was a fan of French poet Arthur Rimbau.

    Arthur Rimbau faked his death to become a gun runner in Africa.

    Like Brian, Jim had been to Moroco.

    Jim joked to his friends that he would contact them using the name Mr. Mojo Risin' after he was back in Africa.

    If you want to go into hiding, Africa is a good place to do it.

    After the deaths of Hendrix and Joplin, Jim told friends he would be the third to die.

    As for the day, they think he chose the third because that was the same day that Brian died.

    People claim they saw Jim board a plane at Orly Airport just hours before his “death”.

    It has been said that his destination was Africa.
     
  10. California Couple

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    Yes, a Most Excellent write up!
     
  11. zobalob

    zobalob Senior Member

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    Glasgow, Scotland.
    Rimbaud didn't fake his death. He gave up literature aged 21 and travelled, spending his last few years as a merchant in Ethiopia before returning to France in 1891 suffering from what was diagnosed as bone cancer in his right knee, he died aged 37 in Marseille.
     
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  12. The Doctor

    The Doctor Forum Resident

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    The two videos for Jumpin' Jack Flash exemplify it the best.

    Video 1; May 1968:


    Jagger is still in 1967 mode. Not quite into his role yet. Keith is just Keith. Brian is showed in the band in full frame shots, not isolated.
     
  13. The Doctor

    The Doctor Forum Resident

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    Video 2. Mick is in full Satanic mode. Confident. In love with himself. Keith is full of confidence. Brian is shown throughout but never in a full shot with the rest of the band (although he is clearly there as you see him at Mick's left at one point. In 1967, Bill and Brian were on the same side of the stage. In 1968, Brian was henceforth alone on the left side.
     
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  14. The Doctor

    The Doctor Forum Resident

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    NME, May 21st 1968. Mick is center, the full band is equal, all on the same side. Brian won't be busted until a week later; he is still in great health here and still stylish.
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    Rock N' Roll Circus, December 1968. Brian is isolated far to the left side of stage. Keith, Bill, Mick and Charlie are kept tight to the right.
    [​IMG]

    The Stones, as such, became "Mick & Keith" sometime between May and December of 1968.
     
  15. California Couple

    California Couple dislike us on facebook

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    That's like saying Jim died aged 27 in Paris.

    Jim had read Rimbauds memoirs, so apparently Jim thought otherwise.

    From notations on the posthumous memoirs of the French poet Jean Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1933):

    “Having faked his death in 1891 to escape mounting debts and increasingly credible threats of violence from rival traders in the Gulf of Aden, Rimbaud lay low for more than four decades. While his former friends and colleagues were elevating his poetic works and mysterious youth into a cult, he kept his distance. “
     
  16. zobalob

    zobalob Senior Member

    Location:
    Glasgow, Scotland.
    That's nonsense. I Was Somebody Else Here's the rest of the fiction...

    I Was Somebody Else
    By Luc Sante August 31, 2016
    Our Correspondents

    [​IMG]Its authorship mistakenly attributed to its copy editor and issued in a single edition of five hundred by a suburban publisher of quickie romances, the posthumous memoirs of the celebrated French poet Jean Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1933) must count among the more obscure byways of literary marginalia.

    Having faked his death in 1891 to escape mounting debts and increasingly credible threats of violence from rival traders in the Gulf of Aden, Rimbaud lay low for more than four decades. While his former friends and colleagues were elevating his poetic works and mysterious youth into a cult, he kept his distance. He stayed busy, variously occupied as a beachcomber on the Côte d’Azur, a croupier at Monte Carlo, a phony “fakir” in a traveling carnival, a roving photographer with donkey on the Belgian coast, a promoter of spurious miracle sites in the Borinage, and finally twenty years as “Beauraind,” an intermittently successful music-hall ventriloquist.

    He lavishes many pages on his dummy, Hugo, with whom he seems to have enjoyed the most intimate and rewarding relationship of his life. Together they traveled incessantly, from the North Sea to the Mediterranean and from the Rhineland to the Bay of Biscay, lodging in rooming houses and train-station hotels, sharing—he would have us believe—meager breakfasts and suppers of coffee and rolls, surviving the war and the thieving practices of theater managers. It did not always go well for them.

    It seems that Hugo was given to making Delphic pronouncements of his own accord, without consulting his nominal master, and that these mystified and sometimes enraged audiences. While Beauraind would be trying to contrive some lighthearted, crowd-pleasing patter about the weather or local politics, Hugo would seize the occasion to rant, going on for marathon bravura stretches about the abolition of property or the erotic powers of the big toe or the unknown crevices of the human mind or the revelatory capacities of ergot poisoning. He might deliver a speech made up entirely of brand names or discontinuous movie dialogue or even lapse into pure glossolalia, making noises that sounded like machine parts or frog choruses or unknown languages. When this happened, Beauraind would drink a glass of water or whistle a tune, hoping to redirect the crowd’s attention to his own apparent virtuosity.

    Theater managers were less than charmed by these outbursts. Frequently the pair were booted out into the street, denied payments owed, forced to pilfer from church poor boxes into order to survive. Occasionally it did happen that audiences—usually students or striking laborers—would appreciate a performance, applaud vigorously, and call the two back for an encore. Hugo would then, with unfailing perversity, play the fool, and Beauraind would be forced to improvise for the both of them. He writes that on such occasions “my mind would be bleached of inspiration, and all I could summon up was some idiot wordplay about the length of women’s skirts.” Then the crowd would hiss, the manager would threaten to cancel their remaining dates, and ventriloquist and dummy would bicker until dawn.

    But they soon made up again. Theirs was, if not exactly a marriage of true minds, at least a union based on profound mutual dependency. Here and there the author waxes candid about the loss of his muse, his years of despondent wandering, his inability to confront the much-touted brilliance of his younger days. When he spotted Hugo in a pawnshop in Lille in 1911, though, something happened. He is unable to account for the “electric charge” he received when he picked up the wood-and-cloth dummy. He held in his hands the genius of poetry itself. The dummy was somehow him, and at the same time something profoundly alien. Those outbursts were murder, commercially, but they were balm to his ruined soul. He wishes he could have transcribed those rants, but memory dissipated when they left the stage, and Hugo never repeated himself.

    The end, when it came, was brutal. They were traveling, as was their wont, illicitly, clinging to the rear platform of a train, hoping to make it to the south for carnival season, when the engine stopped to take on water. Just then a giant eagle swooped down, seized “that beloved face” in its talons, and flew away in the direction of the setting sun. At the close of the book the former poet is wandering around an unspecified provincial town, wearing dark glasses to hide his grief, unable to stop his hands from manipulating that absent jaw.

    Luc Sante’s most recent book is The Other Paris. He is one of the Daily’s correspondents, reviving his blog on pictures, Pinakothek. Luc was interviewed in our Spring issue. (He contributed the portfolio, too.)
     
  17. The Doctor

    The Doctor Forum Resident

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    Philidelphia, PA
    Brian being a Blues purist is kind of a popular myth. Mick and Keith were actually brought into the band because of heir openness to other stuff besides the blues - mainly their Chuck Berry influence. Brian actually fired two blues purists from the proto-Stones before hiring Mick and Keith. Another myth I feel is that Brian was opposed to the direction of Beggar's Banquet. He would not have been so eager to contribute to a song like No Expectations, I think, had he been so opposed. You also wouldn't have his bluesy harmonica on songs like Dear Doctor or Parachute Woman if he had been opposed. What I do think he was against was the Stones ONLY doing the blues. I think he wanted to do stuff like Jig-Saw Puzzle - which mixed the blues and psychedelia, or Street Fightin' Man, which is again a fusion track. I think the "Brian disliked Beggar's Banquet" myth comes from his press release. At the end of his life, he was obsessed with Johnny Winter and Creedence Clearwater Revival, and he was often heard listening to The Ballad of John and Yoko. He reportedly wanted to start a new band with a similar style to CCR, with world music touches.
     
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  18. Pinstripedclips

    Pinstripedclips Forum Resident

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    Superb observations and telling of them. :righton:
     
  19. Pinstripedclips

    Pinstripedclips Forum Resident

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    Bill moved to Keith's side when Brian stopped doing backing vocals/Keith started doing them in 1965. This ties in roughly with when Brian started playing organ onstage too.
     
  20. Pinstripedclips

    Pinstripedclips Forum Resident

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    Not so, it wasn't even written until they all went their separate ways on holiday in December 1967.
     
  21. Purple Jim

    Purple Jim Senior Member

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    Bretagne
    Mick and Keith had asserted themselves as songwriters before 1967:
    Off The Hook
    Heart Of Stone
    Satisfaction
    Get Off My Cloud
    I'm Free
    As Tears Go By
    Paint It Black
    Let's Spend The Night Together
    Ruby Tuesday
    ...

    ...all written in 65-66. So it was already clear to Brian that he had lost his dominance. Still, you're right, the transformation in 1968 was really something.
     
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  22. Pinstripedclips

    Pinstripedclips Forum Resident

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    Btw, it's likely that Keith played the mellotron intro to Sing This Altogether.

    In Satanic Sessions bootleg, there's ongoing takes of someone playing the intro, mistake after mistake and it's Keith's voice heard apologising.

    Here's me playing it on a late 70's MKV mellotron.

    Sing This Satanic Mellotron Together (See What Happens)

     
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  23. lennonfan1

    lennonfan1 Senior Member

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    I agree with you regards Mick and Keith affecting Brian's traits.
    I also feel Majesties bares Brian's soul as a musician.
    If you look at his passion for Joujouka, it's about as far from the Blues as you could possibly get.
     
  24. Pinstripedclips

    Pinstripedclips Forum Resident

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    It makes total sense given how distinctive, potent and pure both those musics are.
     
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  25. GoodKitty

    GoodKitty FloydM

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    The lyric "she comes in colors" always reminds me of the twist on it from The Cars' "You Can't Hold On Too Long" : "you'd like to come in colors, you don't know which one..." I heard that one first, when it was new in 1979 ....

    Also, I only recently made the connection between the Love song and Madonna's "Beautiful Stranger" .
     
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