Their Satanic Majesties Request Song By Song Thread

Where's that joint?

Congratulations, it's delightful to hear and see it being played.
Interesting that Keith may have played it on the album!

What's the connection? I like "Beautiful Stranger".

 

Wow! Having never heard that Love song, I didn't know that it was the inspiration (blueprint) for "Beautiful Stanger".
Have you made the connection between "Beatiful Stranger" and Jimi's "If 6 Was 9"?

 

hmmm, off the top of my head .... no ? The flutes maybe ? but the flutes on the Love song seem more similar to me...

 

Those bells sure sound familiar .... but I can't yet place them ..... Stock recording used on a bunch of other things ?

 

Yes, the abstract flute patterns at the close (it was a cheap recorder, bought off a street seller for Jimi).

 

There was a tv special of the show from Trump Casino in NJ 1989 (pretty sure) and you could get 3D glasses from 7-11 to be used during "2000 Light Years" .... I might even still have 'em .

EDIT: I don't see Trump Casino on the Wikipedia page, so it was probably Atlantic City Convention Center ... and I think Clapton and John Lee Hooker were special guests ...

 

^ Oh, too late I see that the 3D glasses were already covered in detail in post #466 ....

Great thread everybody ! Totally reawakened my interest in this album ... This album was in the house when I was a kid and was played by the "adults" but it seems side 2 not quite as much ....

 

Surprise, Surprise my friend the USA single exists both without and also WITH said snoring! Unsure what came first or if it was down to different pressing plants at the same time or what. This may or may not help but i seem to recall the without snoring edit to have a far heavier and thicker font for the labels song titles. I had both and kept the snoring copy.

 

oh no now you're going to make me have to pull my 45 with the original picture sleeve

 

i have this, i don't hate it, there are some good songs ... but, to me, it seemed like the stones were trying too hard to be something they weren't. I always felt (and it's just a personal opinion with no subjective facts that i know of to back it up) that the stones constantly having been compared and contrasted with the beatles, seemed to feel a need to step right out of their comfort zone to keep up with the extreme changes the beatles were going through.
i think it's telling that the next three albums by the stones would be probably their best run of rock albums in their career. With beggars banquet, let it bleed and sticky fingers the band got progressively more rootsy and rocky to brilliant effect. Perhaps stepping out with something as abstract, and to my ear, inconsistent as tsmr, gave them a chance to blow out some cobwebs and refocus ...
Obviously by the time the band got to sticky fingers, the beatles shadow was less of an issue and the stones really loosened up. sticky and mainstreet probably being their most solid rock efforts with, seemingly, less of a care being given about what anyone else was doing.

 

Is not Keith singing the chorus also?
I also like the way the lines ending in "surprise" and also "eyes" are both swapped around and sung in reverse order.

 

Do it!

 

Mick said it was a sound more than a song experience.

 

Not for me.
If that applies for someone they could ask themselves if it fits the "album"

 

Yes. Didn't Stu organise the sale and Mick Taylor not meet any of the band?

 

Does your copy have the snoring?
To me the harpsichord intro just sounds magnificent on the mono 45!

 

Great post! Brian devised the maze and as you know there is no way out.

 

I'll have to spin it later and report back.

 

This sums up the conventional wisdom about Satanic Majesties: They were trying too hard to ape The Beatles, straining to become something that they weren't, and then they found their way again with Beggar's Banquet and the albums that followed. I used to buy into this line of reasoning myself. My best advice when viewing the Stones' career arc is to try to forget about The Beatles, despite the obvious parallels, and accept their work on its own terms. Like a lot of bands in that era, they went through a stylistic evolution, starting in earnest with Aftermath and Between The Buttons and then culminating with the psychedelic experimentation of Satanic Majesties. Pretty much every major band was dabbling with psychedelia at that point, but The Stones brought their own unique style to bear here, offering a more gritty, visceral approach. Their exploration of African influences and exotic percussive textures was pretty unique. (I also used to buy into the idea that TSMR is inconsistent, but I've honestly come to love pretty much every track here, though a couple of them could have stood with a bit of editing.) While it is tempting to think that they did a reactive about face with Beggar's Banquet, I actually hear a lot more similarities between the two albums now and think that the heady experiments on Satanic Majesties helped to inform tracks like "Sympathy For The Devil" and "Street Fighting Man", so I view TSMR less as an anomaly now.

 

All sounds fair to me plus remember Brian is all over Aftermath too.

 

In fact, along their parallel careers, nothing sounds further from The Beatles to me than Aftermath and TSMR.

 

The snoring IS part of the LP, i see no need to complain about it.

 

No we both are!

 

I had no idea what the conventional wisdom was or is.
As someone who has owned everything from the debut to dirty work, since dirty work came out, that is merely my opinion.
Never said it was a bad record, never said it wasn't worth listening to.

 

There is a tendency to generalize the song content on TSMR. If "Sing This All Together" (the strangest opening track in their career) and its long reprise had not been included, I don't think the album would have suffered the bad reputation that it has. The other tracks are all much better, even "On with the Show" and "Gomper" which some people complain about.