Their Satanic Majesties Request Song By Song Thread

I really need to scarf up another copy of that one o' these days, if I can find it on LP cheap enough...

 

Do you think those covers,
Love In Vain and You Gotta Move
are better than their originals
Jiving Sister Fanny and I'm Going Down?

Guide vocal or not, I think those two songs would have made those two albums better.

 

I like the live version of Love In Vain better but I like You Gotta Move. Personally, I think they should have omitted Country Honk as it is similar to Honky Tonk Women which is superior and replaced it with Jiving Sister Fanny or I'm Going Down.

 

"Sister Fanny" is a fun little jam and guitar solo, but not much of a song. "I'm Going Down" has potential, but sounds unfinished. I love the studio version of "Love in Vain" and the Ya-Ya's version, too. I dig "Country Honk" - it a cool alternate view of "Honky Tonk Women", with a nice groove and great-sounding acoustic guitar. I consider it to be a necessary part of the perfect album that is Let It Bleed.

"You Gotta Move" is annoying and should be replaced by anything - just move it outta there!

 

You have a good point here but it's going to be difficult not to mention Pepper. Although totally absurd, the Pepper ripoff accusation has always been one of the biggest clubs used to beat Satanic down and this is duly noted by the OP in post #1.

I love Satanic. Some songs are better than others but they all flow together and there's no song I would remove. I think it's the finest psychedelic album of 1967, the year of psychedelia when almost everybody was making a psychedelic album. It's closest comparison is probably The Piper at the Gates Of Dawn, another outright classic.

I would not say for sure that Satanic is the Stones finest moment, but I probably listen to it more than any other Stones album. This is because they did only one psychedelic album and lots of great bluesy rock albums.

 

Yes, I just wanted the thread to stick to Satanic and not to degenerate into a Beatles vs. Stones thread.

Satanic is such a great album to me that I wanted to have the talk stick to Satanic and avoid other deviations from it.

 

"I'm Going Down" was always my favorite track on "Metamorphosis", even among the strong tracks on side 2.

But is it really Keith playing? I've also seen it credited to Mick Taylor (and even Stephen Stills!). The riff sounds like an abbreviation of the "Brown Sugar" riff, and is also similar to "Too Tough" on "Undercover".

 

Still trying to change classic records, huh John?

Leave 'em alone!! I love having the classic B-sides - if you got your way, we would never have those 'hidden classics'.

 

Perfect post - I wouldn't change a word.

 

@sami You would have Country Honk as a b-side instead. I also wasn't the one that originally suggested changing tracks, it was California Couple that suggested dropping Love In Vain and You Gotta Move from Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers.

 

Just teasing, you know that. And no, I would absolutely not have Country Honk as a B-side - it's perfect right where it is.

As much as I love the live Love in Vain, I actually prefer the studio version. Same, and more so, with Midnight Rambler, which I don't think is even close.

 

Excellent breakdown of the album. First album in which Keef really transforms into the Human Riff Machine. One point I would add: the baroque flourishes that grace things like “As Tears Go By” or “Play With Fire” are more than simply flourishes here—baroque is a key cog, like blues, grunge, and psychedelia; it’s a part of this particular tapestry.

Lots of early Velvets sound here, too—Banana LP and WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT. The storm Keef creates on “Sing...(See What Happens)” is reminiscent of that white lightning Lou and Sterling unleash on “Sister Ray.”

Agreed on the album—it gets as much play time as BLEED or STICKY or EXILE. Wicked album!

-siyt

 

That's unmistakably Keith playing that monster riff. Mick Taylor is on the song though. That's him (just as unmistakably) on bass.

 

"She's a Rainbow" is probably the best known song off the album, but to me it's the weak link on the album, as the least interesting song on the record, and also pretty much the only Rolling Stones single that I can think of -- apart from "As Tears Go By," where Mike Leander's strings almost dominate, but that record was a fluke to start with, with only two members on it -- on which a non-group member (i.e. Nicky Hopkins on piano) pretty much takes the spotlight and the foreground from the band. I still like the song, incidentally, and I love the album, for all of its flaws.

Additionally, one must have an understanding of the circumstances that yielded the album. The Stones had probably been heading for an eventual parting of the ways with Andrew Oldham in any case, at least as a producer -- it was patently clear by 1967 that they were at least as adept in their knowledge of the studio as he was. Jagger, for one, has long been known to have been unhappy with the overall sound on their preceding studio LP, Between the Buttons, and Keith Richards has long maintained that the wrong backing track was used for the single "Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing in the Shadow," dating from the same era. Everything boiled over in terms of Oldham's managerial responsibilities when Jagger, Richards, and Brian Jones were arrested on drug charges in mid-1967 and Oldham was nowhere to be found. (It was at that point, incidentally, when Allen Klein -- who was Oldham's business representative, not the Rolling Stones' -- stepped into the breach and helped organize both a public and legal defense for the three musicians).

When it came time to go into the studio to work on the new album, according to many and varied accounts, the band decided to stick it to Oldham in his capacity as their manager and owner of their recordings (by way of the group's original contract with Oldham and one-time partner Eric Easton, going back to 1963, 1964, and 1965). Under that deal, Oldham was paying all of their recording costs and providing finished recordings to Decca Records in England (and, by extension, under a deal modified by Allen Klein when he came aboard as Oldham's business manager, London Records in the USA, through Klein's soon-to-be-named ABKCO Records). So they showed up in the studio for sessions with virtually no songs worked out, or worked on, and proceeded to burn up thousands of pounds in studio fees noodling around, seemingly endlessly.

They were trying to make their contractual relationship untenable, and they succeeded.

(And all of this couldn't have come at a worse time for Oldham, if my judgement of the chronology is any good; never one to live life frugally, by most accounts, he was also thoroughly committed to his own Immediate Records label, which would attract lots of attention, and generate some hits and a lot of great music, but also burn up somewhere between a quarter-million and a million pounds [depending on whose account you believe] in debt by the time it shut its doors in 1969/1970).

By the time the dust settled, Oldham was gone as their producer and manager, and the album was completed barely in time for a Christmas release.

And amid all of the chaos and delays -- if these had been normal times, and normal recording sessions, they'd have probably completed the album in June or July, and it would likely have been out only a few weeks after Sgt. Pepper, instead of five months later -- the group actually delivered something very worthwhile, though perhaps not an experience that anyone felt was worth repeating (or possible to repeat, even if someone wished to). It was the one place where the group stepped out of their obvious comfort zone for an extended period, with no guidance except for their own judgement, besotted as it might have been at times. (And for all of its blind alleys, Charlie Watts, for one, seems to be having the time of his life working with a bigger array of percussion instruments than he probably ever imagined he'd be using with the band, at various points on the album).

And I would have to say that they acquitted themselves far better, working without a producer to organize the sessions, than, say, the Beatles would have under the same circumstances (the only comparable venture by the latter group was the "Get Back" project, as it were, and I'd stack up Satanic Majesties against the resulting Let It Be album any day of the week).

 

Great post.

 

Great post, agree with most all but Rainbow is not a weak link to me.

 

She's A Rainbow a weak link? Not a chance.

 

Probably the best song on the album.

 

Either that or "2000 Light Years From Home". Daylight between them and the rest.

 

Okay, enough with the jokes, we all know Citadel is the best song on the album.

 

Number 3 or 4.

 

I've honestly come to love every track on the album to one degree or another, but still "2000 Light Years From Home" is the pièce de résistance, hands down.

 

I just think it's the least interesting song on the album -- it's still very good, though it's far from being a traditional Rolling Stones song or single.

I just happen to love "2000 Man," "Citadel," "In Another Land," "Gomper," "2000 Light Years From Home," and "Sing This All Together (See What Happens)" more in terms of what they capture of the band's musicianship. I will say, also, that for all of its troubled creation, Satanic Majesties does show that the Rolling Stones could do great work even in the face of adversity, internal and external.

In fact, its very nature may have been a by-product of the fact that they were in no way in a position to tour, or perform, even within the UK, amid the legal problems and managerial disputes -- they never had more time to work on a record than they did on this one, from April thru October of 1967, even if all hands were seldom on deck at the same time; in a way, it's a little like the freedom that the Beatles found themselves faced with when it became clear that they were not going to do a movie in the winter of 1966, and so suddenly had three months instead of three weeks to work on their next album, and the result of that was REVOLVER, another record that never figured in any way into its makers' role as a performing band. Every prior Stones album, no matter how ambitious, had at least one song that made it into their concert set -- even "Connection" from Between The Buttons on their European tour of early 1967. But there was little question that nothing they were doing here, with the conceivable exception of "Citadel," was even possible to perform on stage in any adequate way, assuming they could even have gotten it together to put together a concert.

 

I only like 4 songs on the album. The rest just aren't that tuneful or great in my opinion.

She's A Rainbow
2000 Light Years From Home
Citadel
2000 Man

 

I don't mind "The Lantern" either.