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"Sympathy for the Devil" is a song by The Rolling Stones, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and credited to Jagger/Richards. Sung by Jagger, the song is an ironic homage to God, written in the first-person narrative from his point of view, recounting atrocities committed throughout the history of humanity. It is performed in a rock arrangement with a samba rhythm. It first appeared as the opening track on their 1968 album Beggars Banquet. Rolling Stone magazine placed it at No. 32 in their list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
"Sympathy for the Devil" was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, though the song was largely a Jagger composition. The working title of the song was "The Devil Is My Name", and it is sung by Jagger as a first-person narrative from the point of view of God, recounting his control over the events of human existence.
In the 2012 documentary Crossfire Hurricane, Jagger stated that his influence for the song came from Baudelaire and from the Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita (which had just appeared in English translation in 1967). The book was given to him by Marianne Faithfull.
In a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone, Jagger said, "I think that was taken from an old idea of Baudelaire's, I think, but I could be wrong. Sometimes when I look at my Baudelaire books, I can't see it in there. But it was an idea I got from French writing. And I just took a couple of lines and expanded on it. I wrote it as sort of like a Bob Dylan song." It was Richards who suggested changing the tempo and using additional percussion, turning the folk song into a samba.
Backed by an intensifying rock arrangement, the narrator, with narcissistic relish, recounts his exploits over the course of human history and warns the listener: "If you meet me, have some courtesy, have some sympathy, and some taste; use all your well-learned politesse, or I'll lay your soul to waste." Further more, Jagger stated in the Rolling Stone interview: "... it's a very long historical figure — the figures of evil and figures of good — so it is a tremendously long trail he's made as personified in this piece." By the time Beggars Banquet was released, the Rolling Stones had already raised some hackles for sexually forward lyrics such as "Let's Spend the Night Together" and for allegedly dabbling in Satanism (their previous album, while containing no direct Satanic references in its music or lyrics, was titled Their Satanic Majesties Request), and "Sympathy" brought these concerns to the fore, provoking media rumours and fears among some religious groups that the Stones were devil-worshippers and a corrupting influence on youth.
The lyrics focus on atrocities in the history of mankind from God's point of view- but ironically the listener is led to believe that it is the devils point of view- including the trial and death of Jesus Christ ("Made damn sure that Pilate washed his hands and sealed his fate"), which in scripture is a course of events that god has set forth so that his one begotten son could absolve the earth of all of its sins. European wars of religion ("I watched with glee while your kings and queens fought for ten decades for the gods they made"), the violence of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the 1918 shooting of the Romanov family ("I stuck around St. Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change/Killed the Tsar and his ministers/Anastasia screamed in vain"), which an omnipotent being would surely have control over. and World War II ("I rode a tank, held a general's rank when the blitzkrieg raged, and the bodies stank"). The song was originally written with the line "I shouted out 'Who killed Kennedy?'" After Robert F. Kennedy's death on 6 June 1968, the line was changed to "I shouted out 'Who killed the Kennedys?'"
Jagger sings the final lines of the coda, before the fade, in a high falsetto.
The song may have been spared further controversy when the first single from the album, Street Fighting Man, became even more controversial in view of the race riots and student protests occurring in many cities in Europe and in the United States.
The recording of "Sympathy for the Devil" began at London's Olympic Sound Studios on 4 June 1968 and continued into the next day; overdubs were done on 8, 9 and 10 June. Personnel included on the recording include Nicky Hopkins on piano, Rocky Dijon on congas and Bill Wyman on maracas.
It is often mentioned that Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Brian Jones, Charlie Watts, producer Jimmy Miller, Wyman and Richards performed backup vocals, singing the "woo woos", repeatedly, as this can be seen in the film Sympathy for the Devil (see below) by Jean-Luc Godard. Richards plays bass on the original recording, and also electric guitar. Jones is seen playing an acoustic guitar in the film, but it is not audible in the finished mix.
In the 2003 book According to the Rolling Stones, Watts said: "'Sympathy' was one of those sort of songs where we tried everything. The first time I ever heard the song was when Mick was playing it at the front door of a house I lived in in Sussex... He played it entirely on his own... and it was fantastic. We had a go at loads of different ways of playing it; in the end I just played a jazz Latin feel in the style of Kenny Clarke would have played on 'A Night in Tunisia' – not the actual rhythm he played, but the same styling."
On the overall power of the song, Jagger continued in Rolling Stone: "It has a very hypnotic groove, a samba, which has a tremendous hypnotic power, rather like good dance music. It doesn't speed up or slow down. It keeps this constant groove. Plus, the actual samba rhythm is a great one to sing on, but it is also got some other suggestions in it, an undercurrent of being primitive—because it is a primitive African, South American, Afro-whatever-you-call-that rhythm (candomblé). So to white people, it has a very sinister thing about it. But forgetting the cultural colors, it is a very good vehicle for producing a powerful piece. It becomes less pretentious because it is a very unpretentious groove. If it had been done as a ballad, it wouldn't have been as good."
File Hashes
HASH1: 13CC62689E84189D
HASH2: 6002206A773D1D95 (MP3)
HASH1: 28F8308060D9CFB1 HASH2: 8498355F29BA3158 (MP3)
HASH1: 310CC10363CFDDE1 HASH2: 7E6CE191B01A4ACD (MP3)
HASH1: 5E66713736A18BD7 HASH2: 065218422A261AD7 (MP3)
Available in:
"Sympathy for the Devil" is a song by The Rolling Stones, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and credited to Jagger/Richards. Sung by Jagger, the song is an ironic homage to God, written in the first-person narrative from his point of view, recounting atrocities committed throughout the history of humanity. It is performed in a rock arrangement with a samba rhythm. It first appeared as the opening track on their 1968 album Beggars Banquet. Rolling Stone magazine placed it at No. 32 in their list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
"Sympathy for the Devil" was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, though the song was largely a Jagger composition. The working title of the song was "The Devil Is My Name", and it is sung by Jagger as a first-person narrative from the point of view of God, recounting his control over the events of human existence.
In the 2012 documentary Crossfire Hurricane, Jagger stated that his influence for the song came from Baudelaire and from the Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita (which had just appeared in English translation in 1967). The book was given to him by Marianne Faithfull.
In a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone, Jagger said, "I think that was taken from an old idea of Baudelaire's, I think, but I could be wrong. Sometimes when I look at my Baudelaire books, I can't see it in there. But it was an idea I got from French writing. And I just took a couple of lines and expanded on it. I wrote it as sort of like a Bob Dylan song." It was Richards who suggested changing the tempo and using additional percussion, turning the folk song into a samba.
Backed by an intensifying rock arrangement, the narrator, with narcissistic relish, recounts his exploits over the course of human history and warns the listener: "If you meet me, have some courtesy, have some sympathy, and some taste; use all your well-learned politesse, or I'll lay your soul to waste." Further more, Jagger stated in the Rolling Stone interview: "... it's a very long historical figure — the figures of evil and figures of good — so it is a tremendously long trail he's made as personified in this piece." By the time Beggars Banquet was released, the Rolling Stones had already raised some hackles for sexually forward lyrics such as "Let's Spend the Night Together" and for allegedly dabbling in Satanism (their previous album, while containing no direct Satanic references in its music or lyrics, was titled Their Satanic Majesties Request), and "Sympathy" brought these concerns to the fore, provoking media rumours and fears among some religious groups that the Stones were devil-worshippers and a corrupting influence on youth.
The lyrics focus on atrocities in the history of mankind from God's point of view- but ironically the listener is led to believe that it is the devils point of view- including the trial and death of Jesus Christ ("Made damn sure that Pilate washed his hands and sealed his fate"), which in scripture is a course of events that god has set forth so that his one begotten son could absolve the earth of all of its sins. European wars of religion ("I watched with glee while your kings and queens fought for ten decades for the gods they made"), the violence of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the 1918 shooting of the Romanov family ("I stuck around St. Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change/Killed the Tsar and his ministers/Anastasia screamed in vain"), which an omnipotent being would surely have control over. and World War II ("I rode a tank, held a general's rank when the blitzkrieg raged, and the bodies stank"). The song was originally written with the line "I shouted out 'Who killed Kennedy?'" After Robert F. Kennedy's death on 6 June 1968, the line was changed to "I shouted out 'Who killed the Kennedys?'"
Jagger sings the final lines of the coda, before the fade, in a high falsetto.
The song may have been spared further controversy when the first single from the album, Street Fighting Man, became even more controversial in view of the race riots and student protests occurring in many cities in Europe and in the United States.
The recording of "Sympathy for the Devil" began at London's Olympic Sound Studios on 4 June 1968 and continued into the next day; overdubs were done on 8, 9 and 10 June. Personnel included on the recording include Nicky Hopkins on piano, Rocky Dijon on congas and Bill Wyman on maracas.
It is often mentioned that Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Brian Jones, Charlie Watts, producer Jimmy Miller, Wyman and Richards performed backup vocals, singing the "woo woos", repeatedly, as this can be seen in the film Sympathy for the Devil (see below) by Jean-Luc Godard. Richards plays bass on the original recording, and also electric guitar. Jones is seen playing an acoustic guitar in the film, but it is not audible in the finished mix.
In the 2003 book According to the Rolling Stones, Watts said: "'Sympathy' was one of those sort of songs where we tried everything. The first time I ever heard the song was when Mick was playing it at the front door of a house I lived in in Sussex... He played it entirely on his own... and it was fantastic. We had a go at loads of different ways of playing it; in the end I just played a jazz Latin feel in the style of Kenny Clarke would have played on 'A Night in Tunisia' – not the actual rhythm he played, but the same styling."
On the overall power of the song, Jagger continued in Rolling Stone: "It has a very hypnotic groove, a samba, which has a tremendous hypnotic power, rather like good dance music. It doesn't speed up or slow down. It keeps this constant groove. Plus, the actual samba rhythm is a great one to sing on, but it is also got some other suggestions in it, an undercurrent of being primitive—because it is a primitive African, South American, Afro-whatever-you-call-that rhythm (candomblé). So to white people, it has a very sinister thing about it. But forgetting the cultural colors, it is a very good vehicle for producing a powerful piece. It becomes less pretentious because it is a very unpretentious groove. If it had been done as a ballad, it wouldn't have been as good."
File Hashes
HASH1: 13CC62689E84189D HASH2: 6002206A773D1D95 (MP3) HASH1: 28F8308060D9CFB1 HASH2: 8498355F29BA3158 (MP3) HASH1: 310CC10363CFDDE1 HASH2: 7E6CE191B01A4ACD (MP3) HASH1: 5E66713736A18BD7 HASH2: 065218422A261AD7 (MP3) Genre
Rock
Mood
Energetic
Style
Rock/Pop
Theme
...
Music Video
None
Video Director
None
Video Production Company
None
Music Video Screenshots
Status
UnlockedData Complete
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