The Rolling Stones
Sympathy for the Devil
Hot Rocks 1964-1971 (1971)
It’s difficult to refer to this as a Rolling Stones album, since the Stones had little to do with the compiling or release of this record. Former manager Allen Klein, who had acquired the rights to all mateial written by the Stones through 1970, released Hot Rocks on his own ABKCO Records after his association with the band ended. I previously wrote about this situation in a post about the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.
But the Rolling Stones did a fair job of bouncing back from what Keith Richards has referred to “the price of an eduation.” The next year, they released Sticky Fingers, one of the most successful albums of their career. I wonder if the title Sticky Fingers is a reference to their former manager.In a final legal twist, Hot Rocks contains two tracks, Wild Horses and Brown Sugar, that also appear on Sticky Fingers, since Klein claimed that the songs were written before the Stones ended their contract with him. I previously wrote about Wild Horses from this album.
Sympathy for the Devil first appeared on the Rolling Stones’ 1968 release Beggars Banquet. The process of recording the song is, in part, the subject of the 1968 Jean-Luc Godard documentary Sympathy for the Devil. A second documentary, Gimme Shelter, by Albert and David Maysles, includes harrowing footage of the disastrous Altamont free show that concluded the Stones’ 1969 U.S. tour. I wrote something about this in a post about the Echo & the Bunnymen song, Altamont.
Because of his increasing drug problems, Brian Jones was only intermittently present during the Beggars Banquet sessions. Keith Richards played the stinging lead guitar part on Sympathy for the Devil, as well as playing bass. The song also featured Rock Dijon on congas, and bassist Bill Wyman added maracas on the track. The result is a samba-tinged track, a sound experiment the Rolling Stones would explore later on Can’t You Hear Me Knocking on Sticky Fingers.
Sympathy for the Devil tells the story from a first-person point of view of the Devil’s presence throughout human history. I think this was intentional red meat for people who felt that the Rolling Stones were Satanists, determined to cause listeners to slouch, stay up late and talk back to their parents. Certainly, the Rolling Stones did nothing to dispel their bad-boy image. Mick Jagger added to the Sympathy for the Devil mystique when he said: “something very funny happens when we start that number.”
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine put Sympathy for the Devil at No. 32 in its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time issue.
Here are some lyrics that may cause you to renounce your faith and quit the Boy Scouts:
Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I’ve been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man’s soul and faith
I was ’round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the Czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain
I rode a tank
Held a general’s rank
When the Blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, ah yeah
I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the god they made
I shouted out,
“Who killed the Kennedy’s?”
When after all
It was you and me
Let me please introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached Bombay
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, ahhh yeah, get down, baby
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
But what’s confusing you
Is just the nature of my game mmm yeah
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
‘Cause I’m in need of some restraint
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, have some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I’ll lay your soul to waste, mmm yeah
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, mmm yeah
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, mmm mean it, get down
Woo, who
ah yeah, get on down
Oh yeah
bum bum ba ba ba do a, bum bum ba ba ba do a
yea Ahh yeah!
Tell me baby, what’s my name
Tell me honey, can ya guess my name
Tell me baby, what’s my name
I tell you one time, you’re to blame
Oh, who
woo, woo
Woo, who alright
oo, oo oo
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Oh, yeah
Woo, who, who
Woo, who, who
Oh, yeah
well What’s my name
Tell me, baby, a what’s my name
Tell me, sweetie, a what’s my name
oo, who, who
oo, who, who
oo, who, who
oo, who, who
oo, who, who
oo, who, who
oo, who, who
Ahhhhh, yeah
Woo woo
—
I had to include all the Woo woo’s because the Satanism doesn’t work without them.
![The Green Mile | [Stephen King]](https://i0.wp.com/ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51YHXxkpt5L._SL300_.jpg "The Green Mile | [Stephen King]")
Shuffling Through My Life: 