The rolling stones sympathy for the devil

Sympathy for the Devil

«Sympathy for the Devil» is a song by The Rolling Stones which first appeared as the opening track on the band’s 1968 album Beggars Banquet. It was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Rolling Stone Magazine placed it at #32 in their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

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Inspiration [ ]

«Sympathy for the Devil» was written by singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards, though the song was largely a Jagger composition. 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.

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 Lucifer:

I used a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic tuned to open D, six string. Open D or open E, which is the same thing – same intervals – but it would be slackened down some for D. Then there was a capo on it, to get that really tight sound. And there was another guitar over the top of that, but tuned to Nashville tuning. I learned that from somebody in George Jones’ band in San Antonio in 1964. The high-strung guitar was an acoustic, too. Both acoustics were put through a Philips cassette recorder. Just jam the mic right in the guitar and play it back through an extension speaker.

These opening lines reflect Jagger’s direct inspiration by The Master and Margarita, with the book opening with the similar «‘Please excuse me,’ he said, speaking correctly, but with a foreign accent, ‘for presuming to speak to you without an introduction.'» More references to the book are made in I used a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic tuned to open D, six string. Open D or open E, which is the same thing – same intervals – but it would be slackened down some for D. Then there was a capo on it, to get that really tight sound. And there was another guitar over the top of that, but tuned to Nashville tuning. I learned that from somebody in George Jones’ band in San Antonio in 1964. The high-strung guitar was an acoustic, too. Both acoustics were put through a Philips cassette recorder. Just jam the mic right in the guitar and play it back through an extension speaker., as this Bible passage is mentioned in the first chapters of «The Master and Margarita»

The lyrics also refer to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. The recording sessions for the track were in progress when the latter was killed, and the words were changed from «Who killed Kennedy?» to «who killed the Kennedys?» These lyrics are also a bit of word play on one of the most famous passages by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in his book The Gay Science where, in section 125, entitled «The Madman» he writes:

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 the U.S.

Recording [ ]

Musical equipment for the solo [ ]

Film clips from the recording of the song (as well as the tone of the guitar on the released track) reveal that Richards used his 1957 three pick-up Gibson Les Paul Custom. In the clips various amps are seen, with a Vox AC-30 and a solid state Vox Supreme (the top-of-the-line guitar amp of the solid-state Vox line, which included the Supreme, Defiant and Conqueror) as the main guitar amps.

Aftermath [ ]

Of the change in public perception the band experienced after the song’s release, Richards said in a 1971 interview with Rolling Stone, «Before, we were just innocent kids out for a good time, they’re saying, ‘They’re evil, they’re evil.’ Oh, I’m evil, really? So that makes you start thinking about evil. What is evil? Half of it, I don’t know how much people think of Mick as the devil or as just a good rock performer or what? There are black magicians who think we are acting as unknown agents of Lucifer and others who think we are Lucifer. Everybody’s Lucifer.»

The studio version has been featured on the Rolling Stones compilation albums Hot Rocks and Forty Licks.

In 2004 Rolling Stone magazine placed the song at #32 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Sympathy for the Devil is also the title of a producer’s edit of a 1968 film by Jean-Luc Godard whose own original version is called One Plus One. The film, a depiction of the late 1960s American counterculture, also featured the Rolling Stones in the process of recording the song in the studio. On the filming, Jagger said in Rolling Stone: «. it was very fortuitous, because Godard wanted to do a film of us in the studio. I mean, it would never happen now, to get someone as interesting as Godard. And stuffy. We just happened to be recording that song. We could have been recording ‘My Obsession.’ But it was ‘Sympathy for the Devil,’ and it became the track that we used.»