SONG OF THE DAY

“Sympathy For The Devil” by The Rolling Stones (Beggar’s Banquet, Decca Records, 1968). Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

WHY TODAY?

First of all, is anyone going to say “Nice Easter Sunday pick, Joanee” and point out the irony of this song on this day? No, because no one reads this blog.

I heard this on the radio today on my way to working out, and was totally stumped because I couldn’t think of the movie that prominently featured this song in the closing credits. I finally got home and hit up wikipedia, and NOTHING. But I know this was a big film, and that the song memorably plays a role in revealing the true nature of a character in the elusive film I am trying to reference. I turn to google, and the results are mixed: there’s a 1968 film called Sympathy For The Devil about the Rolling Stones, so that result is taking up a lot of space. The song was also used on the Interview With A Vampire soundtrack, but I know that can’t be what I’m thinking of because I haven’t seen that film. And it’s not the soundtrack to Tropic Thunder that I’m thinking about either. It’s something serious and crazy, Coen Brothers-y, John Turturro-y.  Finally, IMDB helps me out: the website has a way that I can sort through any film the Rolling Stones were a part of, soundtrack or otherwise, by year, and then I just searched inside of that page for every reference to the song. Nailed it! It’s the 1998 Denzel Washington film Fallen, and it sends chills down my spine once I remember it because the song is used SO BRILLIANTLY in keeping with the plot. The soundtracker should be a billionaire. And now I know why I thought of John Turturro too; because John Goodman’s in the film and he always reminds me of Turturro because of that crazy Coen Brothers film called Barton Fink. Yips, that’s why I probably thought of the Coen Brothers, now that I lay it all out in my little brain.

IMDB shows that “Sympathy For The Devil” has been used in a LOT of films and television soundtracks, so I’m a bit perplexed as to why none of that shows up in the wikipedia article on the song. There’s not even a section on the song’s wiki for uses in media, which seems negligent of someone, seeing as that the song has been used prominently 23 times according to IMDB. So the next section of this post, Interesting Facts, is from wikipedia AND IMDB this time around. It’s only right.

INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia and IMDB)

- Rolling Stone magazine placed it at #32 in their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

– Though “Sympathy for the Devil” is credited as having been written by both singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards, the song was largely a Jagger composition.

– 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”.

– It is sung by Jagger as a first-person narrative from the point of view of Lucifer.

– 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.”

- Backed by an intensifying rock arrangement, the narrator, with chilling 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.” 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.”

– At the time of the release of Beggars Banquet 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, had been titled Their Satanic Majesties Request), and “Sympathy” brought these concerns to the fore, provoking media rumours and fears among some religious groups that The Rolling Stones were devil-worshippers and a corrupting influence on youth.

– The lyrics’ focus, however, is on atrocities in the history of mankind, including 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 massacre 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”) and World War II (“I rode a tank, held a general’s rank when the Blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank”).

– The lyrics also refer to the assassinations of John 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?”

– 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.

– Jagger 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 (candomble). 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.”

– In an interview with Creem, Jagger said, “[When people started taking us as devil worshippers], I thought it was a really odd thing, because it was only one song, after all. It wasn’t like it was a whole album, with lots of occult signs on the back. People seemed to embrace the image so readily, [and] it has carried all the way over into heavy metal bands today.”

– 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.”

– Contrary to a widespread misconception, it was “Under My Thumb” and not “Sympathy for the Devil” that the Rolling Stones were performing when Meredith Hunter was killed at the Altamont Free Concert. Rolling Stone magazine’s early articles on the incident misreported that the killing took place during “Sympathy for the Devil”, but The Rolling Stones in fact played “Sympathy for the Devil” earlier in the concert; it was interrupted by a fight and re-started, and several other songs were performed before Hunter was killed.

– After being omitted from the Rolling Stones’ 1972/73 tours, “Sympathy for the Devil” was played occasionally as the encore in 1975/1976, and has been performed regularly on all of their tours since 1989. Concert renditions have been released on the albums The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!, Love You Live, Flashpoint and Shine a Light.

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

- 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.”

– The song has been widely covered since its release, including renditions by Blood, Sweat & Tears, Bryan Ferry, Jane’s Addiction, and, most notably, Guns N’ Roses.

– The GNR cover reached #55 on the Billboard Hot 100; and was featured in the closing credits of Interview with the Vampire and was included on their Greatest Hits album.

– This cover was also notable because it was partially responsible for guitarist Slash leaving the band; he described the GNR cover as “the sound of the band breaking up”.

VIDEO OF THE DAY