Fact #63208
When:
Short story:
The Rolling Stones finish recording Sympathy For The Devil at Olympic Studios, London, England, UK, Europe.
Full article:
Mick Jagger (vocalist, Rolling Stones) : 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.
I knew it was a good song. You just have this feeling. It had its poetic beginning, and then it had historic references and then philosophical jottings and so on. It's all very well to write that in verse, but to make it into a pop song is something different. Especially in England -- you're skewered on the altar of pop culture if you become pretentious.
I hadn't written a lot of songs on my own, so you have to teach it. When you write songs, you have to like them yourself first, but then you have to make everyone else like them, because you can force them to play it, but you can't force them to like it. And if they like it, they'll do a much better job than if they're just playing 'cause they feel they're obligated.
Keith suggested that we do it in another rhythm, so that's how bands help you.
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's 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. So to white people, it has a very sinister thing about it.
My whole thing of this song was not black magic and all this silly nonsense - like Megadeth or whatever else came afterward. It was different than that. We had played around with that imagery before - which is Satanic Majesties - but it wasn't really put into words.
But forgetting the cultural colours, it is a very good vehicle for producing a powerful piece. It becomes less pretentious because it's a very unpretentious groove. If it had been done as a ballad, it wouldn't have been as good.
And you can see it in this movie Godard shot called Sympathy for the Devil, which is 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.
(Source : not known)
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I knew it was a good song. You just have this feeling. It had its poetic beginning, and then it had historic references and then philosophical jottings and so on. It's all very well to write that in verse, but to make it into a pop song is something different. Especially in England -- you're skewered on the altar of pop culture if you become pretentious.
I hadn't written a lot of songs on my own, so you have to teach it. When you write songs, you have to like them yourself first, but then you have to make everyone else like them, because you can force them to play it, but you can't force them to like it. And if they like it, they'll do a much better job than if they're just playing 'cause they feel they're obligated.
Keith suggested that we do it in another rhythm, so that's how bands help you.
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's 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. So to white people, it has a very sinister thing about it.
My whole thing of this song was not black magic and all this silly nonsense - like Megadeth or whatever else came afterward. It was different than that. We had played around with that imagery before - which is Satanic Majesties - but it wasn't really put into words.
But forgetting the cultural colours, it is a very good vehicle for producing a powerful piece. It becomes less pretentious because it's a very unpretentious groove. If it had been done as a ballad, it wouldn't have been as good.
And you can see it in this movie Godard shot called Sympathy for the Devil, which is 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.
(Source : not known)