The heavy metal band Mick Jagger disregarded as “nonsense”
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(Credits: Bent Rej)
Typically, Keith Richards has been the loudest dissenting voice within The Rolling Stones. The guitarist’s role has largely been criticising other bands, forming rivalries, and stoking fires, whereas his bandmate, Mick Jagger, has been more of a calming presence.
More commonly, Jagger has found himself the target of verbal attacks, including by Richards on numerous occasions. However, Jagger’s most notable critic was the tabloid press, which depicted The Rolling Stones as villains in the 1960s and beyond.
Although it ultimately provided the group with publicity, which boosted their profile, it also had its downsides. Jagger felt he was unfairly treated, and his songs were overanalysed to a degree that wasn’t comparable to his peers.
Despite being an artist, Jagger’s work was often examined as if it were fact rather than fiction, such as with ‘Sympathy For The Devil’. On the song, Jagger delivers his vocals from a first-person narrative, portraying the devil, which provided him with artistic license to delve into Satanic themes and imagery.
Rather than being viewed on a deeper level, ‘Sympathy For The Devil‘ was taken at face value, which is never how art should be interpreted. For some background, The Rolling Stones had released an album titled Their Satanic Majesties Request the previous year, which gave the tabloids further ammunition.
After the track’s release, The Rolling Stones gained an unwanted reputation that permanently altered how many viewed them. “Before, we were just innocent kids out for a good time,” Richards later remembered. The guitarist continued: “But after ‘Sympathy For The Devil’, they’re saying, ‘They’re evil, they’re evil’. There are black magicians who think we are acting as unknown agents of Lucifer and others who think we are Lucifer”.
During an interview with Rolling Stone in 1995, almost three decades after the release of ‘Sympathy For The Devil’, Jagger explained the repercussions of the backlash. “It became so involved with [Altamont] – sort of journalistically and so on,” Jagger admitted to Rolling Stone, referencing The Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Free Festival in 1969 when riots broke out in the crowd, resulting in four audience members dying. “There were other things going on with it apart from Altamont”.
Defending the track, Jagger used Megadeth as an example of a band who did possess the belief system that The Stones were accused of adhering to, adding, “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 [Their Satanic Majesties Request] – but it wasn’t really put into words”.
Jagger then maintained: “The Satanic-imagery stuff was very overplayed [by journalists]. We didn’t want to really go down that road. And I felt that song was enough. You didn’t want to make a career out of it. But bands did that – Jimmy Page, for instance. I knew lots of people that were into Aleister Crowley. What I’m saying is, it wasn’t what I meant by the song ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. If you read it, it’s not about black magic, per se.”
The true inspiration for the song was French poet Baudelaire and Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita. However, the truth has never stopped a good story from catching fire.
While The Rolling Stones have never been Satanists, this was how many viewed them. In contrast, Dave Mustaine from Megadeth did practice black magic as a teenager, which inspired some of his early work and explains Jagger’s comment. However, Mustaine is now a born-again Christian who has publically declared that he would never perform on a bill with any Satanic bands. Furthermore, he disowned the songs he wrote that contained black magic themes, suggesting that he agreed with Jagger’s “silly nonsense” critique.
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