The Rolling Stones - Their Satanic Majesties Request
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Artist: The Rolling StonesBrand: ROLLING STONES
Edition: Music CD
Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2002-08-27
Music Label: Abkco
Soundtracks:
- Sing This All Together
- Citadel
- In Another Land - Wyman, Bill
- 2000 Man
- Sing This All Together (See What Happens)
- She's a Rainbow
- The Lantern
- Gomper
- 2000 Light Years from Home
- On With the Show
Free Music Notes for Their Satanic Majesties Request
Free Music Review: The Rolling Stones Journey To Middle Earth And Find Damnation
Hit: 5 Stars
This has always been my favorite Rolling Stones album. Always will be. Sure, it's spotty and flawed, the sound quality and/or mix is weak in places, parts of it are seemingly thrown together, but that becomes part of its charm, its strength, its mystique. What it does for the imagination, for me, is inestimable; the possibilities are endless. A wistful romanticism shines through the tarnish. What it lacks in polish, it more than makes up for in character. From the opener "Sing This All Together", a rousing hiking march sung in unison with Hobbitlike exuberance, you know you are going on a trip, a journey both physical and sensory as you are transported over varying terrain and through unfamiliar vegetation with subtle changes in the purposeful and multifarious percussion, finally sliding into the medieval "Citadel" with its strained, strange and brazen instrumentation (a Stones hallmark), and its rather complex arrangement (for pop music) with contrary instrumental lines. "Men at arms shout 'Who goes there...'" Stand forth and declare yourself. "...Here the peasants come and crawl, You can hear their numbers called..." I always loved the lyrics; for one, I was reading science-fiction and fantasy at the time. No doubt Mick & Keith were having some fun with this one, commenting on their cloistered existence as pop stars, and venting their antipathy toward conventional society. The traveller then shuffles along to the next attraction in the sideshow, the plucky harpsichord induced otherworldliness of Bill Wyman's "In Another Land" (I wish he'd done more like this gem, & "Shades Of Orange"), a cool, breezy, dream-within-a-dream which ends all too soon with the dragonlike snore of oblivion. Nicky Hopkins does some of his finest work here on the keys, evoking a wistful, timeless place where "the sea and the sky and the castles were blue". The track regularly emerges from the trance with a typical Stoneslike (although the bulk of the Stones did not participate until after the fact, Steve Marriott and Nicky Hopkins filling in with Bill and Charlie) refrain of barbaric intensity (oddly muted) and irreverence (the half-hearted vocalization of a trumpet, for instance). "And nobody else's hand will ever do, nobody else ('s hand) (will do)..." Romantic.
From the medieval we fastforward to "2000 Man", a futuristic hillbilly ballad with impressive, lovely acoustic guitar picking, and robust, though peculiar drum time which unexpectedly fits the meter of the song, then into the organ surging refrain and a continuation of the sci-fi tinged lyrics: "Oh daddy, proud of your planet, Oh mommy, proud of your sun..." Yes, there may be a pun in there. It doesn't have to make sense does it? This is impressionism; the whole album abounds in colorful glasslike fragments, like the 3D photo on the cover.
"Sing This All Together (See What Happens)" A free form, free fall instrumental continuation, replete with lots of percussion, of the opening track, amply summed up in the Newsweek article cited below.
"She's A Rainbow" I have long wondered: Is this a paean to Mia? "Have you seen the lady Farrow?" That's what it sounds like to me. After all, this was a time when, along with the Beatles, other pop stars and celebrities such as Donovan, Mike Love, Mia Farrow (whose sister, also at the ashram, was immortalized in John Lennon's song "Dear Prudence"), and Mick Jagger were spending time with the Maharishi. A continuation of the Stones formula to pop music with the one-two punch of the delicate and airy (the Stones could be quite elegant and courtly at times) on one hand, countered by the brutal and beastly on the other. Effective combination, later taken to dizzying heights of success by their understudies, Led Zeppelin. The song shimmers with iridescence, with tight little neoclassical musicbox piano sections, flawlessly executed, strings (arranged by John Paul Jones) and unknown instrumentation (characteristic of the entire lp), offset by the heavy pop rhythm, finally breaking up into the ominous foghornlike stylings and twittering violins segueing into...
"The Lantern" Distant church bells clang with foreboding as the song drifts into perhaps the most engaging double guitar intro in all popdom. Taken in combination with the prior song's outro, is this not contemporary classical music? Also, for me, among this album's highlights has long been those short, poignant instumental passages in this moody, atmospheric track. Very moving...
"Gomper" Ahh... "By the lake with lily flowers, While away the evening hours, To and fro she's gently gliding, On the glassy lake she's riding..." Is this not poetry? Music in the Eastern mode, this, with killer guitar line, augmented by Jones' sitar flourishes and flute, and the drumming and percussion is still with us to move us along on our trip. I see a late, golden afternoon sun scene interwoven with images on some ancient tapestry. Thus the gliding, aquatic themed song progresses along, until portentously turning into a disjointed, insectoidal/electronic freakout. What's not to like?
"2000 Light Years From Home" I was partial to this early on, with its science-fiction theme. Since I had discovered sci-fi, astronomy and pop rock at about the same time in my early adolescent life, I had long made a connection between them, and so was happy to receive this verification. And eagerly anticipated more. Eerie mellotron tones by Brian, evoking those lonely light years in the vast reaches of space, that he seemed destined to drift into on a more personal level. "It's so very lonely, you're two thousand light years from home..." I have always been fascinated with the throaty, raunchy guitar section in the middle, with attendant pulsating rhythm section, in all its glorious simplicity. Oh yeah, the only music video promo I know of from this lp is of this song, and it is a good one (good luck finding it---oh yeah, YouTube). I hope there are more (though I do doubt it)...
"On With The Show" Catchy tune, that, reminding us that all is glittering sham and that we're still in the show back here on planet earth, after all (time to start the album over). No doubt this drew further unflattering comparisons to "Sgt. Pepper" (i.e.: that the Stones "copied" the Beatles' idea of the Vaudeville, minstrel show concept prevalent on "Pepper"). Maybe so, but who cares? This is still a great album, and actually owes little to the Beatles' opus. After all, both bands were very much in "show business". Incidentally, "Child Of The Moon" (B side to "Jumpin' Jack Flash") belongs with TSMR, with its goin' against the grain musical motif. In fact, so does "Jumpin' Jack Flash", with its odd, dark fairytale lyrics---and these two were recorded mere months after the Satanic sessions. They were clearly transitional pieces---Request, with a boost in raw power, and were hailed as the Stones' "return".
This lp has often been compared unfavorably to the Beatles offering "Sgt. Pepper", which became THE record album against which all future albums would be measured for some time to come. Sure, Pepper was released prior to Request, undoubtedly informed and inspired the Stones' (& everyone else's) effort, was sheer in-your-face genius when establishment media pundits were gleefully predicting the Fab Four's demise every year, was arguably the first "concept" album (which spawned hundreds of others by various groups), but. Pepper and Request occupied different universes. Whereas the Beatles album was an earthbound, transcendant, ironic small town carnival ride, the Stones offered a trip through the outer cosmos, through time and space. You could get lost there. While it celebrated the familiar and mundane, Pepper was really about the inner journey. Where Pepper was introspective, Request was strictly outward bound (what could be construed as an appeal to the inward search, "Open our heads, let the pictures come..." was more an invocation to submit to the sensory magic of the voyage), ranging from the Middle-Ages (even prehistoric: "...Pictures of us painted in our caves...") to the interstellar---eclectic, outlandish and strange, and it would have been interesting had the Stones continued on that trip.
But then, the drug busts and attendant chaos had entered the studio with them. They managed, in spite of it all, to finish the album. But sooner or later the Stones had to come back to earth. They were too far out. Back on terra firma with the delta blues; earthbound once more, like Icarus with his melted wings.
Point of fact, some early reviews of "Their Satanic Majesties Request" were quite favorable. One in Newsweek for January 1, 1968 related a music critic's "amazement and admiration" upon hearing "Sing This All Together (See What Happens)", later referring to it as a "masterpiece" (strange as that may seem), a "fantastic eight-minute pocket opera of a disoriented world, a perfectly articulated jetstream of sound which vacuums out of the air everything from pure melodies to fragments of conversation, screams, volcanic rumblings, mad ornithological croakings, Stravinskyan karate chords, turning itself rhythmically inside out like a wind sock, and ending with a choral climax..." He goes on to say, "It is the Stones' look into the abyss, their giant anthem of the new chaotic togetherness that leaves no one either connected or alone." A fellow high school pal of mine at the time related another glowing review of the lp, though I don't now recall his source or much detail. Condemnation became quite fashionable later (one negative Rolling Stone magazine review comes to mind), everybody scrambling to get on the bandwagon, because the Stones had dared to make a departure from the same old tried and proven formula. Back to the blues, rock 'n' roll, back to the cotton fields, the salt mine, at the expense of any further exploration. What a shame. Even the Stones have felt compelled to be apologetic about this album ever since, so great was the animosity directed towards it. Once again, people in the main prove themselves to be hidebound, deaf and blind fools. And groups such as Pink Floyd have been extolled for the very thing the Stones were denounced for.
Of course, I'll be among the first to say that some of the Rolling Stones' best work was their powerful blues renditions. Nobody did it like them. And the gritty rock numbers, not to mention the lyricism of their folkish tracks of yore. But don't let anyone convince you otherwise; there's not a bad song on this album, and it does draw from their past work.
The Stones really had been building up to this, at least since "As Tears Go By". Not content to merely cover great blues standards, and needing to branch out into pop music (where the money was) with original songs possessing a diverse mix, due in no small part to Brian Jones' virtuosity and fascination with exotic instruments, they began to experiment with more original sounds. So the progression toward Request was in that sense inevitable. If you listen carefully to "Going Home", the long track from "Aftermath" of the previous year, somewhere in the break you can hear traces of that incipient melody that would later grow into "Sing This All Together".
I have been fascinated with this record from the first time I saw it hanging on the wall at the record store, with its white smoke and blue cover bordering the enigmatic 3D color photo. With a cover like that, it had to be good, I reasoned. So when my sister asked what I wanted for Christmas, I said that album. And it was a great Christmas present---one of the best I ever received. For one thing, Yule was a great time to explore that record, what with all the time off from school. And explore I did. I don't remember anything else about that holiday season, except listening to TSMR. Over, & over, & over... Sitting in the cushioned chair with my head between the speakers, looking at the cover front and back, inside and out. Later on I bought a second copy just so I could stack the records to hear both sides without having to get up. Omigod, this has all the earmarks of brainwashing (now gaze into the 3D image). And happily did I take that trip...
© 2008 RAPWreckerds
Their Satanic Majesties Request Poster
No Description Available.Genre: Popular Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 27-AUG-2002
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