The Rolling Stones are probably the only ones who didn’t have that many mistakes in their career. Or that’s something that only we fans talk about. On top of that, the debate about The Rolling Stones copying The Beatles was always a headline for the news departments.
The Rolling Stones were very disapproving of their own music. They often times diss themselves, and most of them don’t even like their own song. But they have to be taken as jokes too. Same that way, there is an album that both Mick Jagger and Keith Richards hate.
The infamous album is their 1967 ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request.’ They both called that album garbage. According to Jagger, “There’s a lot of rubbish on ‘Satanic Majesties‘”. He added, “Just too much time on our hands, too many drugs, no producer to tell us, ‘Enough already, thank you very much.’”
The more was explained in an interview with Rolling Stone in 1995. In an article by Rolling Stone, Mick was asked about the album. He replied, “I probably started to take too many drugs.” Jagger also added,
“Well, it’s not very good. It had interesting things on it, but I don’t think any of the songs are very good. It’s a bit like Between the Buttons. It’s a sound experience, really, rather than a song experience. There’s two good songs on it: “She’s a Rainbow,” which we didn’t do on the last tour, although we almost did, and “2000 Light Years From Home,” which we did do. The rest of them are nonsense.”
Now back to their rivalry with The Beatles. As mentioned above, many thought The Rolling Stones were copying most of the Beatle’s songs. Regarding that matter when McCartney was with Howard Stern in 2020, he said, “I mean, we started to notice that whatever we did, The Stones sort of did it shortly thereafter… We did Sgt. Pepper; then The Stones did a sort of psychedelic album, there was a lot of that.” Paul was also referring to their album ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’.
Keith has also talked about the album. Unlike others, he doesn’t shy away from inspiration and has said that The Beatles Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band inspired their album. However, Jagger has a different opinion on the matter. He said, “
I think we were just taking too much acid. We were just getting carried away, just thinking anything you did was fun and everyone should listen to it.” Jagger also added,
“The whole thing, we were on acid. We were on acid doing the cover picture. I always remember doing that. It was like being at school, you know, sticking on the bits of colored paper and things. It was really silly. But we enjoyed it. [Laughs] Also, we did it to piss Andrew off, because he was such a pain in the neck. Because he didn’t understand it. The more we wanted to unload him, we decided to go on this path to alienate him.”
“Without actually doing it legally, we forced him out. I mean, he wanted out anyway. We were so out of our minds.”
Keith believes that they strayed away from their usual path and it backfired. Richards told
Esquire, “
If you’re the Beatles in the ’60s, you just get carried away—you forget what it is you wanted to do. You’re starting to do Sgt. Pepper. Some people think it’s a genius album, but I think it’s a mishmash of rubbish, kind of like Satanic Majesties — ‘Oh, if you can make a load of sh*t, so can we.'”He also added in his memoir, “None of us wanted to make [Satanic Majesties], but it was time for another Stones album, and Sgt. Pepper’s was coming out, so we thought basically we were doing a put-on.”
No matter how much they hate the album, the fans totally loved it. This one album would not stop them from being who they are today in this world. The way they tried to take a different path and how it backfired totally made them learn their lesson. This album showcased how their drug use overtook their craft but how they admit their under comings is something we should appreciate.
