Album: Beggar's BanquetAvg rating:
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Total ratings: 5340
Length: 6:17
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I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a mans soul and faith
And I was round when jesus christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
I stuck around st. petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain
I rode a tank
Held a generals rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah
I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made
I shouted out,
Who killed the kennedys?
When after all
It was you and me
Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached bombay
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what's confusing you
Is just the nature of my game
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me lucifer
Cause I'm in need of some restraint
So 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, um yeah
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, um yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, um mean it, get down
Woo, who
Oh yeah, get on down
Oh yeah
Oh yeah!
Tell me baby, what's my name
Tell me honey, can ya guess my name
Tell me baby, what's my name
I tell you one time, you're to blame
Ooo, who
Ooo, who
Ooo, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Oh, yeah
What's my name
Tell me, baby, what's my name
Tell me, sweetie, what's my name
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Oh, yeah
Yes, because evil should always be assuaged.
Zhelinski wasn't a part of the huge mess that caused the chaos. That was in the making for over 15 years before he was elected. Western support for the least popular and most unpleasant elements jostling for power had far more to do with the crisis happening now.
Um. Honestly a serious question? the Vietnam was was America's, not the UK's. No, there was no draft because it wasn't our war - and the poster - Dapps - flags herself as a woman anyway
It was also Australia's war. They had a Draft of sorts, compulsory military conscription. 60,000 Australians fought there, all the way to 1975.
i wonder how many "woo - woo"s there are in this song...
Just watch Focus to get the answer to that question
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt238...
19 in 1969? Was there a Draft in UK at that time for the Vietnam war?
Um. Honestly a serious question? the Vietnam was was America's, not the UK's. No, there was no draft because it wasn't our war - and the poster - Dapps - flags herself as a woman anyway
Very possibly the most annoying song played on RP.
Its ok Alastair...some day you'll grow up and appreciate classic rock music!
Very possibly the most annoying song played on RP.
Very possibly the most annoying comment posted on RP.
Takes me back to the days when I bought vinyl albums, and for sure I remember buying 'Beggar's Banquet' - 1968. I was 19, the world was wonderful over here in the UK - the music, the clothes, the hairstyles, awesome times.
The arm moved over, the needle landed and then .... Sympathy For The Devil started up. This woman was on another planet, loving every minute. Wow, what a terrific time to be a teenager.
Thanks RP for the memories đ
19 in 1969? Was there a Draft in UK at that time for the Vietnam war?
i wonder how many "woo - woo"s there are in this song...
Too many. Gets on my nerves. It's a good song until they start.
Take a look at this songs RP-id number in the address-bar of your browser.
Well, that's gone with the website's player revamp. Reasonable to assume it was 666.
The arm moved over, the needle landed and then .... Sympathy For The Devil started up. This woman was on another planet, loving every minute. Wow, what a terrific time to be a teenager.
Thanks RP for the memories đ
...and maybe mention devilishly hard-headed Zhelinsky, who had 101 chances to avoid war and spoiled them all
Yes, because evil should always be assuaged.
RE:
'Overplay' -
There was a first time that everyone here, heard this song.
May have been in 1968, yesterday, or any time in between.
That's a span of 54 years.
I don't recall when I first heard this - probably 1985? - I was 17 back then and it's the time I first heard a lot of 60's music. (that I could remember!)
It's not a bad song, right?
54 years later, there aren't many written like this.
Not bad for a band that once asked the Beatles to write them a hit...
RE:
'Overplay' -
There was a first time that everyone here, heard this song.
May have been in 1968, yesterday, or any time in between.
That's a span of 54 years.
Likely, the farther back one's first listening was, the more times they've heard it.
As you read this, there are no doubt those that are hearing it for the first time.
Among the many features at Radio Paradise is the option to easily move forward to a different song.
I'm going to listen to this particular 'overplayed' tune though, as I haven't heard it in a little while, and because - it's The Rolling Stones.
I'd be okay if Jagger/Richards wanted to add a verse for Putin's invasion of Ukraine....
...and maybe mention devilishly hard-headed Zhelinsky, who had 101 chances to avoid war and spoiled them all
He sings a "Strange game"
I had to look up the definition of erudition. Therefore, I can now wholeheartedly agree. This is a brilliant song from a man who was almost a school teacher. It has often been taken out of context.
more irony than Alanis can handle
This one is DEAD FROM OVERPLAY. So are so many of the Classic Rock Staples like the Pink Floyd rubbish and Baba O'Riley, Stevie Wonder's Superstition, Jimi's version of Watchtower etc... but generally speaking, this site is a fantastic bubbling fountain of musical knowledge and I am grateful for it.
SUPER GREAT!!!! ICONIC!!!! ...Ooo, who, who..............
I agree!!
Hey folks - remember this is 1968. Pretty innovative at the time. Aan easy 9. Just listen to Keef
Oh we were, and even earlier!
Says so much!
Given the lyrics, that is kind of funny.
but damn does it get better than this?
Der Name Ol' Rubber Lips gefällt mir. Von mir auch ne 10 fßr den Song.
Greetings from Bavaria to all the listeners outside. Stay safe!
From a NY Post interview with Todd Venezia:
She (Mackenzie Philips) says that sex with Mick Jagger is still a fond memory.
âI was proud of my conquest,â she writes. âOr of having been conquested.â
Since the titular character of the song also served with a General's Rank,... he must not have had those pesky bone spurs either.
TDS
I had to look up the definition of erudition. Therefore, I can now wholeheartedly agree. This is a brilliant song from a man who was almost a school teacher. It has often been taken out of context.
Sad to say, a relationship with Jagger wasn't as bad as the one with her father....
Weave wrote:
"The Rolling Stones and controversy go together like fish and chips. In 1968, one of their best-known controversies kept their classic album âBeggars Banquetâ album off shelves for nearly six months in a protracted dispute over the legendary âtoilet cover.â
As conceived by designer Michael Vosse, the original cover for âBeggars Banquetâ depicted graffiti on the wall of a bathroom that could charitably be described as dilapidated. Located at a Los Angeles-area Porsche dealership, the bathroom walls were defaced by actual Stones: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards scrawled the album credits and one-liners like âWot no paper!â The photograph featured not just the walls but the top of an old, beaten-up toilet.
Itâs possible that the toilet was the main source of the problem; just two years earlier, the cover of the Mamas and the Papas album âIf You Can Believe Your Eyes and Earsâ was yanked off shelves by their label simply because a toilet sat next to the band in the cover photo. Whatever the reason, both the Stonesâ U.S. and U.K. labels rejected the original âtoilet coverâ concept, delaying the albumâs release.
âWe really have tried to keep the album within the bounds of good taste,â said Jagger in 1968, as the controversy stretched on. âI mean, we havenât shown the whole lavatory. That would have been rude. Weâve only shown the top half. Two people at the record company have told us that the sleeve is terribly offensive ⌠Weâll get this album distributed somehow, even if I have to go down the end of Greek Street and Carlisle Street at two oâclock on Saturday morning and sell them myself.â
Originally slated for release in the summer of â68, the cover controversy pushed the release of âBeggars Banquetâ until December. The original compromise cover adopted a wedding-invitation style; by the early â80s, reissues began using the original cover design. By then, the sight of an offensive toilet had finally waned, and the Stones had discovered new and exciting ways to shock the public."
zesty !The lyrics are "I'm a man of wealth and taste".
Since the titular character of the song also served with a General's Rank,... he must not have had those pesky bone spurs either.
"Sympathy for the Devil"
Mick Jagger's mad, erudite incantation strutted '60s rock toward the dark side of history.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Douglas Cruickshank
Jan. 14, 2002 | While the Beatles dominated pop in the 1960s, their music was nearly devoid of one vital element: darkness. At a time when authentic blues was still relatively unknown (and also not widely available) to most white kids, those who craved the seductive complexities of the dark side turned to the Rolling Stones. And nothing more vividly illuminated the group's supposed affinity for Lucifer than "Sympathy for the Devil," their anthem-cum-incantation in the form of a taunting cultural fable. It was the first cut on the A side of "Beggar's Banquet" — which now, 33 years later, still stands as not only one of the Stones' finest albums, but one of the best rock records ever made.
Released on Dec. 5, 1968, "Beggar's Banquet" came out just 10 days after the Beatles' White Album, and a year and a day before the Stones' notorious free concert at Altamont Speedway in Livermore, Calif. (Contrary to popular legend, "Sympathy for the Devil" was not the song being played when a young man was killed at the free concert. The band was knocking out "Under My Thumb" when 18-year-old Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death by a member of the Hell's Angels motorcycle club. Several Web sites reference Don McLean's allusion to this incident in deconstructions of his song "American Pie": "Oh, and as I watched him on the stage/My hands were clenched in fists of rage/No angel born in Hell/Could break that Satan's spell.")
The Stones have made plenty of mistakes over the years ("Their Satanic Majesties Request"), but producing a rock opera wasn't one of them. Though "Sympathy for the Devil" is embedded with enough historical and philosophical scope to seem like the opening act to a drama of operatic dimensions, they wisely kept it to a concise six minutes and 22 seconds. In interviews, Mick Jagger — who wrote "Sympathy" ("I wrote it as sort of like a Bob Dylan song") without his usual writing partner, Keith Richards — has said he was concerned at the time about the potential for the lyrics to come off as pretentious and the band to be "skewered on the altar of pop culture." So when Richards suggested changing the rhythm, Jagger agreed and as the band worked (and worked and worked) on the piece, it ended up as a samba, which Jagger has called "hypnotic" and Richards referred to as "mad."
Jagger, a voracious reader and history buff, claimed he was influenced in writing "Sympathy" by Baudelaire. But he was also, as others have pointed out, clearly under the spell of Mikhail Bulgakov's classic allegorical novel of good and evil, "The Master and Margarita." Of course Jagger was even more clearly under the spell of the 1960s, a time when — for many — heaven and hell seemed to have come to earth in the most lucid terms.
The song's opening — "Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste" — parallels the beginning of Bulgakov's novel, in which a sophisticated stranger, who turns out to be Satan, introduces himself to two gentlemen sitting in a Moscow park as they're discussing whether Jesus existed or not. ("'Please excuse me,' he said, speaking correctly, but with a foreign accent, 'for presuming to speak to you without an introduction.'") The song then references Christ and the story of Pontius Pilate, which the novel takes up in its second chapter. Before moving on to the Russian Revolution, the song's narrator, Lucifer, acknowledges that his listeners are mystified — "But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game" — just as, in "The Master and Margarita," one of the men approached by Satan in the park thinks to himself, "What the devil is he after?"
In the lyrics for "Sympathy," Jagger's narrator jumps from making "damn sure that Pilate washed his hands and sealed fate" to St. Petersburg, "When I saw it was time for a change," and kills "the Czar and his ministers." Curiously (or not so curiously, given Jagger's penchant for reading history), the only other allusion in the song to Russia's dark past is an odd one: "Anastasia screamed in vain" — a reference to the youngest daughter of the czar who was murdered with the rest of the Romanov royal family. For most of the 20th century Anastasia was an almost mythological figure, thanks to the specious claims that she alone had survived the murders.
But more interesting than what appear to be direct correlations between the book and the song is how Jagger and the Stones, drawing on numerous influences, Bulgakov's novel apparently among them, managed — in a rock song — to address serious, even profound, ideas to a samba beat without turning the whole affair into an exercise in dull earnestness. On the contrary, "Sympathy" sounds like a party and works so well, on multiple levels, because its lyrics evoke more than they spell out, while the music not only has an infectious rhythm, it features ingenious layering of sound and background vocals that build to an irresistible, kick-ass tribal hootenanny. Those "woo woos," by the way, which provide a self-deprecating, cartoonish poke at the song's spookiness, while adding to the chanting-around-the-bonfire nature of the music, were provided by the four demons themselves, along with two members of the Stones' 1968 coven — Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull — and the album's producer, Jimmy Miller.
In writing the song, Jagger used words with impressive economy. He cites Jesus Christ, Pontius Pilate, the czar, Anastasia, the blitzkrieg (World War II), the Kennedys and the city of Bombay and mentions Lucifer by name (just once) and in so doing creates a deep, amplified portrait of a world torn by religion, war, assassination and confusion where "Every cop is a criminal/And all the sinners saints." Threaded throughout are taunts from the teasing narrator — the traditional demon trickster — trying to get the listener to speak his name: "Hope you guess my name," "Tell me, baby, what's my name?" "Tell me, sweetie, what's my name?" And — at the very pinnacle of the Flower Power era, remember — he then turns on his starry-eyed audience and tells them that they, in league with him, are to blame for the deaths of the '60s most promising political leaders.
But lest you think Jagger simply mixed up some brainy lyrics and threw them into a recording studio with his talented, stoned friends, take a look sometime at the strange little cinematic time capsule "One Plus One," a documentary on the recording of "Sympathy for the Devil" (among many other things). The film, which has been distributed in two versions, was directed by Jean-Luc Godard, and it's had a tempestuous history, which I won't go into here except to say that one version, known by the same title as the song, is not Godard's cut. That's the version generally available in the U.S. Anyway, whichever version you view, you'll see the Stones as they work with meticulous attention to detail to record the tracks and build the elaborate song.
Not surprisingly, given its distinctive sound and eternal-hot-button subject matter, "Sympathy" has taken on a life of its own (and isn't that just what that doggone devil would want?). It's been recorded by Bryan Ferry, Guns 'n' Roses, Natalie Merchant, Jane's Addiction, the Hampton String Quartet, the band Laibach (which devoted an entire album to different versions of the song) and, believe it or don't, the London Symphony Orchestra. It's worth pointing out that Rolling Stone magazine's take, in its review of Ferry's cover of the song ("'Sympathy' has always been recorded with, if not seriousness, at least earnestness"), is dismissive of both the Stones' version and Jagger's lyrics, which Rolling Stone called "slightly corny, vaguely ridiculous."
On the other hand, just last month Ron Rosenbaum wrote an article in the New York Observer in which he extols Jagger's abilities as a lyricist and specifically mentions "Sympathy for the Devil": "And let's not forget," Rosenbaum writes, "at this particular moment, that he's one of the rare rock songwriters who has addressed the question of evil and apocalypse in a sophisticated way." Rosenbaum goes on at some length to praise the singer's "beautiful use of incantation ... a lovely word for a special kind of vocal recurrence, one that combines overtones of prayer, magic, spell casting ... a kind of vocal voodoo."
The song's title continues to have almost iconic status and gets all manner of uses. It has been appropriated for a computer game ("Sympathy for the Devil: The War in Russia, 1942-43") and is tiresomely used whenever possible to headline stories about Jagger's marital woes and paternity suits or anytime bad behavior is the subject. For example, these, all of which appeared in the New York Post: "Jagger's Ex Has Sympathy for the Devil," "No Sympathy for Devils" and "Sympathy for the Devil: Why Bill Is No Hypocrite" (an article by P.J O'Rourke). To this day, "Sympathy" is widely discussed online on sites like the Christian Music Forum and referenced in treatises on the devil, such as John P. Sisk's paper, "The Necessary Devil" in First Things: A Journal of Religion and Public Life.
Jagger concedes that the song may have been something of an inspiration for all the '70s and '80s heavy metal bands that flirted with Satanism, but in interviews he's repeatedly distanced the Stones from any of it. In an exchange with Creem magazine, he said, ", 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, it has carried all the way over into heavy metal bands today. Especially in the sense of the fact that I have been a practicing Christian all of my life! People will see the worst when all we are is attempting to open their eyes to evil!"
Regardless of, or maybe because of, the swath it has cut, "Sympathy for the Devil," as good art often does, continues to resonate at least as strongly today as it did when it was first created. Woo woo.
Thank you Misterfixit and fredriley, Happy New Year!!! WOO-HOO!!!!
Held a General's rank -
When the Blitzkrieg raged,
And the bodies stank'
)CRANKIN' IT!
I'll give that a woo-hooo!
)I know what you mean! I can't believe this song has been played one other time in the past 30 days. Shocking. It's like I can't listen to RP without hearing it. If only there were a way for one to listen to just the songs one wants to, without hearing songs one doesn't want to. It would be kind of like radio, but you get to pick the songs! I think I'm going to start a music service with this premise — I'll make a million!
So am I wrong to rate the song "Godlike"?
WOOO-WOOOO!!!
The lyrics are "I'm a man of wealth and taste".
This one is DEAD FROM OVERPLAY. So are so many of the Classic Rock Staples like the Pink Floyd rubbish and Baba O'Riley, Stevie Wonder's Superstition, Jimi's version of Watchtower etc...
Not even your capslock key can make that remotely true.
Yepp, and this fate is shared by so many songs here, which is no surprise when the play list gets not updated. I have given up hope for some improvement here, sorry to say. I just switch the sound off, because PSD just gives me another overplayed song.
It feels one hasn't heard a new song here for decades! It is not quite tru I know, but it feels like it. I mostly know what song comes next, because it is always the same set. even Bill's announcements comes from tape. Because he is always saying the same text.
One does not really feel the "we are glad to have you with us" feel here.
This one is DEAD FROM OVERPLAY. So are so many of the Classic Rock Staples like the Pink Floyd rubbish and Baba O'Riley, Stevie Wonder's Superstition, Jimi's version of Watchtower etc... but generally speaking, this site is a fantastic bubbling fountain of musical knowledge and I am grateful for it.
Do you mean the origin of "non-lexical vocal accompaniment" (like in Doo-wop music) or do you mean The Stones choice of the sound "woo-woo"?
Well I don't know, but the origin of my 'woo-hoo' was when I first heard Keef's icy hot killer solo on this, and that perfect crunchy slide chord stop at the end of it.
It feels one hasn't heard a new song here for decades! It is not quite tru I know, but it feels like it. I mostly know what song comes next, because it is always the same set. even Bill's announcements comes from tape. Because he is always saying the same text.
One does not really feel the "we are glad to have you with us" feel here.
I'm pretty sure no one is forcing you to listen to RP.
If you have given up hope for improvement, why are you still here??
There's an extensive Wikipedia article on Bulgakov's novel, with external references to where you can read the book online or download it. Like yourself, I've not managed to read the thing myself, but it is on my To Read list.
I will feed in as one who has read The Master and Margarita, this very year. When I was about 15 years old, my mother suggested that I read it. A rather excessive number of decades later I got around to it (she recently told me that she herself never finished it). It's an interesting read, especially when you understand the environment in which it was written, where writing something like this could and often did lead to execution or at the least severe persecution by the State. The allegories to the Soviet Union and the Stalinist rule are clear, but probably hard to grasp in 2016. This song has taken on a different meaning for me after who can guess how many hearings. As I understand, the English translation was published in the late 1960s and was being read by Mick's girlfriend at the time (M. Faithful?). In some respects, there is something poignant about living in a society where a novel can get one killed and continuing to pursue one's vision carries with it this type of potential outcome (I suppose Salman Rushdie might have a sense of this). The novel itself is an example I suppose of socialist unrealism and/or phantasmagoricism. Push it to the top of your reading list and at the very least this Stones song will resonate differently.
I remember this was called the Stones' "Woo-hoo song". Not sure why
Yepp, and this fate is shared by so many songs here, which is no surprise when the play list gets not updated. I have given up hope for some improvement here, sorry to say. I just switch the sound off, because PSD just gives me another overplayed song.
It feels one hasn't heard a new song here for decades! It is not quite tru I know, but it feels like it. I mostly know what song comes next, because it is always the same set. even Bill's announcements comes from tape. Because he is always saying the same text.
One does not really feel the "we are glad to have you with us" feel here.
So am I wrong to rate the song "Godlike"?
Besides, if the Devil is behind killings of Russian emperor and the Kennedys, he can't be all that bad...
WOW! I thought I was in the RadioParadise political forums by mistake
Someone interested ?
Besides, if the Devil is behind killings of Russian emperor and the Kennedys, he can't be all that bad...
Tells us what we need to know about your politics along with your lowest rated song
1 - Elvis Costello - Peace, Love and Understanding
REALLY!!!!!!!!
But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
I think you miss the point. It's from the point of view of the devil saying 'Don't blame me. You did it all yourselves.' and yet he seems to take all the rap for man's crimes with religious nut-jobs first in the queue to point the finger. Meanwhile their own god gives children cancer.
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint
(Who who, who who)
He's saying god and Lucifer are one and the same.
Tell me baby, what's my name
Tell me honey, can ya guess my name
Tell me baby, what's my name
I tell you one time, you're to blame
It's not the devil to blame for all the ills in the world. Jagger is saying the line from those who are religious is nonsense, blaming an imaginary devil for the ills when the real culprits are human beings.
The title of the song - Sympathy For the Devil, he has sympathy because he gets blamed for a helluva lot when the real blame lies at the door of people.
Not that I think for one minute Jagger is religious, but is using this topic as an allegory.
So am I wrong to rate the song "Godlike"?
My goodness, these guys were geniuses.
I agree completely with your assessment. Too bad that spark of genius was extinguished so long ago.
Besides, if the Devil is behind killings of Russian emperor and the Kennedys, he can't be all that bad...
Right-wing lunatic much?
Besides, if the Devil is behind killings of Russian emperor and the Kennedys, he can't be all that bad...
Man, that's some real hot take trolling right there. Good effort.
Anyone going to Oldchella (Coachella) to see the Stones?
- Steven Wright.
There's an extensive Wikipedia article on Bulgakov's novel, with external references to where you can read the book online or download it. Like yourself, I've not managed to read the thing myself, but it is on my To Read list.
Thanks! The book is great, and knowing more analysis is available is awesome.
My goodness, these guys were geniuses.
I think you miss the point. It's from the point of view of the devil saying 'Don't blame me. You did it all yourselves.' and yet he seems to take all the rap for man's crimes with religious nut-jobs first in the queue to point the finger. Meanwhile their own god gives children cancer.
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint
(Who who, who who)
He's saying god and Lucifer are one and the same.
Tell me baby, what's my name
Tell me honey, can ya guess my name
Tell me baby, what's my name
I tell you one time, you're to blame
It's not the devil to blame for all the ills in the world. Jagger is saying the line from those who are religious is nonsense, blaming an imaginary devil for the ills when the real culprits are human beings.
The title of the song - Sympathy For the Devil, he has sympathy because he gets blamed for a helluva lot when the real blame lies at the door of people.
Not that I think for one minute Jagger is religious, but is using this topic as an allegory.
Awesome rebuttal!
Read The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, then the song means even more!
Besides, if the Devil is behind killings of Russian emperor and the Kennedys, he can't be all that bad...
I think you miss the point. It's from the point of view of the devil saying 'Don't blame me. You did it all yourselves.' and yet he seems to take all the rap for man's crimes with religious nut-jobs first in the queue to point the finger. Meanwhile their own god gives children cancer.
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint
(Who who, who who)
He's saying god and Lucifer are one and the same.
Tell me baby, what's my name
Tell me honey, can ya guess my name
Tell me baby, what's my name
I tell you one time, you're to blame
It's not the devil to blame for all the ills in the world. Jagger is saying the line from those who are religious is nonsense, blaming an imaginary devil for the ills when the real culprits are human beings.
The title of the song - Sympathy For the Devil, he has sympathy because he gets blamed for a helluva lot when the real blame lies at the door of people.
Not that I think for one minute Jagger is religious, but is using this topic as an allegory.
Besides, if the Devil is behind killings of Russian emperor and the Kennedys, he can't be all that bad...
There's an extensive Wikipedia article on Bulgakov's novel, with external references to where you can read the book online or download it. Like yourself, I've not managed to read the thing myself, but it is on my To Read list.
Well worth it. I didn't want to put it down. Unique work.
Misterfixit's post of Cruickshank's article is definitely worth reading. Cruickshank's article suggests in part that Jagger's lyrics were influenced by Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" and uses events in the opening chapter. Sadly, I've only read a few chapters of the book but it's brilliant and the opening chapter, wherein the Devil talks with two men in a park, is darkly hysterical.
There's an extensive Wikipedia article on Bulgakov's novel, with external references to where you can read the book online or download it. Like yourself, I've not managed to read the thing myself, but it is on my To Read list.
I think you're just copying yourself and make the same joke over and over again.
You're right on it idiot_wind!!! And the vocals also sound an awful lot like Colin Meloy, don't they?
No question for me, either. Great music.
"The Rolling Stones and controversy go together like fish and chips. In 1968, one of their best-known controversies kept their classic album ‘Beggars Banquet’ album off shelves for nearly six months in a protracted dispute over the legendary “toilet cover.”
As conceived by designer Michael Vosse, the original cover for ‘Beggars Banquet’ depicted graffiti on the wall of a bathroom that could charitably be described as dilapidated. Located at a Los Angeles-area Porsche dealership, the bathroom walls were defaced by actual Stones: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards scrawled the album credits and one-liners like “Wot no paper!” The photograph featured not just the walls but the top of an old, beaten-up toilet.
It’s possible that the toilet was the main source of the problem; just two years earlier, the cover of the Mamas and the Papas album ‘If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears’ was yanked off shelves by their label simply because a toilet sat next to the band in the cover photo. Whatever the reason, both the Stones’ U.S. and U.K. labels rejected the original “toilet cover” concept, delaying the album’s release.
“We really have tried to keep the album within the bounds of good taste,” said Jagger in 1968, as the controversy stretched on. “I mean, we haven’t shown the whole lavatory. That would have been rude. We’ve only shown the top half. Two people at the record company have told us that the sleeve is terribly offensive … We’ll get this album distributed somehow, even if I have to go down the end of Greek Street and Carlisle Street at two o’clock on Saturday morning and sell them myself.”
Originally slated for release in the summer of ’68, the cover controversy pushed the release of ‘Beggars Banquet’ until December. The original compromise cover adopted a wedding-invitation style; by the early ’80s, reissues began using the original cover design. By then, the sight of an offensive toilet had finally waned, and the Stones had discovered new and exciting ways to shock the public."