"
Sympathy for the Devil" is a song by
The Rolling Stones which first appeared as the opening track on the band's 1968 album
Beggars Banquet. It was written by
Mick Jagger and credited to
Jagger/Richards.
Rolling Stone magazine placed it at #32 in their list of
The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
"Sympathy for the Devil" was written by singer Mick Jagger and
guitarist Keith Richards, though the song was largely a Jagger
composition.
[1]
The working title of the song was "The Devil Is My Name", and it is
sung by Jagger as a first-person narrative from the point of view of
Lucifer.
[2]
In a 1995 interview with
Rolling Stone, Jagger said, "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."
[1] It was Richards who suggested changing the tempo and using additional percussion, turning the folk song into a
samba.
[3][4] Additionally, the song has some similarities to
Mikhail Bulgakov's novel
The Master and Margarita.
[3] Jagger's philosophy of the devil states that "Just as every cop is a criminal/ and all your sinners saints."
Backed by an intensifying rock arrangement, the narrator, with
chilling narcissistic relish, recounts his exploits over the course of
human history and warns the listener: "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." Jagger stated in the
Rolling Stone
interview: ". . . it's a very long historical figure — the figures of
evil and figures of good — so it is a tremendously long trail he's made
as personified in this piece."
[1]
At the time of the release of
Beggars Banquet the Rolling Stones had already raised some hackles for sexually forward lyrics such as "
Let's Spend the Night Together"
[5] and for allegedly dabbling in
Satanism [3] (their previous album, while containing no direct Satanic references, had been titled
Their Satanic Majesties Request),
and "Sympathy" brought these concerns to the fore, provoking media
rumours and fears among some religious groups that The Rolling Stones
were devil-worshippers and a corrupting influence on youth.
[3] The lyrics' focus, however, is on atrocities in the history of mankind, including the trial and
death of Jesus Christ ("Made damn sure that
Pilate washed his hands and sealed his fate"),
European wars of religion ("I watched with glee while your kings and queens fought for ten decades / For the Gods they made"), the violence of the
Russian Revolution of 1917 and the 1918 massacre of the
Romanov family ("I stuck around
St. Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change / Killed the
Tsar and his ministers /
Anastasia screamed in vain"), and World War II ("I rode a tank, held a general's rank / When the
Blitzkrieg raged, and the bodies stank").
[6]
The lyrics also refer to the assassinations of
John and
Robert Kennedy.
The recording sessions for the track were in progress when the latter
was killed, and the words were changed from "Who killed Kennedy?" to
"Who killed the Kennedys?"
[citation needed]
The song may have been spared further controversy when the first single from the album, "
Street Fighting Man", became even more controversial in view of the
race riots and
student protests occurring in many cities in the U.S.
[7]
From
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