- Writers: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
- Producer: Jimmy Miller
- Recorded: June 1968 at Olympic Studios, London
- Released: December 5, 1968
- Players:
- Mick Jagger — vocals
- Keith Richard — bass, guitars
- Charlie Watts — drums
- Brian Jones — percussion
- Nicky Hopkins — piano
- Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Jimmy Miller: backup vocals and percussion
- Album: Beggars Banquet (London, 1968/ABKCO, 1986)
- Also On:
- Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! (London, 1970/ABKCO, 1986)
- Hot Rocks 1964-1971 (London, 1972/ABKCO, 1986)
- Flashpoint (Rolling Stones/Sony, 1991)
- Rock And Roll Circus (ABKCO, 1996)
- “Sympathy For The Devil” began as a folk-styled song called “The Devil Is My Name.” It was inspired by the Mikhail Bulgakov novel The Master And Margarita, in which Satan appears in Moscow to observe the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution.
- Jean-Luc Godard filmed the band recording the song for a movie that was to be called One Plus One, but was later changed to Sympathy For The Devil.
- With its menacing polyrhythms and dark lyrics, the song became a symbol of the Rolling Stones‘ violent Altamont Speedway concert in 1969. Critic Robert Christgau wrote, “An Afro-American bohemian is murdered by a lower-class white Hell’s Angel while the Englishmen do a song called ‘Sympathy For The Devil.’” However, the film Gimme Shelter, about the Stone’s 1969 tour and the free concert at Altamont, clearly shows that the Stones were actually playing “Under My Thumb” at the time of the stabbing.
- The song was seen as symbolic of the end of the 1960s.
- The band dropped “Sympathy For The Devil” from its live shows for several years.
- Beggars Banquet was the band’s first album with producer Jimmy Miller, who said: “Mick (Jagger) contacted me and said he liked the things I did with Traffic. He had been producing the Rolling Stones but he says he doesn’t want to be on two sides of the control room window now.”
- During sessions, guitarist Brian Jones and his lackadaisical habits got on the other Stones’ nerves. “What can I play?” he asked Mick, who responded cynically, “Yeah, what CAN you play, Brian?”
- At 4:15 a.m. a studio fire interrupted the session, and the firemen’s extinguishers wrecked a lot of equipment. Said drummer Charlie Watts: “It was bloody frightening.”
- Jagger originally wrote the lyric “who killed Kennedy,” but altered it after Robert F. Kennedy‘s assassination to “who killed the Kennedys.”
FAST FORWARD:
- Guns N’ Roses covered it for the film version of Interview With The Vampire in 1994. It has also been covered by Jane’s Addiction, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Widespread Panic, Brian Ferry, and Thrashing Doves.
- The Stones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.
- Bill Wyman left the Stones in 1993.
- 2006 was a rough year for the Stones — Richards fell on his head while on vacation in Fiji and had to have cranial surgery, which led to European dates being rescheduled; guitarist Ronnie Wood did another stint in rehab to deal with his alcoholism; and frontman Mick Jagger had throat issues over the summer which forced the cancellation of two dates in Spain, followed by more throat problems that led the band to rework part of their fall North American tour.
- The group played two shows at the Beacon Theater in New York City in 2006, which were filmed by director Martin Scorsese for a Stones tour documentary called Shine A Light.
Richards appears in Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End, playing the father of Johnny Depp‘s character Jack Sparrow. Depp has said that his portrayal of Sparrow was partly inspired by Richards’s vocal and physical mannerisms.