Sympathy for the Devil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Sympathy for the Devil" was written by Mick Jagger and 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 the 2012 BBC documentary Crossfire Hurricane, Jagger stated that his influence for the song came from Baudelaire and from the Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita (which had just appeared in English translation in 1967). The book was given to him by Marianne Faithfull.
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]
Backed by an intensifying rock arrangement, the narrator, with 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" [4] and for allegedly dabbling in Satanism [5] (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 Stones were devil-worshippers and a corrupting influence on youth.[5]
The lyrics focus on atrocities in the history of mankind from Lucifer's point of view, 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"). The song was originally written with the line "I shouted out 'Who killed Kennedy?'" After Robert F. Kennedy's death on 6 June 1968, the line was changed to "I shouted out 'Who killed the Kennedys?'"[6]
Jagger sings the final lines of the coda, before the fade, in a high falsetto.
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 Europe and in the United States.[7]
Altamont
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