Their Satanic Majesties Request - History

History

Begun just after Between the Buttons had been released, the recording of Their Satanic Majesties Request was long and sporadic, broken up by court appearances and jail terms. For the same reasons, the entire band was seldom present in the studio at one time. Further slowing productivity was the presence of the multiple guests that the band members had brought along. One of the more level-headed members of the band during this time, Bill Wyman, wary of psychedelic drugs, wrote the song "In Another Land" to parody the Stones' current goings-on. In a 2002 interview with Rolling Stone, Wyman described the situations in the studio.

Every day at the studio it was a lottery as to who would turn up and what - if any - positive contribution they would make when they did. Keith would arrive with anything up to ten people, Brian with another half-a-dozen and it was the same for Mick. They were assorted girlfriends and friends. I hated it! Then again, so did Andrew (Oldham) and just gave up on it. There were times when I wish I could have done, too.

Their producer and manager Andrew Loog Oldham, already fed up with the band's lack of focus, distanced himself from them following their drug bust and finally quit, leaving them without a producer. As a result Their Satanic Majesties Request was the Stones' only self-produced album, which Mick Jagger admitted was not for the best.

There's a lot of rubbish on Satanic Majesties. Just too much time on our hands, too many drugs, no producer to tell us, "Enough already, thank you very much, now can we get just get on with this song?" Anyone let loose in the studio will produce stuff like that. There was simply too much hanging around. It's like believing everything you do is great and not having any editing.

According to Brian Jones, a month before the album's planned release date the group "hadn't got anything put together".

It's really like sort of got-together chaos. Because we all panicked a little, even as soon as a month before the release date that we had planned, we really hadn't got anything put together. We had all these great things that we'd done, but we couldn't possibly put it out as an album. And so we just got them together, and did a little bit of editing here and there."

Keith Richards himself has been critical of the album in later years. While he likes some of the songs ("2000 Light Years from Home", "Citadel" and "She's a Rainbow"), "the album was a load of crap".

The Stones experimented with many new instruments and sound effects during the sessions including the theremin, synthesisers, short wave radio static and string arrangements by John Paul Jones. In 1998, a bootleg box set of eight CDs with outtakes of the Satanic sessions was released on the market. The box set shows the band developing the songs over multiple takes, and striking is the cooperation between Brian Jones, Richards and session pianist Nicky Hopkins. Richards is leading the sessions and most songs seem to be written by him, and both Hopkins and Jones indulge in creating elaborate soundscapes.

The working title of the album was Cosmic Christmas. In the hidden coda titled "Cosmic Christmas" (following "Sing This All Together (See What Happens)"), Wyman tells "it's slowed-down: 'We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas, and a happy New Year!'" Some of the album's songs were also recorded under various working titles, some appearing rather non sequitur and radically different from the final titles. These working titles include: "Acid in the Grass" ("In Another Land"), "I Want People to Know" ("2000 Man"), "Flowers in Your Bonnet" ("She's a Rainbow"), "Fly My Kite" ("The Lantern"), "Tough Apple" ("2000 Light Years from Home"), and "Surprise Me" ("On with the Show").