Sympathy for the Devil

The Rolling Stones were the sixties’ “bad boys”, making loud and provocative music. Their looks, moves and lyrics were full of explicit themes ranging from sex to drugs to rebellion. This not only set them apart from other British groups (such as the Beatles). Far more importantly than that, it revolutionized rock and roll as well as music on the whole, opening new doors for bands that follow to further explore these themes. For better or worse, this pushed topics that had previously been taboo into the public discourse and pop culture.

In 1967, the band released Their Satanic Majesties Request. This was the band’s first toying with satanic themes. They even proposed the album’s cover to be a photograph of the band’s frontman Mick Jagger naked on the cross (which the record company refused to do). And so, with an appetite to further explore this theme, they opened their next album Beggars Banquet with the hypnotizing samba beat of “Sympathy for the Devil”.

The song seduces the listener in with upbeat congas and shrieks by Jagger. We are then introduced to the song’s protagonist, who describes himself as “a man of wealth and taste”. He then takes us on a journey in time through tragedies, saying he played a role in some. The journey begins the Jesus’ “moment of doubt and pain” and Pilate’s order to crucify him. Already, within the first verse, we see religious characters arising, hinting at our narrator’s identity.

In the chorus he taunts us, urging us to “guess his name” and try to understand the “nature of [his] game”.

We are then led further in time through revolutions, wars and the Kennedy assassinations: “I shouted out ‘who killed the Kennedys’? When after all it was you and me”. In the background, after being taunted again, “woo-woo”s are called out every verse, making the song ever more hypnotizing and catchy.

Finally, our protagonist reveals himself to be Lucifer (another name for the Devil), but not before condemning humanity. “Every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners – saints” he judges, casting us all as both angels and demons. Here the song’s message is driven home: the Devil asks for sympathy and understanding not because he is responsible for tragedy, but because we’ve all got him inside of us. We bear the responsibility to restrain our malice, which is the true cause of mankind’s errors and setbacks.

The outro solo in the form of a call and response between the Devil and the guitar paints the picture of this internal struggle between his cries to do bad and our morality and restraint. This continues as the song fades out, symbolizing the eternal nature of the conflict, never-ending.

The Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil was among the first rock songs to bring the devil into pop culture. I see this as one of their unique contribution to the way the sixties revolutionized music and, through it, society. Introducing this theme influenced and inspired the hard rock and heavy metal to come in the seventies and eighties, allowing bands like Led Zeppelin and perhaps even more famously Black Sabbath to further explore it. Today the character of Lucifer is completely normalized as mainstream – so much so he has his own TV show and appears regularly in films, music and video games, indicating the significance of the first steps forward The Stones took to help us see that the Devil really is, after all, in all of us.