An album by legendary rock group The Rolling Stones is “not very good” according to frontman Mick Jagger.
The veteran musician was brutally honest with his assessment of early records from the band, with the “interesting” topics of one album not enough to hold it together. Speaking with Rolling Stone Magazine founder Jann Wenner, Jagger confirmed he thought very little of Their Satanic Majesties Request, a psychedelic-tinged album which had The Rolling Stones chasing The Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club sound. Wenner asked as much in the interview, but Jagger says it was more the drugs of the times which shaped their work on Their Satanic Majesties Request than anything else. Jagger considers the record to be nothing more than “a phase” but did single out two songs of note.
He shared: “Well, it’s not very good. It had interesting things on it, but I don’t think any of the songs are very good. It’s a bit like Between the Buttons. It’s a sound experience, really, rather than a song experience. There’s two good songs on it. She’s a Rainbow, which we didn’t do on the last tour, although we almost did, and 2000 Light Years From Home, which we did do. The rest of them are nonsense.
“I think we were just taking too much acid. We were just getting carried away, just thinking anything you did was fun and everyone should listen to it. The whole thing, we were on acid. We were on acid doing the cover picture. I always remember doing that.
“It was like being at school, you know, sticking on the bits of colored paper and things. It was really silly. But we enjoyed it. Also, we did it to piss Andrew [Loog Oldham] off, because he was such a pain in the neck. Because he didn’t understand it. The more we wanted to unload him, we decided to go on this path to alienate him.”
Oldham, who had already been fed up with the band at this point, decided to up and leave because of Keith Richards, Brian Jones, and Jagger, according to Bill Wyman.
He wrote in his 2002 book Rolling with the Stones: “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 anywhere 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.”
Jagger expanded on this, saying they “forced him out” because of how “out of our minds” the band had been at the time. The frontman added: “Yeah. Without actually doing it legally, we forced him out. I mean, he wanted out anyway. We were so out of our minds.”
He would go on to describe Their Satanic Majesties Request as “a phase. A passing fancy.”
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