Rolling Stones: Their Sanitized Majesties Request

On this day in 1969, Brian Jones was found dead in his swimming pool. He'd been fired from the Rolling Stones, the band that he had founded and named, about a month earlier. While not an acid casualty, his drug abuse seemed to have played a role in his ouster. He wouldn't practice. He failed to show up in the studio. Sometimes the band would just unplug his amp when he did show up....

As the story goes, Brian had been dissatisfied with the commercial direction the band had been taking from, say, Satisfaction onward. He wanted the band to stay true to its R&B roots. Strange, that, as he was responsible for the marimba in "Under My Thumb," the sitar in "Paint it Black" and "Street Fighting Man." When the Stones return to their roots with Beggars Banquet he leaves most of the guitar playing to Keith. On Let it Bleed, he plays congas on one song, autoharp on another.

On their least rootsy album, Their Satanic Majesties Request, he plays on everything. He puts mellotron on almost every track. Guitar on "2000 Man" and "Lantern," flute and sax on "Citadel," and oboe on "Dandelion," a single from the same sessions.

It may be his swansong.

I had the album for years before I really listened to it. The album itself is an acid casualty. Not only is it marred by a solid 16 minutes of nonsense spread over three pieces, one of them is the opener, "Sing This All Together." If you can make it through that, and it took me years, you get three nice bits of psychedelia before the nonsense starts again with the side one closer "Sing This All Together (See What Happens)." What happens, all too often, is that one lifts the needle and puts the album away.

Side two has the LP's two hits and Gomper, which sounds like a retread of Scarecrow from Piper at the Gates of Dawn with a bit more see-what-happens thrown in.

If we strike two of the three (let's keep "Gomper"), we're left with a Manson-Years-Beach-Boys length album, so lets put the single from the sessions - "Dandelion"/"We Love You" - into the mix. The b-side to Jumpin' Jack Flash, "Child of the Moon," while produced by Jimmy Miller, has a sound more in accordance with Satanic Majesties than what came after...in it goes and on with the show.

What we have here is a nice psychedelic album. Not Pepper to be sure and definitely not Stonesy, but a worthwhile listen. If I didn't know better, I might think it was Dukes of Stratosphear. Just be careful that Bill's snoring doesn't give you a flashback.
Here is a youtube playlist of the album with a few of the original promotional films: 2000 Light Years, We Love You, Child of the Moon, and maybe Dandelion.

Comments

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