Song in my head July 20

July 20, 2005- Sympathy for the Devil-The Rolling Stones. A trip down the darkside of history backed with an almost latin rock beat, it is perhaps one of the greatest of Rolling Stones songs ever put out. Reflecting the tumultuous times of the day, Sympathy gave Jagger the platform to weave a tale that equally enthralled and frightened at the same time. From the time of Christ to the Russian Revolution, on past Hitler and to the death of John F. Kennedy and beyond, Jagger traced evil in all its forms in a world turning upside down.

From the opening drumbeats and Jaggers introductions, the beat and tempo of the song is one of building expectation. "Please allow me to introduce myself" it's the knock at your door and from that point on, the listener is captivated, listening intensely to the journey our narrator will take us on. As the guitars screech and the pace quickens, we feel the change that Jagger is crafting for us.

The song more perfectly than any other of the era captures the feeling that the sixties were drawing to their close in a most dangerous way. The era of love would give way to violence, hatred, war and cynicism, as though led by a dark Prince himself. Sympathy reviewed and with a sense of foreboding warned, that we could (and eventually would) see much worse.

In fact, the Stones themselves would find the final days of the flower power era in a cold, damp field in California at Altamont about a year later. The kind of night where a song like Sympathy for the Devil would truly appear to hold some sense of punctuation to a night and an era.

The library of the Rolling Stones includes many classics of our time, but this track from Beggar's Banquet stands out and stands the test of time. Douglas Cruickshank wrote probably the definitive review of the song for Salon magazine in 2002, he charts its formative stages and captures the effect that it had on the band, the industry and the fans. And really that must be the test of a great rock song, if people are still talking about it some 37 years later you know that it connected.