# Understanding Sympathy For The Devil

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** 12tone
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtcJvqwXL-E

## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtcJvqwXL-E) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00)

I've always been fascinated by the devil in music. he wears many faces, from a swaggering con man in Devil Went Down To Georgia to the patron saint of misdeeds in Friend of the Devil, from a hard rock ringleader in Highway to Hell to the inevitable conclusion of a lifelong struggle in Me and the Devil. across history, countless artists have wrestled with the symbolism of the devil, each finding their own meaning within his slippery and ever-changing character, and each song tells us something important about not just the artist themself, but the times they live in and the world they see. so today, I want to look at one the foundational depictions of the devil in rock, a song that uses him to tell a story not about sin or salvation, but a story about humanity, and about all the ways we build the devil in ourselves. it's a song that holds the avatar of evil up like a mirror and asks us if we like what we see. I'm talking, of course, about the Rolling Stones classic, Sympathy for the Devil. let's take it apart. (tick, tick, tick, tock) the song starts like this: (bang) and fair warning, I'm gonna be talking a lot about these drums because, as far as I'm concerned, Sympathy for the Devil is a percussion loop that happens to have a song on top. it's a groove first and foremost, and that groove is lovingly built, one drum at a time, across this intro, starting with the band's actual drummer, Charlie Watts. he's got three main lines here. the first is a hi-hat stomp on the offbeats, played with the foot pedal. this keeps time and adds a little syncopation, but it goes away after a couple bars, so I'm not gonna dwell on it. the second is the kick: it's mixed pretty quiet, but each bar ends with a little crescendo of 8th notes that builds up to the next downbeat. (bang) but, of course, the main event is in the middle register. judging by live videos, I think this is played on a snare drum with the rattle turned off. his left hand is muting the drum-head and playing cross-sticks, while his right is tapping away. taken together, it sounds kinda like a timbale: (bang) and the missing rattle lets the complex rhythm still sound completely legible. that rhythm is a dense one-bar loop where he hits most of the available 16th notes, so I'm just gonna focus on the ones he doesn't play. there are three short pauses, and each one creates an accent. the first two rests occur on either side of the first upbeat, where Watts plays a cross-stick. (bang) all that space makes it feel like the sound is bouncing off the downbeat, rebounding into the syncopation that fills the rest of the bar. the only other rest comes directly on beat 3, emphasizing the 16th before it. (bang) keep those accents in mind, they're gonna come back up in a second. Watts's drums are panned pretty hard to the left, leaving a lot of open space on the right side of the mix. after a few bars, that space is filled by Rocky Dijon on the congas: (bang) playing a traditional pattern called a tumbao. this is a two-beat groove with light taps on every 16th note and, again, a couple specific accents. on the first upbeat, there's a slap, and on the second upbeat, two open hits. (bang) the light taps get buried in the mix and all that cuts through are the accents, which line up pretty perfectly with Watts. or, I mean, not quite: Watts's pattern is four beats long, but Dijon's is only two, so his accents fall in a couple different places against the main beat. in the first half, Dijon's slap matches that initial cross-stick, while the open hits land on that same syncopated 16th before beat 3. (bang) in the second, Watts is playing all the 16th notes, so Dijon's accents can just go wherever. (bang) those different pattern lengths give the groove a sort of ebb and flow: thanks to Dijon, the accents are always there, with Watts coming in and out of alignment with them for a more dynamic sound. I'm kinda oversimplifying Dijon's part, though: the tumbao is just a starting point. earlier, I called this a percussion loop, but to be clear, there's no actual loop going on. everyone plays through the whole song, and a percussionist as talented as Dijon isn't gonna stick to one two-beat pattern for six whole minutes. he's gonna mix it up, adding little flourishes and fills, and we see some of that as early as the intro: in a couple spots, he replaces the slap of the tumbao pattern with a delayed open hit. (bang) this change in tone and timing may not seem like a huge deal, and it's kinda not, but it does make him seem a little more wild and unpredictable, contributing to the song's loose, almost hedonistic atmosphere. even though he basically stops doing it after a couple bars, the idea that he could is enough to keep you on edge for the rest of the piece. that's also true for Watts, by the way: throughout the song, he keeps making these little decisions, like bringing in a whole note cymbal after the second chorus: (bang) that show up for a couple bars, make their point, then go away forever. back to the intro, though, there's a couple more drums. first, we get some maracas: (bang) to fill out the acoustic space with more percussion. the other drum parts all have fairly sharp attacks, so the more ambient, sustained shaker sound is able to work its way into all those little nooks and crannies between the beats. and then Bill Wyman comes in on a shekere, a West African shaking gourd instrument: (bang) hitting the first three quarter notes before adding a little syncopation at the end. plus, later in the song, Jagger adds a hand drum part

### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtcJvqwXL-E&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00)

and Dijon eventually doubles up on a cowbell too. there's a lot of drum parts, and each one is panned pretty hard into its own section of the soundbox. wherever you point your ears, you'll wind up hearing some sort of percussion, and each one is doing something fresh and different. this creates the impression that you're surrounded by pounding drums, giving the song this dense, disorienting quality that can be intoxicating, but also speaks to some of it's darker themes. in western music, a wall of percussion often conveys a sort of primal urgency, evoking prehistoric dangers and triggering our instinctive fear of that ancient unknown. there's something about the drums that just sounds… primitive, with all the good and not-so-good connotations that word carries. and part of that is historical and technological: the first external instruments humans ever played were almost certainly percussion, because they're really easy to make. by comparison, even something as simple as a bone flute requires some intuitive understanding of resonance and harmonics. but drums? just bang two rocks together, you'll be fine. that's the innocent explanation, but there's another one, and it's also important. these drum-heavy grooves sound primitive to western listeners partly because they just aren't that common in traditional European music. they belong much more to Native American and African traditions, so all the negative stereotypes we have about those cultures get translated to this musical signifier. and because I know some of you are already running to the comments to accuse me of being way too sensitive, here's a quote from Mick Jagger himself saying the exact same thing: "the actual samba rhythm is a great one to sing on, but it’s also got some other suggestions in it, an undercurrent of being primitive – because it is a primitive African, South American, Afro-whatever-you-call-that rhythm. So to white people, it has a very sinister thing about it. " so, yeah. that's not great. and, of course, it needs to be understood in the context of a white British band whose whole sound is already borrowed from Black American blues artists. but does that mean it's a bad song? I don't think so. I think there's room for nuance here. we can understand these choices as having unpleasant implications while still recognizing that, for the audience they were speaking to, those choices worked. the decision to combine the rhythmic vocabulary of samba with the performance practices of blues rock and a lyrical style inspired by french Decadents like Baudelaire created something that captures both the dangerous power of the devil and some sense of his appeal. he seems like a fun guy, and that's what's scary. all that carries through to the verse, and this is where I have to talk about the arranging approach this song uses: it's a fairly classic blues form, with a series of verses and the occasional refrain, so they can't rely on section differences to keep things building. instead, they use what I'm gonna call a shift-up approach. as the verse starts, we're introduced to three new instruments: Keith Richards on the bass: (bang) Nicky Hopkins's piano: (bang) and, of course, Jagger's vocals. (bang) all three of them are pretty restrained: Richards and Hopkins are playing whole notes, moving only when the chords do, and Jagger's melody is just a whole step wide, alternating between B and A to fit the harmony. this keeps the energy low to start, but at some point in the song, each of them will suddenly cut loose and start playing a much more dynamic, evocative part. Richards is up first. it takes just half a verse before he lets go, erupting into a euphoric frenzy of bass: (bang) that continues more or less the same for the rest of the song. and here's where I want to talk about time feel. I was gonna do that earlier, but I decided to wait 'cause I think it's easier to hear on the bass part that the 16th notes are definitely swung. swing 16th obviously create a looser, more ecstatic atmosphere, but in this context, and especially with how Richards plays them, it also makes the song sound like it's running a little too fast. especially after the straighter pulse in the intro, it takes on a kind of sloppiness that feels almost possessed, as if some external force is pushing him to play faster than his body will allow, and he's struggling to keep up. and that's kinda the whole point of this shift-up arrangement: beyond just building energy as the song progresses, it also shows each member individually taking on this animalistic aspect to their performance, a musical metaphor for the demonic corruption of the lyrics. the devil possesses each one in turn until the whole band is under his thrall. and guiding that process is, of course, the chords. (bang) this bVII-IV-I thing is pretty common in blues-based music, so instead of what these chords are, I'd rather talk about how they're used. these days, most chord loops are open: that is, they return to the I chord at the start of the loop, not before. this creates a more consistent flow by spreading out the resolutions. metrically, we're used to four-bar phrases, so the most conclusive ending happens in bar 4. in an open loop, though, bar 4 is harmonically unstable, and by the time that resolves, we've started a new phrase and the meter wants to keep going. there's never a moment of complete rest. Sympathy For The Devil, on the other hand, is a closed

### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtcJvqwXL-E&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00)

loop, returning to the I chord before it repeats. this creates clear stopping points in the music, which Jagger emphasizes with his phrasing: the return to E major is also where he ends each set of lyrics: (bang) and he waits 'til after the next downbeat to pick them up again. so why? well, for starters, closed loops are just more common in older rock and roll, drawing direct inspiration from the 12-bar blues. and that gives us a pretty useful clue: in the blues, rather than one continuous story, it's common for each verse to be its own little vignette, so the closed looping structure of the 12-bar pattern helps draw clear narrative boundaries between events. Sympathy is using the same idea for a slightly different purpose: here, I think what it really does is highlight the inhuman timescale of the song's protagonist. his story runs from the crucifixion of Christ all the way to the assassination of Robert Kennedy, an event so recent that it actually took place while Jagger was writing the song. he literally had to change the original line, "who shot John F. Kennedy? ", to accommodate the news. in that context, the closed loop functions kinda like a time machine, skipping through centuries from the perspective of an immortal being. the refrain features a couple changes. Jagger's melody jumps up to the root: (bang) but he still sounds pretty controlled, so I'm not counting this as cutting loose quite yet. underneath, Hopkins switches the chords to this repeated V-I figure. (bang) and again, I'm gonna view this through the lens of blues harmony. the relationship between the V chord and the blues is a complicated one that I'm not gonna fully unpack here because, if I'm being honest, I don't feel entirely qualified. I know some stuff, probably more than most, but there's plenty of people who've studied this way more than I have, and I don't want to step on their toes by presenting myself as more of an expert than I am. fortunately, though, I don't have to, 'cause this isn't really about the original blues. by 1968, those traditions had been passed around between different rural communities, become codified through early recordings, reinvented by jazz, commercialized by rock and roll, and finally exported across the Atlantic where they were reinterpreted again by a new generation of British youth. at this point, they're not dealing with traditional blues either. they're dealing with its then-modern incarnation, and in that style, the role of the V chord had been partly reshaped by its important position in both European classical music and older styles of American pop. this means we can understand the V-I as a kind of idealized resolution, the most complete sense of closure you can get from two chords. for a lot of blues rock, avoiding that closure is part of the point: the weaker IV-I resolution that dominates these sorts of songs, and in fact was the main driving force of the verse loop, is a way of keeping the listener partly on edge. the V-I is withheld for moments of particular importance or clarity, and that's what this refrain is: it's where the protagonist reveals his true identity. or, I mean, he doesn't, he just says this: (bang) but I'm not gonna pretend there's any real ambiguity here. it's literally in the title. before I leave the refrain, though, I want to talk about how it's approached. the verse plays its loop four times, but instead of jumping straight into the refrain, it pauses for one extra bar of E major. (bang) this is what I like to call a breath bar. it's most common in folk styles, and it gives both the singer and the audience a moment to catch up before the next thing happens. in this case, it helps further separate the vignettes of the verse from the more dramatic reveal of the refrain. not hugely important yet, but it will be later, so keep it in mind. the second verse is where Hopkins shifts up. he's been playing mostly whole note pads, decorated with these walk-ups: (bang) that highlight the closed nature of the loop by strongly resolving to the final chord. but as the refrain ends, he slips into this manic, pounding, syncopated rhythm: (bang) which has an almost gospel sound to it, an ironic twist on the song's satanic themes. rhythmically, this is what mathematicians call "maximally even". it's a great way to create tricky-sounding rhythms that still feel good: you just take some span of meter and try to divide it into something it's not quite divisible by. in this case, the 16 16th notes of a bar are being split by 5 attacks. we can get close with five dotted 8th notes: (bang) but it's not quite long enough, so he pads out one attack as a full quarter. this could be any of them, but since the drum groove has that slower moment at the start, Hopkins aligns himself with that, putting the quarter note first and then bouncing off the beat to pinball his way through the rest of the bar. it's a simple pattern, but really effective, and it adds a lot of excitement without much extra complexity. and finally, in the second half of the verse, Jagger does his own shift up. this is partly accomplished through register: he once again jumps up to the high E, this time with more of a screaming tone to intensify his voice, but since he's already been up here, there's also

### [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtcJvqwXL-E&t=900s) Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00)

an extra little thing in his phrasing to help sell the release. if we think of the verses as a montage of events the devil has witnessed, then so far, each scene has lasted for 8 bars, or two times through the loop. there's a line that sets it up, then another to close it out. but here, that gets compressed, fitting the entirety of World War II into just four bars. (bang) after that, they seem to start the next phrase with another bar of E major, before unexpectedly veering back into the refrain: (bang) turning that extra bar from the start of a loop into the breath bar that sets up the transition. he's become so excited listing his deeds that he can't wait to deliver his punchline. it's a lovely little moment that tells you a lot about who this character is. now that everyone's loose, the only thing left is to add new parts, and the third verse obliges, with the song's iconic background vocals. (bang) these don't move with the chords, so to me they feel less melodic and more symbolic: the high, pure tone followed by the long slide off at the end is extremely reminiscent of a train whistle. (bang) and I doubt that's a coincidence: trains have a long and complicated history in American folklore and, thus, the blues. on the one hand, they're powerful modes of transportation, connecting communities and allowing free movement between them in a way many people had never seen before. on the other, they're massive, mechanical beasts of screaming metal and boiling steam. trains are a sign of both humanity's brilliance and its hubris, making them potent symbols of folklore and superstition, darkly powerful machines that ushered in a shining new era of industry at the cost of the old traditions. this recurring steam whistle part, sung by most of the band and a couple of their friends, comes to dominate the song just as the steam engine dominated and reshaped the landscapes of the world, and in doing so, the devil takes his credit. the second half of this verse has Jagger reaching even higher. (bang) the refrain has those train whistles finally jumping up to follow the chords: (bang) further highlighting the importance of that V-I figure, and then we're into the solo. and the key word here is restraint. Richards is a pretty competent shredder, and he shows that off, but only in short bursts, with long gaps in between. this puts him more in line with blues guitarists like B. B. King, whose solos were famous for the way he'd play around with space. (bang) it's a practice that got kinda lost in the increasingly extravagant rock of the '70s and '80s, which I think is a shame: this fragmented approach makes it much easier to give the solo a sense of structure, and though Richards is playing a lot more notes at a time than King usually did, it's clear he's paying tribute. the solo starts with this repeated pentatonic walk-down: (bang) demonstrating another important principle of great solos: repetition. it's tempting to throw in every idea you have, but paradoxically, those solos tend to all sound kinda the same. repetition, as they say, legitimizes, and taking a particularly good idea and playing it a couple times is enough to give your solo its own unique character. it says there's a purpose at work here, guiding Richards through his choices. and while, in this case, that purpose is largely "a cool blues lick", there is one important fact about it: it starts and ends on E, the root, so each statement feels settled and complete. that sets him up, and his next move is to flip it around. (bang) compared to the blistering runs of the first phrase, these walk-ups feel slow and deliberate, and while they still start on E, they don't end there: the first one ends on B, with the second ending on D, slowly pointing your ear back toward that high E. but instead of playing it, he jumps past it to this screaming-high B, then finally walks back down again: (bang) with these long, held notes that contrast beautifully with the short stabs at the ends of his walk-ups. and I should probably take a second to talk about the tone here because it's amazing. 1968 is pretty early in the history of effect pedals, and Richards wasn't really known for using them outside of a couple specific tracks like Satisfaction, so my guess is that this was achieved with just guitar and amp settings. without getting too technical, electric guitars work by using magnets to turn the vibrations of strings into an electrical signal. where those magnets are on the guitar affects the sound, and here, he's using the bridge pickup, which is further from the center of the string. that means less vibration total, and the ones you do get tend to be from the higher overtones, resulting in a clean, crisp sound that cuts through easily. that's even more true when you're playing this high on the neck, and he boosts it even further by turning up the

### [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtcJvqwXL-E&t=1200s) Segment 5 (20:00 - 24:00)

treble for this piercing, glassy tone. to top it off, he cranks up the gain, which… ok, guitarists will get mad if I say that gain is basically volume, 'cause it's not, that's a different knob, so instead, let's just say it's part of the volume family. it's another way to make your signal loud. point is, setting the gain to maximum pushes the amp past its physical limit, causing the sound to distort. it's a simple set-up, and one used by a lot of rock and blues soloists, but Richards has it dialed in particularly well here, and I thought that was worth recognizing. anyway, the cool thing about this initial restraint is that, when he finally does cut loose with a long, extended run: (bang) it feels earned, like the payoff for all the patience he's put in. this is, again, just a bunch of E minor pentatonic, but deployed in a really beautiful way that develops the ideas of the previous fragments while carrying their energy forward. and then we get my favorite part of the solo. (bang) I dunno. I just love it when a soloist repeatedly hammers a single note. it always feels like such a statement. do this more often, guitarists. and the solo finally ends the way it began: by repeating a previous idea, in this case an embellished version of the ending lick from that long run. (bang) it's a simple solo, but a thoughtful one, and I think it's made all the better for its restraint. that carries into another refrain, then a final verse, which features a really cute lyrical trick Jagger starts by rattling off supposed opposites: (bang) to say they're actually much more alike than they are different, and then, after flirting with his identity throughout the song, he finally gives us a name. (bang) kinda. not really. I mean, yes, he calls himself "Lucifer", but in the context of the surrounding lines, we're invited to ask what, exactly, the opposite is. who is the heads to the devil's tails? you might think that's god, but I'd argue it's Jagger. or, like, not him specifically, but the humanity he represents. he's saying the devil is us, and his power comes from the evil things we do to each other. notice how every story throughout the song is about humans hurting other humans, through hatred, violence, and war. it's a condemnation of our past, but also a bright hope for our future: it says maybe the devil's game isn't so puzzling after all. maybe the winning move is just to be kind, to love and protect each other, and to rob him of his power by rejecting the all-too-human instinct to cause harm. it's a nice message, if that's how you choose to hear it. and finally, there's the outro: (bang) and this is something I'm not quite sure how to talk about: my style of analysis is all about finding key structural elements, but the structure of this outro is just borrowed from the verse. Jagger and Richards are trading licks, but beyond that everyone's just continuing to groove. from a purely structural standpoint, then, the song's run out of ideas and should probably stop, but like… no. and that's the thing about groove-based styles: it's often less about crafting a musical narrative and more about building a specific musical, and especially rhythmic, environment. they've spent this whole song assembling the groove piece by piece. now that it's complete, they're gonna let it ride. there's not a lot of specific moments I can pull out and be like "this is the thing that really matters here" because what matters is all of it. the whole thing, experienced as a whole thing. we've talked about many of the components, but the end result is so much more than the sum of its parts, and that's what this outro does. that's why they can spend another 2 minutes here, and it's why, when the song does finally end, it does so with a fade-out, so the band never has to stop playing. and that gets into another whole topic: Sympathy for the Devil was a cultural phenomenon. it caused a huge controversy for its satanic themes. and, like, for someone my age, that might sound silly: when I think of controversial satanic music, my brain goes to stuff like this: (bang) but to quote L. P. Hartley, the past is a foreign country. and that's why this video is a collaboration with my friend and podcast co-host, Noah, from Polyphonic. he just dropped a whole companion piece analyzing the same song with his typical approach, focusing more on its historical and cultural significance and less on real, important things like which specific doots everyone played. I bet he never even said "pentatonic" once. if you're into that sort of thing, though, we also recorded a whole episode of our podcast, Ghost Notes, talking about the experience of breaking down this song from both our separate angles: that's live on Nebula now and will be up on all the normal podcast places next month! I'll put some links in the description. and as always, thanks for watching. thanks to our featured patrons, Susan Jones, Jill Sundgaard, Howard Levine, Warren Huart, Damien Fuller-Sutherland, Neil Moore, Geoff, and Michael Mol! check out Patreon or Nebula for a fuller outro, and as always, keep on rockin'!

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/43926*