On This Day in 1967, The Rolling Stones Released Their First Self-Produced Album That Keith Richards Called a “Load of Crap”

It’s a tale as old as time: a rock ‘n’ roll band releases a batch of incredibly successful, well-received albums just to succumb to the “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll” lifestyle by the fourth or fifth follow-up. For The Rolling Stones, that expected slump came during the production of their sixth studio album, Their Satanic Majesties Request, which became the first record the band ever self-produced…an inadvertent development, to say the least.

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Their Satanic Majesties Request was one of The Stones’ more experimental, psychedelic offerings—a distinction that, along with their vibrant album artwork, set the band up for obvious comparisons to The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which came out six months earlier. The similarities were apparent to most, including The Beatles themselves.

“We started to notice that whatever we did, The Stones sort of did it shortly thereafter,” Paul McCartney said in a 2020 interview with Howard Stern. “We went to America, and we had a huge success. Then The Stones went to America. We did Sgt. Pepper, The Stones did a psychedelic album.”

To The Stones’ credit, the band had plenty getting in the way of innovative creativity. Drug-related legal trouble and burnout did little to boost the band’s artistic drive. As Keith Richards would later recall, per Mick St. Michael’s Keith Richards: In His Own Words, the album was “done semi-comatose, sort of. ‘Do we really have to make an album?’ ‘Yeah.’”

How ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’ Became Self-Produced

Having a producer in the studio can be an invaluable asset for a band. The producer acts as an objective set of ears, guiding the recording process along and saving the band from any potential blind spots. As the band’s manager, Andrew Loog Oldham had a uniquely helpful perspective of the band. However, his relationship with the musicians became increasingly strained until the band’s business manager, Allen Klein, pushed Oldham to resign. Ironically, Oldham hired Klein in 1965.

After Oldham left, The Rolling Stones had no choice but to produce Their Satanic Majesties Request themselves. But with their personal lives in such dire shambles, the musicians struggled to keep their heads clear and focused during the recording process. As Mick Jagger recalled to Rolling Stone years later, “I probably started to take too many drugs.” He added that the album was “not very good. It had interesting things on it. But I don’t think any of the songs are very good.” With the exception of “She’s a Rainbow” and “2000 Light Years From Home”, Jagger said, “The rest of them are nonsense.”

Keith Richards’ memory of the album was hardly any more flattering. The guitarist listed the same two songs Jagger listed as the only good tracks, plus “Citadel”. “But basically,” he said, “I thought the album was a load of crap. That album was made under the pressure of the court case and the whole scene that was going on in London at the time.”

And indeed, when you sense yourself floundering in the water, you’re liable to grab the nearest floating device you can—even if that floating device looks eerily similar to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

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