the "sympathy for the devil" groove

i think one thing i like is the centrality of the piano. there's something really satisfying about that basic rhythm on a piano.

i guess that terrible train song about jupiter is the last hit i can think that kind of had a (very lugubrious) variation on it. maybe that killed it.

Kind of Bo Diddley is it not?

Is the "Step On" mentioned above the cover of the John Kongos song?

"Civilisation" from Barry Adamson's new album Back To The Cat isn't a million miles removed from the SFTD/baggyshuffledelica template...

Also chord sequence of "Sympathy For the Devil" 'borrowed' from Traffic's "Dear Mr. Fantasy" (prod. Jimmy Miller)?

Is the "Step On" mentioned above the cover of the John Kongos song?

yeah, happy mondays. it's maybe the least direct lift of the ones i mentioned, but i think the drums and bass especially put it in the ballpark.

it has some relation to bo diddley, but it doesn't have the big whomp on the 4. (instead usually a big fat piano chord on the 1.)

"sympathy" does sound kind of like "mr. fantasy," but they're both just i-iv-v (at least on the verses).

(or more specifically they're both cycles of v-iv-i-v.)

Ten Years After's "50000 Years Beneath My Brain" is a song from the same era that knicked the sympathy groove.

on reflection i take back saying it doesn't have a whomp on the 4, it does. not quite as emphatically as bo diddley beats tend to, but the ONE-two-three-FOUR-ONE-two-three-FOUR-ONE-two-three... is a distinguishing characteristic. i think the difference in this groove is that the four kind of glides back to the one, instead of forcefully demarcating the end of the measure. which sort of mirrors the circular chord structure, ending back where it began.

(percussively, the "glide" is accomplished with accents on congas, toms, etc, so that the snare doesn't get final say)

it's a '60s Afro-Cuban thing, far more than a Motown or soul groove, innt it?

yup

ummm... there's a lot of Chicago house influence in the Primal Scream and Happy Mondays stuff as well.

Check out Farley's remix of John Rocca's "I Want It To Be Real" to see what I mean. Definitely an antecedent to stuff like Freedom 90.

I hear way more Bo Diddley than Motown in his rhythm. Doors "Touch Me" also bites this rhythm (at least for the organ driven intro bit)

the bass rhythm is a bo diddley/rock n' roll thing, but the percussion is a classic afro-cuban thing.

we're talking about a guns n' roses song right?

I thought we were talking about a laborious Godard film.

yeah, the Godard film is crucial if you are curious about why this song kicks so much ass, it's really weird and great despite its heavy breathing didactic agenda. (or maybe because of it?)

Keith has already totally figured out his riff and solo and the rest of the band don't have much going on, and there are a lot of stale takes and sluggish stabs and attempts at an idea and then it cuts to when the band have brought in a troupe of shithot conga players and percussionists and voila! zee killer song by zee Rolling Stones is born.

I guess the Godard film's instrumental use of the Black Panthers as right-on anchoring point is the radical recapitulation of the Stones exploitation of their percussionists as righteously groovy bedrock, thus showing the structural kinship relation between the Stones pop product and Godard's avant-gardist product? Or something?

The congas etc also makes me think of Traffic - the Jimmy Miller connection again

I always imagined that Primal Scream et al borrowed this from the hyperspeed gospelly pianos used in much early UK dance music, slowing down what the artists of that scene had originally sped up. Maybe my thinking was a bit over-complicated.

The Stones song I think of when I hear Screamedelica is You Can't Always Get What You Want.

"Monkey Man" is also very proto-baggy.

love that Godard film

Sight
anDS
ound

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JQHA7H8l2w

congas show up @ 5:42

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl7HoWd79Xc&feature=related

this rhythm/groove is called a "samba".

no

i guess it's not wildly unsamba-like, since it's nebulous 60's fake afro-cuban territory, but it doesn't have any of the specific rhythms that mean samba to me.

then>Keith has already totally figured out his riff and solo and the rest of the band don't have much going on now> Keef shreds (top right clip here).

Primals' I'm losing more than I'll ever have isn't really so much like Sympathy as Loaded is though. (A bit later but Charlatans Just when you're thinking things over is pretty much a cover of Sympathy.

wtf Steve this is not a samba

It started out as a folky thing like Jigsaw Puzzle, but that didn't make it so we kept going over it and changing it until finally it comes out as a samba.

- Mick Jagger, 1968

Sympathy for the Devil started out as a Bob Dylan song and ended up as a samba.

- Keith Richards, 2002

Sympathy for the Devil started as sort of a folk song with acoustics, and ended up as a kind of mad samba, with me playing bass and overdubbing the guitar later. That's why I don't like to go into the studio with all the songs worked out and planned beforehand.

- Keith Richards, 1977

Sympathy for the Devil was tried six different ways. I don't mean at once. It was all night doing it one way, then another full night trying it another way, and we just could not get it right. It would never fit a regular rhythm. I first heard Mick play that one on the steps of my house on an acoustic guitar. The first time I heard it, it was really light and had a kind of Brazilian sound. Then when we got in the studio we poured things on it, and it was something different. I could never get a rhythm for it, except this one, which is like a samba on the snare drum. It was always a bit like a dance band until we got Rocky Dijon in, playing the congas. By messing about with that, we got the thing done.

- Charlie Watts, 1982

I mean I know you guys know a lot more about music and this song then these guys....

Richards not knowing what a samba rhythm is is totally not surprising gimme a break

particularly in the late 60s

.............................................................

mad samba

yeah, just because they call it one doesn't make it so. congas aren't even in a lot of brazilian music.

I mean merengue, samba, bossa nova, cha cha - these are specific rhythms. Saying "hey this is kinda latin-sounding it must be a samba!" is not accurate. if anything its kinda insulting.

x-post

yeah, just because some people who have studied and (successfully) performed a wide swath of musical styles for 40 years call it one doesn't make it so when you're dealing with english majors on the internet.

english majors?

don't make me break out the drum pattern notation

this makes a lot more sense, charlie watts copping a jazz dude who is also playing fake latin, and mick's "afro-whatever" comments.

On the song, drummer Charlie Watts said in the 2003 book According to the Rolling Stones, "'Sympathy' was one of those sort of songs where we tried everything. The first time I ever heard the song was when Mick was playing it at the front door of a house I lived in in Sussex... He played it entirely on his own... and it was fantastic. We had a go at loads of different ways of playing it; in the end I just played a jazz Latin feel in the style of Kenny Clarke would have played on 'A Night in Tunisia' - not the actual rhythm he played, but the same styling."[3]

On the overall power of the song, Jagger continued in Rolling Stone: "It has a very hypnotic groove, a samba, which has a tremendous hypnotic power, rather like good dance music. It doesn't speed up or slow down. It keeps this constant groove. Plus, the actual samba rhythm is a great one to sing on, but it is 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 (candomble). So to white people, it has a very sinister thing about it. But forgetting the cultural colors, it is a very good vehicle for producing a powerful piece. It becomes less pretentious because it is a very unpretentious groove. If it had been done as a ballad, it wouldn't have been as good."

haha, i'm an english major who has played drums in samba groups!

Don't forget, you know more about music than Charlie Watts and Keith Richards.

A bit later but Charlatans Just when you're thinking things over is pretty much a cover of Sympathy.

-- Bocken Social Scene

good call, i was going to mention this one

whatever.

I promise to take whatever silly things musicians say at face value from now on, Steve

besides, charlie watts is saying it's not a samba in that quote above.

Semantics. Who cares.

let's all just agree the song is latin-flavored

probably "fake latin rock groove" is as technical as the label needs to get. i still hear motown in the bass though, the bom-bom-bom, bom-bom-ba-bom. the stones were obviously picking up things from a lot of places without worrying too much about it.

there's a lot of Chicago house influence in the Primal Scream and Happy Mondays stuff as well.

yeah that's what i meant about the piano being a common denominator, those pounded, syncopated chords swing both ways into rock and house. this groove was a rockish way into some house crossover for those late '80s/early '90s bands.

(and didn't house music borrow that from salsa to start with? a lot of stuff on say ray barretto's albums has very house-y piano.)

at least this has got me looking up carlinhos brown and timbalada clips on youtube.

i was in a bar/frathouse band in college that used to play "sympathy." lots of fun to play, but we had to do it at the end of the set because it just killed the bass player's fingers. it's a real busy, propulsive bassline.

super busy

i find it kinda hard to decide where the groove is in this song, i think because everyone makes their own contribution to it but they're kind of pushing/pulling against each other, so if you listen closely to one part it kind of sounds out of place

but the bassline is the most in the groove (maybe because mick's riding it?)

i like how there's barely any guitar for the whole thing except that great solo... is there any rhythm guitar in there at all?

it feels like it's all congas, drums, bass and piano. and woo woo's.

just that absence of rhthym guitar is part of what makes the groove so weird and cool

there is not

and when the solo comes in it pretty much leaves everything else except mick intact and then he comes back in with the chorus and then a new verse, so the solo is a pretty unobtrusive event in the whole song

it also comes back at the end, when mick is sort of scatting ('get on down', 'tell me baby'), but it's very gappy, kinda miles davis 'let the silences be as long as the parts you play'. and the end is very long anyway.

ya-ya's version is more guitar-oriented and just as dope imo

true about ya yas being cool - i haven't heard it for awhile, does it dumb down the bass line a bit to make room for more guitar?

feels like the busy bassline works on the studio version works because there's lots of the space for it left by the absence of guitar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEthBrny2ek

^ sympathy for 18 musicians