(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Tue 14 October 2025 12:21, UK
Some songs sing out like hymns into the sonic heavens. They feel untouchable, ethereal, almost, and The Rolling Stones certainly have a few of those in their impressive rock arsenal.
Noted guitar god Carlos Santana often gets described as a spiritual individual, usually based on his performances, which, at times, feel like they arrive from another plane of existence. So much video of Santana performing sees him seemingly channelling the vibrations of another world into his music. But that belies the fact that Santana is devoutly religious. At a time when he was going through a divorce from his wife of 34 years, Deborah, Santana only found solace by turning to God.
“I was able to remove the anger by forgiving that man….” Santana says, referring to the Man Upstairs. The rocker had long been a rebel, but with this one act, found himself now converted and in servitude to a higher power. “Forgiveness, man, forgiveness is incredibly liberating. And I’m here to tell you, with all my heart and spirit, that it can be done. You can be freed.”
The Rolling Stones are not quite as pious. Salacious, sin-fueled rock and rollers with little time or regard for the reverence of religion, songs like ‘Stray Cat Blues’, ‘Dead Flowers’, and ‘Shattered’ celebrate the grittier, more risqué side of life that the band favoured. The group were, for a lot of people in the 1960s, arguably the devil incarnate as they promoted sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll like handing out communion at the Catholic church. Sometimes the band even parodied Jesus freaks, like on Some Girls’ tongue-in-cheek country track ‘Far Away Eyes’.
But it was one specific track that got the band labelled Satan worshipers: Beggars Banquet leadoff song ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. It might seem quaint today, considering hordes of fans scream out the words at shows all over the world, but ‘Sympathy’ was a genuinely provocative piece of art when it was released back in 1968. Pearls were surely clutched as Mick Jagger took on the role of Lucifer and demanded courtesy.
Keith Richards and Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones. (Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Santana wasn’t exactly a pearl-clutcher, having spent a fair amount of time in the drug-spun rock and roll world, but he gave a stern warning to The Stones anyway.
“I don’t have no sympathy for the devil,” Santana said in an interview with NME. “I like the beat of the song, but I never identify with the lyric. Jagger and Richards don’t really know the full extent of what they’re talking about. If they knew what they were getting into when they sing that song they would not be doing it. The devil is not Santa Claus. He’s for real.”
For a retort, here’s Keith Richards in 1971 while talking with Rolling Stone. “They’re saying, ‘They’re evil, they’re evil.’ Oh, I’m evil, really? So that makes you start thinking about evil […] What is evil? Half of it, I don’t know how many people think of Mick as the devil or as just a good rock performer or what? There are black magicians who think we are acting as unknown agents of Lucifer and others who think we are Lucifer. Everybody’s Lucifer.”
In 2002, Richards shared another thought on the track: “‘Sympathy’ is quite an uplifting song. It’s just a matter of looking the Devil in the face. He’s there all the time. I’ve had very close contact with Lucifer – I’ve met him several times. Evil – people tend to bury it and hope it sorts itself out and doesn’t rear its ugly head. ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ is just as appropriate now, with 9/11. There it is again, big time. When that song was written, it was a time of turmoil. It was the first sort of international chaos since World War II. And confusion is not the ally of peace and love. You want to think the world is perfect. Everybody gets sucked into that. And as America has found out to its dismay, you can’t hide. You might as well accept the fact that evil is there and deal with it any way you can. Sympathy for the Devil is a song that says, Don’t forget him. If you confront him, then he’s out of a job.”
Whether you side with Santana or Richards, sometimes walking on the sin-filled side of the street isn’t all that bad. Here’s ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, just in case you want to indulge those inner demons.
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