The original version of “Sympathy for the Devil”

Who doesn’t know the Rolling Stones master piece “Sympathy for the Devil”?

For anyone of you who don’t know the song, go to YouTube, Spotify or any other music streaming platform and listen to it. I don’t mean that awful Guns N Roses version but the original by the Rolling Stones.

The song is basically a brief summary of 2000 years of history compressed in to a few minutes.

The lyrics focus on atrocities in mankind’s history from Satan’s point of view including the trial and death of Jesus Christ :”Made damn sure that Pilate washed his hands to seal his fate”

European religious wars: “I watched with glee while your kings and queens fought for ten decades for the gods they made”.

The violence of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the 1918 execution of the Romanov family during World War I :”I stuck around St. Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change/Killed the Tsar and his ministers/Anastasia screamed in vain”.

World War II:”I rode a tank, held a general’s rank when the blitzkrieg raged, and the bodies stank”.

It also mentions several other historical events which happened up to the time the song was released. Originally the song was going to be released including the lyrics: “I shouted out ‘Who killed Kennedy?'”. However they had to change the lyrics after Robert Kennedy was also assassinated on June 6,1968. They changed the lyrics to “Who killed the Kennedys?”

The recording of “Sympathy for the Devil” began at London’s Olympic Sound Studios on 4 June 1968 and continued into the next day; overdubs were done on 8, 9 and 10 June.

The assassination of Robert Kennedy did not make much of a difference lyrics wise but it clearly would have had an impact if they would have left the song as it was.

How many artists are able to say that they wrote a song about historical events as they were happening?

Ending up with that master piece.

Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy

On June 5, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a presidential candidate, WAS shot three times in a hail of gunfire at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Five others were wounded. The senator had just completed a speech celebrating his victory in the California presidential primary.

After winning the California and South Dakota primary elections for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, Kennedy was fatally shot while exiting through the hotel kitchen immediately after leaving the podium in the Ambassador Hotel and died in the Good Samaritan Hospital twenty-six hours later. Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian/Jordanian immigrant, was convicted of Kennedy’s murder and sentenced to death in 1969, although his sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1972.

The summer of 1968 was a tempestuous time in American history. Both the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement were peaking. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in the spring, igniting riots across the country. In the face of this unrest, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to seek a second term in the upcoming presidential election. Robert Kennedy, John’s younger brother and former U.S. Attorney General, stepped into this breach and experienced a groundswell of support.

Kennedy was perceived by many to be the only person in American politics capable of uniting the people. He was beloved by the minority community for his integrity and devotion to the civil rights cause. After winning California’s primary, Kennedy was in the position to receive the Democratic nomination and face off against Richard Nixon in the general election.

As star athletes Rafer Johnson and Roosevelt Grier accompanied Kennedy out a rear exit of the Ambassador Hotel, Sirhan Sirhan stepped forward with a rolled up campaign poster, hiding his .22 revolver. He was only a foot away when he fired several shots at Kennedy.

Grier and Johnson wrestled Sirhan to the ground, but not before five bystanders were wounded.

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Grier was distraught afterward and blamed himself for allowing Kennedy to be shot.

After about 30 minutes, Kennedy was transferred several blocks to the Hospital of the Good Samaritan for surgery.

A gymnasium near the hospital was set up as temporary headquarters for the press and news media to receive updates on the senator’s condition. Surgery began at 3:12 a.m. PDT and lasted three hours and 40 minutes. Ten and a half hours later, at 5:30 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, spokesman Frank Mankiewicz announced that Kennedy’s doctors were “concerned over his continuing failure to show improvement”; his condition remained “extremely critical as to life”.

Kennedy had been shot three times. One bullet, fired at a range of about 1 inch (2.5 cm), entered behind his right ear, dispersing fragments throughout his brain.^[35] The other two entered at the rear of his right armpit; one exited from his chest and the other lodged in the back of his neck.Despite extensive neurosurgery at the Good Samaritan Hospital to remove the bullet and bone fragments from his brain, Kennedy died at 1:44 A.M. PDT on June 6, nearly 26 hours after the shooting.

Sirhan, who was born in Palestine, confessed to the crime at his trial and received a death sentence on March 3, 1969. However, since the California State Supreme Court invalidated all death penalty sentences in 1972, Sirhan has spent the rest of his life in prison. According to the New York Times, he has since said that he believed Kennedy was “instrumental” in the oppression of Palestinians. Hubert Humphrey ended up running for the Democrats in 1968, but lost by a small margin to Nixon.