Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released on June 1st 1967, in the most elaborate sleeve of any rock album up to that point. Though cut-outs of the Rolling Stones weren't included, an oblique tribute was paid by the inclusion of a Shirley Temple doll wearing a jumper that has 'THE WMPS GOOD GUYS WELCOME THE ROLLING STONES' knitted on it. Six months and many tribulations later, the Stones finally released their own psychedelic album,
Their Satanic Majesties Request. Not to be outdone, they had an amazingly expensive lenticular sleeve produced, with art direction by their chum Michael Cooper. Buried in the blurry image are the moustachioed heads of the four Beatles, but they're nigh-on impossible to spot, so I thought I'd spoil the fun:
Symptomatic of the Stones caught at a very unconfident stage of their career, having made the underwhelming Between The Buttons, and released this, the underrated but still difficult and atypical Satanic Majesties. References to the Beatles would continue, most noteably with Let It Be's riposte, Let It Bleed, but this time the tone would be a lot more sarcastic and caustic; they no longer needed to sit at John's feet singing along to 'All You Need Is Love' once they'd cracked it with Jumping Jack Flash and Beggars Banquet.
ReplyDeleteForgive my pedantry, but the Let It Be single and album were both issued months after Let It Bleed. It's surprising how long it took the Stones to make a consistent album.
ReplyDeletebut the beatles started working on the album/single a year earlier which would have been well known to the press and the stones themselves. i think...or something like that.
DeleteYes, the Beatles did start working on the Let It Be song in early 1969, but we don't know if the Stones were aware of the song/album/movie until it was released in early 1970, which was months after the Stones had released the Let It Bleed album.
Deletebut let it be was recorded in january 1969 and was floating around on test pressings ages before the spector version arrived in 1970
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