2000 Man

Their Satanic Majesties Request
Track 4
"2000 Man" – 3:07

Well, my wife still respects me, I really misuse her
I am having an affair with a random computer.
Don't you know I'm the 2,000 man
And my kids, they just don't understand me at all.

This is one of those songs where Mick attempts to sing like his name is not Mick Jagger – in this case, he thinks he's Ray Davies or something. It's almost amusing listening to him try to stretch the instrument. At least he gets to go back to being Mick for that odd bridge.

It's a very strange song, even within the context of this crazy, crazy album. It has the whole Kinks social commentary thing going on (there's a real "Well Respected Man" feel to the music), but while those guys looked back to the Victorian era for material Mick looks to the future – and maybe it's just retrospect talking, but Mick Jagger and science fiction do not go together very well.

Though I have to give him props: rhyming "misuse her" and "computer" was a masterstroke.

---

UPDATE: Kissfag and friend of the blog Ron Littlejohn passes this along:



Yup, that's gay.

---

In Another Land

Their Satanic Majesties Request
Track 3
"In Another Land" (Bill Wyman) – 3:15




Wikipedia to the rescue!

"In Another Land" was recorded on a night where Wyman had shown up to the studio and found that the session had been canceled. Feeling frustrated that he had potentially wasted time in driving to the studio, engineer Glyn Johns asked him if he had anything that he'd like to record. "...I'd been messing with this song. It was a bit... what I thought was kind of spacy, you know... a bit kind of Satanic Majesties-like. And psychedelic in a way."^[1]

Lyrically, Wyman stated that "The idea for the song is about this guy who wakes up from a dream and finds himself in another dream."^[1] The song describes events that transpire in a dreamlike state:

“

We walked across the sand And the sea and the sky and the castles were blue I stood and held your hand And the spray flew high and the feathers floated by I stood and held your hand

”

Johns showed the song to singer Mick Jagger, and guitarists Keith Richards and Brian Jones who all liked it and decided to include it on the record.^[1]

The musicians on the song are Wyman on lead vocals and bass, Small Faces vocalist Steve Marriott on acoustic guitar and backing vocals, Ronnie Lane of the Small Faces on backing vocals, Nicky Hopkins on harpsichord and piano, Charlie Watts on drums, Jones on Mellotron, Jagger and Richards added their backing vocals at a later stage of the recording.

At the conclusion of the track as heard on the album, Wyman himself can be heard snoring. Bill was unaware this had been tagged onto his song until he first played the completed album. He learned later that one night when he had fallen asleep in the studio, Mick and Keith miked him up and recorded him snoring, and stuck it onto his track as a joke. This does not appear on the single.

Thanks, Wikipedia! You spared me the pain of coming up with something interesting to say about this thoroughly uninteresting song.

Citadel

Their Satanic Majesties Request
Track 2
"Citadel" – 2:50




An almost-rocker. I get the feeling this will be the high point of Satanic Majesties. I will therefore force myself to write about the actual song instead of how much stress this album is putting me through.

Opens with a neat little guitar part – Keith got a really nice sound for this track. Then the drums come crashing in and Mick does his great slur-the-words act. That's what he does best as a singer, and helps the listener focus on something other that the words he's singing.

Oh, what the hell. Here they are:

Men at arms shout "who goes there?"
We have journeyed far from here
Armed with bibles make us swear

Cindy and Cathy, hope you both are well
Please come see me in the citadel

Flags are flying dollar bills
Round the heights of concrete hills
You can see the pinnacles

Cindy and Cathy, hope you both are well
Please come see me in the citadel

In the streets of many walls
Hear the peasants come and crawl
You can hear their lovers call

Cindy and Cathy, hope you both are well
Please come see me in the citadel

Screaming people fly so fast
In their shiny metal cars
Through the woods of steel and glass

Cindy and Cathy, hope we both are well
Please come see me in the citadel

Jesus. At least they didn't go as far into Tolkien fantasyland as, say, Zeppelin, but holy crap this is a shitty idea for a song. What ever happened to the smartass cynics who wrote "Satisfaction"?

Sing This All Together

Their Satanic Majesties Request
Track 1
"Sing This All Together" – 3:46




The first song off Their Satanic Majesties Request. This is the kind of stuff that makes me hate the Beatles all over again, a swirling mess of hippie love and pretension. I spent all of last week preparing myself mentally for the challenge of dealing with this album, but after hearing "Sing This All Together", I realise that a single week was not enough time to steel myself for the pain. Maybe there is not enough time in the world – maybe, like peeling a bandage off a hairy part of your body, you shouldn't even give yourself time to prepare, you should just jump into it without thinking, instead of dwelling on how much this is gonna hurt. And if track 1 is any indication, it's gonna hurt a lot.