Be Dangerous like Mick Jagger

A New Year’s Resolution and meditation on why danger is important to art

I just saw the first time Sympathy for the Devil was played live. I highly suggest you stop NOW and watch the video below before reading my essay so you can experience it’s purity and danger before I ruin it by talking about it. I said NOW. You need danger like this in your life. NOW.

This is an incendiary work of art on so many levels, not just for its brilliant lyrics. After it has worn a groove in your soul through hearing it for decades, becoming just another greatest hit, it is hard to imagine the power this song had on its release in the late 60s.

This was cultural subversion, it dealt w sounds and words that had not been heard before. It broke ground, it helped lead a cultural revolution. Soon, it would get even darker at Altamont where a young black man was stabbed by Hell’s Angels shortly after it played. The song took on mythic status and there was no bigger fuck you to the man, to the normal life, even to the goodness of the Beatles who were the Stones main competition.