How the Stones Built the Ritualistic Groove of 'Sympathy for the Devil' with Handclaps and Spring Reverb

The key trick that turned ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ into a voodoo hypnotic wasn’t just the congas and bongos—it was handclaps drenched in spring reverb. During the Beggars Banquet sessions at Olympic Sound Studios in 1968, engineer Glyn Johns recorded a handful of claps and then ran them through a spring reverb unit. The result wasn’t a clean slap-back echo but a huge, metallic whoosh that sounded like a chain being swung through a cathedral. It gave the track a wet, otherworldly pulse that locked into the samba rhythm.

The percussion bed itself was layered by hand: Rocky Dijon on congas, Bill Wyman on maracas (and later bongos on the overdub), and Charlie Watts contributing the basic hi-hat and snare pattern.