Their Satanic Majesties Request: The Stones' Psychedelic Experiment That Shaped Prog Rock

The Rolling Stones spent most of 1967 trying to out-psychedelic the Beatles — and the result was their most divisive album, Their Satanic Majesties Request. Recorded under the haze of drug busts, court appearances, and Brian Jones’s increasing instability, it swapped the band’s signature blues swagger for Mellotrons, phasing effects, and lyrics about cosmic wizards. Keith Richards later called it “a load of crap,” and the Stones never played a single track from it live after 1967.

But the album’s influence on progressive rock is quietly massive. Bands like Pink Floyd, King Crimson, and Yes borrowed its willingness to abandon structure for texture: the 13-minute closer “Sing This All Together (See What Happens)” is a free-form jam with tape loops and non-Western scales that predates the long-form psychedelia of Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The use of a full orchestra on “She’s a Rainbow” and the sitar-drenched “Gomper” gave early prog a template for blending pop with experimental instrumentation.

Even the cover — a 3D lenticular image of the band dressed as wizards — screamed “this is not your parents’ rock record.” The Stones may have disowned it, but without this weird, messy detour, the progressive rock of the early 1970s might have sounded very different.