What inspired 'Sympathy for the Devil' and how the samba rhythm almost didn't happen

The song started with Mick Jagger reading Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita—a Russian novel where Satan visits Soviet Moscow. That gave him the idea of writing from the Devil’s perspective, a first-person monologue chronicling historical atrocities. He also pulled in references from Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal and a general fascination with how evil wears different masks across centuries.

The recording process was almost derailed by its own genre. The band initially struggled with a standard rock groove until Brazilian percussionists brought in a samba rhythm—specifically a batucada feel that turned the track into a hypnotic, carnivalesque chant. Keith Richards started the song with that opening, fingerpicked acoustic guitar riff, and the addition of piano, congas, and the famous “Whoo! Whoo!” backing vocals gave it an eerie, celebratory menace. The session at Olympic Studios in London was chaotic—drummer Charlie Watts reportedly asked Jagger, “You want a samba? On a rock song?”—but that fusion is exactly what made it immortal.