When the Devil Became Their Shadow: How 'Sympathy for the Devil' Got Blamed for Altamont

The most interesting thing about “Sympathy for the Devil” is that it’s not a Satanic anthem—it’s Mick Jagger playing a shape-shifting character who takes credit for everything from Christ’s crucifixion to the Kennedy assassinations. He borrowed the idea from a French novel (Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita) and wrote the lyrics as a first-person confession. The song’s samba groove and chanted “hoo-hoo” chorus were meant to be theatrical, not worshipful. But in 1968, the band was leaning into occult imagery—they’d just posed with a goat on the Their Satanic Majesties Request cover—so the public didn’t bother parsing intent.

The real trouble came a year later at the Altamont Speedway free concert. The Stones hired the Hells Angels as security; bad idea. During the set, as the band launched into “Sympathy for the Devil,” the crowd surged and a knife came out. A fan named Meredith Hunter was beaten and stabbed to death within feet of the stage. The song became the spiritual soundtrack of the disaster. Newspapers put the headline “Rolling Stones’ Song Sympathy for the Devil Sparks Deadly