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Sympathy for the Devil--opinions?


Vincent Vega

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It isn't a bad cover. Or a good one. Bit unnecessary. It is GNR performing a song by RS. Nothing more. Performance like this is something you'd expect to hear on a live album/bootleg, not something released as a studio-single. If you go far enough to turn a cover to a single, imo it marks the point where you better add something unique to the song. If you release song like this under name of your own band you'd at least need to try to make it your own. You need to try to steal it from the original performer. Sympathy tries nothing of the sort. It tries none of the things Live and let die succeeds in, and KOHD fails in. It just is..GNR performing RS.

Edited by LTD
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Criminally underrated due to something as trivial as a background guitar track. Slash is such a diva.

I agree that it is underrated.

Question, can anyone answer:

I thought when I heard this song he said "Goddam politics" But the only versions I have he says "well learned" however, it sounds dubbed. Do I have an edit? Or am I just remembering wrong?

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Criminally underrated due to something as trivial as a background guitar track. Slash is such a diva.

I agree that it is underrated.

Question, can anyone answer:

I thought when I heard this song he said "Goddam politics" But the only versions I have he says "well learned" however, it sounds dubbed. Do I have an edit? Or am I just remembering wrong?

I'm pretty sure you're remembering wrong. I'm also pretty sure Axl fucks up the lyrics, because I think it's supposed to be "politesse" and not "politics".

Can someone confirm so I can :lol: ?

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Criminally underrated due to something as trivial as a background guitar track. Slash is such a diva.

I agree that it is underrated.

Question, can anyone answer:

I thought when I heard this song he said "Goddam politics" But the only versions I have he says "well learned" however, it sounds dubbed. Do I have an edit? Or am I just remembering wrong?

The actual lyrics are "Use all your well-learned politesse". As one can clearly hear on the bass and vocals track extracted from the 5.1 Blu Ray, Axl flubs it and says "well-learned politics", which doens't mean much in the context of the verse.

Wether that means the main vocal track is a single take, flubbed lyrics and all, or that Axl couldn't be bothered to learn the proper lyrics, no one knows.

Never heard a GNR version with "goddamn".

Edited by EvH
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Reminds me of the Megadeth cover of Anarchy in the UK where the words '...or just another country?!? Another council tenancy!' were apparently heard by that band of brain surgeons at Megadeth as 'and other cunt-like tendencies'.

Not saying metallers are thick or anything, but...

:lol:

Edited by Len B'stard
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Criminally underrated due to something as trivial as a background guitar track. Slash is such a diva.

I agree that it is underrated.

Question, can anyone answer:

I thought when I heard this song he said "Goddam politics" But the only versions I have he says "well learned" however, it sounds dubbed. Do I have an edit? Or am I just remembering wrong?

The actual lyrics are "Use all your well-learned politesse". As one can clearly hear on the bass and vocals track extracted from the 5.1 Blu Ray, Axl flubs it and says "well-learned politics", which doens't mean much in the context of the verse.

Wether that means the main vocal track is a single take, flubbed lyrics and all, or that Axl couldn't be bothered to learn the proper lyrics, no one knows.

Never heard a GNR version with "goddamn".

That part always bothered me. I think he just made a mistake the last second, and didnt bother to change it.

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Always liked it, never thought much about the problems behind it (though it was the accelerator for the old lineup demise).

Axl's vocals are top notch IMO, great guitar work from Slash and I even liked Matt Sorum's drum sound (not a fan of it on UYIs).

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I wasn't a huge fan of the song when I first heard it, because I allready loved the original song, but I ADORE it now

And Axl's vocals are brilliant, he absolutely nailed it!

Edited by nn18
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As I've already stated many times on this forum, my opinion is that GNR's rendition is a mixed bag...

- The production is really good.Slash's tone is as tasty as ever, and Matt gets his best drum sound. Better than the already great one he got on TSI?.

- Speaking of Matt, I know he gets a lot of slack simply for not being Adler. Matt's got no groove? His performance on SFTD is perfect.

- Apart from the lyrical flub I mentioned earlier, I honestly think Axl is the weak link on this version. He oversings the song as much as he can. I guess he wanted to play the #demented card (yep, Ashba was already in his mind) but his stupid laughs, sighs and overmodulated voice are grating really fast.

The Stones' version is among my 5 favorite songs ever, because I like their take on my favorite book, The Master and Margarita. I love the voodoo feel of the original. But I also love the hard edge feel of GNR's cover.

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Love the Rolling Stones version or it and loved the GNR version too.

This is just one amazing song. So glad the Stones went back to doing it live. For a long time, Jagger felt the song was a jinx after the fiasco in San Francisco. He said everytime the Stones did it live after that, bad things happened.

I think it's a bad ass in your face song and some people don't like to hear it because it hits true with every word.

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Criminally underrated due to something as trivial as a background guitar track. Slash is such a diva.

I agree that it is underrated.

Question, can anyone answer:

I thought when I heard this song he said "Goddam politics" But the only versions I have he says "well learned" however, it sounds dubbed. Do I have an edit? Or am I just remembering wrong?

The actual lyrics are "Use all your well-learned politesse". As one can clearly hear on the bass and vocals track extracted from the 5.1 Blu Ray, Axl flubs it and says "well-learned politics", which doens't mean much in the context of the verse.

Wether that means the main vocal track is a single take, flubbed lyrics and all, or that Axl couldn't be bothered to learn the proper lyrics, no one knows.

Never heard a GNR version with "goddamn".

That part always bothered me. I think he just made a mistake the last second, and didnt bother to change it.

Yeah if it isn't a dub, then it's got to be a fuck up, that was the "don't want to do eet" before "Don't want to do eet" was a thing.

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h

The original is hypnotic, tribal, sexual, political. Jagger speaks for a generation that is traumatised, from Vietnam, from the civil rights era, from the 'death of the 1960s' (alright Altamont had not happened yet but it was obvious the hippy ideal had turned into vacuous nothingness). GN'R's version is none of those things. It is not obnoxiously bad I would say but it is basically completely uninteresting. You could never call The Stones' version ''uninteresting''.

I think in purely musical terms, based strictly on sound the GNR version trumps the Stones. They do for Sympathy what Hendrix did for All Along the Watchtower.

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h

The original is hypnotic, tribal, sexual, political. Jagger speaks for a generation that is traumatised, from Vietnam, from the civil rights era, from the 'death of the 1960s' (alright Altamont had not happened yet but it was obvious the hippy ideal had turned into vacuous nothingness). GN'R's version is none of those things. It is not obnoxiously bad I would say but it is basically completely uninteresting. You could never call The Stones' version ''uninteresting''.

I think in purely musical terms, based strictly on sound the GNR version trumps the Stones. They do for Sympathy what Hendrix did for All Along the Watchtower.

I do not agree. Slash is right, it is the sound of a 'dying band'.

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h

The original is hypnotic, tribal, sexual, political. Jagger speaks for a generation that is traumatised, from Vietnam, from the civil rights era, from the 'death of the 1960s' (alright Altamont had not happened yet but it was obvious the hippy ideal had turned into vacuous nothingness). GN'R's version is none of those things. It is not obnoxiously bad I would say but it is basically completely uninteresting. You could never call The Stones' version ''uninteresting''.

I think in purely musical terms, based strictly on sound the GNR version trumps the Stones. They do for Sympathy what Hendrix did for All Along the Watchtower.

I do not agree. Slash is right, it is the sound of a 'dying band'.

T

I'll agree with you there. By the time GNR covered Sympathy the Stones were pretty much a dying band- artistically speaking.

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I like it.

That said, the original is so good, it doesn't blow the original away...like KOHD. KOHD a-la GNR is 1000% better than Dylan's original version in my opinion, especially live early '90's.

Even LALD is much better than McCartney's.

Both of those are a lot different than the original, but not SFTD.

Curiously though, while Sailing doesn't differ much from the original, it works PERFECTLY in my opinion as a Guns tune...big improvement from the original.

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