3. The Rolling Stones Frank ZappaLet It Bleed
It was actually Aftermath that planted the seed of doubt and dirt, and later Beggars Banquet, with ‘Street Fighting Man”s arrogant energy and the absolutely stunning and subversive ‘Sympathy For The Devil”s shamanistic trance – but we, just kids, didn’t quite understand that yet. When Let It Bleed reached us, we were old enough to get the message, at least through the energy of the form. I well remember the moment when I first took the vinyl out of the sleeve and put it on my first Tosca gramophone, made in Yugoslavia. The needle went on, and I had to wait for a few moments for it to find the right trail and then the fabulous and apocalyptic sound of ‘Gimme Shelter’ started. It was just an absolute knockout. And when the record reached the end and we heard the London Bach Choir opening ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’, we were literally stoned and wanted to stay stoned to be able to fully understand all these stories and emotions in a very evocative way.
Of course it was a foreign world to us, but we had our own ‘translating machines’ in our heads and, while listening to these songs, our imagination told us stories, that were never even told on the album. But one thing we understood very well: The Rolling Stones were not The Beatles; they were real, they were dirty and they were dangerous, very dangerous! Their sound was far from being as polished as The Beatles’ was, it sounded like a kind of essence of the rock music itself. From then on it was always The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, the two sides of the coin. In 1976, The Rolling Stones performed their first two shows in Yugoslavia, both in Zagreb, the Croatian capital, less than an hour from Trbovlje. In 1988 Laibach released an album with six different versions of ‘Sympathy For The Devil’. Mick Jagger was asked if he was aware of this "strange" release and apparently answered only with a smile.
