[ed. Fascinating video by Jean-Luc Godard documenting the creative process behind the Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil. If you find this article interesting be sure to read the comments section, too.]
In my years of writing and performing songs I’ve come to realize that small, even accidental, lyric changes can greatly improve (or screw up) a song. Sometimes I notice it in my own songs; an accident of vocal delivery on stage one night might turn a light bulb on and then remain an integral part of a song forever, leaving me to lament that my officially released album recording is weaker than the currently performed version.
This might be because of a mere couple words’ difference. Sometimes I notice it in other artists’ work when hearing an unearthed early demo version of a well-known song, or a slightly different live performance. Some tweaks are noticeable only to obsessives, but other tweaks, equally small in terms of how many words are changed, can become legendary. Woody Guthrie wrote a song in 1940 with the recurring tag line, “God blessed America for me,” and it sat ignored in his pile of unused songs for years. But with those few words changed to “This land was made for you and me,” the entire song became part of the bedrock of 20th-century songwriting.
Getting an insight into this process is part of why it’s a joy to see a songwriter’s original lyric sheet, like Bob Dylan’s 1965 original typed page of lyrics for “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” which became widely accessible to public view when it was acquired by Christie’s for an auction in 2011 (it was valued at more than $50,000, but was ultimately removed from the sale). All of Dylan’s ballpoint pen corrections and additions surely made it a cooler, more valuable auction piece than if it had just burst from his forehead as a complete, finished work. Why? Because you are not just getting his handwriting, you are getting a map of the inner workings of the famously elusive Dylan’s mind at a specific moment in time. (...)
Sometimes small lyric changes are due to practical circumstance, but end up meaning more than perhaps intended. On June 4, 1968, for example, the Rolling Stones entered Olympic Studios in London to begin recording “Sympathy For the Devil,” which at that time included the lyric “I shouted out ‘Who killed Kennedy?’/when after all, it was you and me.” But within 24 hours Robert Kennedy too had been murdered, and the recorded lyric had to be changed to the plural, “Who killed the Kennedys?”
The original line can be seen as asking a specific, non-rhetorical question, which we just happen to still be asking: Who did kill John Kennedy? However, because Robert Kennedy’s killer was undeniably Sirhan Sirhan, the revised line, “Who killed the Kennedys?” still asks “who,” but in the new context that “who” seems to really ask “Why?” — no longer merely a police procedural question about facts but a more deeply resonant question about human nature: Why do such assassinations happen? It can be argued that the line now more clearly questions the general human spirit — not just the specific spirit of whoever shot J.F.K.
