She shoots colours all around

It may have been hijacked recently by both Apple and Sony for TV ads, but that shouldn’t diminish one iota from the brilliance of the Rolling Stones’ 1967 track “She’s A Rainbow”. Taken from the psychedelically challenging but actually quite fantastic fork in the road of The Stone’s more easily categorised recording career, 1967’s “Their Satanic Majesties Request”, this is a song that to me is awe-inspiring in its beauty, and mixture of depth of texture and seeming simplicity. The album itself divides opinion almost entirely, a masterpiece or folly depending on your view. I’m in the former camp, and in many ways “She’s a Rainbow” sums up why.

The lyricism from Jagger is quite stunning in its poetry and construction, weaving a rich tapestry of fairy tale-like wonder without being twee. But it is the music that really shocks, led of course by the brilliant piano track of celebrated session man Nicky Hopkins. The Stones are renowned for picking good keyboard additions as honorary members and long-time collaborators, from the funk and soul licks of the brilliant Billy Preston, to the rock chops of Ian Stewart, and then balladry and classical leanings of Nicky Hopkins. Famed for laying down tracks with little or no preparation, Hopkins has graced far too numerous a selection of classic records of the late 1960s and 1970s to mention here. But on this track he brings sheer beauty to the studio and magic on the keys.

The opening always sounds to me like the template for the pop orchestration that would bring global fame to Abba a decade later, but this is far from a criticism. Rather it belies a genius of accessible and beguiling melody. But it is when the track explodes into guitar swirls, strings, mellotron, and the quite fantastic drum performance from Charlie Watts always the greatest of the Stones firmament) that the track truly takes off. Up and down in tempo, quiet in places and at times bursting uncontrollably with joy, this record seems to capture the colours of the very best bits of the Summer of Love. It is the folkier end of their sound, touched on only occasionally in other songs such as “Ruby Tuesday” or “As Time Goes By”, but I think an under-appreciated element of their work away from the standard blues-rock.

“Their Satanic Majesties Request”, to my mind, is ahead of its time, not Sgt Pepper or Forever Changes lite, but a stunning record of its own volition, The Stones doing psychedelia as only they could, and finding hidden depths and embellishments to an already heavily-mined style. The first album to be produced by the band themselves, and even featuring a pre-Led Zeppelin John Paul Jones on string arrangements, it is Keith Richard’s song writing in particular at its most creative. That it was followed by 1968’s return to hard, driving blues riffs in the equally brilliant but completely different “Beggar’s Banquet” suggests it was an aberration, but I still think it was key. Proof that they could match the best of their contemporaries on any ground they chose, an indulgence perhaps, but not one taken lightly. As a soundscape it is lush and one to dive straight into the middle of. And if ever a song sounded like the thing it describes it is “She’s A Rainbow”. Vibrant, beautiful, mysterious, but never ever black and white.