Their Satanic Majesties Request

It was the first Stones album issued in identical versions in Britain and the United States, and the first the band produced themselves after Andrew Loog Oldham left. The title plays on the wording of a British passport, which says that Her Britannic Majesty requests and requires. The sessions ran from February to October 1967 at Olympic Studios. The recording was lengthy and disjointed because of court appearances and jail terms. Wyman wrote In Another Land to parody the goings-on.

The band used Mellotron, theremin, short-wave radio static and a string arrangement by John Paul Jones for She's a Rainbow. Several songs had other titles in the studio: In Another Land was Acid in the Grass, She's a Rainbow was Flowers in Your Bonnet and 2000 Light Years from Home was Toffee Apple. The working title of the album was Cosmic Christmas, and a hidden coda after Sing This All Together (See What Happens) plays a slowed version of We Wish You a Merry Christmas on an oscillator.

Michael Cooper designed the lenticular three-dimensional cover. A proposed cover of Jagger naked on a cross was scrapped by the record company as in bad taste. The album reached number three in the UK and number two in the US, where it went Gold. It was criticised as derivative of Sgt. Pepper, and Jon Landau criticised the production in Rolling Stone. Jimmy Miller, recommended by the engineer Glyn Johns, was asked to produce the next record.

Richards later said the album was a load of crap, though he liked 2000 Light Years from Home, Citadel and She's a Rainbow. Jagger said in 1995 that there were two good songs on it. Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote in Pitchfork that no other record sounds quite like it, and Richie Unterberger of AllMusic wrote that the Stones never took so many chances in the studio before or after.