Rolling Stones – She’s A Rainbow (from the Sony Bravia Bunnies ad)

The new Sony Bravia bunnies ad features She’s Like A Rainbow by The Rolling Stones. It’s one of the best Beatles songs Lennon & McCartney never wrote..

The Rolling Stones – She’s Like A RainbowIn 1967 The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band and the rest of the rock world looked on in awe. It apparently drove Brian Wilson to madness, as he felt that he could never compete with such a record (and despite having inspired it he was right). And it obviously caused The Rolling Stones to feel seriously envious as it spurred them on to release Their Satanic Majesties Request, which features the song She’s A Rainbow.

The album was, and is, a sprawling mess of wannabe pschedelia from a band who were always at their best when sticking to their roots in rock & R&B. But it contained one absolute gem, in She’s A Rainbow, which has just been unearthed & used as the soundtrack to the new Sony Bravia bunnies ad.

The song is a lovely piece of 60s whimsy, built around little more than Mick Jagger’s vocals & a rambling piano melody, some military style drumming and Brian Jones’ use of the mellotron. It perfectly summed up the vibe of Swinging London, just before the scene came crashing down; many in fact pinpoint the death of the flower-power movement as The Rolling Stones’ infamous gig at Altamont just a few years after the release of She’s A Rainbow. Which of course means that The Stones ended up writing a soundtrack for the Summer of Love as well as writing its obituary.

How ironically apt then that a song that seemed to speak of the opportunities that the 60s offered for change, by a band who then went on to epitomise (for many) everything that is wrong with the over-commercialisation of rock, should now be used to soundtrack a commercial; even if it is for one as lovely as Sony Bravia’s bunnies ad.

2 comments

  1. Yeah Brian’s part on this song is great but Nicky Hopkins on piano and John Paul Jones’ strings arrangement kind of makes it for me. I think 2,000 Light Years From Home is also a powerful song. And Andrew Loog Oldham is not mentioned at all in the sleeve notes.

  2. Thanks for the comment. That must be one of the only times that Oldham didn’t get his way.

    I have to say that I find it hard to feel sorry for the man who forced The Verve to hand over the lion’s share of their royalties for using the sample of his version of The Last Time on Bittersweet Symphony!

Leave a Reply to The Knitter Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *