They are still the representatives of the other God on Earth. Half a century ago, Their Satanic Majesties visited Spain for the first time. A decade after The Beatles’ concerts in a country still under Franco, The Rolling Stones played at Barcelona’s Plaza de Toros Monumental. These were different worlds. The posh audience that showed up for the four young men who sang in suits had been replaced by a more apathetic, pot-smoking youth, as an amateur recording shows. On June 11, 1976, the Spanish Transition was undergoing a critical moment: Franco had died in November, King Juan Carlos I had returned from a consequential trip to the United States, and Carlos Arias Navarro was languishing as prime minister. The concert captured something of the zeitgeist, a decadent glamour in a country that until then had been excluded from the major global tour circuit.

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In the early days of 1975, David Bowie was a broken toy. Holed up in his grotesque Los Angeles mansion, the British musician spent his days reading obscure essays on Nazi esotericism, watching television sprawled across a wide Victorian four‑poster, and performing black‑magic rituals inspired by his new hero, the crackpot charlatan Aleister Crowley.

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