I am into a Sticky I've been reading how Dead Flowers was a sort of goodbye to the hippies, Abbie Hoffman, etc.. But I feel that Sway is also a "goodbye".
It seems to me that Mick is saying goodbye to the whole demon/devil thing that they were playing up or at least we was still playing it up but trying to separate himself from it.Maybe from the whole KR/Anita, MJ/Maryanne scene.
Thoughts?

Yes...I am bored.

I understand what you mean, but to me Exile has that vibe as well.

Nah, hardly a goodbye to the whole "devil" theme. Goats Head Soup continued it.

Dead Flowers is just a good old country song. Sway seems to me to be about fatigue, regret and personal demons. I don't think Mick & Keith thought in terms of "the end of an era" or big messages, with a few possible exceptions like Street Fighting Man. People read too much into these things sometimes. Especially people who write books about rock music for a living. Bob Dylan must have laughed a million times over some of the rubbish that has been written about his lyrics.

Yeah, you have to be careful in attributing major change to a single track or even an entire album, as often the songs were first played many years prior to their release. I don't really think the stones ever thought lets include demonic songs or let's not include demonic songs. It was more about what they were reading at the time or who they were hanging around and where. Let's face it Keith has flogged the skull theme since the late sixties and it's still going strong....it reminds him of his own mortality, or so he says, strange that he has done everything possible to kill himself through these years....lol, funny guys these rolling sones fellas!

In retrospect I think Cafaro has a point. No more 'demons' after Sway, not on Exile and certainly not on GHS (Mr D is another kind of song).

Finally one has to distinct between the intentions (if there were any anyway) of the (song)writer regarding a song and its review in retrospect. They don't have to be the same.