#185 The Rolling Stones, 'Beggars Banquet' (1968)
Previously #58
On The Rolling Stones’ 10th album, there was a major shift in leadership. Group founder and leader, Brian Jones, was mostly AWOL due to his heavy drug use, leaving Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to take the reigns. During the mid-60s, while on their many tours in the US, Richards would collect records but never had time to listen to them. In late ’66 and early ’67 he decided to unwrap them and listen to what he had bought. This was the catalyst for the band to start writing songs about their version of America, inspired by these records. The band incorporated Country, Blues, Honky Tonk and Roots, with injections of Latin music too, for good measure.
The result was a coming of age for the band and arguably their first great record. Opening with the iconic ‘Sympathy For The Devil,’ the rhythms are unusual and the lyrics dark and mysterious. Frequent collaborator, Nicky Hopkins, gives a great performance on piano (in fact, his contributions throughout the record are invaluable). ‘Dear Doctor’ could honestly be a Merle Haggard song. Keef’s vocals are very prominent on this one. I’ve always loved the contrast between his vocals and Mick’s. This goes into the classic Chicago Blues-sounding ‘Parachute Woman.’ The album features the band’s most political song, ‘Street Fighting Man,’ a song inspired by riots at the US Embassy in London. Richards’s unique guitar sound was achieved by recording an acoustic guitar through a Philips cassette recorder microphone. Once again, Hopkins shines and Brian Jones decided to stop binging for a minute to join the band in studio to contribute sitar. ‘Factory Girl’ is the one song on the record that’s completely different, more akin to an Appalachian folk song than the country/blues of the rest of the record. The album ends with one of my favourite Rolling Stones songs, definitely my favourite Keef vocal, ‘Salt Of The Earth.’ Jagger was inspired by Lennon and wanted to write an anthem for the working class; “Let's drink to the hard working people/Let's drink to the lowly of birth/Raise your glass to the good and the evil/Let's drink to the salt of the earth.” This album was the last Rolling Stones record to be released in Brian Jones’s lifetime. He would die less than 7 months later under mysterious circumstances at the age of… yep, you guessed it, 27 years old.
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