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Beggar’s Banquet - The Rolling Stones

"Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste."

It's one of the most potent opening verses in the pantheon of immortal rock songs. Instantly recognizable, sinewy, swaggering. No introductions needed.

This is a love letter to Beggar's Banquet, which is celebrating its 50th birthday. 50 years!  That's going to make some of my friends here on Facebook feel old. Boomers, take consolation in the fact that the rock and roll heroes of your generation produced some of the most epic, durable albums in rock history. They genuinely don't make 'em like this anymore.

Beggar's Banquet kicked off a 5-album run of hall of fame material, including Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main Street. Ben Fong Torres describes it as "an album flush with masterful and growling instant classics." This release is where the "World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band" thing started. At least, it's where the masses came to agree with Jagger's own proclamations.

This was the Stones' coming out party as musicians and songwriters. But in typical Stones fashion, there's plenty else to unpack around this album before we even consider the music.

Banquet followed Their Satanic Majesty's Request, the Stones' supposed answer to Sgt. Pepper.  A turnaround of epic proportions, to be sure. Satanic Majesty sucked, except for “She's a Rainbow” and “2000 Light Years From Home.”

It's the last Stones album featuring any meaningful contribution from Brian Jones - his absolutely sublime slide guitar work on "No Expectations" -  before he was found dead in a pool.

Controversy? Yes, please. First, there was Banquet's original album cover: Graffiti scratched onto a wall above a toilet in a dirty bathroom. It was so controversial at the time that it got pulled and replaced with the plain white design most of us are familiar with.  More controversy on the track "Stray Cat Blues," with its sexually-charged lyrics and one of the meanest guitar riffs Keith's ever summoned forth from his Tele.  No way it gets released in the age of #MeToo.

Stellar guest players,  including Nicky Hopkins, Ric Grech, Dave Mason, and Jimmy Miller.

Looking at Beggar's Banquet track by track, I'm struck by how it can be so cohesive and shambling at the same time. It's a  perfect example of how the Stones slipped this ominous tension into everything they did in their classic era. I've heard it described this way: In most rock bands, everybody follows the rhythm section.  Not the Stones, at least not in their work that's got some bite. Charlie follows Keith's guitar, and it feels like everything's perpetually on the verge of falling apart. Until it doesn't. Those in the know say that Charlie is the secret weapon in this band. I believe them.

So there's "Sympathy," which really needs no further explanation. I've heard it a million times. Every time, it's like I'm listening to the soundtrack to the end of the world.

The rest of these drug-fuelled, roots-and-blues numbers equate to a single album, of a unique place and time, worth a book or biopic all its own.  

"Dear Doctor" presages Jagger's tongue-in-cheek country dabblings (Think "Far Away Eyes" from 1978's Some Girls album) and is just plain fun. "I'm down in Virginia with your cousin Lou, and there'll be no wedding today!" he sings in a fake female falsetto to some poor bastard who finally lucks out when his "four-legged sow" of a fiance runs off on their wedding day.

"Parachute Woman: just bleeds Muddy Waters, and when the Stones cover or outright ape Muddy, good things usually happen. Keith doesn't play it straight-Muddy, though. He messed around with his guitar tone in ways he hadn't since "Satisfaction."

And then..."Street Fighting Man."  Oh my God. An uber-anthem for the classic rock ages, guitars like chimes soaring over a city that happens to be on fire. Lyrically, a masterpiece:

"So my name is called Disturbance I'll shout and scream I'll kill the king I'll rail at all his servants Well, what can a poor boy do Except to sing for a rock n' roll band? 'Cause in sleepy London town There's just no place for a street fighting man, no"

And then that bass run, which ends up in Jumpin' Jack Flash a few years later. For good reason, too.  Wyman could work that into every song, and I wouldn't care. It's just that formidable.

Maybe "Factory Girl" and "Prodigal Son," Keith-driven country-blues numbers, were thought of as filler at the time. I don’t know. I wasn’t born yet and my dad probably doesn’t remember. But that would have been premature and disproved in a few short years. Both tracks would have been right at home on Exile on Main Street. And everybody knows there is no filler on Exile on Main Street.

I already mentioned "Stray Cat Blues."  Like I said, it would never get played on the radio today (which I don't understand, given the content of much rap music). You just have to hear it for yourself, throw your sensibilities under the bus and repeat this mantra: It's only rock and roll, but I like it.

No track other than "Sympathy for the Devil" could have opened this album. Likewise, none except "Salt of the Earth" could close it. Keith and Mick trade stanzas in this ode to those who are, well, the salt of the earth.  In somebody else's hands (that isn't Woody Guthrie or Bruce Springsteen), this song might have come off as contrived - and that's before the mid-tempo acoustic guitars and piano tinklings crescendo into an all-hands-on-deck affair with a gospel chorus, of all goddamned things. Emoting heartache and bittersweet yearning or not, it sure feels honest.

"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

Say a prayer for the common foot soldier Spare a thought for his back breaking work Say a prayer for his wife and his children Who burn the fires and who still till the earth."

The Glimmer Twins weren't yet called the Glimmer Twins when this album was released. These songs - and the ones on the next several albums - were more rust and dust than glitter.  Glimmer, in fact, is the chief problem some of us hardcore fans have with their modern-day efforts like Steel Wheels and Voodoo Lounge. Once in a while, as on Some Girls and even Undercover of the Night, they return to form and act like the World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band. Whether or not they go into the studio deliberately trying to recapture the magic of Beggar's Banquet, their music works best when it at least tries.

========================= Beggar's Banquet Recorded: March 17 - July 25, 1968 Released: December 6,1968

Side A: Sympathy For The Devil No Expectations Dear Doctor Parachute Woman Jigsaw Puzzle

Side B: Street Fighting Man Prodigal Son Stray Cat Blues Factory Girl Salt Of The Earth