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Music > Albums > The Rolling Stones - Beggar's Banquet (2002) Retail CD
added on May 19, 2007, at 17:38 by Menta

Beggar's Banquet is a great album that I'm only recently beginning to appreciate, despite the fact that I first bought it in 2003. I'm no great fan of The Stones, as yet (always preferred the Kinks when it comes to 60's British rock) but I can certainly understand why their peak albums, such as Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and this, are so well respected, with Mick and Keith really creating a melting pot of different rock n' roll elements that are advanced upon wonderfully by the other members of the band. The overall style of the album is loose rhythm and blues, with nods towards country, folk and bluegrass thrown in for good measure. There's also that legendary opening track, Sympathy For The Devil, a song that has been covered, sampled and trotted out onto the soundtracks of so many films (most notably, Interview With The Vampire) that it must be recognisable even to people who think they've never heard the Rolling Stones in their life. From that exotic and sexually charged opening epic, the album moves into the more obvious country-inflected rhythm and blues numbers (the standouts amongst them including No Expectations, Parachute Woman and the immense Street Fighting Man). Jigsaw Puzzle is a nice piece of epic blues-rock with a great overall performance from the band and Jagger on fine vocal form, whilst the later Prodigal Son (a song credited to Rev. Wilkins) is a disorienting piece of carnival blues-rock in the same vein as Dylan's Rainy Day Women No's 12 & 35 from a few years before. Stray Cat Blues is a great piece of rock and roll in the traditional sense of the word; with those swaggering vocals leading a top-notch band performance in which every member of the group seemed to be playing at their absolute peak. It leads us nicely into my favourite song on the album; the more folk-influenced Factory Girl, which has some fantastic acoustic guitar playing and an interesting approach to percussion. It's probably my favourite Stones song (although I'm not going to pretend that I've heard single song they've ever recorded... it's just the one that most appeals to me), and is a great track to lead us into the closing song on the album, Salt of the Earth. This is another excellent song that draws on bluegrass and folk, with the guitar and piano merging perfectly... complimented by Jagger's vocal, which here, seems to possess an innocent naivety far removed from the possessed intensity of some of the preceding tracks. The use of backing vocals towards the end of the song establish a soulful feeling that would carry over into Let It Bleed, making Salt of the Earth not only a great way to end Beggar's Banquet but also, strangely enough, a great place to start Let It Bleed. Beggar's Banquet is a great place to start for those interested in discovering the music of the Rolling Stones, with the general critical consensus arguing that Beggar's Banquet is not only one of the best albums ever released by the Stones, but quite easily, one of the key rock albums of the 1960's. And, it must be said, that with songs like Sympathy for the Devil, No Expectations, Street Fighting Man, Factory Girl and Salt of the Earth featured on it, it's hard for me to disagree.

front 952 x 946 px

back 1173 x 922 px

cd 1330 x 1058 px

inside 962 x 946 px