The Rolling Stones – Beggars Banquet [Vinyl LP]

The Rolling Stones – Beggars Banquet [180g Vinyl LP]

Details

• Format: Vinyl LP, Album, Reissue, Gatefold, Stereo
• Catalogue Number: 7120481
• Barcode: 018771204817
• Genre: Blues Rock / Rock / Classic Rock
• Label: ABKCO Music & Records
• Originally Released: 6 December 1968
• Reissue Released: 2022
• Pressing: 180 Gram Vinyl
• Condition: New & Sealed

Description

Beggars Banquet is the sixth studio album by The Rolling Stones — released on 6 December 1968 on Decca Records in the UK and London Records in the US — and the album on which the band definitively redefined themselves for the second half of the 1960s and beyond. After the psychedelic diversion of Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967), producer Jimmy Miller — recruited on the recommendation of Traffic's Steve Winwood — guided the Stones back to their roots in American blues, country and R&B, with a rawness and directness that felt both timely and timeless. The result was immediately acclaimed as one of their greatest achievements, and its reputation has only grown: Rolling Stone magazine ranks it number 58 on the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and it is widely regarded as the first instalment of their creative peak, running through Let It Bleed (1969), Sticky Fingers (1971) and Exile on Main St. (1972).

The album opens with one of the most recognisable recordings in rock history. "Sympathy for the Devil" — developed in the studio from a Bob Dylan-influenced acoustic sketch into a rolling samba-percussive epic, with Mick Jagger adopting the first-person voice of the devil as narrator across a lyric surveying centuries of human atrocity — runs for six and a half minutes and remains one of the most discussed, interpreted and covered rock songs ever recorded. "Street Fighting Man" — written during the Paris student uprising of May 1968 and recorded on a cassette tape by Keith Richards as a deliberately lo-fi demo, with the cassette distortion retained in the final mix — became the album's lead single and a defining anthem of political upheaval, reaching number 48 in the US despite being banned by several American radio stations. The acoustic Delta blues of "No Expectations" — with Brian Jones' exquisite slide guitar work, among the last significant recordings he made before his departure and death in 1969 — and "Prodigal Son" (a Robert Wilkins cover) anchor the album's folk and blues heart, while "Stray Cat Blues" and "Jigsaw Puzzle" push into harder electric territory. The closing "Salt of the Earth" — written by Jagger and Richards as a tribute to working people and performed partly by Richards in an uncharacteristic lead vocal — brings the album to a dignified, hymn-like conclusion.

The album's original release was itself accompanied by controversy: the intended sleeve — a toilet wall covered in graffiti — was rejected by Decca and replaced with a formal dinner party photograph at the band's insistence, a compromise that only added to the album's mythological status. The recording sessions at Olympic Sound Studios in London in the spring and summer of 1968 were the first with Jimmy Miller and the first to fully incorporate Charlie Watts' drumming as a structural element rather than a supporting one — a shift in the band's rhythmic approach that would define their work for the following decade.

This ABKCO reissue — sourced from the 2018 50th anniversary remaster, as indicated on the label (Ⓟ & Ⓒ 2018 ABKCO Music & Records, Inc.) — presents the album on 180 gram black vinyl in a gatefold sleeve, manufactured at GZ Media in the Czech Republic (confirmed from the "Made in Czech Republic" sticker on the shrinkwrap). ABKCO Music & Records — the label that has held the rights to the Stones' pre-1971 catalogue since Allen Klein's original deal — has maintained this title in continuous print, and this is the current standard edition.

Tracklist

Side A

1. Sympathy for the Devil
2. No Expectations
3. Dear Doctor
4. Parachute Woman
5. Jigsaw Puzzle

Side B

1. Street Fighting Man
2. Prodigal Son
3. Stray Cat Blues
4. Factory Girl
5. Salt of the Earth

Credits

• Mick Jagger – Vocals, Guitar, Harmonica
• Keith Richards – Guitar, Bass, Vocals
• Brian Jones – Slide Guitar, Harmonica, Sitar
• Bill Wyman – Bass
• Charlie Watts – Drums
• Nicky Hopkins – Piano
• Jimmy Miller – Producer
• Glyn Johns – Engineer
• Label – ABKCO Music & Records