Ronnie Wood on his favourite Rolling Stones album he didn’t play on
If you’re in any band, there will always be some prejudice for the songs you played on. For as much as people might like to pay tribute to the thousands of guitarists who came before them, it feels much better talking about the mark that you left on music rather than having to discuss everything great about everyone else. While Ronnie Wood is known as the newest recruit in The Rolling Stones’ camp, he still counts Beggars Banquet among the best albums they have ever made.
Although the band were entering one of their most creative periods, it all seemed to be birthed out of pain. For the last few years trying to play second fiddle to The Beatles, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had finally come into their own as songwriters, and it looked like they were going to be a big enough rival to John Lennon and Paul McCartney than anyone else once the 1960s drew to a close.
It all seemed to be going up…as long as you didn’t look in Brian Jones’s direction. For the past few albums, Jones had effectively checked out from the group, and his dissatisfaction with his place in the group led to him spending half the time in the studio getting nothing done. When a band member decides it’s better to take a nap than lay down guitar, it’s usually time for them to go.
While Jones still plays on the album in places, most of Beggars Banquet is down to Richards, who mans most of the lead guitar duties before Mick Taylor was brought in. Taylor could weave together guitar parts like no one else, but there’s something more natural hearing the band internalise their roots, getting back in touch with blues music while writing the odd country song like ‘No Expectations’.
Compared to the other Stones albums that seem to have a distinct face, this often feels like a duo album between Jagger and Richards, albeit with Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman providing a solid foundation behind everything. Whereas every other album had a knack for great blues rock, maybe it’s that rootsiness that keeps Wood returning to this album.
On Instagram, Wood said that this was far and away one of the best records the group ever made, saying, “My favourite Stones album without me on it is Beggars Banquet”. Is it at all surprising, though, since Wood had made some of his most celebrated work when collaborating with Rod Stewart on his rustic approach to rock and roll?
It’s not like he’s wrong, either. Beggars Banquet may start the classic run of albums that led to Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street, but when looked at them all as separate entities, this one might be the best of them. There’s not as much blistering guitar work as before, but that wasn’t the goal. This was the sound of the band hanging onto their sanity by a thread, and across ten tracks, they showed us what it was like to be from the wrong side of the tracks and struggling to survive.
