The Rolling Stones’ most important album of all arrived in 1968: “The first change”
Every band that has been around the block a couple of times normally has that sweet spot where they can’t go wrong.
For The Rolling Stones, that golden period arrived at a crucial moment. Having spent much of the 1960s establishing themselves as one of Britain’s premier rock acts, they were now under pressure to prove they could evolve beyond chart success and create work with lasting artistic significance.
Despite being one of the foundations of what modern rock and roll was supposed to sound like, The Rolling Stones themselves would probably even tell you that some of their projects are a lot more appealing than others when looking through their discography. If you want to know when things started to get really good, Keith Richards pointed to them making Beggars Banquet.
At the time of its release, though, the group had been going through some of the biggest growing pains of their career. They could still play some of the best rock and roll this side of The Beatles, but their journey to become a great rock and roll band was little more than just seeing what John Lennon and Paul McCartney did and then wash, rinse, and repeat the rest.
Don’t believe me? Fine, well then, let’s take a look at Their Satanic Majesties Request. Written shortly after the Fab Four dropped their magnum opus, Sgt Peppers, and ushered in the summer of love, now the Stones were also donning strange psychedelic costumes and putting in trippy effects into their songs on tracks like ‘2000 Light Years Home’.
That doesn’t mean that the group didn’t have talent; it’s just that they needed some more time to focus on what they were doing. Since Mick Jagger and Richards always found their way back to the blues, Beggars Banquet was the kind of return to form that most people had been hoping they would do for ages.
These weren’t just cover tunes, though. Outside of the occasional run-through a standard, much of the album was made up of the kind of rock and roll that brought more attitude to those Albert King-style riffs Richards was pumping out. While they would refine their sound on future albums, Richards knew the real turning point began here.
When speaking with Rolling Stone, Richards thought the album had everything they needed for their future, saying, “Beggars Banquet was very important. That body of work, between [Banquet and Exile on Main St]: That was the most important time in the band. It was the first change the Stones had to make after the teeny-bopper phase”.
Even though this marked the moment when the boys playing the blues morphed into men, it didn’t come without a few sacrifices. After being one of the leading forces behind the group for years, Brian Jones officially checked out of the group shortly after working on the record, only contributing slide guitar to the song ‘No Expectations’ before being let go and later found unresponsive in his pool a short time later.
That kind of background paints Beggars Banquet in a bit of a dark light, but that hardly mattered to The Stones. They were always creatures from the wrong side of the tracks, and while they had to soldier on however they could, it was still bound to be outstanding going forward.
In many ways, Beggars Banquet represents the moment The Rolling Stones fully became The Rolling Stones. The youthful imitators and psychedelic experimenters were replaced by a band comfortable in its own skin, ready to define rock music on its own terms for the decade that followed.
