Beggars Banquet by The Rolling Stones

Beggars Banquet, the Rolling Stones' seventh album, came out on 6 December 1968, on Decca in Britain and London in America, and it's the sound of the band shaking off the paisley and getting back down to the dirt. After the psychedelic pop of Between the Buttons and Their Satanic Majesties Request, they went back to the blues and roots rock of their early days, and it was the first album made with Jimmy Miller producing, at Olympic Studios.

Brian Jones, who had co-founded the group and once led it, had grown unreliable in the studio because of his drug use, so nearly all the rhythm and lead guitar is Keith Richards'. He and Mick Jagger wrote all but one of the songs, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts held down the bottom, and Nicky Hopkins added piano on many tracks. And for a back-to-basics record, it roams: Latin beats and claves, tanpura, tabla and shehnai, conga rhythms with an African pulse. "Sympathy for the Devil" struts and shimmies on a hip-shaking groove, "Street Fighting Man" crackles with nervous electricity, "Parachute Woman" is lowdown and sly, and "Salt of the Earth" rolls out ragged and rousing.

It went top ten in plenty of places, reaching 3 in the UK and 5 in the US, and critics hailed it as a return to form. There wasn't a big hit single, but "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Street Fighting Man" became radio mainstays for decades. It was the last Stones album released while Jones was alive, and it entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.