a.) QUESTION: How could you tell that Brian Jones, who was having trouble staying upright at this point, was also having difficulty adapting to the arrangements on Beggars' Banquet, the Stones' return to their blues-based roots? ANSWER: The wackily inappropriate Mellotron on "Stray Cat Blues." (Listen for it! You'll never be able to ignore it again!) QUESTION: What counterarguments could be made? ANSWER: The magnificently patient slide guitar on "No Expectations," where Jones manages to conquer a musician's natural instinct to rush the beat, and lets his sighing, resigned playing act as musical commentary on the lyrics.

b.) "Salt Of The Earth" has GOT to be the world's most amazingly insincere, unrighteous anthem to the masses I have ever heard - completely cynical, phony, and full of scat - and therefore absolutely brilliant. Nothing more perfectly encapsulates the Stones' discomfort with the "revolutionary masses" than this totally bourgeois hymn to them. Listen to those lyrics: "As I look out into faceless crowds, swirling mass of greys and blacks now, it don't look real to me, in fact it looks so straaaange..." This is so great; would we really want a truly compassionate anthem from The Stones? Of course not. So we get a song that sounds like a populist ode at first, but on closer listening turns out to be something quite different. And it has these wonderful images of rich people drinking wine trying to come up with toasts to the common people. They're "raising a glass" to the hard-working people. They certainly don't seem to be hard-working folk themselves. And as the song progresses, they seem to run out of good things to say about the common people, and start talking about stay-at-home voters, and those faceless crowds....here's to the bourgeoisie!

c.) In fact, Beggar's Banquet as a whole holds together lyrically much better than many of their other albums. All the songs seem to alternate between demonism ("Sympathy For The Devil," "Stray Cat Blues") and world-weariness ("Jig-Saw Puzzle," "No Expectations") and some seem to embrace both ("Street Fighting Man"). It seems to me that they're obviously becoming tired of that demon life that's got them in its sway.

I am the Stones Authority. This is a very special album for a number of reasons. It is the first album of the Stones second era. It is really the first post Brian Jones album. Sure he was there for the sessions, but so was the janitor, and that doesn't make him relevant. And, even though this is 1968, it is in a way the first post Sixties album by the Stones. This was the album that defined what the new Rolling Stones band would be as it transitioned to the Seventies, while the other great acts of the Sixties were coming apart or finding it impossible to make the transition to relevancy outside the context of the Sixties, this album established the fact that the Stones would remain relevant for some time to come. They would survive - and before this album this was not at all a certainty. This album is the Rolling Stones grown up, mature and very, very good at what they do. The album represents a watershed in the band's history, and as such many aficionados rate it quite high and sometimes as their best album ever. I understand their emotion, but outside of its context, which is how all work should be judged in my humble opinion, is it relevant to another listener who is not a product of the context in which the work is done? I appreciate Mozart. I understand that his work is great. I do not have an understanding of the context in which the work was composed. The music is so good that it transcends the limitations of my understanding. Beggars Banquet is a very good album in any context. It is one of their four best albums. It is not their best. It is not their second best. They would get even better. Much better. I do love this album and for these songs: "No Expectations", Parachute Woman", "Jigsaw Puzzle", "Stray Cat Blues", "Factory Girl" and "Salt Of The Earth". The others are not too bad either. A must have album for the serious rock music fan.

Ain't reviews; these is messages.

Anyway, musta been '71 or '72, I was 11 or 12, just some nerdy kid with big glasses and short hair living in an econo-apartment complex. The kool boy, cigarettes and harness boots, broken home and little supervision, was right down the hall. Bored occasionally, the dude would have me over, showing off with tough talk about "getting some" and playing the "bitchin'" solo from Grand Funk's "Inside Looking Out." One day, I brought over a record to hear, he was real skeptical, rolls eyes, but what so, here comes "Sympathy For The Devil" which, incomprehensibly, he never heard. Dude was working hard to look bored and hip but, splonk, by the time the guitar comes in, he's got this look on his face ~ stunned.

Dude got punked.

Following the bad year of 1967, which saw drug busts and the unsuccessful attempt to one-up the Beatles with "Their Satanic Majesties Request", the Rolling Stones needed to regroup. They did, spectacularly. The group made its fans wait an entire year for its next album, but when "Beggars Banquet" was finally released in December, 1968, it was evident from the very first track, the instantly-unforgettable samba "Sympathy For The Devil", that the wait was worthwhile. The material is strong, and utterly without the psychedelic affectations which had weakened the previous LP. As if to offset the references to the diabolic, "Banquet" includes a cover of the Reverend Robert Wilkins' Gospel parable "Prodigal Son". "Street Fighting Man" (though it backs off from advocating any type of actual revolution) is an anthem of the times, and "Jigsaw Puzzle" a cryptic little portrait of the late Sixties. "Parachute Woman" and "Stray Cat Blues" reflect the group's return to its bedrock blues base. In Jimmy Miller, who would work with them through 1973, the band found the best producer it would ever have. "Beggars Banquet", in short, marks the beginning of the roughly four-year period when the Stones were, both live and in the studio, the finest, most powerful rockers in the world.

This legendary album was hailed both by critics and Stones fans alike whom consider it one of the very best efforts of their illustrious careers, although commercially it would be the worst performing record of the 24 albums issued between 1963 and 2005 reaching only #5 on the charts. Although it sounds absurd now, it was also considered a comeback by a band that at the time appeared doomed after their previous album Their Satanic Majesties Request was the weakest of their career and several members of the band were involved in high profile drug arrests and the band's founder Brian Jones sank further into the morass of drugs. Furthermore, the band had not toured since 1966, an eternity back in that era, mostly due to issues related to the decline of Jones. The band was also nearly bankrupt due to a combination of a terrible recording contract, lack of touring, outrageous tax rates in England at the time and excessive spending on their part.

Against this beak backdrop and behind the scenes the band was about to rebound to spectacular creative heights over the next 4 years that would forever give them deserving claim to "The Greatest Rock `N Roll Band in the World". Mick Jagger would maintain his wild image, but behind the scenes he gave up drugs and smoking and reverted to his roots of exercising regularly as taught by his Phys-Ed instructor dad. In an interview in the 1990s Jagger said "I was too smart to fall victim to drugs".

He also became a voracious reader of scores of classic novels, and spent hours learning how to play guitar, both of which had a profound effect on his song writing ability. It would no longer be Jagger exclusively writing the lyrics and Keith Richards exclusively writing the music. The band also marginalized Jones' involvement as he had become a liability. Between mid '68 and mid '69 they recorded 25-30 songs, many of which would ultimately be among the greatest Rock `N Roll songs of all time. The songs would be divided into 2 albums, 2 separate singles, and another classic that would be released on a later album. Jagger later explained that Beggar's Banquet and Let It Bleed were recorded over the same extended 12 months of recording. It was decided that for the most part, the songs that were predominantly acoustic would be on Beggar's Banquet and the songs that were predominantly electric would be on Let It Bleed. For example, "You Can't Always Get What You Want" was one of the first songs recorded and was played live in '68 at the Rolling Stones Rock `N Roll Circus, but its release was delayed (with a boy's chorus intro added) until the fall of '69 on Let It Bleed. That is why Brian Jones and his replacement Mick Taylor both appear on Let It Bleed.

It was also decided, in a rare promotional blunder by the Stones, that "Jumping Jack Flash" would be left off of Beggar's Banquet and instead would be only available as a single, preceding the release of the album. JJF was an instant hit (#3 on the singles chart) and is unquestionably an all time rock classic. Critics and fans hailed that the Stones were back and "they had returned to their roots". Jagger disputes that saying that yes it was a turn away from the psychedelic failure of Their Satanic Majesties Request and the Pop sound of Between the Buttons, but in fact it was quite unlike any song they had done before. It was not psychedelic or Pop, but is was also not blues based rock like many of their earlier recordings, it was pure Rock `N Roll. The release of the single was complimented for the first time with a music video that was seen by few due to censorship because as Richards says "it was a pretty wicked video". Also absent from the record would be the classic "Sister Morphine" that was delayed until Sticky Fingers in 1971 because Jagger's ex girlfriend Marianne Faithful had made claims she wrote the song.

Despite the absence of these songs, and the relative poor sales for the album, Beggar's Banquet is a landmark album. The opening song "Sympathy for the Devil" is musically and lyrically unlike any song ever written and is on everyone's top 10 all time rock songs. Another hard rock classic, and perhaps the only hard rock acoustic classic, was Street Fighting Man, a reflection of the student riots taking place on both sides of the Atlantic at the time. The remaining tracks are acoustic songs that have never gotten radio play then or now, but every one of them is a hidden gem. There is the soulful ballad "No Expectations" and the cleverly comical country influenced songs "Dear Doctor" and "Factory Girl". There is the "Sympathy for the Devil" antithesis redemption in the Jesus parable from the Bible "Prodigal Son" followed by the savagely hard rock "Stray Cat Blues", which was easily the hardest edge rock song recorded at that point in time and is one of the top 10 most underrated songs ever. Have you ever heard it on the radio? "Jig Saw Puzzle" and "Salt of the Earth" with Richards singing the intro, are exclamation points for this masterpiece in which the Stones took acoustic songs well beyond the usual background sound for soft rock ballads.

So why was it tied with Now! (1964) as the poorest charting Stones album in their careers? To this day it has barely sold 1 million copies compared to the nearly 8 million copies of Some Girls (1978). There are multiple reasons, the hit "Jumping Jack Flash" was not included, it followed the much high charting Satanic (#2) which disappointed most buyers, the original bathroom graffiti album cover was rejected by the record company and instead they went with a bland white jacket, albums that are primarily acoustic don't sell well (for example Led Zeppelin III and Pink Floyd's Meddle) and lastly the album was not promoted/backed by a tour. An example of the reaction is documented in Bill Wyman's book in which members of the Stones and Beatles were at the same party. Jagger played an advance copy of "Sympathy" and the muted reaction by the partygoers were that it was "cool" and "unique", then Paul McCarthy put on an advance of "Hey Jude" and all the hippest of the hip flower children of the day got much more excited and all "oohed" and "aahed" about how great it was.

Despite the lack of sales, I rank this album surely in their top 10 and close to the top 5. I will note that many "hardcore Stones fans" typically rate it in their top 3 or 4. Maybe if "Jumping Jack Flash" were included I would have rated it as high. Regardless, it is a must have Masterpiece. Overall grade: A

Other Stones album ratings

1) Some Girls (1978) A+
2) Let It Bleed (1969) A+
3) Sticky Fingers (1971) A+
4) Exile on Main Street (1972) A+
5) Voodoo Lounge (1994) A
6) Beggar's Banquet (1968) A
7) Black and Blue (1976) A
8) It's Only Rock `N Roll (1974) A
9) Bridges to Babylon (1997) A-
10) Out of Their Heads (1965) A-
11) Goat's Head Soup (1973) A-
12) Aftermath (1966) A-
13) A Bigger Bang B+ (2005)
14) Between the Buttons (1967) B+
15) Tattoo You (1981) B+
16) Now! (1964) B+
17) Emotional Rescue (1980) B
18) Steel Wheels (1989) B
19) Dirty Work (1986) B-
20) Undercover (1983) B-
21) England's Newest Hit Makers (1963)B-
22) December's Children (1965) B-
23) 12 X 5 (1964) B-
24) Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967) C