maandag 4 oktober 2021

Beggar's Banquet. The Rolling Stones

It's over five years ago that I wrote on albums that were released later in 1968 and in 1969. In this series, I looked back on hitsingles that I liked as a little boy. Songs that came by on the radio, pirate radio station 'Veronica', while I was playing in the living room with music on in the background. Songs that made it into the Top 40 that I had discovered, was released every Thursday on a piece of oddly shaped paper. Most of those song came from albums, that I had never heard before and decided to give a listen and report on. Acts like Blue Cheer, Barry Ryan, Tee Set, Golden Earrings, etc., came by in this series. It was expanded to albums that I have for decades. Beggar's Banquet was the last on that list, but got stuck there, until today that is. This week I took the cd, not LP, out of its place against the wall and played the album for the first time in a long, long time. I fell in love with the album all over again, just like I did when I bought it around 1980.

Let's go back in time first. As a boy under 10 I lived in Rotterdam in an apartment building, what would now be called a maisonette. We had the third floor and half of the top, fourth floor. One evening late in 1968 or early 1969, there was a knocking on the balcony door. This was really odd, as who knocks on a door of a balcony on the fourth floor? It was our neighbour's son, Hans, then 12. He had a stack of 7" singles under his arm and asked if he could come in to play them. We went down, asked my mother and she said yes. Odds are, looking back, that Hans had been sent up to his room to make his homework, decided he wanted to do something else and went around the wall dividing our balconies. From that evening on, we listened to music very regularly and started to play other games as well.

Hans was not very possessive of his singles. He gave me one once, because I had to walk home from the city centre. He had forgotten that he had to visit his grandmother and off he went on his bike. This is how I got my first The Rolling Stones single (or 'Sunny Afternoon' by The Kinks, I'm not sure which one I received or the which one I bought for a few dimes/dubbeltjes). This was my true introduction to The Rolling Stones, 'Street Fighting Man'/'No Expectations'. Not that I truly liked the songs at the time. Especially 'No Expectations'. What kind of song was that? In fact it turned out to be my introduction to the blues, despite having no clue at the time.

Fast forward, circa 10 years. I can't remember when I bought Beggars Banquet. It must have been in 1978 - 1980. I am very certain that it must have been one of the first Stones albums I bought, when I started to have my own income.

Fast forward  some 40+ years. This week I played Beggars Banquet, twice in a row. Listening to the album intensely, it made me realise something that only comes with life's experiences. This album made me listen to musical styles that I had never truly listened to before. Country, blues, bluesrock, folkrock and what not. Beggars Banquet contains it all. And as an 18 year old, I really had no clue what I was listening to.

Of course, the album opens with the song that is still the staple song of every live show the band plays to this day, 'Sympathy For The Devil'. It had been released as a single in 1973, by popular demand. I had bought the single at a discount price, so had it and new it before I first heard that superior version on the 1970 live album, I bought in 1976 with birthday money. Listening once again with a relatively fresh ear, I noticed how special the song builds up. It is a piano and percussion based song and some great ooh-oohing. In 2021 it sounds as powerful as it did to me in the past. It is also the only song Charlie Watts sings on.

'No Expectations' has become one of my favourites for a long time. I just love the way The Stones can play the blues. Acoustic slide guitar playing was not something I was accustomed to in 1969. I had no idea what I was listening to. Nowadays it is a normal thing for me to hear. Not then. The country element? Totally unknown to me. Later in the 1970s country was Tammy Wynette and Dutch bands playing country, so definitely not for me. And now I realise The Rolling Stones were playing it in 1968! Almost confusing.

'Dear Doctor', another country influenced song, is as funny as it was when I heard it for the first time. Not having heard it for perhaps two decades, I had no clue how it ended anymore. So I laughed a little all over again. I loved the way Mick sings here and still do. The harmonies are just as much fun. I can only wonder how this song landed in 1968. In 2021 with me just great.

Then there's 'Parachute Woman' and 'Prodical Son', that can be lumped into the category folk/bluesrock as well. The first has such a great groove. A pre 'Live With Me' on Let It Bleed, which is louder. This is a band not afraid to take on anything and lay down that superb groove. Jagger's (or Jones' harp? They are both credited on Wikipedia) is giving it that extra rough edge.

There are two songs extra-ordinaire besides 'Sympathy For The Devil' on this album as well. 'Jigsaw Puzzle' and 'Salt Of The Earth' showcase what The Rolling Stones would become masters at in the future, right up to 1997's 'Saint Of Me'. Long, drawn out songs containing a storyline, that impress. 'Jigsaw Puzzle' impressed me tremendously in 1978. The drive of the acoustic guitar, the honky tonk piano, the slide guitar, the melody, that weird bass part and the second electric, high up played guitar and not to forget that weird lyric. This is a band that is making strides into its own. 'Salt Of The Earth' holds some gospel elements as well. (Not that I recognised that at the time.)

And then there is 'Stray Cat Blues', another song I knew in a better version first, yes, thanks to Mick Taylor's fabulous guitar playing. What a fantastic song! Right up to today it is one of the best bluesrock songs I know. The lyric could not be released in 2021, luckily we already have it for over 50 years. 'Stray Cat Blues' is so forceful, charged even, in a way that The Stones would only seldom reach in later years.

Finally there's the single. For The Rolling Stones' standards in the 1960s it can almost be called a flop. It did not get higher than the low top 10 and in its second week at that. I never really cared for it as well, compared to all the other ones. In comes 2021 and perhaps for the first time I truly heard how powerful it is. The interplay between the forcefully played acoustic guitar and Nicky Hopkins' piano is fabulous. There is no other word for it. The song has a truckload of power, even if it isn't among The Rolling Stones' best singles.

Overseeing the whole album I jump to a surprising conclusion. Beggars Banquet is lumped into the category of classic rock albums with ease. For a classic rock album it contains so much acoustic guitar at its heart and for a band not having a piano player among its original five members, the instrument is leading a lot of the songs. Nicky Hopkins plays a huge role, as he would in the coming years. His name must be written in gold on the side of Beggars Banquet.

In 1968 The Rolling Stones was a band in transition. Founder Brian Jones had all but stepped away from his band, leaving it all to the other four, who had some help here and there and a producer, Jimmy Miller, who gave the band a new focus. The band managed to move from the 60s hitmachine to an album band and the reputation it still leans on today. And rightly so. The greatest rock and roll band in the world? For my generation? Certainly.

Wout de Natris

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