Beggars Banquet - History

History

Following the long sessions for the previous album in 1967 and the departure of producer and manager Andrew Loog Oldham, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards hired producer Jimmy Miller, who had produced the Spencer Davis Group and Traffic. The partnership would prove to be a success and Miller would work with the band until 1973.

In March, the band began recording their new album, aiming for a July release. One of the first tracks cut, "Jumpin' Jack Flash", was released only as a single in May 1968, becoming a major hit.

Beggars Banquet was Brian Jones' last full effort with the Rolling Stones. In addition to his slide guitar on "No Expectations", he played harmonica on "Dear Doctor", "Parachute Woman" (along with Mick Jagger) and "Prodigal Son"; sitar and tambura on "Street Fighting Man"; mellotron on "Jigsaw Puzzle"and "Stray Cat Blues", and sang backing vocals on "Sympathy for the Devil". Jones also played an acoustic guitar part on Sympathy for the Devil, but it is not audible in the final mix of the song.

On 7 June 1968, a photoshoot for the album, with photographer Michael Joseph, was held at Sarum Chase, a mansion in London. Previously unseen images from the shoot were exhibited at the Blink Gallery in London in November and December 2008. On 9 September 1968, an WABC Radio News report stated that the release was delayed due to artwork for the album cover, a California artist's work was considered "too dirty to release".

Critics considered the LP as a return to form. It was also a clear commercial success, reaching No. 3 in the UK and No. 5 in the US (on the way to eventual platinum status).

Early LP pressings of the album did not credit Rev. Robert Wilkins as the writer of "Prodigal Son" although the Stones' original "bathroom" cover did. The error was corrected on later pressings. Wilkins' performance of "Prodigal Son" at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival was included on the Vanguard LP Blues at Newport, Volume 2; that performance is similar to the Stones' cover.

On 10–11 December 1968 the band filmed a television extravaganza entitled The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus featuring John Lennon, Eric Clapton, The Who and Jethro Tull, Marianne Faithfull among the musical guests. One of the original aims of the project was to promote Beggars Banquet, but the film was shelved by the Rolling Stones until 1996, when it was finally released officially.

In August 2002, ABKCO Records reissued Beggars Banquet as a newly remastered LP and SACD/CD hybrid disk. This release corrected an important flaw in the original album by restoring each song to its proper, slightly faster speed. Due to an error in the mastering, Beggars Banquet was heard for over thirty years at a slower speed than it was recorded. This had the effect of altering not only the tempo of each song, but the song's key as well. These differences were subtle but important, and the remastered version is about 30 seconds shorter than the original release. It was released once again in 2010 by Universal Music Enterprises in a Japanese only SHM-SACD version.

In 2003, the album was ranked number 57 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In the same year the TV network VH1 named Beggars Banquet the 67th greatest album of all time. The album is also featured in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.