Beggars Banquet

About Beggars Banquet

Beggars Banquet is a studio album by English rock band the Rolling Stones. It was released in December 1968 by Decca Records in the United Kingdom and London Records in the United States; it is the band's seventh British and ninth American studio album. The recording marked a change in direction for the band following the psychedelic pop of their previous two albums, Between the Buttons and Their Satanic Majesties Request. Styles such as roots rock and a return to the blues rock sound that had marked early Stones recordings dominate the record, and the album is among the most instrumentally experimental of the band's career, as they infuse Latin beats and instruments like the claves alongside South Asian sounds from the tanpura, tabla and shehnai and African-influenced conga rhythms. Its release marks the beginning of the most critically acclaimed period of the Rolling Stones' career. Brian Jones, the band's founder and early leader, had become increasingly unreliable in the studio due to his drug use, and it was the last Rolling Stones album to be released during his lifetime, though he also contributed to two songs on their next album Let It Bleed, which was released after his death. Nearly all rhythm and lead guitar parts were recorded by Keith Richards, the band's other guitarist and primary songwriting partner of the band's lead singer Mick Jagger; together the two wrote all but one of the tracks on the album. Rounding out the instrumentation were bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts, though all members contributed on a variety of instruments. As with most albums of the period, frequent collaborator Nicky Hopkins played piano on many of the tracks. The album was the first Rolling Stones album produced by Jimmy Miller, whose production work formed a key aspect of the Rolling Stones sound throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. more »