Last Updated on 27 January 2026 by Massimo M.
Released in 1968, Beggars Banquet is the seventh album in the Rolling Stones’ UK discography (the ninth in the US discography).
The album, published by Decca in the UK (SKL 4955) and by London Records in the USA (PS 539) represents an important turning point in the Rolling Stones’ musical production.
In Beggars Banquet for the first time the Stones set aside the typically English pop rock and psychedelic sounds used in their previous works, one for all Their Satanic Majesties Request published the previous year, and adopt a musical language strongly oriented towards typical US sounds.
The songs collected on the vinyl are very blues, rock and folk in nature and, moreover, they are not covers but all songs born from the increasingly fruitful collaboration between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
Furthermore, Mick Jagger decided to hire Jimmy Miller for the production, who had already worked successfully with Steve Winwood’s Traffic and the Spencer Davis Group.
The collaboration between Miller and the creative duo Jagger/Richards was evidently a success that also produced important results in the following years. In fact, Miller’s production lasted until 1973, favoring the creation of the Stones’ masterpieces, namely Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main St, as well as obviously the album we are talking about in this article.
The most significant song contained in Beggars Banquet is certainly the famous Sympathy For The Devil. It is undoubtedly one of the most analyzed texts in the history of rock which even at the time caused quite a few protests and outcry, being interpreted, by a certain right-thinking and bigoted part of society, as a sort of elegy to Satan, which led to the inevitable accusation of Satanism against the band. Very interesting, for those interested in learning more, is the documentary made in 1968 by Jean-Luc Godard entitled One plus one (aka Sympathy for the devil, in Italy The rolling stones according to Godard). The film shows the Rolling Stones in the recording studio in 1968, working on Sympathy for the Devil, following its complete genesis from the first draft versions to the final version which is then released on disc.
From Wikipedia: ” The album was released at the end of 1968, on December 6 in England and December 7 in the United States. Commercially it did worse than the previous Their Satanic Majesties Request, reaching the same number 3 position at home, but only number 5 in the United States, but was acclaimed by critics almost unanimously, and in retrospect defined as “the greatest rock album of the sixties”.
« The Stones have returned to their roots and this is the best album they have ever made. » (Disc, November 23, 1968.) « The Stones are back and bringing back rock and roll. » (Rolling Stone, August 10, 1968.)
« The album is full of the hard, lustful rock that made the Stones the most subversive rabble-rousers since Fagin’s band (Oliver Twist) onwards. Yielding to a mood very widespread in the world of pop, Beggars Banquet returns to the wild vitality of rhythm & black blues and the authentic simplicity of country music. » (Time Magazine, October 11, 1968.)
« This album is to the Beatles what Courbet is to Manet, Michelangelo to Tintoretto, Realism to Expressionism. » (International Times, November 15, 1968.) « There’s everything: the Bible, Satan, street battles and of course sex. Best thing the Stones ever did. » (Sunday Mirror, 1 December 1968.) « Beggars Banquet remains to this day one of the best albums in rock history. » (Steve Appleford, 1997.)
« The lyrics talk about sex, drugs, politics. The Stones are the modern outlaws of music, who, like their legendary black ancestors, court the devil and play inspired by him. » (Piero Scaruffi, 1999.)
« Beggars Banquet is a powerful and brazen, lacerating and capricious work, overshadowed by a pair of masterpieces such as Sympathy for the Devil and Street Fighting Man. » (Enzo Gentile, Dictionary of pop rock, 2002.)
« The Stones album closest to pure blues is also their most intimately rock, for many that of mature and conscious rebellion – therefore dangerous – and for others the one that best condenses the idea of sex & drugs & rock and roll. Extraordinarily beautiful album, whatever it is. » (Blow Up, 2003.)
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Traklist
Side A
Sympathy for the Devil – 6:18
No Expectations – 3:56
Dear Doctor – 3:21
Parachute Woman – 2:20
Jigsaw Puzzle – 6:05
Side B
Street Fighting Man – 3:15
Prodigal Son (Robert Wilkins) – 2:51
Stray Cat Blues – 4:37
Factory Girl – 2:08
Salt of the Earth – 4:47
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