111: BEGGARS BANQUET | THE ROLLING STONES

Jean Luc Godard’s 1968 Sympathy For The Devil film is real interesting depiction of the time inter-spliced with The Stones recording this well loved song. And it’s really the last we see of Brian Jones who, as you can tell, is barley there. He died not too long after this. Check out the blu ray here.

Richie Unterberger at AllMusic: The Stones forsook psychedelic experimentation to return to their blues roots on this celebrated album, which was immediately acclaimed as one of their landmark achievements. A strong acoustic Delta blues flavor colors much of the material, particularly "Salt of the Earth" and "No Expectations," which features some beautiful slide guitar work. Basic rock & roll was not forgotten, however: "Street Fighting Man," a reflection of the political turbulence of 1968, was one of their most innovative singles, and "Sympathy for the Devil," with its fire-dancing guitar licks, leering Jagger vocals, African rhythms, and explicitly satanic lyrics, was an image-defining epic. On "Stray Cat Blues," Jagger and crew began to explore the kind of decadent sexual sleaze that they would take to the point of self-parody by the mid-'70s. At the time, though, the approach was still fresh, and the lyrical bite of most of the material ensured Beggars Banquet's place as one of the top blues-based rock records of all time.

wiki: 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.

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.

Beggars Banquet was a top-ten album in many markets, including the US (number 5) and their native UK (number 3). While the album lacked a "hit single" at the time of its release, songs such as "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Street Fighting Man" became rock radio staples for decades to come.

Being one of their most acclaimed albums, it appears on many "Greatest Albums" lists, including Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Full article