Beggars Banquet

First, the congas. Then, the unmistakable yowls of Mick Jagger. Then the lyric:

"Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith"

It is, of course, "Sympathy for the Devil," the lead-off track of the Rolling Stones' album Beggars Banquet, which was released fifty years ago this month. Songs like this one are so ingrained in me--I can hear every note, every inflection in Jagger's voice--that I can't possibly remember a time when I didn't know it, but of course there was.

Beggars Banquet (I would be remiss as an old copy editor to note that there should be an apostrophe between the r and s of Beggars, depending on how many beggars are involved in said banquet) was a return to the Stones' blues roots. It followed Their Satanic Majesties Request, which was a stab at psychedelia that was clearly influenced by the Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. As an album, Beggars Banquet has many so-so tracks, but it was two classic and magnificent rock songs.

"Sympathy for the Devil" came to Mick Jagger while reading Baudelaire and the novel The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. There have been many artistic forms of personifying Satan that go back to John Milton, but this one, as the title suggests, asks for sympathy, and points out that while he was there during the worst incidents of mankind, mankind itself bears some of the responsibility. He says that "I rode the tanks in the general's ranks, while the blitzkrieg raged and the fighting stank," but he doesn't take credit for it, or any of the others, such as the deaths of Anastasia or the Kennedys.

The other great song is "Street Fighting Man," also with lyrics by Jagger, that bemoans that while there was revolution at the time in France and the U.S., nothing was happening in London:

"But what can a poor boy do,
Except play in a rock 'n' roll band
While in sleepy Londontown
There's no place for a street fighting man"

The opening chords, strummed on acoustic guitar by Richards. Then the drum of Charlie Watts kicks in. It's one of the greatest opening riffs of any rock song, period, even better to me than "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." When it was played over the closing credits of the film V for Vendetta it made me like the movie more.

The songs were both controversial. After a record with the word "Satanic" in it and then a song sympathetic to the devil, the Stones were accused of being devil worshipers, and "Street Fighting Man" openly calls for revolution--"I think the time is right for palace revolution." The Stones had always been the dark side of the British invasion, the bad boys to the Beatles' good boys, and now they seemed even more dangerous.

Beggars Banquet was the last album to be released in Brian Jones' lifetime, and the last one he played on all tracks. The other songs on the record range from pretty good to forgettable. They include "No Expectations," one of their country blues songs, and "Jigsaw," which I think is the third best cut on the record. There's also a song, "Prodigal Son," by country blues legend Robert Wilkins. The Stones began by emulating old American blues men, and this album got them back on that wavelength. I think their following album, Let It Bleed, was their best. I'll write about that when the fiftieth anniversary rolls around.