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It’s another 45 year anniversary. This time it’s “Beggar’s Banquet”. One time I was driving in Seattle in my old red pickup and a song came on the radio. I’d heard the Stones all my life, but just the singles. The Chevy started steering itself until I ended up at a CD store. The song was “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, and I’d never listened to it closely. It made a big impression on me and started me on a journey.
I used to like a lot of thrash bands, then grunge. I like melodic music, but the Stones were off my radar. The journey was expensive, because I had to buy thirty albums. Same with Bowie. I was buying a CD almost every day and got obsessed with them and Bowie.
“Beggar’s Banquet” was probably the second album of theirs I got. It is very acoustic. The record cover is simple, white with script writing and said “RSVP”. It was like a formal invitation to a nice dinner. The real album cover they wanted to use was refused by the record company but they re-released it with that in 2003 or so. It’s a horrible bathroom like in “Trainspotting” and they use graffiti to great effect. It’s a sepia toned picture with dirty porcelain. It looks like the Rolling Stones name is written in lipstick. It also says, “God rolls his own”. There’s an ankh and a peace sign and someone has taco thighs. There’s a weird not to Bob Dylan. Inside joke, probably. Kilroy was here, and so was a naked woman. The back cover has the crediting of the musicians and the song titles, randomly written. Somewhere it says, “Where is Spanish Tony?” who was their drug dealer.
It was a transitional album, because the previous album was the strange answer to “Sgt. Pepper’s” called “Their Satanic Majesties Request”. They were messed up on drugs bigtime. “Beggar’s” was a return to their roots, acoustic blues. “Sympathy for the Devil” is the first song, but doesn’t fit with the rest, since “Sympathy” is an electric rocker.
Brian Jones had puffy eyes and a bowl haircut. He was always on drugs and fighting women. He couldn’t play much because he was so messed up, but he would show up at the studio and want to play. Mick and Keith were pushing him out. Brian would derail their productivity in the studio because he didn’t know the songs. So they kicked him out, which is real hard to do, trust me. Brian Jones drowned in his swimming pool about a month later.
About that time, Keef was making friends with Gram Parsons, who died tragically like many others around the Stones. He influenced Keef’s country sound. Gram was from Georgia, Bakersfield, and Nashville. He showed Keef how to tune his guitar to an open tuning, which I don’t want to explain. It became Keith’s signature, and it’s the reason I never learned how to play Stones songs because I didn’t want to retune all the time. Crazy, since I have a Stones tattoo.
Mick was getting more comfortable as a singer and he sounds like a Chicago blues man. He doesn’t get the credit he deserves.
The Stones had a mobile studio built in ’68. Mick lived in a country house called “Stargroves”. They were tired of being in the studio and wanted to record at their houses, so they made a mobile control unit. That studio recorded dozens of seminal albums by Lou Reed, Marley, Mac, Badco, Zep, etc., etc. They recorded Zep at Headley Grange and Stargroves. They drove the studio around on a flatbed. On the “Physical Graffiti” album, there’s a song called “Black Country Woman” and Eddie Kramer was the engineer. A plane flew over and Robert Plant told him to leave it on the recording.
The Stones were from the street, working class, and they never forgot that. At the height of their fame, Keef had rotten teef. I hope you liked this episode!
My website is www.PaperbackRocker.com. You can find the podcast archives there. Find my books on Amazon by searching my name, Matt Syverson. Follow me on Twitter @PaperbackRocker. Email me at [email protected]. Thanks for listening!