Rolling Stones

Spring 1968: the squares of Europe's great capitals are swarming with angry students, Paris has its barricades, and from Berlin comes the echo of the slogan "We want everything and we want it now": the days of peace and universal love are giving way to the days of rage. The Rolling Stones, shrewd operators that they are, realize it's time to leave behind the psychedelic adventure, the acid trips and the hippie utopia, which decidedly don't suit them, and throw themselves body and soul into the fever pitch of '68 — so much so that Mick Jagger himself would even go on to take part in some demonstrations against the Vietnam War.

Starting with the band's original, deliberately provocative choice of cover art (a public restroom covered in graffiti), later censored and replaced with a virginal white sleeve, the Stones show they want to reclaim their image as the ugly, dirty and bad boys — since playing the strung-out hippies hadn't done them much good.

From a sonic standpoint, with "Beggars Banquet" the Rolling Stones set their musical compass straight again, after it had suddenly gone haywire in a clumsy attempt to ape the Beatles, and they do so by returning to the raw blues of their early days; there's no longer any trace of the pop of "Between The Buttons", let alone the psychedelia of "Their Satanic Majestic Request"; everything goes back to being pure blues pulp, often acoustic, propped up by a sturdy rhythm section, by Nick Hopkins's immense piano work - the true jewel in the album's crown - and by Keith Richards's cutting guitar. The lyrics, beyond the usual references to sex and drugs, give voice to youthful discontent and drip with empathy for the working class. Never again will the Rolling Stones be this revolutionary and this dangerous.

The album's masterpiece, fittingly placed at the very start to set the record straight, is "Sympathy For The Devil": a demonic sabbath set to a samba beat, a percussive obsession driven by Hopkins's piano phrasing (arguably the greatest session man in rock history) and by the stiletto jabs of Keith Richards's Telecaster, taut as never before; Mick Jagger slips perfectly into the role of Lucifer, and like a true messiah of hell rewrites the history of humanity. On the acoustic, elegant "No Expectations", Brian Jones briefly resurfaces from the abyss of drugs and existential spleen he'd fallen into, just long enough to give the song a magical pedal steel part. The country sound of "Dear Doctor" lays out ideas that would be properly developed on the following "Let It Bleed". Wyman's plastic bass, the ever-present Hopkins's piano figures and Richards's slide guitar reach perfect cohesion in the hallucinated visions of "Jigsaw Puzzle", the album's other masterpiece.

Side two opens with the rock-solid battle hymn "Street Fighting Man", built on a riff carved in granite and Watts's "military" drumming; the lyrics represent the strongest political anathema ever penned by the celebrated Jagger/Richards partnership, and above all the line "Well then what can a poor boy do except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band" perfectly captures the restlessness of the angry youth of '68 (the track contains the last contribution - his sitar part - that Brian Jones would bring to the Rolling Stones' story; shortly afterwards he'd be ousted from the band, and in 1969 he'd be found dead at the bottom of a swimming pool). The gritty, perverted street blues of "Stray Cat Blues" - whose lyrics recount the "exploits" of a man luring underage girls - cements Jagger and co.'s status as public enemy number one. The bucolic elegy of "Factory Girl" and the choral gospel of "Salt Of The Earth" fittingly close out an unrepeatable work for the Rolling Stones, one that thirty-five years after its release has lost none of its sinister charm, and that even today puts every self-styled "rebel" of contemporary rock to shame.

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08/11/2006