Preproduction:
Early-mid
February 1968: Keith Richards' home (Redlands), West
Wittering, Sussex,
England
February
21-Mid-March 1968: R. G. Jones Studios, Morden, Surrey,
England
Recorded:
March
17-April 3, 1968: Olympic Sound Studios, London, England
May
9-23, 1968: Olympic Sound Studios, London, England
June
4-10, 1968: Olympic Sound Studios, London, England
June
24-28, 1968: Olympic Sound Studios, London, England
Overdubbed
& mixed:
July
6-25, 1968: Sunset Sound Studios, Los Angeles, USA
Producer:
Jimmy
Miller
Chief
engineers:
Glyn Johns & Eddie Kramer
Released:
December
1968
Original
label: London Records
(Polygram)
Contributing musicians: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, Brian Jones, Nicky Hopkins, Jimmy Miller, Dave Mason, Rocky Dijon, Rick Grech, Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Watts Street (L.A.) gospel choir.
Sympathy for the Devil
No Expectations
Dear Doctor
Parachute Woman
Jigsaw Puzzle
Street Fighting Man
Prodigal Son
Stray Cat Blues
Factory Girl
Salt of the Earth
(The title) comes from a cat called Christopher Gibbs. Mick laid it on me but it was Christopher who arrived at that mixture. Although we had all been throwing around Tramps' Mushup or something. On the same idea. We wanted to do the picture. That idea came first, the beggars thing came first... Mick was very much into that tattered minstrel bit then.
I don't find (the cover we proposed) at all offensive. Decca has put out a sleeve showing an atom bomb exploding. I find that more upsetting.
Anita, Mick and I found this wall. Barry
Feinstein
photographed it. It was a great picture. A real funky cover. The
fight
(Decca Records) gave us we dug in our heels. They really
wouldn't budge.
It stopped the album from coming out (sooner). Eventually it got
to be
too much of a drag. It went on for 9 months or so. It was like
them saying,
We
don't give a shit if your album never goes out. After
that, we knew
it was impossible and started looking around to do it
differently.
We really have tried to keep the album
within
the bounds of good taste. I mean we haven't shown the whole
lavatory. That
would have been rude. We've only shown the top half! Two people
at the
record company have told us that the sleeve is terribly
offensive.
Apart from them we have been unable to find anyone else who it
offends.
I asked one person to pick out something that offended him and
he quite
seriously picked out Bob Dylan. Apparently Bob
Dylan's Dream
on the wall offends him... We've gone as far as we can in terms
of concessions
over the release of this sleeve. I even suggested that they put
it in a
brown paper bag with Unfit For Children and the title of
the album
on the outside. But no, they wouldn't have it. They stuck to
their guns...
It was simply an idea that had not been done before and we chose
to put
the writing on a lavatory wall because that's where you see most
writings
on walls. There's really nothing obsecene there except in
people's own
minds... We'll get this album distributed somehow even if I have
to go
down the end of Greek Street and Carlisle Street at two o'clock
on Saturday
morning and sell them myself.
I've lost interest in (the album cover
battle)
situation. It's been a complete waste of energy. We agreed to
them using
a different sleeve in the end and it still hasn't been realised
yet. They
change their minds all the time about it - come and go.
(The fight) was so silly - everything
written
on the wall was relevant to the album. Do they really believe
people don't
read things on public lavatory walls?
We copped out, but we did it for money, so
it was all right.
There is a change between the material on Satanic Majesties and Beggars Banquet. I'd grown sick to death of the whole Maharishi guru shit and the beads and bells. Who knows where these things come from, but I guess it was a reaction to what we'd done in our time off and also that severe dose of reality. A spell in prison at Wormwood Scrubs would certanily give you room for thought! I was fucking pissed with being busted. So it was, Right we'll go and strip this thing down. There's a lot of anger in the music from that period.
During that long recording lay-off after Between
The
Buttons, I got rather bored with what I was playing on
guitar...
Anyway I eventually got into open-D tuning, which I used on Beggars
Banquet. Street Fighting Man is all that, and Jumpin'
Jack
Flash.
Child of the Moon was one of the early open-tuning
numbers
on the electric guitars, because Street Fighting Man was
all acoustic
guitars.
I (was) working a lot with open-E and open-D
tuning for Beggars Banquet, working from what I'd learned
during
that year off the year before. (But I wasn't using the open-G
yet), not
at that time, except I played around with it for slide...
Jagger came to me after Satanic
Majesties
and said, We're going to get a new producer, so I said,
OK, fine.
He said, We're going to get an American. I thought, Oh
my God,
that's all I need. I don't think my ego can stand having some
bloody Yankee
coming in here and start telling me what sort of sound to get
with the
Rolling Stones. So I said, I know somebody! I know
there's one in
England already and he's fantastic, and he'd just done the
Traffic
album: Jimmy Miller. And it was a remarkably good record he
made, the first
record he made with Traffic. I said, He's a really nice guy.
I'd
met him, he'd been in the next studio room and I said, I'm
sure he'd
be fantastic. Anything but some strange lunatic, drug
addict from Los
Angeles. So... Jagger actually took the bait and off he went,
met Jimmy
Miller and gave him the job. And the first thing Jimmy Miller
did (laughs)
was fire ME. Cause he'd been using Eddie Kramer as an engineer.
And so,
naturally, quite obviously, he wanted to use his own engineer,
the guy
he knew.
I came in at a crucial time. The night
Jagger
phoned I just knew he was going to ask me to produce them. I
just glided
over to his house on a cloud. Before I was there 10 minutes he
asked me
if I'd be interested. Besides being excited, I'd always been a
Stones fan...
They'd play me songs on cassette or acoustic guitar, and we'd
talk about
how we'd develop it. That's how we came to record on cassette.
I'd contribute
in an unobtrusive, uninsulting, unnegative way. Everything was
always great;
how could WE make it better.
(Mick) told me that he'd liked what I'd done
with Traffic. We met and discussed ideas and later we began the
sessions.
Mick has found it too much of a strain producing Their
Satanic Majesties
Request and playing as well. So he contacted me.
(Even though he wasn't really contributing
anymore), there was no immediate necessity to go through the
drama of replacing
Brian because no gigs were lined up. We first had to recognize
the fact
that we needed to make a really good album. After Satanic
Majesties
we
wanted to make a STONES album.
I'm delighted (to produce the Stones). Being
down here with the Stones while they are rehearsing, you get to
know and
feel their music. You become one of them, which not only makes
for a feeling
of brotherhood and love, but also keeps you in sympathy with the
ideas.
It saves a lot of time and misunderstanding in the recording
studio later.
Jumpin' Jack Flash and Street
Fighting
Man came about because I had become fascinated by the
possibilities
of playing an acoustic guitar through a cassette recorder, using
it as
a pick-up, really, so that I could still get the crispness of an
acoustic
- which you can never get off an electric guitar - but
overloading this
tiny little machine so the effect was that it sounded both
acoustic and
electric. Technology was starting to increase in sophistication,
but I
just wanted to reduce it back to basics. I bought one of the
first cassette
machines - a must for a budding songwriter - and then day in,
day out recorded
on it. Then I began to get interested in the actual sound of the
machine,
how close you could put the microphone to the guitar and what
effect you
could get out of it... When we were in the studio I would bring
in that
little Philips cassette recorder, get a wooden extension
speaker, plug
that into the back of the recorder, shove a microphone in front
of the
speaker in the middle of the studio and record it. W e would all
sit back
and watch this little microphone record the cassette machine in
the middle
of the studio at Olympic, which was the size of Salder's Wells.
Then we'd
go back, listen to it, play over it, mash it up and there was
the track.
(Brian
was) probably the one I've made most effort to get along with.
When the
sessions started, he came to me and said he didn't think he
would be able
to contribute much. I didn't push him. I asked Mick what the
situation
was and Mick said: Look, you can't force him, but he'll be
OK. And
he was right. When we started working he really got into it and
started
to get excited, and he apologized to me for having had doubts at
the beginning.
Brian is very insecure. He has to have people around him all the
time -
and he has a lot of hang-ups. But when he's doing something that
really
interests him he's almost a different character.
God, what was I doing? Who was I living with? It was all recorded
in London, and I was living in this rented house in Chester
Square. I was
living with Marianne Faithfull. Was I still? Yeah. And I was just
writing
a lot, reading a lot. I was educating myself. I was reading a lot
of poetry,
I was reading a lot of philosophy. I was out and about. I was very
social,
always hanging out with (art gallery owner) Robert Fraser's group
of people.
And I wasn't taking so many drugs that it was messing up my
creative processes.
It was a very good period, 1968 - there was good feeling in the
air. It
was very a creative period for everyone. There was lot going on in
the
theater. Marianne was kind of involved with it, so I would go to
the theater
upstairs, hang out with the young directors of the time and the
young filmmakers.
I'm very hung-up on electronic music at
present.
If there is not room to include it on our album I would like to
do something
separately.
Brian wasn't really involved on Beggars
Banquet, apart from some slide on No Expectations;
that was
the only thing he played on the whole record. He wasn't turning
up to the
sessions and he wasn't very well. In fact we didn't want him to
turn up,
I don't think.
Brian Jones was in very bad shape. He was OK on the sessions for Satanic Majesties but on Beggars Banquet, he'd come in with his guitar and half an hour later he'd keel over and be out cold. There's a lot of very prominent piano on that album and that's the reason - essentially they were short one guitarist.
There are a couple country tunes (on the new album) 'cause we've always liked country music... Keith has always been country. That's what his scene was. We still think of country songs as a bit of a joke, I'm afraid. We don't really know anything about country music really, we're just playing games. We aren't really into it enough to know. I think it's going to be a good album.
I think that everybody knew that we had to
get back to our roots, you know, and start over... That's why we
got Jimmy
Miller as a producer and came out with Beggars Banquet and
those
kinds of albums after, which was reverting back and getting more
guts -
which is what the Stones are all about.
(Along with Exile On Main Street),
Beggars
Banquet was also very important. That body of work,
between those two
albums: that was the most important time for the band. It was
the first
change the Stones had to make after the teeny-bopper phase.
Until then,
you went onstage fighting a losing battle. You want to play
music? Don't
go up there. What's important is hoping no one gets hurt and how
we are
getting out... To compensate for that, Mick and I developed the
songwriting
and records. We poured our music into that. Beggars Banquet
was
like coming out of puberty.
(It's) just a hazy mirror of what we were
thinking last summer when we wrote the songs.
(My favorite Stones record to make was t)he
last album. But when you get involved in the mixing you get so
bored 'cause
you've heard it two thousand times.
I guess I like Beggars Banquet the
best of everything we've done.
I think Beggars Banquet, Sticky
Fingers and Let It Bleed.
Yeah, well, you KNOW the ones I like. The
first album was good. Beggars Banquet was good. That's
about it.
I like Beggars Banquet and Let
It
Bleed very much.
Well, funnily enough, this year I've
listened
to (Stones albums) more than ever, because they all came out on
CD... (T)he
ones that impressed me were the ones I always thought were
superior - Beggars
Banquet, Let It Bleed. And Sticky Fingers.
And Exile.
(My favorite Stones album ) without me (on
it is)
Beggars Banquet.
The album bristles with the brand of hard, raunchy rock that has helped to establish the Stones as England's most subversive roisterers since Fagin's gang in Oliver Twist. In keeping with a widespread mood in the pop world, Beggars Banquet turns back to the raw vitality of Negro R&B and the authentic simplicity of country music.
One thing is certain - Sympathy for the
Devil is a Rolling Stones classic, beautifully built and
with a brilliant
lyric. If I could do it justice in words I would be writing
songs like
it myself.
I think the new Stones album is unflawed and
lacking something. I think the new Beatles album is flawed and
great anyway.
The Stones have unleased their rawest,
ludest,
most arrogant, most savage record yet. And it's beautiful.
The Rolling Stones are constantly changing
but beneath the changes they remain the most formal of rock
bands. Their
successive releases have been continuous extensions of their
approach,
not radical redefinitions, as has so often been the case with
the Beatles.
The Stones are constantly being reborn, but somehow the baby
always looks
like its parents... On Beggars Banquet the Stones try to
come to
terms with violence more explicitly than before and in so doing
are forced
to take up the subject of politics. The result is the most
sophisticated
and meaning statement we can expect to hear concerning the two
themes -
violence and politics - that will probably dominate the rock of
1969...
They make it perfectly clear that they are sickened by
contemporary society.
But it is not their role to tell people what to do. Instead,
they use their
musical abilities like a seismograph to record the intensity of
feelings,
the violence, that is so prevalent now...
Beggars Banquet is a complete album. While it does not attempt Sgt. Pepper-type unity it manages to touch all the bases. It derives its central motive and mood from the theme of "revolution" but isn't limited to that. Over at the Stones house there's plenty of room for groupies, doctors, jigsaw puzzles, factory girls, and broken hearts as well. Yet even these subjects are colored by the impact of Sympathy for the Devil and Street Fighting Man. Beggars Banquet ought to convince us all that the Stones are right. By putting all these different themes on the same album the Stones are trying to tell us that they all belong together. They do.