Review: RSD Edition of the Rolling Stones' 'Beggars Banquet' on Colored Vinyl

When last ABKCO reissued The Rolling Stones'  Beggars Banquet on stereo vinyl, the record arrived as the usual black plastic disc but with a sly slipcover depicting the bowdlerized white-invitation cover and a bonus twelve-inch single featuring "Sympathy for the Devil" in its rare mono mix. That was for the LP's fiftieth anniversary. For its fifty-fifth, ABKCO is rolling the Stones' best out again but without the slipcover, the single, or the blackness.

Review: 50th Anniversary Edition of Rolling Stones' 'Beggars Banquet'

The old story goes that Their Satanic Majesties Request was an unmitigated disaster and The Rolling Stones desperately needed to find their way back from a 2000 light-year remove from the earthier sounds that made them. The nice thing about Beggars Banquet is that the Stones made that restorative trek without entirely discarding the colors, instrumentation, and imaginative lyricism that made Satanic Majesties such a gas to certain fans (such as me). That increased creativity coupled with a return to the Stones’ blues/Rock & Roll roots is the key to their finest album. 

Take “Street Fighting Man”, a three-chord piece of uncomplicated Rock & Roll zapped to life with Indian instrumentation, a tangy combination of hi-fi and lo-fi recording techniques, and provocatively ambivalent lyrics about the band’s role on the outskirts of 1968’s revolutionary temper. Take “Sympathy for the Devil”, another three-chord simplicity that revives the frantic rhythms that added so much texture to Satanic Majesties with a sweeping, funny, frightening lyric that I contend is Rock & Roll’s very best. Take the murky drones and Mellotron of “Stray Cat Blues”, the ethereal take on the blues called “No Expectations”, the outlandish character piece “Jigsaw Puzzle”, the goony humor of “Dear Doctor”, the tapestry of shimmering strings on which “Factory Girl” lounges, and the lush and hippie-ish “Salt of the Earth”. Just as Let It Bleed and Exile on Main Street needed Beggars Banquet to establish their formats, Beggars Banquet would not exist without Their Satanic Majesties Request to serve as its artistic stepping-stone.