After Their Satanic Majesties Request, the Stones'fuzzy psychedelic experiment (and answer to Sgt. Pepper's), the band got back to their core on Beggars Banquet — to their darker instincts, and even to their bluesy roots, on songs like “Jigsaw Puzzle,” “Parachute Woman,” “Prodigal Son” and the equally countrified “Dear Doctor” — more of a jaunty answer to the Band than to the Beatles. “Factory Girl” and “Salt of the Earth” are affecting and spare. Brian Jones, on the outs, contributes a sepulchral slide guitar to the fatalistic “No Expectations.”

In an album that responds more to the chaos of '68 and to themselves than to any fellow artists, the music is masterful; the mood is one of dissolution and resignation, in the guise of a voice of an ambivalent authority. That, of course, would be the Mick. “Street Fighting Man” is a charged-up call to activism, to bloody up the Establishment. Except that he may be somewhere else, because, like, what can a poor boy do — even if he's a rock star being pampered by stray cats?

No less riveting is “Sympathy for the Devil,” sung by the Satan the Stones saw in all of us. This was another classic the… read more »