by Moe Zilla

Created on: February 20, 2008

"Beggars Banquet" is one of the Rolling Stones' best albums. It includes some of their most famous songs - but also some forgotten gems.

The Stones were growing into the great band they would become during the 1970s, and the album offers a great variety of songs. It opens with "Sympathy for the Devil," one of the Stones' most famous - and infamous songs. (A year later, after the ill-fated Altamont concert at which a fan was killed by Hell's Angels, the Stones would stop playing the song for the next six years.) But the classic track is immediately followed by "No Expectations," a slow, sad blues number with sliding chords on two acoustic guitars. The next song contrasts it's dejected tone with a funny country song - "Dear Doctor," about a man drinking to gain enough courage for his wedding to a "bow-legged sow." (In the surprise ending, Mick uses a falsetto voice to recite the letter that the runaway bride sends: "I'm down in Virginia with your cousin Lou. There'll be no wedding today.")

The Stones were still exploring new directions for the band, and there's a strong mix of different styles throughout the album's eleven tracks. Though this album includes the controversial (and hard-rocking) "Street Fighting Man," it also includes the gentle violins and acoustic guitar on "Factory Girl." But this album also offers hints of the autobiographical lyrics they'd master three years later on "Exile on Main Street." "Jig-Saw Puzzle" offers cryptic descriptions about the members of the band themselves. ("The bass player, he looks nervous about the girls outside...") And the album's last track opens with another great acoustic riff, leading to a call to remember the "Salt of the Earth." As the melody rises to a minor chorus, Mick sings about searching a faceless crowd - "a swirling mass of gray and black and white," adding that "they don't look real to me."

One San Francisco radio station reportedly still plays that song every year on Labor Day, which proves that 40 years after its release, this album still left a strong and lasting impression. It's songs are more personal and more experimental - but the different styles all somehow come together, united almost by the Stones' philosophy of indulgent independence.

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