The Rolling Stones released Beggars Banquet in the United States on December 7, 1968, through London Records. Their first album with producer Jimmy Miller moved away from the psychedelia of Their Satanic Majesties Request and put blues and country influences back near the center of their music. Yet some of its toughest sounds came from unexpected sources: the guitars driving “Street Fighting Man” were acoustic.
Recording took place at Olympic Sound Studios in London between March and July 1968, with mixing at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles. Miller joined Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in shaping the arrangements. In his memoir excerpt published by Tape Op, engineer Phill Brown recalled that the songs were rehearsed and their structures worked out before the rhythm section usually joined in. The band could change a song’s feel repeatedly before settling on the version that reached the record.
Richards’ cassette experiments gave “Street Fighting Man” its abrasive guitar sound. He pushed an acoustic guitar into distortion through a small recorder, preserving its sharp attack while making it sound amplified. He told Guitar Player that the track’s only electric instrument was the bass he overdubbed. A conventional electric guitar, he explained, would have sustained too much for the sound he wanted. The overloaded recording was part of the arrangement, and Brown recalled that Richards’ cassette demo was transferred to eight-track tape.
Charlie Watts contributed with a compact 1930s practice kit that folded into a case. Richards remembered how large those small drums sounded on the recording: “When you’re recording, the size of things has got nothing to do with it.” Brown also recalled recording Watts playing an African tom-tom in the studio stairwell for overdubs. They were finding different spaces and instruments to get the sounds they needed.
“Sympathy for the Devil” underwent its own transformation. Initially conceived in a folk style, it developed into a samba after Richards suggested changing the tempo and adding percussion. The sessions were captured in Jean-Luc Godard’s film Sympathy for the Devil, also known as One Plus One. That footage preserves something a finished album usually conceals: a band trying different approaches while the identity of a song is still taking shape.
The record’s presentation became a separate argument. London Records in the United States and Decca in Britain rejected the proposed photograph of a graffiti-covered restroom, and the dispute delayed the release. The LP eventually reached shops with a restrained invitation design bearing the band’s name, the album title and an RSVP. The bathroom image associated with later editions was the rejected proposal; the invitation was the cover original buyers received.
Brian Jones’ acoustic slide guitar on “No Expectations” offered a quieter contrast to the attack of “Street Fighting Man.” Its place immediately after “Sympathy for the Devil” made the album’s range apparent within the first two tracks. Beggars Banquet was the last full Stones album completed with Jones in the lineup. He also contributed to two songs on the following studio album, Let It Bleed, which was released in 1969 after his death.
