Beggars Banquet is not a polemic or manifesto. It doesn’t advocate anything. It is a reflection of what goes on at the Stones’ house, with a few pictures of the house itself thrown in for good measure.

Jon Landau, Rolling Stone, 1969

Beggars Banquet by the Rolling Stones is one of the most revered albums in rock history. A mix of roots rock rebellion and counterculture politics, the record represented both a return to basics and a step forward. Let’s take a look at how a handful of America’s top rock critics responded with deeply individualized interpretations of this pop masterwork.

Introduction

The Rolling Stones released Beggars Banquet during a turbulent period in both England and America. Street protests against war and for racial equality grew more violent in the year leading up to the recording sessions. Protest leaders like Abbie Hoffman called on rock bands to join the cause. Some answered the call. Yet, at the same time, a segment of rock musicians returned to the music’s roots in blues and country music and remained largely apolitical.   

Therefore, rock critics found their calling politicized. Critics’ enhanced clout as cultural arbiters empowered them to voice their views about politics as well as music.   

In fact, when London Records released Beggars Banquet in late 1968, rock criticism was firmly established as a legitimate form of cultural commentary. But rock discourse reflected the fragmented tastes and politics of rock fandom. Histories of 1960s rock journalism often overlook these divisions, instead portraying a united front against “the establishment.”

A look at four reviews of Beggars Banquet from 1968-69 shows how the album inspired radically different viewpoints because of the musical and political context of the time. By understanding these differences, we gain a more fulsome view of this pivotal juncture in rock journalism. 

Turmoil

When the Stones went into the studio to record Beggars Banquet in spring 1967, they peaked in popularity. Yet, their stock with rock critics plummeted following the release of their last LP, Their Satanic Majesties Request. And the band experienced internal turmoil as fan-favorite Brian Jones struggled with a substance abuse disorder that left him unreliable as a bandmate.

Turmoil also roiled the streets of London. Just as the band began recording, thousands of protestors gathered in Trafalgar Square to protest American action in the Vietnam War. Arrests and injuries resulted, and police officers as well as protestors were hospitalized.

And, months later, as the band finished up the recording, a controversy arose over the album’s planned cover art. The record company rejected a photo of a graffiti-splattered restroom wall, which delayed the disc’s release by several months.

Meanwhile, the Stones’ chief competitor released The Beatles, a double album that reflected the diverse tastes of late-1960s rock fans. Despite its strong sales and reviews, the album did have its detractors. In particular, a song released as a single, “Revolution,” drew criticism from the New Left, including rock critics like Jon Landau. These detractors saw that song and other album tracks as dissing the protest movement.

This mood of disenchantment with The Beatles was in the air when London Records released Beggars Banquet on December 6, 1968. Also in the atmosphere: the sounds of roots rock.  

The Question of Relevance

A review by Richard Goldstein in the Village Voice provides a sense of the inevitable comparisons made between the Stones’ and the Beatles’ new albums. For Goldstein, it was a question of relevance.  

He began by discussing a branch of roots rock:  

The blues revival we are witnessing now is a requiem for rock. The simple fact is that the entire pop renaissance of the mid-60s has failed to sustain itself beyond that first shattering tonal wave. That failure holds true far beyond the sphere of music, the pop sensibility, and its extensions. And painting, theater, cinema, and even politics never moved from a mere fascination with the surface of things toward a true metaphysics of the movement …

… In music, the resurrection of rural verities (as represented in country and blues standards) is certainly an act of rebellion against the ethereal urbanity that now dominates rock. The old forms seemed so unblemished, so incorruptible. “Progressive” rock has come to represent a vast compromise with the liberal establishment … [This was before “progressive rock” meant a genre characterized by extended, complex arrangements].

If rock is to retain its outcast appeal, it must renounce its alliance with the intelligentsia. The simplest way of seeming to affect that renunciation is to declare the entire pop enlightenment null and void. Record companies investing in poeticized electropop are barking up the wrong amp …

A Comparison

Goldstein then went on to compare Beggar’s Banquet with The Beatles:

… The new Beatle album, as sturdy and self-contained a package as they have ever released, has met with a mixed reception from hip critics on both sides of the Atlantic.[1]

In contrast, the new Rolling Stones album, Beggars Banquet, has received unanimously favorable notices from the hip press. I don’t deny its virtues. The arrangements are flawless, the tones subdued without seeming dull. But comparing The Beatles and Beggars Banquet track by track, it is hard to imagine that anyone could condemn The Beatles and praise the Stones on technical grounds alone.

But the simple truth is that Beggar’s Banquet is a far more relevant album than The Beatles, and for that reason alone, it is legitimate to call it the more satisfying work of art. The question of relevance is no critic’s conceit, especially in rock, where it is the only truly relevant criterion. It is ironic that the Stones should grasp the importance of immediacy, while the Beatles, who have always been so overtly concerned with the nuances of trend and taste, produce music that is oblivious to its time.

Yet the Stones have responded much more effectively to their audience’s demand for songs that sound like rockabilly or blues. Their toast to the “Salt of the Earth” is a calculated one, just as a reworking of a Bukka White standard, “Prodigal Son,” is a deliberate attempt to draw bonds between the Blues revival and themselves.[2]

With that, Goldstein ended his discussion of Beggars Banquet.

Return to the Basics

Pete Johnson of the Los Angeles Times also focused on Beggars Banquet’s return to basics: 

The music on the album is the Stones’ celebrated return to their roots …  Their new sound is as hard and driving as anything to be found on their first several albums, a contrast with the artsy craftsy complexity of Her Satanic Majesties Request.

… The album seems to be the most relaxed and best musical portrait yet of the group.

[The hard rockers like “Sympathy for the Devil”] are pure Stones: thumping, rebellious songs which have been a constant with the quintet since the beginning.

“No Expectations” is a beautiful, introspective song rooted in the sound of folk music with acoustic and bottleneck guitar accompaniment …

“Prodigal Son” is fine traditional blues with superb acoustic guitar accompaniment …

Beggars Banquet is one of the best of the Rolling Stones’ albums, a relaxed display of the versatility of one of the few great rock groups.[3]

There were only a “few” great rock groups? An interesting perspective on the state of rock at the end of 1968.  

The Vagaries of Rock Criticism

But not all rock critics agreed with Goldstein and Johnson. Case in point, Paul Nelson, who reviewed Beggars Banquet in Hullabaloo magazine, the predecessor of Circus.

The esteemed roots-music scholar had this to say:

As just about everybody knows, there is a widespread back-to-the-basics movement going on right now in today’s rock scene. Translated into records, this means that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Their Satanic Majesties Request are “out,” and that the new Rolling Stones album, Beggars Banquet, heralded to lead us into the promised land, is “in.” Such are the vagaries of rock criticism …[4]

Nelson quoted Jann Wenner’s advance assessment of Banquet, that it would mark “the formal end of all the pretentious, non-musical, boring, insignificant, self-conscious, and worthless stuff that had been tolerated during the past year [1968] in the absence of any standards set by the several great figures in rock ‘n’ roll.”

That statement perturbed Nelson:  

The trouble with such redundant raves is that, to live up to them (or to live them down), Beggars Banquet would have to be just about as amazing as the creation of the earth in seven days. And, of course, it isn’t. It doesn’t bring back rock ‘n’ roll, because (except to Wenner) rock ‘n’ roll has never been away. It isn’t the Stones’ best album, it isn’t a great album, and it doesn’t mark any particular point at all in the short history of rock ‘n’ roll …

… By blowing up Beggars Banquet beyond all proportion and expectation, Wenner pushes it right into the prime-target area. He goes on and on about this: “The Rolling Stones have returned, and they are bringing back rock ‘n’ roll with them… it is the best record they have yet done … In all aspects, it is a great album … a great rock ‘n’ roll album … an achievement of significance in both lyrics and music … Their new album will mark a point in the short history of rock ‘n’ roll … It is the Stones’ best record, without a doubt.”

However, as someone once said, do not understand me too quickly. I greatly admire Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone magazine (I really do – except in this instance), the Stones are my favorite rock band in all the world, and I like Beggars Banquet. But I also like Their Satanic Majesties Request, Got LIVE If You Want It!, Between the Buttons, and Aftermath, each a greater achievement, I think, than “the best record they have yet done.”

Something Not Quite Together

Why did Nelson deem these earlier albums superior to Beggars Banquet? He said it was because:

Apart from the beautiful and brilliant “No Expectations,” one of the Stones’ finest songs, the material isn’t as good as that of their previous albums. “Sympathy for the Devil” is more pretentious than most of Majesties (and the arrangement is awful), while the Dylan-derived “Jig-Saw Puzzle” is just too Dylan-derived to be considered major. “Prodigal Son” (which is not by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard, as the jacket states, but by Reverend Robert Wilkins) and “Factory Girl” are genre songs – blues and Kentucky hill-country music, respectively – and, on each, the vocal just misses – and to just miss with this music is to miss by a mile …  

Further, there is something which is not quite together about Beggars Banquet. Laxity and looseness prevail. The group’s playing somehow lacks excitement and immediacy, and Jagger’s singing is somewhat disappointing. The production (Jimmy Miller) and the engineering (Glyn Johns) are not up to the Stones’ standards. All in all, a good album – yes, a very good album – maybe; a great album — absolutely not.

The Most Formal of Rock Bands

Although he didn’t mention it, Nelson had likely read Jon Landau’s review of Beggars Banquet in Rolling Stone. Landau was one of a handful of rebellious critics who started at Crawdaddy! He was unafraid of taking on rock’s sacred cows, like the San Francisco bands. And so, what was his take on the new Rolling Stones album?

Landau’s review takes us back to the days when impassioned and highly knowledgeable rock critics had a lot to say about the milestone albums released in the late 1960s. The young critic began by arguing why the Stones stood out among their peers:    

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 have so often been the case with the Beatles. The Stones are constantly being reborn, but somehow the baby always looks like its parents.

In many ways, 1968 was another one of those blues revival years … Happily, the Stones never got bogged down in the puritanism that marked so many of the English blues bands. They were from the beginning a rock ‘n’ roll blues band.

There we were in the early summer of 1965, with folk music dead and nothing really exciting going on. And then there were the Stones, sneering at the emptiness of what so many people saw all around them, not telling you to do anything about it, but letting you know that they feel it too. The music, with its incessant, repetitious, pounding guitar and drums, and that tension-filled voice, was so permeated with violence that just listening to it was cathartic.

And the Stones live. If the violence of their music was cathartic, how to describe their concerts?[5]

Landau described a Stones show that ended with “cops exploding tear gas” to clear the way for the band to exit the stage. He continued:

Violence. The Rolling Stones are violence. Their music penetrates the raw nerve endings of their listeners and finds its way into the groove marked “release of frustration.” Their violence has always been a surrogate for the larger violence their audience is so obviously capable of.

On Beggar’s Banquet, the Stones tried to come to terms with violence more explicitly than before, and in doing so were forced to take up the subject of politics. The result is the most sophisticated and meaningful statement we can expect to hear concerning the two themes – violence and politics – that will probably dominate the rock of 1969 …

The Stones’ House

Landau then turned to music and politics:

Protest singers in the past were mostly ideologues who set pallid verse to semi-musical melodies. The idea that the music should convey the brunt of their meaning never occurred to them. There were words and there were notes, but there wasn’t any music.

The people who are turning to political themes in their music now are different. They don’t do it as a luxury or for moral reasons; they’re doing it because it is a part of their lives, and they have to express themselves in terms of how what is happening in the streets is affecting their lives.

Beggar’s Banquet is not a polemic or manifesto. It doesn’t advocate anything. It is a reflection of what goes on at the Stones’ house, with a few pictures of the house itself thrown in for good measure [the album cover gatefold] … The Stones are cognizant of the explosions of youthful energy that are going on around them. They recognize the violence inherent in these struggles. They see them as movements for fundamental change and are deeply sympathetic. Yet they are too cynical to really go along themselves. After all, they are rock ‘n’ roll musicians, not politicians. And London is such a sleepy town.[6]

This review is a stark post-counterculture observation of the 1969 rock scene. The purpose of music is to reflect society, not to change it. Landau saw this in the music of the Rolling Stones:

They make it 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. From the beginning, they themselves have been exponents of emotional violence, and it’s hard to imagine any group more suited to voice the feelings of discontent we all share in these most violent of times … They’re riding songs of revolution because they’re giving powerful expression to the feelings that are causing it…[7]

Sympathy

Landau then launched into a detailed, methodical analysis of each song, but written in the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll. Here’s one example: 

“Sympathy for the Devil” rounds out the group of ambiguous, socially aware songs. To me, it is the most distinguished song and performance of the year. Lyrically, there’s a striking picture of a world gone mad. Cops or criminals. Saints or sinners. God is the devil. Whoever is on top makes whoever is beneath him the enemy. Actually, it is always the men on top who are the enemy. Those who claim righteousness for themselves are only interested in perpetuating their own power. Those they vilify are really the righteous ones until they achieve power for themselves. Then they imitate their predecessors, and the process repeats itself through history …

The music is brilliant. The cut opens with just the percussion – a sort of syncopated Bo Diddley, precisely the kind of thing Watts excels at. Then they add Nicky Hopkins’ rhythm piano, perfectly understated. Wyman’s simple baseline matches Watts’ syncopation perfectly throughout the cut. He adds color to the basic rhythm pattern by throwing in some very pretty, loopy baselines. After two verses of Jagger singing, the background voices add that ultra-simple “oo-oo” accompaniment, which continues to grow for the duration of the cut. By the time they reach the end, they sound like a plane taking off, accelerating at an inexorable pace until it finally reaches its normal flight speed, at which point it levels itself off.

Jagger sings with tension and control, constantly pushing himself as far as he can but never crossing over the line between power and excess. The guitar solo by Richards is among the finest rock solos I’ve heard recently …

Beggar’s Banquet is a complete album … 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 … Beggars Banquet ought to convince us all that the Stones are right. By putting in all these different themes on the same album, the Stones are trying to tell us that they all belong together. They do. [8]

Conclusion

These reviews of Beggars Banquet show the differing views of a handful of prominent rock critics. Even in the affirmative reviews, critics differed in the facets of the album they deemed laudatory, as well as the disc’s broader importance.

These sorts of nuanced differences often go unnoticed in analyses of 1960s rock criticism. But by looking at them, we gain a better understanding of the richness and complexity of pop journalism at that time.

And, most importantly, these four reviews of Beggars Banquet demonstrate the value of album reviews written contemporaneously with the release of a notable recording. These reviews do more than capture the thrill of discovery. In addition, these real-time responses depict the relationship between a sanctified slice of vinyl and the community it built.

Notes

---

[1] Richard Goldstein, “Why the Blues.” In Richard Goldstein. Goldstein’s Greatest Hits (Prentice-Hall, 1970): 179-186.

[2] Richard Goldstein, “Why the Blues.” In Richard Goldstein. Goldstein’s Greatest Hits (Prentice-Hall, 1970): 179-186.

[3] Pete Johnson. “Tasteful ‘Banquet’ from the Stones,” Los Angeles Times Calendar, Dec. 1, 1968: 82.

[4] Nelson, Paul. “The Rolling Stones: Beggars Banquet (London)”. Hullabaloo (1969). The Rolling Stones. Rock’s Backpages. Accessed August 7, 2025. http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-rolling-stones-ibeggars-banqueti-london.

[5] Jon Landau. “Beggar’s Banquet,” in The Rolling Stone Record Review (Pocket Books, 1971): 96-103. (Review appeared in the Jan. 4, 1969, Rolling Stone)

[6] Jon Landau. “Beggar’s Banquet,” in The Rolling Stone Record Review (Pocket Books, 1971): 96-103. (Review appeared in the Jan. 4, 1969, Rolling Stone)

[7] Jon Landau. “Beggar’s Banquet,” in The Rolling Stone Record Review (Pocket Books, 1971): 96-103. (Review appeared in the Jan. 4, 1969, Rolling Stone)

[8] Jon Landau. “Beggar’s Banquet,” in The Rolling Stone Record Review (Pocket Books, 1971): 96-103. (Review appeared in the Jan. 4, 1969, Rolling Stone)