Unlike their peers, the Stones were able to weather the era and score huge hits with 1968's Beggar's Banquet and 1978's Some Girls.

By Michael Salfino - January 22, 2018

The Rolling Stones have long established their resiliency, but perhaps the most impressive artistic testament to their endurance is having top-rated albums a decade apart, in both 1968 and 1978. It’s not just the time between the acclaimed releases of Beggar’s Banquet and Some Girls, but the dramatic differences in those respective eras of popular music that the Stones were able to somehow dominate.

In 1968, the American sound of Bob Dylan and The Band were the rage, with Dylan coming off a string of electric albums that revolutionized the genre and The Band graduating from backing Dylan to orchestrating their own towering musical achievement with their debut, Music From Big Pink. A decade later, the pop landscape was in the midst of the disco craze while rock was overthrown in Britain and New York by an ascendant punk movement, with classic-rockers like the Stones seeming hopelessly out of step.

But the Stones managed to adapt to 1978 as deftly as they had 10 years earlier by co-opting the prevailing disco sound and somehow making it cool for rock fans. As imprressive, they captured both the sound and tone of the punk scene in downtown Manhattan, which may as well have been a thousand miles from the pulsating and chic Studio 54. Songs like “Shattered” and “When the Whip Comes Down” successfully established the Stones’ continued relevance. The former song, written by Jagger in the back of a cab, is the greatest rock song ever written about New York City, The Ramones’ own turf. “When the Whip Comes Down” sounds influenced by Dee Dee’s male prostitute confessional “53rd and 3rd.” It’s openly gay, as Jagger explained at the time, somewhat uncomfortably. But Jagger’s singing actually channels Sex Pistols leader Johnny Rotten, who ironically would call the Stones “one of the most notoriously inept bands in music.”

On Beggar’s Banquet, the Stones had clearly been influenced by Dylan and The Band. In fact, the famous bathroom graffiti on the cover included the words, “Music From Big Brown,” a sly reference to the Canadian rockers. Note that the Stones on their 1968 opus were working for the first time with an American producer, Jimmy Miller. Dylan comes through most clearly (though not entirely convincingly) on the slide-guitaring “Jigsaw Puzzle.” And “Parachute Woman” echoes Dylan’s Basement Tapes, which had been recorded in 1967 and, though not released until 1975, was heard by 1968 by everyone who mattered in rock.

While released a decade apart, Beggar’s Banquet and Some Girls, and even individual songs, are easily connected beyond trying to channel rock’s cutting edge. Both albums are salacious to the point where teenagers at the time could never listen to them with their parents in the room. “Stray Cat Blues,” from Beggar’s, and the Some Girls title track are unapologetically misogynistic. Both make you wince today. Incredibly, Jagger wasn’t even content to make the girl at the center of “Stray Cat Blues” 15, as on the album. On the 1969 live album Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out!, he changed her age to 13. But it’s too over-the-top to take too seriously. It’s just Jagger strutting. In “Some Girls,” he signs about women who are seemingly of appropriate age, but sexualizes possessing them while also making it clear that they are sexualizing and trying to possess him and Keith, too. “Some Girls” is the evil twin of The Beach Boys’ “California Girls,” lumping women together by race and region.

“Street Fighting Man,” like “Shattered,” tried to capture the essence of urban despair in its era. But neither offers answers, which would be too preachy and idealistic for the Stones. While that can leave listeners of “Street Fighting Man” cold given the stakes at the time, with
Civil Rights on the line and a war raging in Vietnam, it actually works on “Shattered,” where laughing at the madness of the Carter era seems the most appropriate response.

“Sympathy for the Devil” and “Miss You,” the tentpole songs on Beggar’s and Some Girls, respectively, are relentless dance grooves. Jagger said of “Sympathy” at the time, “It has a very hypnotic groove, a samba, which has a tremendous hypnotic power, rather like good dance music. It doesn’t speed up or slow down. It keeps this constant groove.”

Ditto “Miss You,” of course, but the lyrics here are closer to “Dear Doctor,” on Beggar’s, a country-rock song (before the term really existed) with a spoken interlude. The longing is also more funny than sincere. “Miss You” reaches a higher level though in mastering the disco genre so completely that it seems completely their own.

The parallels continue with the albums’ respective cover songs. “Prodigal Son,” on Beggar’s, is a retiled version of Robert Wilkins’s “That’s No Way To Get Along.” “Some Girls” similarly nods to music crafted by black Americans with a cover of the Motown hit “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me),” written by Whitfield-Strong and originally performed by The Temptations. While that cover version is fine, the Stones actually wrote a better soul ballad than that original. “Beast of Burden,” from the groove right down to the Eddie Kendricks-inspired falsetto, is a masterpiece on par with “Miss You.”

While those assessing the entire Stones canon inevitably place these two albums next to one another in the top 5—often behind Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street and Let It Bleed, it’s almost always Beggar’s Banquet over Some Girls. Yes, their 1968 effort set the stage for arguably the greatest stretch of recording excellence in rock history. But the public voted with record sales and made Some Girls the best-selling Stones album of all-time. Could the public be right in ranking Some Girls over to Beggar’s Banquet?

Their 1968 LP has three to five essential tracks: “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Street Fighting Man,” “Stray Cat Blues” and probably “Salt of the Earth” and “No Expectations.” The rest of the album grades passable to okay—not filler, necessarily, but nothing historic. Some Girls is stronger up top with “Miss You,” “Beast of Burden” and “Shattered,” and then adds “When the Whip Comes Down” and Keith Richards’s “Before They Make Me Run,” about his heroin bust in Canada.

In his autobiography, “Life,” Richards explained: “For sheer longevity—for long distance—there is no track that I know of like ‘Before They Make Me Run.’ That song, which I sang on that record, was a cry from the heart. But it burned up the personnel like no other. I was in the studio, without leaving, for five days…”

If you include “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” from the Beggar’s Banquet sessions, then there is no quarrel with ranking that album higher. But it’s not on the LP, having been released earlier as a stand-alone single, rising to No. 3 on the U.S. charts. The rest of Some Girls is stronger with the title track and the funnier (and far less offensive) “Far Away Eyes.” Some Girls has a stronger cover song and “Lies” is a more conventional, throwaway Stones rocker, while “Respectable” is another punk-inspired, snarling song that Jagger and the band pull off. Richards said of “Respectable,” “This is a punk meets Chuck Berry number…”

While it’s arguably hair-splitting, Some Girls is not only stronger at the top but the deeper album, too.

[www.pastemagazine.com]

My two favourite Stones albums

Thanks, Cristiano!

"arguably hair-splitting" is correct. Tho a fun read.

I love a Lot of the '81 stuff; and '78 too of course, considering HG...
And SG had Lots of spark and craft.
I put it this way to myself: If you completely had to have only ONE of those,
(Some Girls or Banquet) which would it be? Which would be ultimately more essential and important to ME personally.
And it's always Banquet. by several miles.
Tho I really loved when they hard-turned into punkish stuff very credibly; and some of those were totally great Live too, again and again.
(I just finished watching "Whip" version from that private Gillete Stadium show). I liked the read, thanks Christiano!
But imo, and in my experience, the several foundational favorites I have on Banquet are absolutely prime essential seminal incredible stuff on it's own level.
IF I had to lose one of those LPs forever....well it's a silly sitch; glad I don't have to choose, but if I did, I could never ever, ever surrender Banquet.
Not that I'd make such a projected choice lightly, considering stuff like "When The Whip Comes Down,"
which along with some other crazy-movers, are a hard-stompin' visceral delight.
You can smell blood. They beat it down damn hard.

I guess what that might say about my own tastes relative to them, might be
that I am more naturally inclined to appreciate their folk and country-blues expressions, stylings and songs,
than their Disco-influenced stuff; tho I like a Lot of that too; some of it is precious;
but for me, as triumpant as those pervasive big dance-hits, like MY, were on the radio and in the air;
I'd take the most modest acoustic thing on Banquet closer to heart personally.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 2018-02-03 04:19 by hopkins.

Good write up and 2 most very important albums that really leave there mark on the masses .Beggars Banquet is a very important album because of all the turbulence going on in the world with the war in Southeast Asia raging and all forms of political turmoil all over the globe and the Glimmer Twins really captured it all on pen and paper and then recorded such a masterpiece .Fast forward 10 years later and the times are changing (no pun intended) and the Stones were able to roll with the changes and put there own stamp on the different genres popping up in musical culture with a most welcome and appreciated album that just blows away everybody's misconceptions of the aging dinosaurs (as if ha ha , to Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious and the rest of them ) Great article because it makes you go back in time and think about those days so long ago

Quote
Cristiano Radtke
...Jagger’s singing actually channels Sex Pistols leader Johnny Rotten, who ironically would call the Stones “one of the most notoriously inept bands in music.”...

That made me laugh. I’m imagining the intro on the next tour... Ladies and Gentlemen, one of the most notoriously inept bands in music!!!

It is not a banquet for a beggar, it is a banquet for beggars, hence it being Beggars Banquet, not Beggar's. What a ridiculous error!

TATTOO YOU is easily their 1980s era defining masterpiece, although including "era" in that may be a stretch (maybe strictly for the era UNDERCOVER is the best of the 4 true 1980s albums, although including EMOTIONAL RESCUE in that tally is possibly a moot point, even though U didn't have any impact that BB, LIB, SF, EOMS, SG or TY had).

In addition to that, TY fortunately doesn't have the sound of the 1980s.

Two great albums, my vote goes to Beggars.

While Some Girls was and still is great, there was nothing really groundbreaking about it unless you consider the disco influenced Miss You as being 'groundbreaking'. In hindsight, Beast of Burden is probably the best written original tune on it. Whip comes Down, Respectable, and Lies are simply great barn burners, but are almost interchangeable in their sound and style. Some say punk influenced, maybe so, but if I want to hear real punk music it's not from the Stones. Imagination is a decent cover and at least they kicked it up a notch from the Temptations original, but alas the original is far superior imo. Shattered is OK, but really just an oddball song...almost in the novelty category or even a spoof when compared to the real Stones classics. Same with Faraway Eyes - fun to listen to but a spoof that maybe went too far in the mockery of the country sound. Finally, Keith's BTMMR has great lyrics, but in the end the tune pales when compared to Happy which is his greatest.

As for Beggars, for the most part it's like a mythical historical document that will stand the test of time forever. The only real filler is Jigsaw Puzzle imo, and as the writer states it sort of misses the mark as a Dylan wannabe and falls into the "rest of the album grades passable to okay—not filler, necessarily, but nothing historic" category.

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......