![the rolling stones beggars banquet songs the rolling stones beggars banquet songs](https://www.goldminemag.com/.image/ar_4:3%2Cc_fill%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_1200/MTY4NDE5MDIyNjIyMDQyMDU4/image-placeholder-title.jpg)
I just really thought I was not getting anywhere from straight concert tuning,’ Richards would recall in his autobiography. At the same time, they made a stride towards what would become their signature sound through Keith Richards’ discovery of the open tunings – where open, unfretted strings form a chord – that characterised much of the album, along with Jumpin’ Jack Flash, the preceding single recorded in the same sessions. Their origins as a blues band – their very name was taken from a Muddy Waters song – and the music that had provided source material for their earlier hits served as the foundations for Beggars Banquet. The Stones response was to move forward by looking backwards. Drifting away from the blues-derived aesthetic that had made their name it was disparaged as a derivative shadow of the Beatles’ innovations, receiving unfavourable comparisons to Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Its predecessor, the patchy and poorly received Their Satanic Majesties Request had dabbled in psychedelia and experimental sounds. The album, though, marked a turning point, both for the Stones themselves and, by extension, rock more generally. The subsequent protracted dispute dragged throughout the summer and autumn until an eventual release with a sanitised cover in the style of an event invitation. The launch had, in fact, been delayed by months since even the cover – a toilet wall daubed with graffiti – had given the band’s record label cause for concern. The launch party for the Rolling Stones’ Beggars Banquet, released 50 years ago this month, culminated in a food fight – a suitably messy end to a rather fractious process.