The Rolling Stones: Beggars Banquet

by Alan Clayson

This breakthrough series looks at great music from a unique vantage point. By considering the recording session itself, rather than the final album, Legendary Sessions showcases the creative process and all the elements that go into making music that reflected its time, commented on our society, and influenced our culture.



How did these epoch-making sessions come about? What influenced the artists? What was it like to be there as the recording was made? Written by top entertainment journalists, Legendary Sessions answers those questions with an involving you-are-there style. What impact did the recording have? Who listened to it? Who imitated it? Who was inspired by it? Legendary Sessions looks at those questions, too, with groundbreaking interviews, eyewitness accounts, and contemporary commentary.



Innovative and intriguing, Legendary Sessions is sure to change the way music fans listen to the great recordings of our time.



After the release of the Rolling Stones’s psychedelic album Their Satanic Majesties Request in 1967, many feared that the bad boys of rock had sacrificed their raw, bluesy edge to love, peace, and flower power. No need to worry. Salvation was at hand with Beggars Banquet , featuring “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Street Fighting Man.” The album was a storming return to Satanism, social revolution, and celebrations of the working man. Author Alan Clayson explores the social and cultural developments of the time, the ways that the changing dynamics of the band affected the music, and how the songs took shape. From the latest swinging happenings down on Carnaby Street, to who Mick was sleeping with, to what Keith was taking, Legendary The Rolling Beggars Banquet is an entertaining trip through rock history.

Genres: Music

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2007

About the author

Alan Clayson (Dover, England, 1951) is of a late 1970s vintage of composer-entertainers that also embraces the likes of Wreckless Eric, Tom Robinson, Elvis Costello and John Otway. While he is still making regular concert appearances, he has become better known as an author of around thirty books - mostly musical biography. These include the best-sellers "Backbeat" (subject of a major film), The Yardbirds and The Beatles book box.

He has written for journals as diverse as The Guardian, Record Collector, Ink, Mojo, Mediaeval World, Folk Roots, Guitar, Hello!, Drummer, The Times, The Independent, Ugly Things and, as a 'teenager, the notorious Schoolkids 0z. He has also been engaged to perform and lecture on both sides of the Atlantic - as well as broadcast on national TV and radio.

From 1975 to 1985, he led the legendary Clayson and the Argonauts - who reformed in 2005, ostensibly to launch Sunset On A Legend, a long-awaited double-CD retrospective - and was thrust to 'a premier position on rock's Lunatic Fringe' (Melody Maker).

As shown by the existence of a US fan club - dating from an 1992 soiree in Chicago - Alan Clayson's following grows still as well as demand for his talents as a record producer, and the number of versions of his compositions by such diverse acts as Dave Berry (in whose backing group, he played keyboards in the mid-1980s), New Age Outfit, Stairway - and Joy Tobing, winner of the Indonesian version of Pop Idol. He has worked too with The Portsmouth Sinfonia, Wreckless Eric, Twinkle, The Yardbirds, The Pretty Things, Mark Astronaut and the late Screaming Lord Sutch among many others. While his stage act defies succinct description, he has been labelled a 'chansonnier' in recent years for performances and record releases that may stand collectively as Alan Clayson's artistic apotheosis were it not for a promise of surprises yet to come.

Reviews

[Allan Heron · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know what to expect when I read books by Alan Clayson. Despite that, I still chose to read this to find out more about the recording of this fine album.

There's very little to add to what's already known and the books covers too much of the period up to Beggars Banquet and not enough about the album itself.

The postscript is pretty shallow and attempts to bring the story up to date but fails miserably in that regard.

Clayson writes as someone clearly enamoured by his own verbosity but it would have been better if he'd spent more time checking facts before committing this to print.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know what exactly made me think reading about the making of an album would be particularly interesting. The whole first section was about the influences of The Stones, which numerous and largely unknown to me. Then there was talk about the individual members which mostly read like a gossip rag (who's doing which drugs, who's sleeping with whom, etc.) It wasn't until the last section that they actually tackled the recording of the album, which turned out to be largely uninteresting. A book written by a fanboy for other fanboys. I probably should have expected that.

[Apollonia7 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This could have easily been a four star review... if this book wasn't called "Beggar's Banquet" and didn't start covering the Beggar's Banquet sessions until page 150 or so. Which it did. That was odd. Its obviously exhaustively researched, by someone who has a fairly solid grasp of the time. But really it seems in the end this book is by a Rolling Stones / british rock savant with no filtering mechanism in his brain. It goes off on every 'THE 60s' tangent you can imagine. Really should have been called The Rolling Stones and Brian Jones: A Half-Decade of Frustration.