Best Sellers From The ’60′s: The Stones’ Beggars Banquet

The Rolling Stones - Beggars Banquet (Decca, 1968)

Along with the Beatles White Album and Bob Dylan‘s John Wesley Harding, in 1968 there was the Stones back-to-basics release, Beggars Banquet.

Beggars Banquet was the last Rolling Stones album to include Brian Jones on the Stones roster, albeit more in name than in person.

The estrangement between Jones and his six-string counterpart, Keith Richards, was nearly a fait accompli, with the soon-to-be-departed Jones left uninvited or uninterested in attending. He would soon be banned altogether, in May 1969, and found dead in his swimming pool just a few months later.

Even so, the Stones were at their gritty best on this 10-song collection that harkened back to their R&B roots. Along with the well-known “hits,” “Street Fighting Man” and “Sympathy for the Devil,” the album included stabs at back porch scrub-porch honk (“Factory Girl”), straight-forward electric blues (“Stray Cat Blues”) and tongue-in-cheek cowboy (“Dear Doctor”).

As they showed again later with Some Girls, the Stones’ Beggar’s Banquet proved they could master just about any style. The record sold 500,000 copies right away and has since sold well over 1,000,000 to date.

What was hot almost half-a-century ago? Find out with more Best Sellers from the ’60s here…