The album signified "the Rolling Stones' coming of age," says Glyn Johns, who engineered the record and had worked with the Stones since their earliest days. "I think that the material was far better than anything they'd ever done before. The whole mood of the record was far stronger to me musically."

Producer Jimmy Miller describes Keith Richards as having been "a real workhorse" on the album, largely because Brian Jones rarely made it to the studio, and when he did, he behaved erratically, due to his drug use and emotional problems. "Brian was sort of in and out," Miller says. "He'd show up occasionally when he was in the mood to play, and he could never really be relied on.... When he would show up at a session -- let's say he had just bought a sitar that day, he'd feel like playing it, so he'd look in his calendar to see if the Stones were in. Now he may have missed the previous four sessions. We'd be doing, let's say, a blues thing. He'd walk in with a sitar, which was totally irrelevant to what we were doing, and want to play it. I used to try to accommodate him. I would isolate him, put him in a booth and not record him onto any track that we really needed. And the others, particularly Mick and Keith, would often say to me, 'Just tell him to piss off and get the hell out of here.'"

Despite his problems, Jones contributed extraordinary slide guitar playing to "No Expectations," "Parachute Woman" and "Jig-Saw Puzzle." His sitar -- and tamboura, as well -- can be heard on "Street Fighting Man."

In typical Rolling Stones fashion, various other hitches arose regarding Beggars Banquet. The album's original cover art, depicting a bathroom wall covered with graffiti, was banned. The Stones attempted unsuccessfully to fight their record company's decision -- and from today's perspective, the cover seems quite harmless. Nevertheless, the dispute held up the album's release for months. Jagger and Richards were misidentified on the record as the authors of Robert Wilkins's Biblical blues number "Prodigal Son." And the political correctness of "Street Fighting Man" -- with its ambivalent lines "What can a poor boy do/'Cept sing in a rock and roll band" -- was debated intensely and at great length in the underground media.

As usual, the Stones flourished amid the charges and countercharges. They were back to playing fast and loose, and Beggars Banquet was filled with distinctive and original touches. (The driving basic track of "Street Fighting Man," for example, was recorded on a cassette deck at Keith's house, with Keith on acoustic guitar and Charlie Watts on a toy drum kit.) For Beggars Banquet, the Stones had gone to great lengths to toughen their sound and banish the the haze of psychedelia, and in doing so, they launched a five-year period in which they would produce their very greatest records.