How 'Beggars Banquet' Marked the Rolling Stones’ Turn Toward Roots Rock

Most people think of the Stones as a blues-rock band from the start, but they spent the mid-60s chasing Beatles-style pop and psychedelia. Beggars Banquet (1968) was the sharp left turn back to American roots music—country blues, folk, and even some gospel—that would define their next decade. It’s the album where they stopped being imitators and started sounding like the Stones we know.

The shift wasn’t accidental. After the messy Their Satanic Majesties Request psychedelic experiment, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger reconnected with the raw, open-tuned guitar sound Richards had been playing in private. Songs like “No Expectations” lean on slide guitar and a weary, acoustic feel, while “Prodigal Son” is a straight cover of a Reverend Gary Davis folk-blues. The country touch on “Dear Doctor” and the swagger of “Sympathy for the Devil” (itself built from a samba rhythm) show a band pulling influences from everywhere pre-1965. This wasn’t just a stylistic reset—it was a declaration that the Stones were going back to the dirt.

Listening to Beggars Banquet first helps you understand almost everything that followed. The country-rock of Sticky Fingers, the gospel of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” the slide guitar on Exile on Main St.—all of it starts here. If you’re trying to get why the Stones matter, skip the early singles and start with this album. It’s where they found their voice.