Beggars Banquet Recording Sessions

February - March 1968

At Redlands, Keith Richards’ home in Essex, Richards begins recording acoustic guitar to a Phillips cassette recorder and experiments with overloading audio levels to produce a heavily distorted sound. The same Phillips cassette recorder is later used at Olympic Sound Studios to lay down Keith’s initial acoustic rhythm guitar track of “Street Fighting Man” while Charlie plays along on a 1930s toy drum kit. Charlie had purchased the London Jazz Kit Set at an antiques store. This guitar and drums track was then dubbed from cassette to one channel on a professional multi-track tape recorder and tape. The overdubbing of all the other instruments, including several more guitars, bass, drums, piano, Brian Jones on sitar and tanpura (aka tambura), and Dave Mason on shehnai, continued thereafter. However, the iconic acoustic guitar that opens the final master recording is from the original cassette recording.

Also of note is that the original working title of the instrumental track was “Primo Grande” which later became “Did Everyone Pay Their Dues?” aka “Pay Your Dues” with a different set of lyrics from the final version.