The Rolling Stones -- "Jigsaw Puzzle"
This seems to be the Stones's attempt at impersonating a Bob Dylan song. There's a Dylanesque cavalcade of characters: a tramp, a bishop's daughter, a gangster, twenty thousand grandmas, and a queen, not to mention the various musicians (whom we might be able to identiy by name). There's a detached narrative voice, that of the witness to the spectacle of modernity -- one who is just trying to go about his business.
As a general rule, Dylan impersonations ought not to work, especially one by a band like the Stones, who were hardly following in Dylan's footsteps. And yet it does work.
One more reason why Beggar's Banquet is, at present, my favorite Rolling Stones album.
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