The Rolling Stones - "Jigsaw Puzzle" (1968)

This is the epitome of Mick Jagger's effected, manneristic 1960's singing style (as opposed to his over-the-top, manneristic of the late 80's and on). Also, his most Dylanesque lyrics, as though, after several years of trying to rip off the Beatles, he'd been listening too much to Blonde On Blonde.

But if the Rolling Stones would not have been quite as successful with a less flamboyant frontman, Jagger himself would never have made it if he wasn't backed by such a stellar band, laid back enough to offset his extroverted tendencies on stage and in the studio. And it's the music that that makes this one of the best tracks of their career.

Forget any notions of the Stones being merely purveyors of elemental three chord, blues based rock. "Jigsaw Puzzle", like all of the Stones greatest recordings, may be raw, but it is magnificent music that turns country blues into a space age symphony with no pretensions barring the lyrics. And actually, as is often the case with the Stones, the music redeems the lyrics, turning the line about the guitar players being "outcasts all their lives" into an obituary for Brian Jones before the fact.

Like all of the music on Beggars Banquet, "Jigsaw Puzzle" is based on Keith Richards' explorations of open chord tuning, which is widely documented in interviews and which I admittedly don't understand much about, not being a guitar player myself. But you don't have to be a musician to feel the creative boost these explorations injected in him and you only need to have any ears at all to get the laid back groove of Charlie Watts' drumming or the fat sound of the bass - one of their best recorded parts and rumored to be Keith and not Bill Wyman. But best of all are lilting, almost surrealistic bottleneck guitars, which literally turn into a tribal drone by the time we get to the verse about the twenty thousand grandmas and the queen (see what I meant by Dylanesque?).

With all that going on, Jagger himself sounds quite good, actually.