Sticky Fingers |
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Released: April 23, 1971 Charted: May 8, 1971 Peak: 14 US, 15 UK, 15 CN, 12 AU, 14 DF Sales (in millions): 3.0 US, 0.3 UK, 7.5 world (includes US and UK) Genre: classic rock |
Tracks:(Click for codes to charts.)
All tracks written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards unless noted otherwise. Total Running Time: 46:25 The Players: |
Rating:
 4.705 out of 5.00 (average of 32 ratings)
Quotable: “They were called the World’s Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band for entierely too long, but if that designation ever applied, it was here.” – Mark Richardson, Pitchfork Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Album:“Few bands represent…the move from the relative innocence of the mid-‘60s into the hedonism and burnout of the ‘70s better than the Rolling Stones.” PF “Stoned, rich, and long since morally bankrupt, the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world spent 1971 bathing in decadence and flirting with death. Interestingly, such preoccupations resulted not only in some of the meanest, nastiest music ever recorded, but also some of the prettiest.” VBTheir performance at the Altamont Speedway, during which a group of Hell’s Angels killed a man, has often been held up as a “symbolic end of the peace-and-love ‘60s.” PF With 1971’s Sticky Fingers, “the Rolling Stones came back nastier and more assured than ever.” TL It “proved that the endless summer of the 1960s was over, but that the Stones would rock just as hard in the following decade.” CD In Colin Larkin’s All Time Top 1000 Albums, he says of the #10 ranked album that “dirty rock like this has still to be bettered, and there is still no rival in sight.” WK A Q magazine review said this was “the Stones at their assured, showboating peak.” WK “The key to the album…[is] the utter weariness of the songs.” AM In addition to the aftermath of Altamont, Mick Jagger was dealing with his breakup with Marianne Faithfull while Keith Richards was worried about his newborn son Marlon. CD “Well over half the songs explicitly mention drug use.” AM “Where they once sounded like English boys doing their version of the blues, now their songs felt as lived-in as their inspirations.” PF Chicago Tribune’s Lynn Van Matre said the album captured the band “at their raunchy best” WK as the band delves into “familiar Stones terrain: sex…drugs…the blues…and dirty rock and roll all over.” FP The Big FourThe album was “their biggest seller to date,” TL coming during “one of the great four-album runs in pop music history.” PF The Stones “rise to their own artistic challenge – the run of [1968’s] Beggars Banquet and [1969’s] Let It Bleed.” AD While those albums “might have had higher highs…both also had their share of tossed-off tracks.” PFSimilarly, Sticky Fingers “doesn’t have the sprawl and mood of their next release, [1972’s] Exile on Main Street,” TL “the underground music’s fan’s favorites, but it never had the broader cultural impact of its predecessor.” PF “If you have to pick just one album, then Sticky Fingers” CM “truly captures the Stones at the peak of their game.” TL Recording the Album“Sticky Fingers found the band digging even depper into rootsy veins of Americana, with bohemian, good-vibes producer Jimmy Miller at the helm.” TB He came on board with Beggars Banquet and was, as Bill Wyman said, “a great producer who, for the first time, the band actually listened to.” CMThe band did some recording at the legendary Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama at the close of their 1969 U.S. tour.. Even though only three songs (“Brown Sugar,” “Wild Horses,” and “You Gotta Move”) UD were recorded there, “the Muscle Shoals feel permeates the album.” CM Drummer Charlie Watts said it was “a great studio to work in, a very hip studio…you wanted to be there because of all the guys who had worked in the same studio.” TS In 1970, the band also recorded at their mobile studio in Jagger’s Stargroves mansion in England – TD the same location where Led Zeppelin would record Houses of the Holy. FP Engineer Andy Johns said it “was ideally suited because it was a big mansion and a grand hall with a gallery around with bedroom doors and a staircase.” CMJagger echoed a similar sentiment, describing it as “a big hall with a high ceiling, which was my optimum kind of room.” TS Additional recording was done at Olympic Sound Studios in London in 1969 and 1970. The Album’s SoundThe album is marked by “a loose, ramshackle ambience.” AM “Sticky Fingers moves as far from pop as the band would ever stray.” RV It is “a slow, bluesy affair, with a few country touches thrown in for good measure.” AM “Richards’ riffs and melodies were in full flower” PF and “Jagge’s voice never sounded richer or fuller than it does here.” PF The album also “displayed the improvisational talents of guitarist Mick Taylor,” FP who’d come on board during Let It Bleed to replace Brian Jones and here is “fully a Rolling Stone.” ADThere are also “the spicy horn arrangements of saxophonist Bobby Keys and trumpet player Jim Price. The use of horns in the Stones’ repertoire seemed inevitable – when they kick in during ‘Brown Sugar’ and ‘Bitch,’ it’s as if Keith’s guitar is rebirthed in brass.” CD New Label and LogoThis was also the band’s first release on their new label, Rolling Stones Records. Since 1963, they’d been with Decca Records in the UK and London Records in America. This was also the first studio album from the Stones to not feature any contributions from Brian Jones, the band’s founder, who died at age 27 on July 3, 1969.Sticky Fingers was also the first Rolling Stones’ album to feature the now iconic lips logo. John Pasche designed it in 1970 after Jagger suggested copying the outstuck tongue of the Hindu goddess Kali. WK  Kali, the Hindu goddess  back cover of album Album Package“The whole thing was wrapped up in a brilliant packaging concept by Andy Warhol” PF which “emphasizes the suggestive innuendo of the Sticky Fingers title.” TD The cover “expresses the essence of Rolling Stones at their peak: salacious, impossible to ignore, and rough around the edges.” FP In 2003, VH1 ranked Sticky Fingers as the greatest album cover of all time. FPIt featured a close-up shot of the crotch of a man in tight jeans which, at Jagger’s suggestion, FP featured a working zipper. When pulled down, it revealed a pair of cotton briefs. Warhol suggested the idea to Jagger at a party in 1969. FP Warhol conceived the cover and Billy Name and Craig Braun, members of his art collective, The Factory, photographed and designed it respectively. WK Contrary to popular belief, the crotch in the photo does not belong to Jagger. Several men were photographed during the shoot and Warhol never revealed which model was actually used for the cover. TD There were, however, problems with the zipper. When the albums were stacked for shipping, the zipper would press into the vinyl and damage it. The solution was to pull the zipper down manually so that it would hit the center disc label and not damage the vinyl. As Braun said, “It worked, and it was even better to see the zipper pulled halfway down.” FP The album cover was censored in Spain so a second cover was created which featured what would seemingly be more controversial – severed fingers in a can of Fowler’s Treacle. KR  alternate cover The SongsHere are thoughts on the individual songs from the album.“Brown Sugar” It was the first time Jagger wrote a song completely on his own. CM Of the questionable lyrics, he said it was “all the nasty subjects in one go” PF and that he’d “never write that song now. I would probably censor myself.” TS He’s also said that this was the first riff he wrote. TS He said, “at the end of the ‘60s I had a little more time to sit around and play my guitar, writing songs rather than just lyrics for the first time.” TS He wrote it while on the set of filming Ned Kelly in Australia. TS
“Sway” The song features “fantastic lead vocals from Mr. Jagger, very soulful” AD and he even plays guitar. Watts said Jagger “plays very strange rhythm guitar…very much how Brazilian guitarists play, on the upbeat. It is very much like the guitar on a James Brown track; for a drummer it’s great to play with.” CM There is also “amazing” AD guitar work from Taylor. Richards contributes some additional vocals, but doesn’t play guitar on the track. AD Of Taylor’s performance, Richards said, “acoustically he’s got a nice touch.” TS Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane come on board to provide backing vocals. TD “Wild Horses” According to Richards, the song came about from him playing around with tunings on a twelve-string. The chorus was written in the bathroom at Muscle Shoals. He also said, “If there is one classic way of Mick and I working together, this is it. I had the riff and the chorus line. Mick got stuck into the verses.” TS The band worked with Gram Parsons on the song. TS He was hanging out with Keith Richards quite a bit and Parsons’ band, the Flying Burrito Brothers, actually released a version of “Wild Horses” before the Stones’ version came out.
“Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” In his 2016 book Never a Dull Moment, David Hepworth suggested that Taylor’s “Latin-flavored guitar solo” was influenced by the 1970 Santana album, Abraxas. WK Jagger himself called the song “slightly Carlos-Santana-like. Mick Taylor plays a bit of that style.” TS
“You Gotta Move” “Taylor’s electric slide guitar is absolutely exquisite.” RS “Combined with Richard’s fine work on the acoustic they create one of the album’s few real moments. Charlie Watts’ bass drum holds it together perfectly, while Richard’s harmony smoothes off the more outrageous edges of Jagger’s lead vocal. In the end, all the pieces fit. A small but important triumph.” RS “Bitch” “The arrangement is straight-ahead” RS on this “crunchy boogie” PF which Jagger says is “a guitar song, but it’s also somewhat dependent on the horn lines.” TS Indeed, “the horns sound great here as they are used primarily for purposes of syncopation and rhythm. The bass and drums…burns like a bitch.” RS Jagger called it one of the band’s “groove tunes.” TS
“I Got the Blues” Jagger said, “When you get really slow tunes like this, it’s hard to keep the tempo…but this one holds the tempo. It’s kind of wrenching. You can only get that by doing it really slow and this one comes off.” TS “Sister Morphine” The song was actually recorded during sessions for Let It Bleed in March 1969 WK and features Ry Cooder on slide guitar. TD Jagger and Richards wrote it for Marianne Faithfull to record. CM Jagger says she claimed she wrote the song, although he says she only contributed a couple of lines. TS “Dead Flowers” “Moonlight Mile” Richards said he had nothing to do with the song. “Moonlight Mile was all Mick’s.” TS “I was very out of it by the end of the album.” TS Because of his steadily growing heroin habit, insider Jo Bergman said, “I didn’t think Keith was going to live through the ’70 tour of Europe.” CM Jagger said he wrote some of the early lyrics in the summer of 1970, probably while they were on a train and the moon was out. “The feeling I had at that moment was how difficult it was to be toruing and how I wasn’t looking forward to going out and doing it again. It’s a very lonely thing, and my lyrics reflected that.” TS “Grandiose strings” AM “push the intensity level constantly upwards…The energy becomes unmistakably erotic.” RS “There is something soulful here, something deeply felt.” RS It “has a defiant aloneness to it.” CM It is “a coked-out, somnambulant drift through an era’s last days.” TD It is Jagger’s “best performance on the album – the only thing that compares with his singing of ‘Gimme Shelter.’” It “is a perfect closure,” AM “a beautiful end to a beautiful journey.” TD Notes:In 2015, Sticky Fingers was reissued with a bonus disc featuring five alternate versions of songs and five songs performed live at the Roundhouse on March 14, 1971. A super deluxe edition featured a complete show performed at the University of Leeds on March 13, 1971. |
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First posted 3/23/2008; last updated 8/17/2024. |
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