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Sticky Fingers |
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Released: April 23, 1971 Recorded: date Charted: May 8, 1971 Peak: 14 US, 15 UK, 15 CN, 12 AU Sales (in millions): 3.0 US, 0.3 UK, 7.5 world (includes US and UK) Genre: classic rock |
Tracks: (Click for codes to singles charts.)
All tracks written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards unless noted otherwise. Total Running Time: 46:25 The Players: |
Rating:
4.702 out of 5.00 (average of 25 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). |
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 Their 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.” CDU The album was “their biggest seller to date,” TL coming during “one of the great four-album runs in pop music history,” PF following Beggars Banquet (1968) and Let It Bleed (1969) and preceding Exile on Main Street (1972). Even amongs those lofty albums, this “classic among classics” UD “could reasonably be called their peak.” PF “Beggars and Let It Bleed might have had higher highs, but both also had their share of tossed-off tracks.” PF “It doesn’t have the sprawl and mood of their next release, Exile on Main Street,” TL “the underground music’s fan’s favorites, but it never had the broader cultural impact of its predecessor.” PF “Sticky Fingers truly captures the Stones at the peak of their game.” TL 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.” AMG 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. CDU “Well over half the songs explicitly mention drug use.” AMG “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 Recording the Album 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 Jagger described 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 is marked by “a loose, ramshackle ambience.” AMG It is “a slow, bluesy affair, with a few country touches thrown in for good measure.” AMG “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 and “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.” CDU New Label and Logo 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 It 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 “Brown Sugar” Of the questionable lyrics, Jagger has 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 backing vocals from Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane. TD Jagger and Taylor have both said that Richards isn’t on the song. Jagger plays rhythm guitar on it while Taylor does the solo. TS Of Taylor’s performance, Richards said, “acoustically he’s got a nice touch.” TS “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 also worked with Gram Parsons on the song and his actually came out before the Stones’ version. TS
“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 says Marianne Faithfull claimed she wrote the song, although he says she only contributed a couple of lines. TS “Dead Flowers” “Moonlight Mile” 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” AMG “push the intensity level constantly upwards…The energy becomes unmistakably erotic.” RS “There is something soulful here, something deeply felt.” RS 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,” AMG “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. |
Review Sources:
Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 3/23/2008; last updated 9/4/2021. |