The Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers - 1971

"I thought it was one of the easiest and rockingest sessions that we'd ever done. I don't think we've been quite so prolific…" - Keith Richards

  

The Stones began the seventies as they would carry on through the decade - drug-addled, indulgently decadent, slightly bitter and cocksure. 

This album magnificently sums all that up - they met the Devil at the crossroads and in return for staying true to their blues roots they had to promise to take lots of drugs. They do that to the max on this largely bluesy but also blatantly narcotic corker of an offering. 

Incidentally, this was the first album/single to use the now iconic lips and tongue logo. 

Let's head down to New Orleans then..... 

Well, you simply cannot beat the riffy, sleazy glory of Brown Sugar, can you? Dodgy lyrics and all. It is up there as a candidate for the best Stones song of all time - the iconic opening riff, Jagger’s leery vocal, Bobby Keys’ blistering sax...

"I’m no schoolboy but I know what I like"

....and I have done since I was that schoolboy. 

Some have criticised the song for its more obvious commercial sound compared to the rest of the album. Sometimes some critics astound me - so it’s catchy, lively and gets you off your feet - so it should, it’s The Rolling fucking Stones. I always remember the song being performed on Top Of The Pops, with Jagger looking strangely yellow-eyed. I loved it back then and, of course, I still do. We got a colour telly in 1971, life went into colour with immediate effect and Brown Sugar came out at the same time. Jagger strutting around on that Top Of The Pops performance in a pink shiny suit and looking just so supremely decadent. The King of Knaves. They just looked the absolute business. That was that sealed for me. The Stones were here to stay. They have been here ever since. They always will. Say what you like about them going through the motions for over thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years. So what? Just listen to any Keith Richards intro. They can go through as many motions as they fucking well like, man.

Then, from the rock of Brown Sugar we are straight into the assured, confident and down ’n’ dirty blues sway of yes, Sway. What an apt title for this loose, almost lazy-sounding serving of cookin’ blues rock. Once again, it is another example of The Stones at their very best. As, of course, is the slow grandeur of Wild Horses. If Brown Sugar is one of their best rockers, then this is one of the best ballads. Building up slowly, it bursts into huge life on the chorus when Charlie Watts’ solid, steady drums kick in. It has a country feel to it, too, and indeed first appeared as a cover by The Flying Burrito Brothers. 

The classics keep coming in the grinding opus, Can't You Hear Me Knocking, with its introductory vocal part followed by an intoxicating, extended instrumental workout full of rhythmic percussion, seductive sax, blaring horns and insistent guitar interjections. Four better opening tracks to a Stones album you would do well to equal - rock, blues, balladry and instrumental innovation, one after the other.

The Delta blues arrive with the authentic bottleneck guitar strains of the chunky old blues cover, You Gotta Move, that continues the Stones’ tradition of covering this sort of material since the early days. It harks back to the blues minimalism of Little Red Rooster, Love In Vain and No Expectations.

Want a bit more copper-bottomed Stones rock? Then flip over to side two - check out the grubby but glorious swagger of the horn-drenched beauty that is Bitch. Those horns take this one home from the very start and Jagger addresses Charlie in the lyrics for, I think, the only time. It is one of my all-time favourite Stones rockers. It kicks ass, big time. I would put it on any “best of” compilation. Never have The Stones used horns so effectively. 

You are never far from the blues on this album, though, and we return to them with the slow and dignified brassy blues of I Got The Blues, it is most powerfully enhanced by the horn section. I love the organ swathes near the end too. Thinking about it, only Brown Sugar, parts of Can’t You Hear Me Knocking and Bitch are essentially rock tracks. The rest of the album is blues-based, with a few nods to country. 

One of the group’s most bleak, depressing songs is the hard-hitting and stark Sister Morphine. “Why does the doctor have no face?” asks Jagger, in drug-addled character. Not many songs makes drug taking so horrifyingly unattractive as this one does, but, despite that it is a miserable masterpiece. The guitar on it is superb - Mick Taylor, I think. His contributions throughout the album are magnificent. Stones guitar was never just Keith Richards and Taylor was truly spectacular for a few years. The song was co-written by Jagger's sixties squeeze, Marianne Faithfull.

The Stones always enjoyed delving into country, and they do so here on the enjoyable romp of Dead Flowers, with Jagger hamming up the cod-country accent, beseeching little Suzie to take him down. Hmmm. Where to, I wonder?

The album ends with Moonlight Mile, a dense, slightly Van Morrison-esque chugging ballad, a song that merges a country maudlin feeling with a slow rock muscularity to great effect. It is a pretty difficult song to analyse or pigeonhole, particularly when the sweeping, cinematic strings arrive halfway through.

Along with Let It Bleed, its predecessor, this has a strong case for being The Stones’ best album. I might just plump for the former, but only just, for this one kicked off the seventies in superb rocking, chunky blues fashion.