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Sticky Fingers in depth

Sticky Fingers is the Stones' first record on their own label, the third with Jimmy Miller producing, and was written and recorded during a period of peak creativity and performance.

It's a strong contender for the title of 'Best Rolling Stones Album Ever'. Recorded when, musically speaking, the band was at it's apex, Sticky Fingers is a bona fide rock and roll classic, containing and summing up everything good about guitar music at the start of the 1970s. 

Like it's successor, Exile On Main Street, and its predecessor, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers contains a little bit of everything for the varied musical taste. It features great rock and roll; expert song writing; marvelous production; blues, Latin, country; as well as a technical level of musicianship that many think they never reached again.

“To my mind the things that Ry (Cooder) plays on have a kind of polish that the Stones generally began to develop around that time. The rough edges came off a bit. Mick Taylor started putting on the polish that became the next period of the Stones out of the raw rock and blues band.”

1979


nextTo start with - first, but not most, as it were - you do have to give the man at the desk some credit for having fostered the vibes and mastered the production that makes this sound so good. Jimmy Miller, take a bow. The new head of the new Rolling Stones record label who helped provide a solid commercial platform and context for the recording gets props too: Marshall Chess, take a bow.

But of course, it's the musicians who make the music. Who did what?

To begin: Brown Sugar. Has a better rock tune about slavery/sex/racial preference/heroin ever been written? Yeah? Show me. Mick Jagger, take a bow.

(Disclaimer: nobody here is claiming the song is about any of those things. We do recommend a close reading of the lyrics, though.)

Next up, Sway, a heart-breakingly beautiful song, featuring one of the greatest guitar solos ever heard on a Rolling Stone record. Mick Taylor, take a bow.

Wild Horses follows: along with Goats Head Soup's Angie, perhaps the Stones' best known ballad. It's such a beautiful song, featuring awesome lead guitar work and harmony vocals from Keith Richards, who wrote it (as you do) 'because I was doing good at home with my old lady': take a bow, savvy?

While Keith and the two Micks are the headline stars of Sticky Fingers - Sister Morphine and Moonlight Mile being two further examples - there are fantastic contributions from everyone else involved, too, not least session men Ry Cooder and Bobby Keys.

Along with Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed and Exile On Main St., Sticky Fingers is a cornerstone album - perhaps the cornerstone - in the Rolling Stones' history.