Sunday, February 18, 2007

215. The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers (1971)
















Track Listing

1. Brown Sugar
2. Sway
3. Wild Horses
4. Can't You Hear Me Knocking
5. You Gotta Move
6. Bitch
7. I Got The Blues
8. Sister Morphine
9. Dead Flowers
10. Moonlight Mile

Review

Before I started this project I never had any idea of why there were so many Stones fans, but after such a great sequence of Stones albums, particularly Beggar's Banquet, Let It Bleed and this one, I have seen the light. We are in 1971, the Beatles are dead and the Stones go on to make great music.

I am not advocating that the Stones are the better band, mind. What the Beatles did was so revolutionary the even if they only have three I albums I really love they are all too important not to make them the most influential band of their time. But the Stones are honestly a more consistent band, they very rarely put a foot wrong in these last three albums.

This album is a work of greatness, some songs are infectious like Brown Sugar, some are just pretty like Wild Horses and some are undestilled brilliance like Sister Morphine. The Stones cover hard hitting themes, many of which are realted to their first hand experience of drugs, sex and rock 'n roll. And if only they had stopped doing albums in the mid-seventies maybe, just maybe they would have been contenders to the title of greatest band ever. It's sad not knowing when to quit, but his album is a gem. Get it at Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Sister Morphine
2. Brown Sugar
3. Wild Horses
4. Can't You Hear Me Knocking

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

When Decca informed The Rolling Stones that they were owed one more single, they cheekily submitted a track called "Cocksucker Blues" - which was guaranteed to be refused. Instead, Decca released the two-year-old Beggars Banquet track "Street Fighting Man" while Allen Klein would have dual copyright ownership - with The Rolling Stones - of "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses".

The artwork for Sticky Fingers - including a real zipper - was designed by Andy Warhol and featured the lower torso of actor Joe Dallesandro (not Mick Jagger, as a number of fans at the time have speculated) in a pair of tight jeans.

Mick Taylor was reported to have had a hand in composing "Moonlight Mile" but was denied a co-credit.

In 1989, former bassist Bill Wyman opened an American cuisine restaurant entitled "Sticky Fingers".

In 2003, Sticky Fingers was listed as number 63 on the List of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time while in 2003 the TV network VH1 named Sticky Fingers the 46th greatest album of all time.

Brown Sugar:


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The fact that the Beatles split, was a release for the Stones ... they lost their inspirations and became more their own ... it resulted via Sticky Fingers into in their masterpiece ... "Exile on mainstreet" witch is brilliant ....

I never really liked the Stones, untill around 18 years ago, when i saw them live for the first time. A really "rock and roll circus" that you can't capture on record ...

Anonymous said...

hi!!i´m guillermo from argentina.i´m 21 and studying economics.you know, on tuesday i have a final,but i fucking found yor blogs and i read them all day,lol, so no study for me today.so i hate you, no just kidding.
so if you are doing a phd, can u tell me how you find time to do all this, and more important , money?????? or are u millonaire?
i´d love to do waht u are doing, probably i´m going to have to do it illegally,lol.
i don´t have the money to buy all the albums and dvd´s!!!!.
one suggestion why don´t you do the reviews one by decade, because at least the bok part is going to be realy boring for me!!!.i like more modern books.
i recently bought saturday by ian mcwan, but i haven´t started.have u read it?
ok now i´m saying godbye and probably ging to write u often.
i really like your opinions.
good luck!!

Anonymous said...

guillemro again, i forgot , if you like art, there´s a 1001 paintings!!!

Francisco Silva said...

Guillermo: Sorry I stopped you from Studying :)

Well I have the time precisely because I am doing a PhD, I spend most of the day at home reading or writing and have the music on the background, I watch 3 films a week which isn't that much and reading a bit of fiction everyday never harmed anyone.

In terms of money I have a scolarship and really it is not that expensive, if you pay about 10$ a month you get a subscription to Napster which will have most of the albums you need and you don't need to pay anymore. I live in the UK so DVD's are very cheap through Amazon, for the three films I pay something like 15 to 20 £ and postage and packing is free. And books are so slow to advance and Classic books are so cheap that it is also no problem, I get a lot of the books second hand for like 1 pound.

Actually I have bought Saturday but haven't read it yet, I now have a problem that books that I know are on the list I don't read... but saturday is at the end of the list LOL

I saw the paintings book, but I really think I need to see them live to make them justice... for that I DON'T have money.