Let’s face it, after fifteen months without any trace of new material (although if the 1970 live set ‘Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out‘ was a stop-gap, it was a superb one), having to fully integrate a new guitarist into the outfit and moving from the label where you had spent the past eight years to forming one of your own, for any other rock band such times would be deemed a state of flux.
But this is the Rolling Stones we are talking about and they didn’t do periods of transition.
They had ended 1969 with the brilliant, darkly compelling ‘Let it Bleed‘ album, which was followed within days by the nightmare of Altamont, a free festival headlined by the band at a speedway stadium in northern California when a fan was stabbed to death close to the stage while the Stones were playing – an event signaling not only the end of the 1960s peace and love ethic, but the counter-culture vibe as a whole.
The following year was spent laying down tracks for their next album and performing some of the most enthralling shows of their entire career, charismatic front man Mick Jagger becoming increasingly louche and agile in the process.
But the most renowned rebels in the world were fighting insurgence on three fronts themselves as 1970 continued to unfold. On the Stones ending their association with Decca Records, lawsuits were exchanged with the company issuing several poorly collated compilation albums by way of retaliation. There was a bitter parting of the ways with manager Allen Klien which prompted another round of rancorous legal suppositions – while the UK Inland Revenue were also on their case claiming the band owed income tax on record royalties dating back to the mid-60s.
The group – Jagger (vocals), Keith Richard (guitar), Charlie Watts (drums), Bill Wyman (bass) and relative newcomer Mick Taylor (guitar), a Stone of little more than a year after replacing founder member Brian Jones, who shortly after leaving in June 1969 was found dead in a swimming pool at the age of 27 – responded by reducing time spent in their homeland and by the middle of 1971 had taken up residency in France for tax purposes.
Amidst the turbulence they also had the ninth studio LP of their career to make, the high stakes not just down to it being the first on their recently formed Rolling Stones Records, but because their previous two ‘Beggars Banquet‘ (1968) and the aforementioned ‘Let It Bleed‘ had been landmark entries onto their roster and that of popular music in its entirety.
In the event they duly completed a hat-trick of monumental studio album releases, ‘STICKY FINGERS‘ (April 1971), a rock record of extraordinary resonance and resolve.
From the late-60s, when three of the tracks were originally cut, the Stones had carved themselves a path into the new decade, the music and musings, riffs and rhetoric containing all the attitude and antagonism that was unique to them – but they have entered the 70s with lurid and visceral intent, the drug busts, sex scandals and flouting authority of yore giving way to jet-set debauchery.
Throughout, Jagger in his lyrics conjures intense images of sex, drugs and rock and roll, sometimes within the same song, the episodes sometimes hedonistic, often haunted. To accompany such vivid scenes, the melodies are equally expressive yet at the same time the most diverse they have ever attempted.
Mostly the work of Richard, already no stranger, the inspiration even, for the subject matter his songwriting partner was evoking, (original Stones material from their earliest days credited to Jagger/Richard), as the singer glides from being raucous in the upbeat material to reflective when the mood darkens, his imagery is presented with overtones of country, soul, blues and funk, along with traditional Stones-styled stomp – yet for all its variations ‘Sticky Fingers‘ never once sounds contrived or in danger of losing its grip.
Although slight, a change of emphasis is apparent in the first notes to be heard, opener ‘Brown Sugar‘ beginning not with the sinewy guitar lines that were trademark of Richard, but with a blast of Townshendesqe power chords. Written by Jagger whilst on location in Australia when starring in the film ‘Ned Kelly‘ two years before, this rollicking, propulsive track was one of three recorded at the Muscle Shoals studios in Alabama as 1969 came to a close and debuted on that fateful night at Altamont.
The uplifting aura of the music, which contains a glorious sense of the guitars, piano and saxophone (played with typical aplomb by long-time Stones sideman Bobby Keys) being at cross-purposes, cannot distract from the cruel, despicable tone of the lyrics. Jagger alludes to slavery, rape, racism and heroin in a litany of provocative bad taste – or as he reflected years later, ‘I thought I’d cover all the bad subjects in one go. I could never write that song now.’
The first track to be cut at Stargroves, a country pile in England owned by Jagger, ‘Sway‘ is a downbeat but defiant rumination on the disreputable lifestyle that had earned them much of their notoriety – the protagonist reflecting how, ‘This demon life has me in its sway.’
From the opening lines there is acknowledgment the life of wine, women and song (amongst other vices) comes at a cost, ‘Did you ever wake up to find a day that broke your mind/Destroyed your notion of time,’ the demons now possessing Richard keeping him from a playing on a compelling track – although in his absence Taylor contributes some outstanding electric guitar to further enhance his reputation as a gifted player the Stones can feel fortunate to have recruited.
Another song from the Muscle Shoals sessions of 1969, the serene country-tinged ballad ‘Wild Horses‘ had previously been heard on ‘Burrito Deluxe,’ a 1970 release by country-rock pioneers the Flying Burrito Brothers. Front man Gram Parsons, who was subsequently fired from the band due to his spiraling drug use and preference to jamming with Richard rather than meet Burrito commitments, has been credited with giving the song its accepted arrangement.
Beginning life as a lullaby written by Richard for baby son Marlon, Jagger then came up with a set of touching, exquisite lyrics that chronicle the end of a love affair, thought in this case to be his three-year liaison with actress/singer Marianne Faithfull.
Accompanied by brilliant 12-string guitar harmonics by his co-writer, Jagger has never sounded so personal than when he sings:
‘I watched you suffer a dull aching pain/Now you decided to show me the same/No sweeping exits or offstage lines/Could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind.’
It is a deeply affecting track, Jagger to be taken at his word when he recollected, ‘I was definitely very inside the piece emotionally. It’s very evocative and sad.’
One of his most committed vocal performances, the closing couplet provides one last tug on the heart-strings of both singer and listener, (‘Faith has been broken, tears must be cried/Let’s do some living after we die’), the understated string arrangement of Paul Buckmaster only adding to the poignancy.
In contrast ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking‘ is a drama in two acts, the narrator spending the first three minutes trying to gain entry, as the title describes, to where a woman awaits.
‘Yeah, you got satin shoes/Yeah, you got plastic boots/Y’all got cocaine eyes/Yeah, you got speed
freak jive.’
By the end of verse two Jagger is imploring the woman ‘Can’t you hear me knockin’?/Yeah, throw me down the keys’ but the sharp-edged guitar rock on which the track is built then gives way to a four minute jam that becomes a fusion of jazz and funk – the wailing sax, busy percussion and nimble keyboard work making the Stones sound closer to Santana than their own ‘Satanic Majesties‘ persona of four years before.
Side one closer ‘You Gotta Move’ is an edgy acoustic blues workout of an African American gospel song whose lyrics were credited to blues man Mississippi Fred McDowell, the number having been in the Stones live repertoire for some time. Delivering the vocal in a southern drawl, Jagger brings evocations of the chain-gang as the Stones both acknowledge and celebrate their musical roots.
Another track recorded at Stargroves, side two opens with the pounding rock of ‘Bitch‘ a licentious paean to an object of the singer’s desire. If the blaring horns give it the atmospherics of rock and soul revue, then ‘I Got the Blues‘ sees them move into Stax territory – the clanging electric guitar and lonesome horns that herald the opening create circumstances where the voice of Wilson Pickett or Otis Redding rather than that of Jagger could expect to be heard.
In despair over a woman lost ‘As I stand by your flame/I get burned once again/Feelin’ low down, I’m blue’ the feeling of soulful melancholy is underpinned by a searing performance at the keyboards by Billy Preston and while lamenting his loss, Jagger does not shy away from self-admonishment:
‘Every night you’ve been away/I’ve sat down and I have prayed/That you’re safe in the arms of a guy/
Who will bring you alive/Won’t drag you down with abuse.’
From downcast musings on a love affair now over, albeit decorated by the most sublime horn arrangement, the mood turns ominous – self-destruction the focus on the chilling ‘Sister Morphine‘.
The harsh reality of drug addiction has rarely been aired with such conviction, this in a song whose original framework was said to be sketched by Faithfull, known herself to have struggled with addiction (along with Jagger and Richard she receives a co-write credit). The grim detail, ‘The scream of the ambulance is sounding in my ears/Tell me, Sister Morphine, how long have I been lying here?‘ is accentuated by a stripped back arrangement to which Richard contributes some expressive acoustic guitar, although most of the brooding ambience comes from the stunning slide guitar runs of Ry Cooder.
On first listen ‘Dead Flowers‘ appears an instantly likeable country-rock amble, the gist of which is contained in an opening verse that contains Dylan-like detail:
‘Well, when you’re sitting there in your silk upholstered chair/Talkin’ to some rich folk that you know/
Well, I hope you won’t see me in my ragged company/Well, you know I could never be alone.’
But from there the portents turn decidedly bleak, the music retains its rustic twang but cannot hide the wretchedness being felt by the storyteller:
‘Well, when you’re sitting back in your rose pink Cadillac/Making bets on Kentucky Derby Day/Ah, I’ll be in my basement room with a needle and a spoon/And another girl to take my pain away.‘
Far from sending up country music the Stones could not sound more authentic in their efforts, the depiction of an estranged lover sending ‘dead flowers to my wedding’ and him not forgetting ‘to put roses on your grave,’ is perfect country song juxtaposition of a solemn story set to optimistic music.
While ‘Sticky Fingers‘ can be seen as a celebration of everything, the danger, drama and disrepute, that made them so original and downright fascinating, they choose to conclude things in far from celebratory way – ‘Moonlight Mile‘ a sombre, if not quite sober account of life being led at a gallop, offset by the wearying existence of long hours on the road.
There are allusions to cocaine and other temptations on offer to their travelling retinue, yet what really strikes a chord is the loneliness Jagger conveys in a magnificent vocal performance, the wistfulness of his words taking it close to a sinners prayer for redemption:
Oh, I’m sleeping under strange, strange skies/Just another mad, mad day on the road/My dreams is fading down the railway line/I’m just about a moonlight mile down the road.’
Not only is the track a breathtaking example of their creativity and expressionism, it serves almost as a signpost for what the immediate future had in store for them. Due reportedly to his increasing drug dependency Richard does not appear on the track (on which Buckmaster again does them proud with the string section), ‘I was very out of it‘ the guitarist later remarked, an appraisal that could apply to any of the next four Stones albums – all of which left Jagger and to a slightly lesser extent Taylor and producer Jimmy Miller at the controls.
In the absence of Richard, on ‘Moonlight Mile’ Mick strums an acoustic guitar to good effect with Taylor constructing the musical outline of the song, exemplified by his precise but imaginative playing – yet on the label the track is credited solely to Jagger/Richard, this lack of recognition one of the reasons Taylor left the band before the 70s had reached their halfway point.
For the time being, however, the Stones could afford themselves collective congratulation for a job supremely well done with ‘Sticky Fingers‘. Watts and Wyman were imperious in laying down rhythms that were solid or subtle depending on what was required, Richard (when present) and Taylor weaving guitar patterns both gritty and graceful – out front meanwhile, Jagger had added a vulnerable dimension to his customary verve.
Not for them the prevailing trends of excessive guitar-noodling, the metronome monotony of lengthy drum solos or lyrics bearing the hallmark of mid-teen mysticism – such contrivances beneath the musical dignity of the band against whom all others were judged.
Amidst the critical acclaim that greeted the album perhaps the most telling comment came from the unlikely source of Pete Townshend (who had recently seen the Stones work at close quarters having contributed backing vocals to ‘Sway‘), Pete declaring:
‘Quite simply, I feel the Stones are the world’s best rock and roll band.’
Even then the Stones brought two more aces into play. The Andy Warhol conceived album cover with its moving zip would become as iconic as any in rock history, while for the first time the instantly recognisable lips and tongue motif was used on the sleeve and label – thus they became the most celebrated rock band and most famous rock brand on the planet.
So, ladies and gentlemen, for your delectation – the Rolling Stones.
ROLLING STONES – ‘STICKY FINGERS‘ (Released April 23 1971):
Brown Sugar/Sway/Wild Horses/Can’t You Hear Me Knocking/You Gotta Move/Bitch/I Got the Blues/Sister Morphine/Dead Flowers/Moonlight Mile;
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