Sticky Fingers
Sticky Fingers | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | 23 April 1971 | |||
Recorded |
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Studio |
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Genre | ||||
Length | 46:25 | |||
Label | Rolling Stones | |||
Producer | Jimmy Miller | |||
The Rolling Stones chronology | ||||
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Spanish issue | ||||
Singles from Sticky Fingers | ||||
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Sticky Fingers is a studio album by the English rock band
The album featured a return to basics for the Rolling Stones. The unusual instrumentation introduced several albums prior was absent, with most songs featuring drums, guitar, bass, and percussion as provided by the key members: Mick Jagger (lead vocals, various percussion and rhythm guitar), Keith Richards (guitar and backing vocals), Mick Taylor (guitar), Bill Wyman (bass guitar), and Charlie Watts (drums). Additional contributions were made by long-time Stones collaborators including saxophonist Bobby Keys and keyboardists Billy Preston, Jack Nitzsche, Ian Stewart, and Nicky Hopkins. As with the other albums of the Rolling Stones late 1960s/early 1970s period, it was produced by Jimmy Miller.
Sticky Fingers is widely considered one of the Rolling Stones' best albums. It was the band's first album to reach number one on both the UK albums and US albums charts, and has since achieved triple platinum certification in the US. "Brown Sugar” topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971. Sticky Fingers was voted the second best album of the year in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll for 1971, based on American critics' votes. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and included in Rolling Stone magazine's "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list.
Background
With the end of their Decca/London association at hand, the Rolling Stones were finally free to release their albums (including cover art) as they pleased. However, their departing manager
When Decca informed the Rolling Stones that they were owed one more single, the band submitted a track called "Cocksucker Blues",
Recording
Although sessions for Sticky Fingers began in earnest in March 1970, the Rolling Stones had been recording at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama in December 1969, where they cut "You Gotta Move", "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses". "Sister Morphine", cut during Let It Bleed's sessions earlier in March of that year, had been held over from that release. Much of the recording for Sticky Fingers was made with the Rolling Stones' mobile studio in Stargroves during the summer and autumn of 1970. Early versions of songs that would eventually appear on Exile on Main St. were also rehearsed during these sessions.[4]
Music and lyrics
Sticky Fingers originally included 10 tracks. The music has been characterised by commentators as
Artwork
Standard version
The artwork emphasised the
"We manufactured those kind of one-off packages, because a lot of conventional record suppliers were a bit baffled as to how to make them. I'd already done a few of them for bands like The Temptations, The Supremes, Joe Cocker and a teen idol named Bobby Sherman, where a band would be selling in sufficient quantities – maybe a million-plus – to have a custom-made sleeve. So when there was a big act like the Stones, you knew the initial release would be a million-plus, and a custom package could be made without costing the label too much of a premium. So the Stones' managers came to me and asked what I could do." – Craig Braun[10]
The photo of the crotch was assumed by fans to be Mick Jagger, but people involved in the photo shoot claim Warhol photographed several men (not including Jagger) and never revealed which shots he used. Among the candidates, Jed Johnson, Warhol's lover at the time, denied it was his likeness, although his twin brother Jay is a possibility. Those closest to the shoot, and subsequent design, name Factory artist and designer Corey Tippin as the likeliest candidate. Warhol "superstar" Joe Dallesandro claims to have been the model.[11]
When retailers complained that the zipper damaged the vinyl (from stacked shipments), the zipper was "unzipped" slightly to the middle of the record, where damage would be minimised.[9]
For the initial vinyl release the album title and band name is smaller and at the top on the American release. For the UK release, the title and band name are in bigger letters and on the left.
The album introduced the
Critic Sean Egan wrote: "Without using the Stones' name, it instantly conjures them, or at least Jagger, as well as a certain lasciviousness that is the Stones' own… It quickly and deservedly became the most famous logo in the history of popular music."[12] The tongue and lips design was part of a package that, in 2003, VH1 named the "No. 1 Greatest Album Cover" of all time.[13]
Alternative version and covers
In Spain, the original cover was censored by the
In 1992, the LP release of the album in Russia featured a similar treatment as the original cover; but with
Release and reception
Retrospective reviews | |
---|---|
Aggregate scores | |
Source | Rating |
Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [citation needed] |
MusicHound Rock | 4.5/5[citation needed] |
NME | 9/10[20] |
Pitchfork | 10/10[21] |
Q | [22] |
Record Collector | [22] |
The Rolling Stone Album Guide | [23] |
Uncut | [24] |
Sticky Fingers was released on 23 April 1971[25] and reached number one on the UK Albums Chart in May 1971, remaining there for four weeks before returning at number one for a further week in mid June. In the US, the album hit number one within days of release, and stayed there for four weeks. The album spent a total of 69 weeks on the Billboard 200.[26] According to Billboard's Top 200 list, it was one of many albums that topped the German chart that year.
In a contemporary review for the Los Angeles Times, music critic Robert Hilburn said that although Sticky Fingers is one of the best rock albums of the year, it is only "modest" by the Rolling Stones' standards and succeeds on the strength of songs such as "Bitch" and "Dead Flowers", which recall the band's previously uninhibited, furious style.[27] Jon Landau, writing in Rolling Stone, felt that it lacks the spirit and spontaneity of the Rolling Stones' previous two albums and, apart from "Moonlight Mile", is full of "forced attempts at style and control" in which the band sounds disinterested, particularly on formally correct songs such as "Brown Sugar".[28] Writing for Rolling Stone in 2015, David Fricke called it "an eclectic affirmation of maturing depth" and the band's "sayonara to a messy 1969".[29] In a positive review, Lynn Van Matre of the Chicago Tribune viewed the album as the band "at their raunchy best" and wrote that, although it is "hardly innovative," it is consistent enough to be one of the year's best albums.[30] Writing for Slate, Jack Hamilton praised the album in a retrospective review, stating that it was "one of the greatest albums in rock 'n' roll history."[7]
Sticky Fingers was voted the second best album of the year in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll for 1971.[31] Lester Bangs voted it number one in the poll and said that it was his most played album of the year.[32] Robert Christgau, the poll's creator, ranked the album 17th on his own year-end list.[33] In a 1975 article for The Village Voice, Christgau suggested that the release was "triffling with decadence", but might be the Rolling Stones' best album, approached only by Exile on Main St. (1972).[34] In Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), he wrote that it reflected how unapologetic the band was after the Altamont Free Concert and that, despite the concession to sincerity with "Wild Horses", songs such as "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" and "I Got the Blues" are as "soulful" as "Good Times", and their cover of "You Gotta Move" is on-par with their previous covers of "Prodigal Son" and "Love in Vain".[19]
Re-releases
In 1994, Sticky Fingers was remastered and reissued by Virgin Records. This remaster was initially released in a Collector's Edition CD, which replicated in miniature many elements of the original vinyl album packaging, including the zipper. Sticky Fingers was remastered again in 2009 by Universal Music Enterprises and in 2011 by Universal Music Enterprises in a Japanese-only SHM-SACD version.
In June 2015, the Rolling Stones reissued Sticky Fingers (in its 2009 remastering) in a variety of formats to coincide with a new concert tour, the
Legacy
Sticky Fingers was the first album released by the group in the post-Klein era[25] and was listed among the 1999 class of Grammy Hall of Fame inductees.[39]
In 1994, Sticky Fingers was ranked number ten in
Sticky Fingers was listed as No. 63 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time,[42] No. 64 in a 2012 revised list,[43] and No. 104 in a 2020 reboot of the list.[44] In a 2018 retrospective review, The Guardian's Alexis Petridis ranked it the best album the band had ever produced, stating "their claim to be The Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band in the World has no more compelling evidence than the flawless 46 minutes of music here."[45]
David Hepworth wrote in his 2016 book Never a Dull Moment that the contributions of guest performers like Keys, Jim Dickinson, and Preston made the album contain "more musical range than any other Rolling Stones album," such as "Dickinson's honky-tonk piano on 'Wild Horses'" and "Preston's churchy organ solo on 'I Got the Blues'".[46] Hepworth also suggested that Taylor's "Latin-flavored guitar solo" on "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" was influenced by Santana's 1970 album Abraxas.[46]
Track listing
All tracks are written by
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
---|---|---|---|
1. | "Bitch" | 3:38 | |
2. | "I Got the Blues" | 3:54 | |
3. | "Sister Morphine" | Jagger, Richards, Marianne Faithfull | 5:31 |
4. | "Dead Flowers" | 4:03 | |
5. | "Moonlight Mile" | 5:56 |
Personnel
- Track credits are noted in parentheses and based on CD numbering where the titles of the second side are numbered from 6 to 10.[47]
The Rolling Stones
- Mick Jagger – vocals (all tracks), acoustic guitar (9, 10), castanets (1), maracas (1), electric guitar (2)
- Keith Richards – electric guitar (1, 3–7, 9), acoustic guitar (1, 3, 5, 8, 9), backing vocals (2–7, 9)
- Mick Taylor – electric guitar (1, 2, 4–7, 9, 10), acoustic guitar (3)
- Bill Wyman – bass guitar (all but 5), electric piano (5)
- Charlie Watts – drums (all tracks)
Additional personnel
- string arrangement(2, 10)
- Ry Cooder – slide guitar (8)
- Jim Dickinson – piano (3)
- Rocky Dijon – congas (4)
- Nicky Hopkins – piano (2, 4)
- Bobby Keys – tenor saxophone (1, 4, 6, 7)
- Jimmy Miller – percussion (4, 6)
- Jack Nitzsche – piano (8)
- Billy Preston – organ (4, 7)
- Jim Price – trumpet (6, 7), piano (10)
- Ian Stewart – piano (1, 9)
Technical
- engineer
- Andy Johns – engineer
- Chris Kimsey – engineer
- Jimmy Johnson – engineer
- Doug Sax – mastering engineer
- Andy Warhol – Cover concept/photography
- John Pasche – Cover concept (Spanish issue)
- Phil Jude – Photography (Spanish issue)
Charts
Weekly charts
|
Year-end charts
|
Certifications
Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
---|---|---|
Australia (ARIA)[84] original release |
Gold | 20,000^ |
Australia (ARIA)[85] release of 2015 |
Gold | 35,000^ |
Canada (Music Canada)[86] | Platinum | 100,000^ |
France ( SNEP)[87]
|
Gold | 100,000* |
Italy (FIMI)[88] | Gold | 25,000‡ |
Norway (IFPI Norway)[89] | Silver | 20,000[90] |
United Kingdom (BPI)[91] release of 2015 |
Platinum | 300,000‡ |
United States (RIAA)[92] | 3× Platinum | 3,000,000^ |
* Sales figures based on certification alone. |
See also
- Album era
- List of Canadian number-one albums of 1971
- List of number-one albums in Australia during the 1970s
- List of number-one albums from the 1970s (UK)
References
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Further reading
- Warwick, Neil; Jon Kutner; Tony Brown (2004). The Complete Book of the British Charts: Singles and Albums. ISBN 1-84449-058-0.
External links
- Sticky Fingers at Discogs (list of releases)