Sticky Fingers

A few weeks ago I saw a list on Facebook ranking the Rolling Stones' albums. Even though it was just some guy with his own opinion, I was intrigued because I have no idea what the best Stones album is, mainly because I haven't heard them all (there are 28 to choose from). I think most people would say Exile on Main Street, but this guy picked Sticky Fingers, which was released in 1971.

This was the first album the Stones did without Brian Jones, and was released with an actual working zipper on the cover. Like many Stones albums, it has a handful of songs that are famous and still played daily on classic rock stations, along with songs that are not famous. On many Stones albums, these later songs are not memorable at all, but on Sticky Fingers I count only two songs that really aren't that interesting.

The album opens with "Brown Sugar," which hasn't aged well. It's a great rocker, but have you listened to the lyrics? I suppose Mick Jagger wrote it because he was having a high time with black ladies at the time, but the lyrics are about the exploitation of slave women. Consider:

"Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields,
Sold in a market down in New Orleans.
Scarred old slaver know he's doin' alright.
Hear him whip the women just around midnight.
Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good (a-ha)
Brown sugar, just like a young girl should"

I wince at these lyrics, and wonder what Jagger had in mind. I suppose he's pointing out historical atrocities, but in a song that celebrates how black women's pussies taste?

"Bitch" is another great rocker with one of Keith Richards' many fantastic guitar riffs and a wonderful horn section. "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" has more great Richards guitar work. "Wild Horses" is one of the Stones' better slow songs, right up there with "Angie." In the sort-of famous song category is a country-and-western send-up, "Dead Flowers," which has this nifty lyric:

"Take me down little Susie, take me down
I know you think you're the Queen of the Underground
And you can send me dead flowers every morning
Send me dead flower by the mail
Send me dead flowers to my wedding
And I won't forget to put roses on your grave"

I came to buy Sticky Fingers many years ago not for any of those songs but for "Moonlight Mile," the best song on the album. I saw a now forgotten but under-rated film starring Dustin Hoffman that was titled after the song, and I had never heard it before. It's a sad melody about life on the road:

"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"

The song was created when Jagger and Mick Taylor were working together, but Taylor was surprised to get no writing credit.

In the cultural appropriation arena are two cuts, "You Gotta Move," which was an African-American spiritual, and "I Got the Blues," which is an homage/rip-off of Robert Johnson.

Also on the album is "Sister Morphine," co-written by Jagger, Richards, and their muse, Marianne Faithfull. With so many songs obliquely about drugs, this one doesn't make any bones about it:

"Sweet Cousin Cocaine, lay your cool cool hand on my head
Ah, come on, Sister Morphine, you better make up my bed
Because you know, and I know, in the morning I'll be dead
Yeah, and you can sit around, yeah and you can watch all the
Clean white sheets stained red"

The album hit number one on the charts in many countries, and came in second in the initial Village Voice "Pazz and Jop" poll (it got beat out by Who's Next).

I think the album is definitely better than Let It Bleed and Beggar's Banquet. I'll have to give a good listen to Exile to see which one I think is superior.