Sticky Fingers Roundup

Sticky Fingers Roundup


1. "Brown Sugar" – 3:50
2. "Sway" – 3:52
3. "Wild Horses" – 5:44
4. "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" – 7:15
5. "You Gotta Move" (Fred McDowell/Rev. Gary Davis) – 2:34
6. "Bitch" – 3:37
7. "I Got the Blues" – 3:54
8. "Sister Morphine" (Mick Jagger/Keith Richards/Marianne Faithfull) – 5:34
9. "Dead Flowers" – 4:05
10. "Moonlight Mile" – 5:56

The Stones are really on a roll: Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, and now Sticky Fingers. The biggest change came with the addition of Mick Taylor – finally the band had a world class lead guitar player, and as "Knocking" and "Moonlight Mile" proved, he had some interesting rhythm ideas as well.

The album is unusual in that it features only three rockers – the rest of the songs are mostly mellow, if not contemplative.

Some background info from Wikipedia:

Although sessions for Sticky Fingers began in earnest in March 1970, they had done some early recording at Muscle Shoals Studios in Alabama in December 1969 and "Sister Morphine", cut during Let It Bleed's sessions earlier in March of that year, would be held over for this release. Much of the recording for Sticky Fingers was effected with The Rolling Stones' mobile studio unit in Stargroves during the summer and fall months in 1970. Early versions of songs that would appear on Exile on Main St. were also routined during these sessions.
With the end of their Decca/London association at hand, The Rolling Stones would finally be free to release their albums (cover art and all) as they pleased. However, soon-to-be-ex-manager Allen Klein (who took over the reins from Andrew Loog Oldham in 1965 so that Oldham could concentrate on producing the band), dealt the group a major blow when they discovered - to their horror - that they had inadvertently signed over their entire 1960s copyrights to Klein and his company ABKCO, which is how all of their material from 1963's "Come On" to Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! The Rolling Stones in Concert has since come to be released by ABKCO Records. The band would remain incensed with Klein for decades over the swindle.

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".

Sticky Fingers may just be the band's most drug-drenched album, as well over half of the songs mention drug use, while the rest merely allude to it. Some final overdubbing and mixing in January 1971, found the album complete and preceded by "Brown Sugar" that March, which reached #1 in the US and #2 in the UK. Appearing in April on their new Rolling Stones label (with distribution by WEA Music), Sticky Fingers was rapturously-received and hit #1 worldwide, beginning an uninterrupted string of eight consecutive chart-topping US studio albums. "Wild Horses", covered by Keith Richard's friend Gram Parsons with The Flying Burrito Brothers, was the second single in the US only, making the Top 30.