The Rolling Stones Vinyl : Sticky Fingers

Sticky Fingers

Price: $ 17.98

Sticky Fingers”Sister Morphine,” the heart of guitarist Mick Taylor’s first full studio album with the Stones, doesn’t get the airplay of “Brown Sugar” or “Wild Horses.” But it’s one of the most vivid, horrifying songs about drug abuse ever recorded–as Mick Jagger sings “from my hospital bed,” the ringing guitars of Taylor and Keith Richards build to full catharsis behind him. On that and lighter songs like the countryish “Dead Flowers” and the rocker “Bitch,” Charlie Watts establishes himself as rock’s prototypical drummer. He’s creative and propulsive and knows how to swing, but he never overwhelms the song or the other Stones. –Steve KnopperOnly a peak-of-their-powers Stones could manage to overshadow one of their very greatest albums by surrounding it in their studio chronology with Let It Bleed and Exile on Main St.. Sticky Fingers, however, is anything but an also-ran. Offering some of the band’s most inspired twists on their basic approach–”Sway,” the midtempo rocker that would sound orchestral even without Paul Buckmaster’s climactic string arrangement; the gorgeous closer “Moonlight Mile”–this also rocks like the demon they had lived to face another day after Altamont. And, as if to prove their minds were still as dirty as their music, its keynote is “Brown Sugar.” –Rickey Wright