Just In Time for Father's Day...a Classic from My Dad's Catalog

#12 Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers

Last weekend was a great time in Baltimore. My brother and I went to see the Orioles beat the Phillies, then wandered the streets of Fells Point in search of more fun.  It was a great time visiting a few bars and watching hockey, basketball and replays of the O's game, and of course, music was involved too. At several locations I noticed that we were getting repeat songs.  Three times we heard "Wild Horses," twice by the Rolling Stones, and once by The Sundays . Checking Wikipedia, it seems everyone has covered this song, from Neil Young to Kelly Clarkson. That shouldn't come as a surprise, its a great tune.  With all this Rolling Stones in my system after a great weekend I decided I needed an album's worth today. I have a few Stones albums, but being that its Father's Day weekend, why not break out one of his old records...

The Rolling Stones "Sticky Fingers" came out in 1971 and gave the rock world a new arsenal of popular hits.  From ballads (Moonlight Mile, Wild Horses) to hard rockers (Bitch, Sway) to the blues (You Gotta Move, I Got The Blues), its all here, so lets get this show on the road...

Side One starts out with a big hit, "Brown Sugar" an ode to every random thing floating through Mick Jagger's head at the time. I guess if you had to sum it up, it'd be sex, drugs, and rock n roll...and a whole lot of other scandalous themes thrown in for good measure. If you're easily offended, don't look for the meaning of this song, just enjoy the overall sound. The song features a LOT of instrumentation, which isn't uncommon for the Stones. While most bands like a prominent guitar riff to dominate, Keith tends to lay back and focus on the song as a whole. "Brown Sugar" is no exception, his powerful riff is always there, but the horns, singing and rest of the band fill out the track very well. "Sway" is a tune that features some great fuzzed out guitar, piano, and a slower beat that seems to casually 'sway' down the street...its lame when you describe it, but its musical perfection when you hear it. The song includes a few hard breaks where the slow build releases before a final increase in overall rhythm fades the song out. Next is the track that got stuck in my head for the past week "Wild Horses," a perfect ballad after the opening barrage of rock. Featuring 12 string acoustic, and 6 string electric and acoustic, this song shows off some great interplay between Keith and Mick Taylor. The lyrics are very well written, even if they land it in the category of "prom song," as a personal love letter its pretty beautiful. All love songs have the potential to become lame when some guy uses one he didn't write to pick up chicks in his Camaro outside the local Dairy Queen, hopefully this has enough integrity to resist that. "Can't You Hear Me Knockin'" brings us back to the fuzzed out guitar and what can only be described as a strung out and desperate rock and roll sound.  This song always reminds me of the movie "Casino" and a little bit of "Goodfellas", even though it only appeared in the former. The song stays in the same format until about three minutes in when it reaches its extended coda. Trailing off into infinity is an interesting jungle rhythm and saxophone. Apparently the long end of the song wasn't planned, it just kinda happened in the studio cause the 'vibe' was working. Side One concludes with "You Gotta Move" a straight slide blues cover written by Mississippi Fred McDowell and Rev. Gary Davis (think old timey bluesmen). The song is very deep delta blues style and shows directly the influence artists like Robert Johnson and Son House had on the Stones.

Side Two starts off with the most straight ahead rocker on the album. "Bitch" uses a simple rock riff in the verse followed by hard chords in the chorus. On to the interlude and you get some more horns added that remain throughout the song. The song even includes a reference to Pavlov's dog...that may have helped me in Psychology 101 at Frostburg. Next up is "I Got the Blues," a slower and very clean guitar-centric song. The style of play is very laid back using delicate arpeggios, and in the case of my copy of the vinyl, a crap load of static. Hey its 41 years old, cut it some slack! Next up is "Sister Morphine" a song written and originally released by Marianne Faithful, with some help from Keith and Mick. The song builds slow then turns to a good rock track which features a very interesting sounding slide guitar from Keith, I may have to try and figure out his tone setting on this one and steal...er...borrow them. "Dead Flowers" is a Lebowski approved tune, or should I say "Dude" approved. I sometimes forget this track is on the album. It almost gets lost in the power of the others. Don't let this one pass you by without taking notice of a great Stone song. The album concludes with one final gem, "Moonlight Mile," a song that I used to hear plenty growing up. Anytime this song comes on my Dad describes a scene on an airplane flying back from Europe, at least I think it was Europe. He said this song came on while flying over a layer of clouds with moonlight brightly shining over cloud tops. On one of my trips to San Diego in recent years I decided to load up Moonlight Mile on my iPod and find the right moment. Though I didn't get the clouds the same way, after taking off on a late night flight, there was the moon, beaming down on the landscape as we moved east back to Baltimore. I can see why that memory was so firmly burned in my Dad's mind, it was absolutely breathtaking, a perfect soundtrack. Its hard to say much more about this song to describe it, you just have to hear it.

I doubt that when my Dad bought this album 40 years ago he thought his son would be enjoying it just as much as he did, but isn't that interesting how things work out. Scratched, dusty and sounding a little rough, the songs still come through the static and I would imagine are just as powerful now as they were then.


Strongest Song: Tracks 3, 10, 1, 4, 3, 2, 8, 9, 3, 10, 5, 7, 6, 10, 3
Weakest Song: not one.
Song You Know: Brown Sugar, Bitch, Wild Horses
Why You Might Hate It: Don't try me.
Buy It?  Required for any Vinyl collection...original copy, reissue, whatever you can find.