The Rolling Stones
Sticky Fingers

THE REVIEW

Obsessed with drugs and sex, hounded day and night by intrusive journalists, the Rolling Stones experienced one of their most complex and difficult periods in the early seventies. Having emerged, not unscathed, from some major successes, "Beggars Banquet", "Let It Bleed", the Stones didn't seem capable of repeating exploits of such magnitude: they were more often in gossip magazines, reliable or not, than in record stores. It was Mick Jagger’s brazenness that was especially in crisis: stories of women scattered here and there, used as objects to be consumed and then discarded, stories of drugs consumed fleetingly in some motel, and inspiration, it was said, inevitably waning. And yet, as rarely happens in life but always in music, the dark period magically transforms into pure gold, pearls to sell to the highest bidder and extravagances as sublime as they are epoch-making. Thus was born, amid a thousand doubts and uncertainties, the greatest album by the Rolling Stones: "Sticky Fingers". The cover is already legendary: the (scandalous) zipper of Mick Jagger designed by the genius Andy Warhol. And the music, ladies and gentlemen, what music: blues rock that sends shivers down your spine, guitar riffs worthy of the best Keith Richards, grit, anger, a desire to amaze, but above all a strong willingness to play the game and respond to the many critiques directed at the group by journalists and critics.

"Yes, we use drugs," the Stones seem to want to say, and "Brown Sugar" and "Sister Morphine" are precisely the best examples of what it means to intelligently respond to critiques and provocations. But in reality, every track is flawless. It’s hard to think that certain songs could be equaled by other bands: "Sway" is a sorrowful ballad, at times even tragic, seasoned with absolutely excellent musical solos (strings, guitars, a drumming that gives you goosebumps); "Wild Horses" is the sweetest and most discreet piece of the entire album, and it’s perhaps one of the peaks of Rolling Stone poetry; and then so much, so much blues, "Can't You Hear Me Knocking", "I Got The Blues" and the folk of "Dead Flowers" (with a clear citation of Baudelaire). It’s impossible to choose the best track, it would be a pretentious and outdated game. What is certain is that "Sticky Fingers" possesses a rhythm and a capacity, almost tribal, to envelop and embrace you even after countless listens, all thanks to a perfect fusion of rock, blues, and folk, thanks to Mick Jagger's voice (rarely so sensual), the brilliance of Keith Richards, and the youthful maturity of Mick Taylor, who had already amply demonstrated, in "Let It Bleed", that he wasn't to make one miss the late Brian Jones too much. The perfection of "Sticky Fingers" is also due to the meticulousness with which the Stones created the album, setting up a series of musics and a long train of rebellious and scandalous lyrics (in comparison, the sexual allusions of "The Last Time" seem like mere child's play), and farsighted musical dedications, more or less hidden within the album (Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley), in honor of those who, rather than altering rock, practically invented it. It’s no coincidence that the last track of the album is the flamboyant "Moonlight Mile", a ballad suspended between Earth and Heaven, and a way to distance themselves from rock and approach Nirvana. But maybe the Stones never believed in anything, except themselves.