The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers

The Best Stone Album?

Sticky Fingers is a landmark Stones recording, rivaled and perhaps surpassed, only by Let It Bleed. Mick Jagger's performance on Sticky Fingers was a perfect rock'n'roll 10. Great album. August 5, 2008

As good as they got

For my money, the Stones never put out a better album than 1971's "Sticky Fingers". I know, I know, 1968's "Beggar's Banquet" and 1972's "Exile On Main Street" have their devotees, but "Sticky Fingers" is the World's Greatest Rock And Roll Band at its absolute zenith in the studio. Though he never really fit into the group's aesthetic, the young Mick Taylor was, technically, the best guitarist the band ever had, and helped return them to their blues base after Brian Jones died. And, in my opinion, Jimmy Miller was the best producer to ever work with them. The record kicks off with the filthy "Brown Sugar," the group's best Seventies single, and continues from strength to strength. "Moonlight Mile" is ravaged and lovely, as is "Wild Horses," the best ballad Jagger and Richards ever wrote. The Stones were at their nastiest on "Bitch" and "Can't You Hear Me Knocking." Everything released from 1968 to 1972 is essential, but "Fingers" is, quite simply, the best rock band on earth at its height. July 28, 2008

Demon Life

Misanthropic, gothic, indestructable. Purists will inevitably favor Exile over Sticky, and it's true we've heard "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses" 'til we're dizzy with indifference, BUT, there's something to be said about that 3:52 residing between. And I'll say it: "Sway" is the quintessential Stones session and, most likely, the perfectest damaged purebloodedest rock song ever recorded. It's got that underhanded epic quality, coming way down , which nobody else (like, GnR) could ever effect. Sounds basement, haphazard, intoxicated until the coda, just a sliver of cleverness, suggests the majesty of pure poetic dissolution. Key ingredient, Mick Taylor, no stompboxes, all feel ~ plus Nicky Hopkins and Jimmy Miller strings, plus the boys, just invented the power ballad for the 1st time. As a fadeout, an afterthought! Slippery guitars, barroom piano and careening drums, it's church of roadhouse. I bet Chuck Berry threw a tantrum. Not only THAT, but "You Gotta Move" which shames Led Zeppelin III and "I Got The Blues," Mick's supersingularest rave soul vocal. NO band ever got so much with so little exertion. Bad badder baddest. July 20, 2008

Quintessential, adamantine, monolithic Stones

To extract the essence of the golden age of music (60s to early 80s), you need only spend time on about 10 groups/artists, the top 5 of which must include Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and, of course, The Rolling Stones.

Marrow lies in the center, right inside the bones, and for the Stones that marrow is fittingly to be found in that middle period which includes 'Exile on Main Street', 'Get Yer Ya Yas Out', 'Let it Bleed' and 'Sticky Fingers'.

And of that marrow, the marrow is Sticky Fingers - without a doubt. While the other albums are all masterpieces, Sticky Fingers is so great that it is worth sending out into space to show alien life what the highest of Homo sapiens can create.

And it gets better - the marrow of this album is none other than 'Can't you hear me knocking', a masterful mini-rock-symphony that showcases brilliant composition, a solid, ever advancing and overwhelming avalanche of virtuosity that incorporates pulsating latin-jazz sounds that make even Santana's masterpiece 'Abraxas' seem temporarily lame.

This album is The One. Get it now, or you'll regret it forever. July 6, 2008

it don't get no better!

If you are looking for a real stones album, not just hits, you won't regret this one. An album like this one assures stones fans as to why the stones have made it through all the years and lackluster albums. There is one reason more than any other that I reccomend this. Yes, wild horses is on here. And for any person wether or not you like, love, hate the stones, a person cannot deny wild horses, it is one of the few songs in this world that can always bring about feeling within, no matter how many times you hear it. There arn't many songs that can do that, personally I think it's magic can only compare to that of say....Van Morrison's "sweet thing". But if you have heard either one of those songs too many times, and want to feel what it was like to hear one of those songs for the first time..........all one has to do is listen to 'Moonlight Mile"...and you will listen to it over and over. It is a masterwork of a song. And if all of that's not your thing....."you gotta move" is a great song and the kind of song that makes you think and hope that with all the years behind them, the stones would just say....enough with the R.S. image, lets go make a really great blues album, go out on a high note and let everone remember us for being artists and not celebrites. I always hope that a new stones album means a throwback to the sound of "you gotta move", but it never does. April 26, 2008

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