Sticky Fingers

Certain Songs #2063: The Rolling Stones – “Moonlight Mile”

March 19, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sticky Fingers
Year: 1971

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Like “Brown Sugar” and “Sway,” “Moonlight Mile” was written completely by Mick Jagger, but unlike those two, Keith Richards is nowhere to be found on the recording, which I think is the first time that had ever happened.

In any event, “Moonlight Mile” is an utterly sweeping and affecting “life on the road” song, which is one of the most crowded genres, to be sure, but it totally transcends just about every other song ever recorded in that genre.

Certain Songs #2062: The Rolling Stones – “Dead Flowers”

March 18, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sticky Fingers
Year: 1971

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While the Stones had dabbled with country going far back as at least as Aftermath’s “High and Dry,” it wasn’t until “Dead Flowers” that they well and truly wrote a great country song. No doubt the influence of Gram Parsons — who took country music far more seriously than Mick Jagger — on Keith Richards was a key factor in how much better “Dead Flowers” was than their previous attempts.

Certain Songs #2061: The Rolling Stones – “Sister Morphine”

March 17, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sticky Fingers
Year: 1971

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The oldest song on Sticky Fingers dates back to the Beggars Banquet sessions, and had a chequered route on its way to that album.

They originally recorded it in May, 1968 — which I’m listening to on YouTube right now, and I’m not gonna lie: it’s pretty fucking great — and like “Blood Red Wine,” its musical cousin, would have been a stellar addition to that record.

Certain Songs #2060: The Rolling Stones – “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”

March 16, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sticky Fingers
Year: 1971

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So you know how a couple of days ago I said that “Sway” was my all-time favorite Rolling Stones song? Well, technically the first part of “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” is my all-time favorite Rolling Stones song, because it’s a fucking firestorm of guitars and vocals that is the dirtiest, funkiest, nastiest thing they ever cut.

Certain Songs #2059: The Rolling Stones – “Wild Horses”

March 15, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sticky Fingers
Year: 1971

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On the shortlist of Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, British Invasion Division, “Wild Horses” had its genesis in a tragic situation: a Marianne Faithfull suicide attempt. They had flown to Australia for Mick to shoot Ned Kelly, and after seeing the recently deceased Brian Jones’ face in the mirror looking back at her, swallowed 150 barbiturates, somehow surviving. When she came to, after being in a coma for six days, she said to Mick, “wild horses couldn’t drag me away.”

Or at least, that’s one story: another story is that Keith wrote the music and the chorus about how much he hated leaving his and Anita’s son, Marlon, when the Stones went out on the road.

Certain Songs #2058: The Rolling Stones – “Sway”

March 13, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sticky Fingers
Year: 1971

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“Sway” is probably my favorite Rolling Stones song.

Which is funny, because — as you’ve probably figured out by now — I’m a lifelong Keith Richards stan, and he doesn’t really have much to do with “Sway,” which was written by Mick Jagger and (an uncredited) Mick Taylor. Because it sits between a pair of heavyweights, the scurrilous “Brown Sugar” and the gorgeous “Wild Horses,” I think that it gets overlooked — I mean, as much as any song on fucking Sticky Fingers can be overlooked — when people talk about the record.

Certain Songs #2057: The Rolling Stones – “Brown Sugar”

March 12, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sticky Fingers
Year: 1971

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And so 1970 passed without a new Rolling Stones studio record, the first year since since 1962 the world had not been graced with any new Rolling Stones music, not even a single. There was Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out, the Stones — like The Who with Live at Leeds — pioneering the live album as both a stopgap between studio albums as well as a response to the nascent bootlegging industry, who had packaged a KSAN broadcast of their San Francisco show as LiveR Than You’ll Ever Be, which got some rave reviews, especially in Rolling Stone.

Given that they’d started recording the follow-up to Let It Bleed even before it was released — an illicit session at the famed Muscle Shoals Sound Studios just days before Altamont — the road to Sticky Fingers the longest they’d yet taken. Part of that, of course, was the time it took to get out of their Decca contract, their contract with the evil Allen Klein and set up their Atlantic Records deal to launch their vanity label, Rolling Stones Records.