The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers (1971)

At the beginning of the 1970s, the Rolling Stones were reeling from Altamont and burned by pop impresario Allen Klein, all while trying to gain total control of their work . . . and trying to actually produce some work.  Sticky Fingers, their first seventies studio album, was recorded in fits and starts through much of 1970 in different recording studios (including the legendary Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama) with producer Jimmy Miller, and the album, which came out in April 1971, suggests on the surface that the Stones were none the worse for wear; all the raunchiness and debauchery of their earlier work remains as nasty and as uninhibited as ever.

But listen to what's going on beneath.  While the opening cut "Brown Sugar," an electrically charged tune walking the tightrope between racial animosity and sexual desire, and side two's opener, the explosively offensive "Bitch," pull no punches, the rest of the album, while no less malicious, is a collection of songs of isolation and fear.  The draining rock-star life and the bitter aftereffects of the sixties had clearly taken their toll band and left them feeling alienated.  Mick Jagger sounds restless and scared in much of his vocal delivery, Keith Richards' guitar riffs are crunchy and tight to the point of seeming claustrophobic, and the subtle bass of Bill Wyman and piercing drums of Charlie Watts hold everything together with such conviction that you almost wonder if they are the leaders of this band.  It's Mick Taylor, the group's new lead guitarist, though, that outshines everyone with heavy, blues-steeped solos.

Among the deeper cuts on Sticky Fingers, "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" is the sharpest rocker, but the tale of a man wandering the streets in desperation is the sound of a cry for help - lyrics like "Help me baby, ain't no stranger" and "Hear me singing soft and low" couldn't be any more ironic.  The extended outro, with Bobby Keys's beefy saxophone and Taylor's magnificent (and magnificently long) guitar solo, says more than the lyrics ever could.  The Stones are mainly in a country/blues mood, though, as they stay with mostly slow temps and moody sounds.  "Wild Horses," with its tender acoustic guitar riffs, is a gorgeous country ballad about seeking a place to rest, but if  you find even a modicum of hope in the promise that the narrator and his lady will ride those horses one day, you clearly don't understand the desperation of his pleas.  "I Got the Blues," with its soulful brass, puts the listener in Jagger's shoes as he calls out for succor at three o'clock in the morning, while the absolutely devastating "Sister Morphine" (originally done by Marianne Faithfull in 1969) takes you out of your own shoes and onto a junkie's gurney; you can almost hear the intravenous solution dripping into the veins.   

There's a sense of regret and resentment throughout Sticky Fingers (most notably on the Stones's cover of Mississippi Fred McDowell's "You Gotta Move"), fueled no doubt by the Stones' efforts to take charge of their music after being held down by Klein and his ABKCO company.  Jagger and Richards may be liberated on this, their first album on the Stones' own label, but the liberation comes at a bitter price that, perversely, pays dividends.  The snide "Dead Flowers" is an angry tale of abandonment that shines with Richards's and Taylor's salty honky-tonk guitars topped by Jagger's affected Nashville voice; it's proof positive that they'd learned as much about the culture of the American South through their friendship with Gram Parsons as they did about the music.  And while sidemen such as Billy Preston, Nicky Hopkins and the aforementioned Keys have fine moments on this LP, Paul Buckmaster's orchestral arrangements are the most prominent contributions from outside the band.  Buckmaster had been known for his majestic, symphonic work with David Bowie and Elton John, but his strings on the burned-out rocker "Sway" and the chilling "Moonlight Mile" are menacing.  On the latter song, Jagger seems as lonely and as strung-out as can be, finding no solace in the world of rock and roll adulation and consumed by a hungry, stark rootlessness.  Freedom may be just another word for nothing left to lose, but Sticky Fingers gave the Stones a resilience that allowed them to go forward with everything to gain.