Sticky Fingers (1971)

Sticky Fingers is the ninth studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones. It was released on 23 April 1971 on the Rolling Stones' new label, Rolling Stones Records.

The Rolling Stones had been contracted by Decca Records and London Records in the UK and the US since 1963. On this album, Mick Taylor made his second full-length appearance on a Rolling Stones album (after the live album Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!). It was the first studio album without Brian Jones, who had died two years earlier. The original Grammy-nominated cover artwork, conceived and photographed by Andy Warhol, showed a picture of a man in tight jeans, and had a working zip that opened to reveal underwear fabric. The cover was expensive to produce and damaged the vinyl record, so the size of the zipper adjustment was made by John Kosh at ABKCO Records. Later re-issues featured just the outer photograph of the jeans.

The album featured a return to basics for the Rolling Stones. The unusual instrumentation introduced several albums prior was absent, with most songs featuring drums, guitar, bass, and percussion as provided by the key members: Mick Jagger (lead vocals, various percussion and rhythm guitar), Keith Richards (guitar and backing vocals), Mick Taylor (guitar), Bill Wyman (bass guitar), and Charlie Watts (drums). Additional contributions were made by long-time Stones collaborators including saxophonist Bobby Keys and keyboardists Billy Preston, Jack Nitzsche, Ian Stewart, and Nicky Hopkins. As with the other albums of the Rolling Stones late 1960s/early 1970s period, it was produced by Jimmy Miller.

Sticky Fingers is widely regarded as one of the Rolling Stones' best albums. It was the band's first album to reach number one on both the UK albums and US albums charts, and has since achieved triple platinum certification in the US. "Brown Sugar" topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971. Sticky Fingers was voted the second best album of the year in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll for 1971, based on American critics' votes. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and included in Rolling Stone magazine's "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list.

Background

With the end of their Decca/London association at hand, the Rolling Stones were finally free to release their albums (including cover art) as they pleased. However, their departing manager Allen Klein dealt the group a major blow when they discovered that they had inadvertently signed over their entire 1960s American copyrights to Klein and his company ABKCO, which is how all of their material from 1963's "Come On" to Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! The Rolling Stones in Concert has since been released solely in America by ABKCO Records. The band later sued for their return but without success, settling in 1984. The band would remain incensed with Klein for decades for that act. Klein died in 2009.

When Decca informed the Rolling Stones that they were owed one more single, the band submitted a track called "Cocksucker Blues", correctly assuming that this would be refused. Instead, Decca released the two-year-old Beggars Banquet track "Street Fighting Man" while Klein retained dual copyright ownership in conjunction with the Rolling Stones of "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses".