Unzipping Sticky Fingers: Rolling Stones’ Masterpiece Marked A True Turning Point

This article appears in the July/August “British Issue,” available on newsstands July 7.

From the very first time conservatives were scandalized by Elvis Presley’s swiveling hips, rock and roll became synonymous with outrageousness. It was about grabbing the ears and the crotch, about unfettering the minds and bodies of a new post-war generation. There was something forbidden about it, something your parents didn’t approve of – and that was part of its thrill. It represented rebellion, oozed sexuality, and embraced not only elements of black music, but black culture as well. Yes, it certainly was a threat – to a stale old status quo that desperately needed to be kicked to the curb. And the bad-boy Rolling Stones were just the band to do it.

We no longer question Stones tours as the epitome of corporate rock, but the product hook for their current ZIP Code dates – a re-release of their zipper-adorned 1971 Sticky Fingers album – reminds us that they were once anti-establishment poster children, the enemy of suits from the British government to cash-sucking managers (not to mention censor-prone prudes like TV host Ed Sullivan).

Frontman Mick Jagger, the progenitor of both cock rock and shock rock, studied showmanship from James Brown and Little Richard. But with his leering expressions, increasingly wild getups and that exaggerated rooster strut, he took provocativeness to a whole new level. By the time the band released Sticky Fingers on April 23, 1971, any question of just how brazen they could get was answered even before the shrink-wrap came off the cardboard.

Andy Warhol and Craig Braun’s instantly iconic cover, with its close-up of a well-endowed male’s jeans-clad groin area and a working zipper, didn’t suggest sex, it screamed it. With the album title, the inner-sleeve underwear shot and the debut of John Pasche’s “luscious lick” logo, that package was practically an invitation to indulge in erotic fantasies – for both genders.

Once the turntable needle hit the grooves, it rose to even higher levels of decadence. Sex and drugs dripped from nearly every line of these songs, which seemed to be all about limit-pushing – something the Stones began back with “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and kicked into overdrive with their bold 1967 proposition, “Let’s Spend The Night Together” (which Sullivan famously required them to tone down). Just 10 years earlier, the Everly Brothers got banned in Boston for singing about poor little Susie, who faced slut-shaming for falling asleep with her boyfriend at the drive-in in “Wake Up, Little Susie.” (“What are we gonna tell our friends when they say ooh-la-la?”)

The lascivious lyrics of the first track, “Brown Sugar,” instantly made such quaint euphemisms even more laughable. Even “Midnight Rambler” and “Honky-tonk Women” sounded tamer in comparison. “Brown sugar, how come you taste so good/ Just like a black girl should”? That was about oral sex! Interracial oral sex! (Never mind that it was about a slave owner whipping and raping women.) And “Bitch”? A swear-word in a song title? A swear-word as the song title? Whoa. What would they try getting away with next?

Like the extravagant package – that zipper, it turned out, had to be undone halfway to avoid damaging the vinyl – these songs also comprised a declaration of independence for the Stones. Finally free of ex-manager Allen Klein and their London/Decca label contract, the band had started their own Rolling Stones Records label, with Marshall Chess, son of Chess Records co-founder Leonard Chess, at the helm. (Chicago label Chess, of course, was home to so many of their blues heroes.) They also made a distribution deal with Atlantic, engineered by R&B-empire builders Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler. Sticky Fingers was its maiden release.

The third in a series of four high-water mark Rolling Stones albums delivered from 1968 through 1972, Sticky Fingers stands today as a creative peak from a band that, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, would still be performing those songs five decades later. In fact, “Brown Sugar” is second only to “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” as the most-performed song in the Stones’ vast canon. Though 1972’s Exile On Main St. is often cited as the Stones’ finest album, with “Brown Sugar,” “Bitch,” “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” “Dead Flowers,” “Wild Horses” and the “You Gotta Move” cover, not to mention “Sway,” “I Got the Blues,” “Sister Morphine” and “Moonlight Mile,” it could be argued that Sticky Fingers deserves that rank.

The reissue repackages Bob Ludwig’s 2009 remasters (criticized though they were) in several formats and versions from basic to extra-fancy. The most noteworthy add-ons (to deluxe and super-deluxe editions) are a great alternate version of “Brown Sugar” with Eric Clapton on slide guitar and an acoustic version of “Wild Horses,” with Richards’ delicate 12-string chiming almost like vibraphone notes, that’s even prettier than the one they used.

But at its heart, it’s still the same 10-track album that contains some of the band’s most enduring work.