Rolling Stones

Yes indeed, this is the album with the worn (and evidently well-endowed) jeans on the cover, complete with a real, functioning zipper (at least on the early vinyl pressings), all of it naturally signed by Andy Warhol. Needless to say, for the Stones the more scandal there was, the better - even though by the time of this "Sticky Fingers" their first outrageous phase, the rawest and most savage one, had already given way to a sharper sonic vision, perhaps less rich and visionary (you can't improvise or replace a Brian Jones overnight) but no less refined for it, as guaranteed by the production of their now-trusted Jimmy Miller (who, around the same time, was also behind the musical kaleidoscope of Traffic). More music than misdeeds, then: the sharp profile of an intense, uncompromising rock still far from laying down its arms to mere mannerism and - precisely for that reason - still capable of sounding superbly true, urgent and relevant to this day.

It's fair to say that from the very first note to the very last, given that the album opens with that monster "Brown Sugar", a lethal chart-strangling device where you find room for Keith Richards' inimitable (and thus endlessly imitated) riff, Mick Jagger's animalistic vocals, Charlie Watts' dry, driving beat, Mick Taylor's sly guitar work, a relentless profusion of piano (Ian Stewart) and sax (Bobby Keys), and finally the inexorable precision of Bill Wyman's bass: the result is a rock'n'roll that rallies the sheer will to feel alive, here and now, with all our beauty and our inescapable ugliness (bad, real, true). Craftsmanship, above all: unmatched craftsmanship in laying bare the harshest retching and the most languid sweetness, as the stratospheric "Sway" proves, a ballad teetering between white heat and melancholy, palpable tension amid torn, anguished guitars, Nicky Hopkins' insistent, bittersweet piano, the discreet string arrangement (Paul Buckmaster) and - ladies and gentlemen - drumming worthy of a masters class in gut instinct, the kind that brings cold sweat from brow to calf, courtesy of that taciturn master of cymbals and snare who answers to the name of Charlie Watts.

With "Wild Horses" the air grows distinctly more rarefied, the landscape that takes hold is the misty countryside of some afternoon on English soil, the ideal backdrop for the extraordinary acoustic-folk foundation of this ineffable slow-burner, spent between the languid exhaustion of Jagger's vocal cords and a melodic swoon that's frankly mawkish, even if there's probably someone out there who would sell a kidney to write - even today - a song like this. Less celebrated but absolutely devastating is the following "Can't You Hear Me Knocking", a rhythm'n'blues shot through with torrid funky-soul veins, which makes even the best Black Crowes records feel practically redundant, a disjointed yet stylized energy (bass and drums right at the heart of the fray, treacherous guitars and a voice chasing scorching breaking points), plus the vertical acidity of the organ (Billy Preston), the horizontal palpitations of the congas (Rocky Dzidzournu) and a superb sax performance from Keys: almost eight minutes of pure pleasure, a memorable, convulsive embrace between the restless thighs of rock. We catch our breath with an essential, roots-driven cover of "You Gotta Move", where the drunken voices of Jagger and Richards act as the comic counterpoint to a monumental Taylor on slide guitar. But there's little room to relax, because "Bitch" is just around the corner, rock possessed by uncontainable little demons, like the soul pouring from Keys' and Jim Price's horns, like the blues rubbed raw in Taylor's guitar, like the crackling funk of the tightly wound rhythm section, a runaway train on indestructible tracks.

Tracks that lead us through the bitter sorrow of "I Got The Blues", a majestic soul number in which every element plays its part beautifully (though praise again goes above all to the great Mick Taylor and to Preston's organ solo, a genuine totem of languor and acidity). The pen of muse and lover Marianne Faithfull is behind the lyrics of the famous "Sister Morphine" (a drug-addiction drama told with the same merciless compassion as a Lou Reed song), a nervous, throbbing folk piece to which Jagger lends voice, blood and anguished vocalizing, framed by the muffled hammering of piano (the late Jack Nitzsche) and Ry Cooder's feverish slide guitar (a gentle breath, a wind that cuts across the face).

"Dead Flowers", on the other hand, is a delightfully charming folk-blues vignette inlaid with two guitars in a spellbinding mood, one of the countless minor (?) gems of a prodigious career, while the closing "Moonlight Mile" stitches together a drunken, suspended, breath-held ballad: laying out the craftsmanship we've already discussed and summoning all its guiding spirits (an echo of soul, the paternal blues, the authority of folk), a string section with a taste for the exotic can then couple sweetly with the most full-blooded of rhythm guitars, and nothing feels excessive, nothing rings false, we welcome it all between one heartbeat and the next.

At this point, what's left to say that hasn't already been said? If from rock you expect both energy and the most roguish tenderness, in "Sticky Fingers" you might find every answer you're looking for, and much more besides. With the Stones, what matters is less the music itself than its delivery, though it's to their enormous credit that they made the two coincide, so much so that afterwards neither was ever quite the same. Much like our own lives, for that matter.

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08/11/2006