I put on the headphones and let the Stones take me back for 45 blissful moments. I have to say it…if you don’t agree with me that Sticky Fingers is far and away the band’s finest album then you and I, friend, have reached an irreconcilable impasse. It’s so full of intricate guitar passages that work together in such a manner that the combined result sounds fresh and sometimes even different from the last time you heard it. And I’ve heard this record at least a few hundred times from start to finish, it really shouldn’t give me goosebumps every time I hear Mick Taylor’s solos in “Sway” and “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”, it really shouldn’t make me bristle with anticipation and want to pump my fist during the climactic end of “Moonlight Mile”, and yet it just did and I’m sure it always will. I mean, Sticky Fingers is not only why I used to like the Stones more than the Beatles when I was a kid, it’s the reason I wanted to play in a rock and roll band one day. If you haven’t listened to it in awhile do yourself a favor, give it a spin and remember what Keith Richards sounded like at his best, challenged by the addition of a new face in the band whose stylish fretwork elevated the group’s sound to an even higher level than what they achieved on Beggars Banquet. Listen and hear Mick Jagger deliver songs of lust, loneliness, ennui, feistiness and drug-addled death with the conviction, at least for the most part, of experience. Listen close to Charlie Watts’ impeccable drumming and maybe you’ll see part of the reason I was not so impressed with Hackney Diamonds. Lester Bangs was right when he hailed it as one of the greatest albums of all time.
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