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  Fingers is tighter and more focused than the basement-tapes jam-session sprawl of Exile. It finds Jagger and Richards mastering every American roots genre they touch, from swaggering rock ’n’ soul (“Brown Sugar,” riding on one of Keith’s rawest riffs) through Gram Parsons–infused country soul (“Wild Horses”) and delta blues (“You Gotta Move”) to churchy Muscle Shoals soul (“I Got the Blues,” with its peerless Billy Preston organ solo).

  “Bitch” is as thumpingly funky as it is politically incorrect. “Sway” may be the band’s greatest hard rock outing, as well as a potent illustration of Mick Taylor’s fluid lead guitar . . . “Dead Flowers” is gnarly country rock born of the Stones’ frequent stints in turn-of-the-decade LA. Only the sub-Santana extemporization of “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” can be said to let the record down.

  The Marianne Faithfull co-write “Sister Morphine”—with the late Jack Nitzsche on piano and his protégé Ry Cooder on cold-turkey slide guitar—is the ultimate late ’60s junkie lamentation. Closing the record, “Moonlight Mile” is one of the band’s true peaks—a cocaine-comedown ballad boasting a magisterial Paul Buckmaster string section and a thing of wasted, desolate beauty.

  A few more points before we move on from Sticky Fingers. The first is about Barney’s criticism of the jam at the end of “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.” Many Stones fans love that part of the song.

  BILLY ALTMAN: The jam at the end of “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” gives a lot of space for Mick Taylor to make a real impact.

  KEITH RICHARDS: We didn’t even know they were still taping. We thought we’d finished. We were just rambling and they kept the tape rolling. I figured we’d just fade it off. It was only when we heard the playback that we realized, “Oh, they kept it going.” Basically we realized we had two bits of music. There’s the song and there’s the jam.

  MICK TAYLOR: That song had such a fantastic groove going, they just left the tape running for my solo at the end. Generally, I tried to bring my own distinctive sound and style to Sticky Fingers and I like to think I added some extra spice. I don’t want to say “sophistication”—I think that sounds pretentious. Charlie said I brought “finesse.” That’s a better word. I’ll go with what Charlie said.

  The other issue to follow up on is about “Sister Morphine” and Marianne Faithfull.

  MARIANNE FAITHFULL: I wrote this song with a guy I used to know called Mick Jagger. I made the mistake of telling my mother I was doing drugs. She immediately had me committed to a hospital. I had one phone call. I called Mick Jagger and he came and got me out. He showed very good form.

  We asked her to expand further on her relationship with Mick and Keith for this book but she politely declined.

  MARIANNE FAITHFULL: I don’t talk about the Stones anymore. Proud as I am, of having been in that generation and having been around the Rolling Stones at such a wonderful moment, and being so grateful for “As Tears Go By,” and also writing “Sister Morphine” and just being around them because they’re great, I really can’t go on like that, it’s finished. It kind of diminishes me so forget it.

  Given this quote from Mick about her contribution to “Sister Morphine,” we can’t really blame her for not wanting to talk about the Stones.

  MICK JAGGER: [Marianne Faithfull] wrote a couple of lines; she always says she wrote everything, though. She’s always complaining she doesn’t get enough money from it. Now she says she should have got it all.

  A key witness seems to support Marianne’s view.

  KEITH RICHARDS: Marianne had a lot to do with “Sister Morphine.” I know Mick’s writing, and he was living with Marianne at the time, and I know from the style of it that there were a few Marianne lines in there.

  To this day, Sticky Fingers remains one of the best things the Stones have ever done.

  BILLY ALTMAN: I think on Sticky Fingers and then again on Exile on Main St., the Stones moved back closer to their blues roots than they’d been in a while. And I attribute a lot of that to Mick Taylor. But Keith Richards also deserves a lot of credit for understanding what a great blues player Taylor was and moving out of the way for him on “All Down the Line” and “Stop Breaking Down.” Keith let Mick Taylor really take over there and that required a lot of security in his ego. And at the same time, Keith was still really honing that choppy ringing guitar that’s a part of so many great Stones songs. Keith really got in that middle space with his guitar playing.

  ANDY JOHNS: Mick Taylor in the studio in France or Sunset Sound was just a shining light, as a person somewhat taciturn. When he plays his guitar, and we’d do a hundred takes on something, he would come up with something slightly different every time. Faultless. He’d put a bottle on his little finger and then he’d do chords with the rest of his hand. So he could do both at once. Usually it’s a separate deal but that was part of his style. His sense of melody was unbelievable. Every time I knew it was Mick Taylor, I’d be sitting at the edge of my seat. He was wonderful.

  And what about the band as a whole?

  BILLY ALTMAN: I think when they made Sticky Fingers they were really focused, in terms of the song and their playing. It’s such a wonderful multifaceted album. I think the fact that this was their first release for Atlantic on Rolling Stones Records made them really want to deliver a terrific album. I get a very professional sense of purpose from them on Sticky Fingers. And from there on, that’s what they’ve been.

  CRAIG BRAUN: It was a very special album. I remember sitting around a table in Los Angeles with various record executives listening to a test pressing and just knowing it was going to be a hit. When the record finished, people stood up and cheered.

  The next question was: what should the new album cover look like?

  MICK JAGGER: It’s always good to have something that’s a bit groundbreaking, and that causes a bit of a stir, as well.

  Andy Warhol was at the forefront of album designs that did just that.

  CRAIG BRAUN: I met Andy Warhol in ’65 when he was venturing into all kinds of things. That was my beginnings in the music business. And in those days the art world and all the photographers and design studios and people in the fashion world started to meld together. Hip crossed many lines. Andy had a place called the Factory down in Union Square, which was basically a loft. The Velvet Underground and Nico had recorded an album and they wanted to put a piece of art he’d designed, a banana, on the front cover of the album. This was antithetical to the way music was merchandised. Usually it was the band’s name on the front. But he wanted this banana. And he wanted it to become a peelable banana, and then he wanted to print underneath, and he wanted the banana under the peel to be pink, essentially a phallus. I had to find a custom stock that would be pre-coated in the yellow of that banana that was on the original art and also a removable adhesive that could be peeled back and reapplied. It was a project that was given to me.

  What happened with the Sticky Fingers jacket?

  CRAIG BRAUN: When this opportunity came to pass with Marshall and the Stones, Andy had already met Jagger a number of times and they had talked about doing an album cover. Andy had suggested the idea of maybe one day using a real zipper on an album cover. That was his idea. And Mick never forgot that.

  But they didn’t want to just settle on that first concept, so Braun was tasked with coming up with other ideas as well.

  CRAIG BRAUN: I went to work on it and I used a number of different concepts using the zipper and the blue jeans. We did about three or four zipper ideas and maybe six other album cover concepts. One of them was a black cover, preprinted with images of the Stones’ faces in a black, encapsulated, crystal ink that was heat sensitive. So if you’d put your hand on top of this black cover, all of a sudden the images of the Stones’ faces would come out of it in this eerie, bluish-green color.

  One of Craig’s ideas really crossed the line.

  CRAIG BRAUN: Another idea was to take a photo from the perspective of the bottom of a swimming pool; looking up and throug
h the water you’d see the Stones’ faces standing around the pool. The idea was to come up with something shocking, to push the envelope. But that was too sick even for the Stones.

  The band objected, of course. Brian Jones’s death was not something worth having a sense of humor about. But there were other ideas as well, including a crushed velvet cover with Mick’s face on it, and another design that featured a decapitated Mick! In the end, the correct choice was made:

  CRAIG BRAUN: The zipper thing was at the top of their charts. Marshall called me and told me they liked everything but they still want the zipper. So I put together a comp and they approved it. The cost was such, twice of a normal package, so I’m sure that the Stones had to absorb some of the cost from their royalties. They considered it worth the investment in their future.

  One mystery that still persists to this day is whose waist is pictured on the Sticky Fingers cover. Warhol superstar Joe D’Allesandro believes it’s him:

  JOE D’ALLESANDRO: It was just out of a collection of junk photos that Andy pulled from. He didn’t pull it out for the design or anything, it was just the first one he got that he felt was the right shape to fit what he wanted to use for the fly. It had nothing to do with anything else. There was no photograph session set up where they were taking shots of crotch areas.

  Craig Braun disagrees.

  CRAIG BRAUN: Marshall is convinced that the model was Joe D’Allesandro. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. There were very good-looking twin guys from down south, Jed and Jay Johnson. I think it was Jed Johnson who was on the outside cover. There was also the mention of a model there, Corey Tippin, who was a hanger-on, hairdresser, stylist, model, that he might be the guy. Glenn O’Brien, who was the first editor of Interview, claims it was him. Frankly, I don’t know who it was but we wanted the impression to be, at the point of sale, that it was Mick’s dick.

  Indeed, that became the rumor. Mick himself acknowledges that it isn’t him, though. And while Mick doesn’t have the answer, he does have a cheeky answer:

  MICK JAGGER: It’s one of Andy’s . . . “protégés” is the polite word we used to use.

  The cover is widely recognized as one of the best ever made. But it was almost a total disaster.

  CRAIG BRAUN: I thought there might be problems with the zipper. Vinyl is so easily scratched or dented. We instructed the pressing plant to use corrugated cardboard between each album to nest the zipper, and stagger the albums top and bottom when they were packed. I didn’t take into account the weight that would be cumulative in the back of these big semis. They were stacking boxes very high. And as the truck started moving, that weight started to settle down. But I got a call from Atlantic almost right away that they were getting returns because there was the same dented track—“Sister Morphine”—on a lot of the albums because of the zippers. I was devastated. The corrugated inserts didn’t work. And I got a big lecture about how I should have dissuaded the Stones and Marshall from doing this. They wanted me to pay for it. I went home and tried to think of a way to salvage this thing for everybody. Somehow in the middle of the night, I must have been divinely inspired. The idea came to me that if the fabric was glued with a very strong glue that they would adhere enough in the factory that they could have people pull the zippers down. And if they pulled the zippers down, then that zipper pull would be on the center disc label of the LP. Who gives a shit if that’s dented? They hired these little old ladies whose sole job at the plant was to pull down the zipper. Lo and behold it worked, man.

  CHAPTER 27

  WANG DANG DOODLE

  THE LONDON HOWLIN’ WOLF SESSIONS is a fascinating recording, pairing blues legends Howlin’ Wolf and Hubert Sumlin with the generation of English rock ’n’ rollers who discovered and helped to make their music a worldwide phenomenon, including Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, and Ian Stewart.

  HUBERT SUMLIN: I was glad that they helped us record the London Sessions. We recorded numbers we’d already recorded in the States but we did them all over again.

  Initially, producer Norman Dayron reached out to Eric Clapton to see if he’d be interested in playing with Wolf. He most certainly was.

  HUBERT SUMLIN: The record company wanted Eric Clapton but they didn’t want me. But Eric Clapton called the record company and said, “If Hubert isn’t on the London Sessions, then neither am I.” I didn’t even have a passport, but the next day I had a visa.

  NORMAN DAYRON: Hubert isn’t right about that. He was one of the first people I wanted to bring. I thought for Clapton to play his best on lead, he’d need his idol, Hubert, holding down the rhythm.

  Initially, the band was supposed to feature another guitarist as well.

  HUBERT SUMLIN: Keith Richards was supposed to have been with us too. But Eric Clapton beat him out some kind of way. Keith still talks about this today. He told me, “I was supposed to be on there.”

  NORMAN DAYRON: He’s right about that. I was going to put together new arrangements nothing like the originals, I wanted as many piano players and guitar players as possible because I had a master plan of doing overdubs, but I still wanted to get as much as I could in London. Eric invited Keith to join him to play both lead and rhythm but he didn’t show up.

  Later on, several musicians including Steve Winwood would add overdubs to the initial tracks. Also joining in on the first day of sessions were an array of Chess all-stars, including eighteen-year-old harmonica prodigy Jeffrey Carp (who drowned shortly after), as well as Klaus Voormann and Ringo Starr. The latter two didn’t last long.

  Howlin’ Wolf and Mick at the recording of the London Sessions

  KLAUS VOORMANN: Howlin’ was singing, he took the mic off the mic stand, and was walking around in the studio. He came right up to me, looked at me right in my eyes while he was singing and I was playing. I thought that was great and very inspiring, like he was talking to you: “Come on, boy, do your thing!” Then he went over to Ringo, but Ringo—as he often does when he loves playing—had his eyes closed, so he didn’t notice that Howlin’ was right in front of his face. When Ringo opened his eyes, he got a real shock and nearly fell off his chair with fright.

  Ringo left and took Voormann with him, though Ringo still appears incognito in the liner notes, credited as “Richie.”

  The sessions weren’t without other challenges.

  ERIC CLAPTON: There’s that thing of him teaching me how to play “Little Red Rooster” and when that was happening it was awful. I wanted to just die. He kept grabbing my hand and shoving my wrist up and down the neck of the guitar. And he was angry. He was very angry.

  Wyman recalls a kinder, gentler Wolf.

  BILL WYMAN: It was very nice, actually. Except Wolf wasn’t feeling too well at the time. I remember on some of the tracks there was someone standing behind him whispering the lyrics into his ear because he was getting blanks which he couldn’t remember. But it was a good session—he showed us how to play “Little Red Rooster.” We cut the tune and he says, “No, it shouldn’t go like that.” We were playing it kind of backwards—the way white kids would play it, but the way we felt it. He started to show us the right way to do it, but the Chess people ended up using the old “backwards” take anyway.

  NORMAN DAYRON: That was me whispering the words to him. I don’t think Wolf was angry at that point, but I do remember him being upset about something earlier on. It was my idea to have Clapton ask Wolf about the changes on “Little Red Rooster.” I didn’t think we’d use it for the record but I needed to break the ice.

  Hubert confirmed Bill’s view of Wolf’s health, and remembers another celebrity visitor.

  HUBERT SUMLIN: Wolf had doctors tending him night and day. He was so sick that on a couple of nights we didn’t even record; we just sat in the studio and got high. Mick Jagger and Bill Wyman came in, and we partied all night long, man. The cleaning lady came in the next morning and everyone was laying there on the floor. Mick Jagger had his head up inside the bass drum (laughs). It was wild. We had a ball.


  NORMAN DAYRON: Mick was there, but that’s the only part of that that’s accurate. I had to get Wolf to take his pills but once he did, he was fine, he outworked all the other musicians. Mick played percussion on about five songs. He had perfect rhythm. I was not a producer who sat in the control room, I was out with the musicians conducting. I don’t think Mick liked that at all. He thought I was a prima donna. I remember him saying after one take, “Well, I do hope that her majesty the queen is satisfied with that take,” but Wolf stuck up for me.

  The record stands as an amazing document and a great record that’s a lot of fun to listen to: it’s hard not to enjoy the coupling of “new” and old bluesy sounds. At the time, however, there was a bit of a backlash.

  NORMAN DAYRON: The snobs and the blues-nerds who wrote for the magazines at the time generally resisted liking the album. These were people of a similar ilk to the ones who booed Dylan when he went electric at Newport.