Additional personnel: Ry Cooder (slide guitar); Paul Buckmaster (strings); Bobby Keys (saxophone); Jim Price (trumpet); Billy Preston (organ); Nicky Hopkins, Ian Stewart, Jim Dickinson, Jack Nitzche (piano); Rocky Dijon (congas); Jimmy Miller (percussion).

Engineers include: Glyn Johns, Andy Johns, Jimmy Johnson.

Recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, Muscle Shoals, Alabama and Olympic Studios, London, England.

Digitally remastered by Bob Ludwig (Gateway Mastering Studios).

The Rolling Stones: Mick Jagger (vocals, guitar, percussion); Mick Taylor (guitar); Keith Richards (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, background vocals); Bill Wyman (electric piano, bass instrument); Charlie Watts (drums).

Additional personnel: Ry Cooder (guitar); Paul Buckmaster (strings); Bobby Keys (saxophone); Jim Price (trumpet); Billy Preston (piano, organ); Ian Stewart, Jim Dickinson, Nicky Hopkins (piano); Rocky Dijon (congas); Jimmy Miller (percussion).

Pieced together from outtakes and much-labored-over songs, Sticky Fingers manages to have a loose, ramshackle ambience that belies both its origins and the dark undercurrents of the songs. It's a weary, drug-laden album -- well over half the songs explicitly mention drug use, while the others merely allude to it -- that never fades away, but it barely keeps afloat. Apart from the classic opener, "Brown Sugar" (a gleeful tune about slavery, interracial sex, and lost virginity, not necessarily in that order), the long workout "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" and the mean-spirited "Bitch," Sticky Fingers is a slow, bluesy affair, with a few country touches thrown in for good measure. The laid-back tone of the album gives ample room for new lead guitarist Mick Taylor to stretch out, particularly on the extended coda of "Can't You Hear Me Knocking." But the key to the album isn't the instrumental interplay -- although that is terrific -- it's the utter weariness of the songs. "Wild Horses" is their first nonironic stab at a country song, and it is a beautiful, heart-tugging masterpiece. Similarly, "I Got the Blues" is a ravished, late-night classic that ranks among their very best blues. "Sister Morphine" is a horrifying overdose tale, and "Moonlight Mile," with Paul Buckmaster's grandiose strings, is a perfect closure: sad, yearning, drug-addled, and beautiful. With its offhand mixture of decadence, roots music, and outright malevolence, Sticky Fingers set the tone for the rest of the decade for the Stones. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Sounding subdued, or at least more wary than most Stones albums, STICKY FINGERS' 1971 release betrayed the difficulties the band members were enduring. From Mick Jagger's breakup with the emotionally troubled Marianne Faithfull, to Keith Richards's concern about his newborn son Marlon, the band found themselves re-evaluating their lives, and this depth of emotion made its way into the album. Be it in the terrifyingly spare "Sister Morphine" and "Moonlight Mile," or the near-dangerous, electrified "Can't You Hear Me Knocking," the songs on STICKY FINGERS are anything but innocent.

The lineup on this album solidified with Mick Taylor in place as a second guitarist. Recorded partially in the legendary Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama, the Stones were flirting with the blues, but adding a Southern soul flavor. Much of STICKY FINGERS is this tasteful mixture of blues and soul. Added to the brew are the spicy horn arrangements of saxophonist Bobby Keys and trumpet player Jim Price. The use of horns in the Stones' repertoire seemed inevitable--when they kick in during "Brown Sugar" and "Bitch," it is as if Richards's guitar is rebirthed in brass. STICKY FINGERS proved that the endless summer of the 1960s was over, but that the Stones would rock just as hard in the following decade.