Stones highlight 'Sticky Fingers' on tour
The Rolling Stones' decision to play every song from Sticky Fingers during a pre-tour warm-up show at Los Angeles' Fonda Theatre in May came at the last minute.
"We'd never done anything like that before," says guitarist Keith Richards, 71. "But after listening to the rehearsals, we said we could do it and we should do it. Hopefully, somewhere down the line we can do it again."
The Stones reissue the 1971 album Tuesday, including previously unreleased takes of songs such as Brown Sugar and Wild Horses, along with live recordings made around the time of its initial release.
The name of the band's Zip Code Tour, which continues Tuesday at Atlanta's Bobby Dodd Stadium, refers to the album's iconic Andy Warhol-designed cover, a close-up black-and-white photograph of a man's jeans. Original pressings of the album jacket had a functional zipper.
During the tour, the Stones have been using Brown Sugar as a set-closer, highlighting other songs from the album, like Bitch, Wild Horses, Can't You Hear Me Knocking and the rarely played Moonlight Mile earlier in the show. "We're going to be highlighting Sticky Fingers more than we usually do," Richards says. "We're having fun playing it, so why not?"
Richards says he hopes to bring Sister Morphine, another live rarity, into the set list . "Playing it in rehearsals and at the Fonda Theatre, it's a very powerful sound; Ronnie Wood's playing some great slide," he says. "Maybe because we haven't done it for so long it kind of felt fresh — if morphine can be fresh."
Perhaps the most exciting part of the Sticky Fingers reissue is the appearance of an alternate version of Brown Sugar featuring Eric Clapton on slide guitar. The recording was made two weeks after the original, at the 27th birthday party for Richards and Stones sideman Bobby Keys. "Eric happened to be around," says Richards, who had forgotten a tape of the performance even existed. "It was kind of like that in those days. If somebody was handy, you roped them in."
The album also includes alternate takes of Wild Horses, Bitch, Dead Flowers and Can't You Hear Me Knocking.
Sticky Fingers was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, one of four Stones albums on the list.
"To say that at the album is a classic is a vast understatement," says Rolling Stone contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis. "It's not simply one of the greatest albums of the rock era, it epitomizes everything that rock and roll is about. It rocks as hard and unsettles as fully today as the day it came out."
Richards says he has enjoyed rediscovering Sticky Fingers and the additional archival recordings and he expects the band's fans will too: "I had totally forgotten about half of the tracks. It was as fun for me to listen to them as anybody else."