Sticky Fingers, Tattoo You... Pat Carty ranks the Rolling Stones' 10 best albums
The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers and self-titled albums: two of Pat Carty's favourite albums from the classic-rock icons
As released early demos prove, The Stones had ‘it’ from the off.
This debut sounds like a rocket has been strapped to their collective backs, as indeed it soon would be. It’s almost all blues and R&B covers that blew people’s heads off in London clubs.
Recorded over a few days with a producer (Andrew Loog Oldham) who hadn’t a notion what he was doing, this still rocks harder in face-slapping mono than Please Please Me.
The handclaps driving ‘Route 66’, Jagger lasciviously telling you what time it is during ‘I Just Want To Make Love To You’, ‘Carol’ delivered at 100mph. Ridiculously fantastic.
- Diamond Cut: ‘Walking The Dog’
The first album completely written by Jagger and Richards and the apotheosis of the Pop Stones, it features some of Jagger’s most cutting and incisive lyrics.
The domestic drug taking in ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ was not what pop songs were about while ‘Stupid Girl’ and ‘Under My Thumb’ found sarky Mick casting a very cold eye indeed.
This is also Brian Jones’ finest hour, adding colour with dulcimer, sitar, marimbas and anything else he could get his hands on to songs as accomplished as ‘Out Of Time’ and ‘Lady Jane’.
It’s The Stones swinging their fists at swinging London.
- Diamond Cut: ‘I Am Waiting’
A comedown after the monumental records that preceded it and unfairly maligned because of them, this soup still has plenty of eating and drinking in it.
‘Angie’ was the big hit but it’s the funk of Billy Preston’s clavinet and a never-better Mick Taylor freaking out on ‘Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)’ and ‘100 Years Ago’ that make this essential.
Worth it too for Keith’s nearly horizontal ‘Coming Down Again’, the gloriously filthy ‘Star Star’, Jagger’s gorgeous ‘Winter’, and ‘Hide Your Love’ which takes longer to listen to than it did to write.
Recorded in Jamaica but you wouldn’t know it.
- Diamond Cut: ‘Dancing With Mr D’
Mostly made up of reworked outtakes from the seventies because Mick and Keith couldn’t be arsed, this 1981 collection is, by general consensus, the last one considered a classic, apart from Keith’s solo debut Talk Is Cheap, the best Stones record that never was.
Buy it for ‘Start Me Up’ and the heavenly ‘Waiting On A Friend’ (which has the best video ever made) but keep it for the impossibly groovy ‘Slave’ and the get-into-my-bed-and-I’ll-make-you-famous gambit of ‘Tops’.
Even half-finished arsing around like ‘Neighbours’ rocks like sailors on a weekend pass.
Miles better than it has any right to be.
- Diamond Cut: ‘Worried About You’
A two-fingered salute to punk, new-wave, disco and anyone who dared use the word dinosaur, this is a Mick-led melange (Keith was busy trying to avoid a life sentence).
Jagger was the one in the clubs, checking the scene.
‘Miss You’ puts The Stones back on the dancefloor, where they always were anyway. ‘Lies’, Respectable’, and ‘When The Whip Comes Down’ should have safety pins through their noses.
The title track is so sexist Benny Hill would have vetoed it.
‘Far Away Eyes’ is laugh-out-loud country honking and ‘Shattered’ is New York gone mad.
Their best seller and Rockin’ Ronnie Wood’s finest forty minutes.
- Diamond Cut: ‘Beast Of Burden’
The 1969 American tour documenting Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! is exceptionally good but this hard-to-find live album – released as a download, then in an expensive boxset – captures The Stones at their Mick Taylor (he left not long after) live peak.
Recorded in Belgium because Keith Richards was banned from France (drugs), The Stones play like their arses are on fire and there are buckets of water waiting backstage.
The combined might of ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ and ‘Midnight Rambler’ is positively elemental and proves that anyone else even thinking about starting a band is a bad idea.
Charlie really was good every night.
- Diamond Cut: ‘Star Star’
Having veered unsuccessfully into psychedelia with the extremely patchy Their Satanic Majesties Request, they went back to basics with producer Jimmy Miller, first on ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ and then this album which is where they ascended to true greatness.
‘Sympathy For The Devil’ and the barricade charge of ‘Street Fighting Man’ – Charlie’s playing toy drums! - you already know but have you heard The Stones doing The Velvet Underground with the distinctly you-wouldn’t-get-away-with-that-now ‘Stray Cat Blues’, or the country blues of ‘Prodigal Son’?
It’s the power of Keith’s acoustic driving this because he’s a genius and they left ‘Flash’ off because Banquet didn’t need it.
- Diamond Cut: ‘Factory Girl’
If the only thing The Stones ever recorded was the malevolent guitar howl of ‘Gimme Shelter’, we’d still be talking about them. Again, a number one single ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ is arrogantly discarded, allowing its backwoods cousin ‘Country Honk’ to step out on the porch.
It’s the domestic debauchery of ‘Live With Me’, the ‘Midnight Rambler’ blues opera twitching and moaning like something hastily buried by the side of the road, and the glorious hosanna in the lowest of ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ that bestow immortality on this wax.
The one-two punch alongside Altamont that buried the hippie dream and good riddance to it.
- Diamond Cut: ‘Monkey Man’
Another Jagger-dominated behemoth – he doesn’t get enough credit – that kicks off with the epoch-shaking ‘Brown Sugar’ (Sexist? Racist? Probably. Rockin’? Definitely and Defiantly.) and then gets better.
‘Wild Horses’ is their sweetest ballad, ‘Dead Flowers’ their finest country song, and ‘I Got The Blues’ possibly their purest soul number.
Mick Taylor’s playing on ‘Sway’ will bounce your jaw off the floor.
‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’ unfurls Keith Richards’ gnarliest riff (maybe), earning a roared “Yeah!” before lyrics about cocaine eyes/speed freak jive and a cosmic jam the showed all pretenders how it’s done.
The greatest record of all time, apart from the next one.
- Diamond Cut: ‘Bitch’
Not only The Stones’ crowning achievement but the pinnacle of all human artistic endeavour.
Across four sides, from the opening riff to the closing fade, they combine blues, soul, R&B, country, and everything else into a mystical stew where songs bleed into each other and layers are revealed with each listen.
Disobey the prime directive, drop this onto a distant planet where civilisation is dawning, and watch the natives have a blast making up the rest of rock n’ roll on their own.
The unassailable, unscalable peak which all others must look upon and despair.
Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest rock n’ roll band in the world, The Rolling Stones.
- Diamond Cut: All of them.
