‘Sticky Fingers’: How an Album Cover Defined the Rolling Stones
Some album covers are memorable because they perfectly express an artist’s image (or brand, if you will), as well as music. Such is the case with Sticky Fingers, the 11th American studio album of the Rolling Stones, a band that has existed for 57 years and will tour the United States yet again in 2019. When Sticky Fingers was released in 1971, the album created controversy for its Andy Warhol-designed close-up of a man’s crotch, featuring a functional zipper that dared the listener, “Go ahead, unzip me.” Nearly 50 years later, the cover for Sticky Fingers expresses the essence of Rolling Stones at their peak: salacious, impossible to ignore, and rough around the edges.
The album’s history and legacy are well documented. Sticky Fingers was partly recorded in the fabled Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in the United States during the band’s 1969 U.S. tour (you can catch a glimpse of the recording in Gimme Shelter, the historic movie about the tour), as well as the Stones’ mobile studio unit in Stargroves (where Led Zeppelin would later record Houses of the Holy).
Sticky Fingers featured familiar Stones terrain: sex (“Brown Sugar”), drugs (“Sister Morphine,” “Dead Flowers”), the blues (“I Got the Blues”), and dirty rock and roll all over. The album also displayed the improvisational talents of guitarist Mick Taylor, especially on “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” and some surprisingly tender, if weary moments, most notably “Moonlight Mile” and “Wild Horses.” The violence and menace of 1969’s Let It Bleed gave way to a more decadent, yet more introspective feel, resulting in an artistic breakthrough.
No other Stones album cover would express the band’s decadence so well. According to 100 Best Album Covers: The Stories Behind the Sleeves by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell (themselves legends of album cover design), Warhol suggested the idea of using a real trouser zipper to Mick Jagger at a party in 1969. Jagger, intrigued, asked Warhol to do the design.
Warhol’s former manager Paul Morrissey was quoted in 100 Best Album Covers thusly: “Andy was sensible enough to know not to be pretentious when doing album covers. This was a realistic attempt at selling sex and naughtiness. It was done simply and cheaply, without the pretensions that seem to go with other covers.”
The stark black-and-white close-up of a man’s crotch captured the cheap, simple approach. “It was a cheap camera and cheap film,” said Morrissey. “I have no idea what brand.”
The red rubber stamp design of the album title and band’s name added to the gritty look.
Artist Craig Braun was responsible for translating Warhol’s design into a functional album cover. As told in a 2015 New York Times article, Mick Jagger insisted that the zipper needed to work, and it had to reveal something when you pulled it down.
“[The Rolling Stones] knew if they put jeans and a working zipper that people were going to want to see what was back there,” Braun said.
Braun obtained a photo of the Andy Warhol model in his white underwear to slip behind the zipper. (Contrary to popular belief, it’s not a close-up of Mick Jagger’s crotch you see when you pull down the zipper.)
Realizing Warhol’s vision was a chore. The zipper damaged some of the initial pressings when the albums were stacked and shipped to record stores. The zipper literally dented the vinyl inside the sleeves pressed against it. Removing the zipper would ruin its effect. The solution was for each zipper to be manually pulled down just far enough that the tip of the zipper would no longer rub against the vinyl of any other albums in shipment. As Braun told Joe Coscarelli of the New York Times:
“I got this idea that maybe, if the glue was dry enough, we could have the little old ladies at the end of the assembly line pull the zipper down far enough so that the round part would hit the center disc label,” he said. “It worked, and it was even better to see the zipper pulled halfway down.”
As famous as the cover is, the artwork inside is also notable for the debut of the Rolling Stones’s iconic tongue logo, designed by John Pasche. The tongue logo would become as famous and recognizable as the Nike Swoosh logo, which also appeared for the first time in 1971.
If the album cover reminded us of the Stones’s dirtiness, then the rolling tongue recast the band in a new light: a rock and roll brand, and eventually a lucrative one, gaining revenue streams from touring and merchandising, and corporate deals that few, if anyone, envisioned in 1971. And that tongue retains its power as an icon used in co-licensing deals between the Stones and businesses such as Lucky Brand.
Sticky Fingers became a Number One seller, reaching triple-platinum status, and achieved several critical accolades. Rolling Stone would rank Sticky Fingers Number 64 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2003, VH1 would rank Sticky Fingers as the greatest album cover of all time. Ultimate Classic Rock would rank Sticky Fingers as one of the most shocking covers ever, although the album really looks more raunchy than shocking.
According to rock critic Richard Harrington, “This album heralded an age of really imaginative and provocative packaging. It also introduced the greatest band logo of all time.”
