and Keith’s unrelenting rhythm guitar riffs, I would walk around all day long singing as many of the lyrics as I could remember over and over to myself.
Even though the album was not yet out, Marshall Chess was God’s own salesman when it came to pushing it to all the eager record buyers who then made up the core readership of Rolling Stone magazine. As Marshall was only too happy to tell me, the ten tracks on Sticky Fingers were (in what would turn out not tobe the final running order) “Bitch,” “Brown Sugar,” “You Gotta Move,” “Dead Flowers,” “I Got the Blues,” “Sister Morphine,” “Keep-a-Knockin’” (i.e., “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”), “Wild Horses,” “Sway,” and “Moonlight Mile.”
Befitting the utterly chaotic way in which the Rolling Stones recorded back then, Marshall said that even though the album was slated to be released during the third week in April, there was still a chance Mick might want to go back into the studio to re-record some of his vocals. Because he literally did not have the time to do this once the tour was over, this never happened. But to have even been considering the possibility after having spent more than a year in the studio at a cost of £42,000 (a little less than $100,000) spoke volumes about just how difficult it was for Mick and Keith to ever let go of an album that everyone else thought was long since done.
Because I was still completely clueless about the economics of the music business back then, what I did not understand was just how badly the Rolling Stones needed their new album to be a hit. Throughout the entire tour as the band played their asses off onstage night after night, the elephant in the room was whether or not Sticky Fingers would sell enough copies to justify the insanely lucrative deal that Ahmet Ertegun had given the Stones so he could distribute their next five albums.
As difficult as this may now also be to understand, the Rolling Stones were not yet the heavyweight champions of record sales they have since become. After being released in December 1968, Beggars Banquet had gone platinum in America by selling a million copies. A year later, Let It Bleed had sold twice as many records and gone double platinum. Reverting to form, Get YerYa-Ya’s Out! had sold a million copies in America after being released in September 1970.
While these sales figures were certainly nothing to be ashamed of and continued to provide Mick and Keith with a steady source of income as songwriters thanks to the deal they had signed with Decca Records, the totals paled in comparison to the number of albums that bands like Chicago, Santana, and Blood, Sweat, and Tears were then selling. Released just six weeks before the Stones’ tour began, Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Water was on its way to going eight times platinum in America while selling an astonishing 25 million copies worldwide.
It had been for precisely this reason that Clive Davis, then the head of Columbia Records, decided to pass on signing the Stones to his label. In the end, the only record company suitor willing to meet Stones’ business manager Prince Rupert Loewenstein’s demand for a huge advance as well as what Davis called “a staggering royalty rate” was Atlantic Records. Obsessed with not just the music of the Rolling Stones but Mick Jagger as well, Ahmet Ertegun pursued the band for more than a year and then agreed to come up with a $1 million advance for each of their next five albums against what was then the unprecedented royalty rate of 10 percent.
Further complicating the upcoming release of Sticky Fingers was what both Mick and Keith saw as a deliberate act of corporate pique as well as an attempt to extract one last return on its initial investment in the band. On March 6, 1971, Decca Records issued a compilation of Stones’ tracks recorded in the mid-1960s that had never before appeared on an album in the United Kingdom. Aptly entitled
Even though the album was not yet out, Marshall Chess was God’s own salesman when it came to pushing it to all the eager record buyers who then made up the core readership of Rolling Stone magazine. As Marshall was only too happy to tell me, the ten tracks on Sticky Fingers were (in what would turn out not tobe the final running order) “Bitch,” “Brown Sugar,” “You Gotta Move,” “Dead Flowers,” “I Got the Blues,” “Sister Morphine,” “Keep-a-Knockin’” (i.e., “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”), “Wild Horses,” “Sway,” and “Moonlight Mile.”
Befitting the utterly chaotic way in which the Rolling Stones recorded back then, Marshall said that even though the album was slated to be released during the third week in April, there was still a chance Mick might want to go back into the studio to re-record some of his vocals. Because he literally did not have the time to do this once the tour was over, this never happened. But to have even been considering the possibility after having spent more than a year in the studio at a cost of £42,000 (a little less than $100,000) spoke volumes about just how difficult it was for Mick and Keith to ever let go of an album that everyone else thought was long since done.
Because I was still completely clueless about the economics of the music business back then, what I did not understand was just how badly the Rolling Stones needed their new album to be a hit. Throughout the entire tour as the band played their asses off onstage night after night, the elephant in the room was whether or not Sticky Fingers would sell enough copies to justify the insanely lucrative deal that Ahmet Ertegun had given the Stones so he could distribute their next five albums.
As difficult as this may now also be to understand, the Rolling Stones were not yet the heavyweight champions of record sales they have since become. After being released in December 1968, Beggars Banquet had gone platinum in America by selling a million copies. A year later, Let It Bleed had sold twice as many records and gone double platinum. Reverting to form, Get YerYa-Ya’s Out! had sold a million copies in America after being released in September 1970.
While these sales figures were certainly nothing to be ashamed of and continued to provide Mick and Keith with a steady source of income as songwriters thanks to the deal they had signed with Decca Records, the totals paled in comparison to the number of albums that bands like Chicago, Santana, and Blood, Sweat, and Tears were then selling. Released just six weeks before the Stones’ tour began, Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Water was on its way to going eight times platinum in America while selling an astonishing 25 million copies worldwide.
It had been for precisely this reason that Clive Davis, then the head of Columbia Records, decided to pass on signing the Stones to his label. In the end, the only record company suitor willing to meet Stones’ business manager Prince Rupert Loewenstein’s demand for a huge advance as well as what Davis called “a staggering royalty rate” was Atlantic Records. Obsessed with not just the music of the Rolling Stones but Mick Jagger as well, Ahmet Ertegun pursued the band for more than a year and then agreed to come up with a $1 million advance for each of their next five albums against what was then the unprecedented royalty rate of 10 percent.
Further complicating the upcoming release of Sticky Fingers was what both Mick and Keith saw as a deliberate act of corporate pique as well as an attempt to extract one last return on its initial investment in the band. On March 6, 1971, Decca Records issued a compilation of Stones’ tracks recorded in the mid-1960s that had never before appeared on an album in the United Kingdom. Aptly entitled
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