It feels like only yesterday I was working on the bar at the Rolling Stones’ Hyde Park gig (not the 1969 one!) to celebrate their 50th anniversary of being a band….now, eight years later, we are celebrating 50 years since the release of their ninth album Sticky Fingers! Sticky Fingers was released in 1971 during my favourite Stones era, the Mick Taylor era, and although its predecessor Let It Bleed is an absolutely brilliant album, Sticky Fingers in my opinion is the first time the world got to see the Stones as we still know and love them today.

Sticky Fingers has some of the band’s biggest and greatest hits, including the hugely popular opening track Brown Sugar, the emotional Wild Horses, the swaggering Bitch, and one of my personal favourites Dead Flowers. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if You Gotta Move was left off the album, but otherwise it’s a solid album.

I thought I’d mix things up a bit with this article – instead of listing my top 5 favourite songs, I’ve instead tried to find 5 interesting facts about the album:

5. Sticky Fingers is the best-selling Rolling Stones album with 21.7 million sales.

4. The Rolling Stones have played Brown Sugar 1136 times live – this is the second most played song after Jumpin’ Jack Flash.

3. Sticky Fingers was the first Rolling Stone album to be recorded in the ‘Rolling Stones Mobile Studio’ a mobile studio (as you might have guessed) the band created at the end of the 60s. Other famous albums recorded in this studio include Led Zeppelin III and IV.

2. A real zipper was included in the original vinyl release, but following complaints of damage the zipper was ‘unzipped’ slightly to minimise the damage.

1. Sticky Fingers is the first album to feature the band’s famous tongue logo, designed by John Pasche in 1970.