3. The Rolling Stones Frank ZappaSticky Fingers

I have to pick a Rolling Stones album; there are so many that I like but top to bottom Sticky Fingers has it all. It has the funk, the dirt, the heartbreak, the ballad. It’s got everything. The drugginess, the race-baiting, the devil stuff. It’s sexy as hell. It’s a timeless record, The Rolling Stones at the peak of their powers. ‘Moonlight Mile’ is just a beautiful ballad. It’s got ‘Sway’. It’s got ‘Bitch’ on it, ‘Sister Morphine’. It’s a jam. I mean it’s got ‘Brown Sugar’ on it, dude, it’s so nasty. I remember hearing the "just like a black girl should" lyrics and thinking, "Woah, what did he just say there?" I remember being very conscious of the racial implications there, what they were singing about, some sort of plantation fantasy gone… something.

My initial memories of The Rolling Stones was that I loved to dance to their songs. That’s what I really liked about The Rolling Stones. I remember as a kid my aunt loved The Rolling Stones. I remember that ‘Bitch’ was naughty and that it was naughty to be singing along to it but it was a killer jam to dance to. And ‘Moonlight Mile’ is just a beautiful, beautiful ballad… about outer space love, that’s what it sounds like to me. It’s this spectral love song.

I considered Some Girls too because it came out when I was 12, so I was able to engage with the Stones as a contemporary. I was old enough to know what I liked and they were putting out a new record then. I was like five or six years old when Sticky Fingers came out. Some Girls I considered because I was able to make a conscious choice, "Oh I like that". The first time I heard ‘Miss You’, I knew what sex was then [laughs], so there you go.