This essay was shared privately with this blog's paid patrons in 2025. It is not part of my book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1), and this is its first public appearance. You can became a patron of this blog for a mere $3 a month.
An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!
THE ROLLING STONES: Can't You Hear Me Knocking
Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
Produced by Jimmy Miller
From the album Sticky Fingers, Rolling Stones Records/Atlantic Records, 1971
When opportunity knocks, we're advised we ought to answer it. So what do we do when it's desperation pounding on our window?
In 1971, it wouldn't seem like the Rolling Stones could have much cause for desperation. The group had survived the 1969 departure (and death) of its founder Brian Jones, weathered the violent tumult of Altamont, and outlasted the Beatles. The Stones severed ties with legendarily hard-nosed former manager Allen Klein (though not without relinquishing the rights to all of their pre-'71 catalog), and began a new association with Atlantic Records, Atlantic now distributing the band's own new label, Rolling Stones Records. As galling as it must have been to lose control of their work from 1963 debut single "Come On" through 1970 live album Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!, and especially to lose it to a bastard like Klein, I betcha the Stones were glad to be rid of him.
So opportunity was knocking for the Rolling Stones. They answered with a new start, and with a new album sporting a deliberately edgy cover designed by Andy Warhol and Craig Braun, a salacious image equipped with a working zipper. The album was called Sticky Fingers.
Although de facto Brian Jones replacement guitarist Mick Taylor had played on a little bit of the Stones' 1969 album Let It Bleed and on the above-mentioned in-concert exorcism of Ya-Ya's, Sticky Fingers was his first full-length studio album as a Rolling Stone. Even before Jones split, the Rolling Stones had become Mick and Keith's group, with singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards calling the shots. Taylor, bassist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts rocked their considerable talents, but refrained from rocking the boat.
Still, it would be a grave mistake to give short shrift to Wyman, Watts, and Taylor. I don't think there's any question that Jagger and Richards were running the show, but nor should there be any doubt that without the sheer accomplishment and wizardry of its individual players, the Rolling Stones would not have been capable of claiming the title they'd recently seized as their own:
The World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band.
They staked that claim on stage, on the road. One could say they'd tried to stake it on record as well, but now? Now, in this brave new world that would never know another new Beatles album? Opportunity. Knock, knock. The World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band would unleash their power in the studio.
Sticky Fingers wasn't necessarily a departure from Let It Bleed, but it felt different, weightier, more...important? At the very least, it felt like a statement. Opening track "Brown Sugar" was an instant classic rock staple (its casual misogyny and implied racism somehow glossed over), and Side 2 opener "Bitch" is even better. "Sway" is self-descriptive. "You Gotta Move" and "I Got The Blues" call upon the Stones' Delta-drawn roots. "Dead Flowers" and especially "Wild Horses" establish a gorgeous, haunting ache that is respectively damning and redemptive. "Sister Morphine," which Mick and Keith co-wrote with an originally uncredited Marianne Faithfull, is appropriately harrowing (if not the equal of, say, the Flamin' Groovies' "Slow Death" or the Velvet Underground's "Heroin"). As coda, "Moonlight Mile" tweaks the blueprint of the soon-to-become-familiar AOR ballad. It ain't a revelation to say this, but even the obvious needs to be said out loud every once in a while: Sticky Fingers is one of the all-time finest rock 'n' roll albums.
"Can't You Hear Me Knocking" is the next to last track on Side 1, a seven-minute-and-fifteen second mic drop, a mind-blowing excursion into the sovereign realm of the goddamned Rolling Stones acting with impunity as the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band. It's a full-body immersion in the concept, riff-driven, a desperate knock with no hope of an answer from that damned elusive satisfaction. Jagger wails, feigning a potential loss of control without ever once conceding the possibility of that silly notion. The band just freaking cooks. I mean, they cook, clean, and put the cat out at night, and they did it all in one take. Duly deputized Rolling Stones Billy Preston (organ), Rocky Dijon (congas), Jimmy Miller (percussion), and saxophonist extraordinaire Bobby Keyes execute dominion by divine right, and Keyes in particular provides honkin' skronk whammin' that paradoxically helps define what is essentially a guitar workout. Impossible. But true!
Of course the guys with legit Rolling Stones ID badges demonstrate the divinity of their own rights. With Wyman and Watts as the core of the rhythm section, every buoyant boom and prodding tap is tastefully but emphatically in its proper propellin' place. Bill Wyman is resolutely and unfailingly Bill Wyman, the sine qua non of solid groove. Charlie Watts is Charlie motherlovin' Watts. 'Nuff said.
And if a guitar battle breaks out, you'd better thank the deities that Richards and Taylor are on your side. Bobby Keyes's sublime sax work embellishes and enhances the track; it's still essentially a guitar workout. The song starts with Keef's introductory guitar licks metamorphosing into that killer riff, continues with Keith and Mick trading their prowess, and concludes with Mick Taylor taking over for an extended, improvised solo that proves he was born to be a Rolling Stone. Maybe Mick Taylor was the one answering all that knocking, and answering the summons with ample authority to spare.
When opportunity knocks, we're supposed to answer it. When desperation knocks, we are often the ones doing all that frantic pounding. A decade passed between the release of Sticky Fingers in 1971 and my first belated awareness of "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" in the early '80s. I've described my own not-quite-desperate, not-quite-thriving early '80s situation on previous occasions: A recent college graduate, working at McDonald's, living with my girlfriend in our college town of Brockport, more or less making ends meet but lacking any real sense of direction. My stated goal was to become a writer, but I wasn't writing much, if at all. I was doing a fair amount of drinking. More than anything else, I was failing. My relationship with the girlfriend suffered, and was at potential risk of failing as well. Opportunity wasn't exactly knocking. I'm not sure I was exactly knocking on the right doors either.
Perhaps it's a coincidence that this was also the period in my life when I paid the most attention to the Rolling Stones. I snapped up used copies of most of the Mick Taylor-era LPs. Exile On Main Street. Goat's Head Soup. It's Only Rock 'n' Roll. Sticky Fingers. I never got around to owning 1976's Black And Blue, picking up the post-Taylor Ronnie Wood years with my girlfriend's copy of Some Girls. The sound of the Stones could be heard spinning in our little apartment with a frequency to rival the Ramones, the Jam, and the Undertones. My friend Brian hipped me to "Can't You Hear Me Knocking," and I took that opportunity to dive right in. In my short-attention world of two- and three-minute pop numbers, "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" was my most-played seven-minute song.
Our personal soundtracks can inspire, motivate, distract, and/or uplift in the undetermined manner the grooves allow. They can also be incidental to whatever the hell we do with our lives. I remained my girlfriend Brenda's designated boyfriend as we ditched the disappointments of life in our college town and relocated to Buffalo. We failed there, too. We kept knocking anyway, stayed together, got married, moved to Syracuse, took the opportunity to build a life and a family. Life remains under construction, just like all of the roads in Syracuse. Men and women at work. You can hear us knocking, right?
You can certainly hear when the Rolling Stones come a-knockin', a desperate embrace of opportunity realized, a chance seized, a promise realized. The world's greatest rock 'n' roll band. Can't knock 'em if it's true.
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