How Heroin Shaped the Lyrics and Recording of 'Sticky Fingers' and 'Exile on Main St.'

By the time the Stones made Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St., Keith Richards was deep into heroin, and the drug’s fingerprints are all over both albums. Lyrically, it shows up in the weariness, the paranoia, the hangover — songs like “Sister Morphine” (written by Jagger, Richards, and Marianne Faithfull) are directly about addiction, while “Dead Flowers” and “Tumbling Dice” feel like bar-stool confessions from someone too strung out to care. Even the cover of Sticky Fingers — a crotch bulge behind a zipper — has that sleazy, narcotic edge.

In the studio, heroin didn’t just influence the