How Sticky Fingers’ Zipper and Grit Soundtracked the Birth of Punk

The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers (1971) is often cited as the album that unintentionally handed early punk its visual and sonic road map—not because punk wanted to sound like the Stones, but because the Stones had already cracked the code of raw, provocative, and tactile rock. The most obvious link is that infamous Andy Warhol cover: a working zipper that, when pulled, revealed a crotch shot of a male model in tight jeans. That interactive, almost obscene design was a direct ancestor of the Sex Pistols’ ripped-sleeve aesthetic and the whole punk ethos of making the album itself a confrontational object. Malcolm McLaren, the Pistols’ manager, had been