Sticky Fingers was released in 1971 and is considered one of the band’s best albums. It also has one of the most iconic album covers. The image depicts the waist of a man dressed in tight, snug jeans that leave little to the imagination. The first edition had a working zipper!

The idea of using a real zipper on an album cover came from the godfather of pop art, Andy Warhol, who is also the artist behind the motif. There was speculation on whether the body belonged to the singer, Mick Jagger himself. This was soon displaced by the rumor that it was the model and sex symbol Joe Dallessandro or Warhol’s lover Jed Johnson, who had posed for the cover.
When the zipper is pulled down, it reveals a man in white cotton underwear – a photo taken in the same position as the jeans-clad.

The album cover is designed by Craig Brown. The famous Stones logo appeared here for the first time: caricature of Jagger’s lips and tongue.

Many record stores and shopping centres refused to exhibit a cover that was referred to as lewd and obscene.

The most extreme example was in Franco’s Spain, where the jeans body was replaced with an opened tin of syrup. Out of the box extend three severed fingers (sticky fingers). The syrup gives associations to blood. Alluding to sex was too strong – but violence was apparently acceptable. In the Spanish version, the song “Sister Morphine” was also replaced with “Let It Rock” (by Chuck Berry).

When the album was released in Russia in 1992, There was a further change and a the use of the Cyrillic alphabet. The subject was a colored variant of jeans (female model?) – without a real zipper. The model has a military belt from the Soviet army, where the belt buckle is equipped with a hammer and sickle.