"Fingerprint File" is the closing track from the Rolling Stones' 1974 album It's Only Rock 'n Roll. It is one of their first attempts to branch out into dance or electronic music, and the song resembles music by Sly and the Family Stone. Key ingredients of the song are the rhythm guitar played by Mick Jagger, which features heavy phasing due to the use of the MXR Phase 100 effects pedal, and the highly jazz/funk-oriented bass guitar played by Mick Taylor. Keith Richards uses the wah-wah pedal for his guitar part. Bill Wyman is on synthesiser, Charlie Watts on drums, Billy Preston on clavinet, and Nicky Hopkins on piano. Charlie Jolly Kunjappu is featured on the tabla.
The lyrics, similar to David Bowie's "1984", released the same year, express frustration over government monitoring and surveillance activity, perhaps inspired by reports of the wiretapping of domestic "radical" groups in the US during the Nixon Administration.
A live version is featured on the 1977 live album Love You Live and the 1975 live album L.A Friday: Live 1975, recorded during the the Rolling Stones Tour of the Americas '75.
Famous quotes containing the word file:
“A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)