Can't You Hear Me Knocking from the 1971 album Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones.

Lyrics by Jagger/Richards

Right out of the gate, Keith plays some crystal clear, down and dirty licks, and everything rocks from here on. This is a classic example of fuzzy guitar, genius rock and roll riffing, kept in line with Charlie Watts doing more than his usual time keeping minimum, throwing in some great rap-tapping and cymbalizing. I've been listening to this song for almost half a century, but only recently did I really hear it. Around the fourth stanza, I was drawn to the backup singing: "Hear me prowlin', I'm gonna take you down. Hear me growlin', Yeah, I've flatted feet now, now, now, now. Hear me howlin', And all, all around your street now. Hear me knockin', And all, all around your town". I played the whole thing over and it became brand new.

You don't see it coming, but at midpoint, the song very cleverly and quickly, shapeshifts into a jazzy jam session complete with bongos, a cool-cat saxophone solo by Bobby Keys that never really ends and an echoing guitar solo by Mick Taylor. The jamming goes on for a good 4 minutes and just like that, it's over with an exclamation point! Some of the older folks might remember that when you went into the record store and saw this cardboard album in 1971, right in the middle was a flap, when opened revealed a working metal zipper on a piece of cloth. I've never seen that repeated.