Dirty Work
24th March 1986
LP (CBS 86321).
CD- May 1986 ( Columbia 45333 - CBS 4657522)
Producers: The Glimmer Twins & Steve Lillywhite.
Highest Charts Position : US 3 - UK 2
Contributing musicians: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, Ron Wood, Chuck Leavell, Bobby Womack, Ian Stewart, Don Covay, Ivan Neville, Anton Fig, Steve Jordan, Jimmy Page, Alan Rogan, Charley Drayton, Philippe Saisse, Dan Collette, John Regan, Tom Waits, Jimmy Cliff, Patti Scialfa, Kirsty MacColl, Janice Pendarvis, Dollette McDonald.
-
One Hit (MJ/KR/RW)
- Fight (MJ/KR/RW)
- Harlem Shuffle (Bob Relf/Earl Nelson)
- Hold Back (MJ/KR)
- Too Rude (Lydon Roberts)
-
Winning Ugly (MJ/KR)
- Back To Zero (MJ/KR/Chuck Leavell)
- Dirty Work (MJ/KR/RW)
- Had It With You (MJ/KR/RW)
- Sleep Tonight (MJ/KR)
- Key To The Highway (Big Bill Broonzy/Charles Segar) -STU only, uncredited
tribute of unknown origin
Key To The Highway (Little Walter) A
favorite of the late Ian Stewart, whose barrelhouse piano version was heard as
the fade to the "Dirty Work" album. The Stones played this at the "invitation
only" show that served as Stewart's wake their only performance of 1986. Keith
remembers meeting up with Stewart for the first time unsure of where the
rehearsal room was, he followed the sound of Stewart's boogie-woogie piano
playing and came upon Ian Stewart, dressed in a shirt and a pair of leather
alpine style shorts playing flawless blues piano while keeping a watchful eye on
his bicycle, which was parked out on the corner!
At its best, Dirty Work captures the friction between Mick and Keith during the
album's recording; at its worst, it's simply a competent collection of hard
rock, spiked with some unnecessary synthesizers.
Recording date:
10th September - 15th October
1985 New York, RPM Studios &
15th November - 5th December: Right Track Studios.
Producers: The Glimmer Twins & Steve Lillywhite.
Sound engineer: Dave Jerden.
- Back To Zero II (MJ/KR/Chuck Leavell) -Dirty Work-version
- Dirty Work III (MJ/KR/RW) -Dirty Work-version
- Fight IV (MJ/KR/RW) -Dirty Work-version
- Had It With You III (MJ/KR/RW) -’Dirty Work’-version
- Harlem Shuffle IV (Bob Relf/Ernest Nelson) -Dirty Work-version
- Hold Back II (MJ/KR) -Dirty Work-version
- One Hit V (MJ/KR/RW) -Dirty Work-version
- Sleep Tonight III (MJ/KR) -Dirty Work-version
- Too Rude IV (Lydon Roberts/Sly Dunbar/Robbie Shakespeare) -Dirty Work-version
- Winning Ugly III (MJ/KR) -Dirty Work-version
(It')s very nice to be back with the familiar faces, back to all the jokes you have and the grooves and tunes you can say Let's do that one! There's hundreds of tunes that the band can play. So that's nice... There's a certain tension at the beginning of any recording session. Even if it's the Stones. How's it going to work out? Until you get something under your belt you're a little nervous.
It started off kind of slow but that's because we hadn't played together for a
while, and we live in different countries. So, it's like, Hello, mate! What's
you been doing? How's the wife? How's the kids? Oh, the kid passed some test at
school, you know, you get all that jive. And then you just sit around and
jam for 3 weeks or something, play a lot of early blues and '50s stuff, Eddie
Cochran, Muddy Waters blues. You just play anything that comes into anybody's
head. And you just JAM and get your chops back in. And then you start laying
down rough ideas for songs. And then you just go through those and then you
slowly pick out and play odd demos more and more and more...
The great thing about Ronnie and me is that we really don't stop working. We're
pretty much around the corner from each other all the time, and he LOVES playing.
So we've made a point in the last year or two - this is what I mean, we did our
last tour THREE YEARS ago - of going around to each other's place 2 or 3 nights
a week and play. That way, we've kept the playing and the ideas flowing, so that
there's much more CONTINUITY in the things we're doing. At least that's what I
feel: we didn't just arrive cold turkey to start this record. The only
difference was changing from acoustic to electric. It took me a couple of weeks
to get used to the POWER of an electric guitar, especially full blast in the
studio.
We messed around for weeks because Mick was still buggering around with his solo
album instead of working with us. He would fly back to London in the middle of
it which, I might add, is a thing that nobody else has ever done, because when
it's Stones work, everybody drops solo projects. It kind of caused a bit of
resentment in the band.
(On the) Dirty Work album, Mick and Keith were at a low writing ebb, and
they gladly accepted my songs.
Mick and I suddenly realized that it had been a long time since we'd had a real
outside influence in the studio helping produce records - ever since Jimmy
Miller left in 1973, really. Mick and I talked about it. We had Dave Jerden -
Bill Laswell (who co-produced 6 songs on Mick's solo album
She's The Boss)'s guy - engineering. He and Steve Lillywhite turned
out to be an incredible team. The first day Steve walked into the studio, I said,
Maybe you don't want to be the meat in this sandwich. But he handled
every aspect superbly. It was very interesting to watch him build up respect
from the band. It didn't take him very long to establish his credentials. He
didn't jump up and down. We might do a great take and he'd say, Okay, that's
it. None of this raving about, which would have been embarrassing for
everybody. He was very cool. It didn't take long before everybody was going
Yup (mimics nodding and winking). Surprisingly enough, we were LISTENING to
this young kid!
They'd done about 3 months in Paris when they got me in. I started in May. When
I got there 75% of the songs had been written. A few more came out after I got
there. I think I brought them together and played on the strength of the what
the band has. After a few weeks working with people you find out who does their
best work when. I found that all of them were pretty good early on: first,
second or third take. It was really a case of keeping the early ones and
remembering where all the good bits were. It got a bit crazy, so you had to log
things in your mind. The sessions were always based on work and jamming. It
wasn't as if everyone stopped if one of them wasn't there. They'd always be
playing. If Mick wasn't there, Keith might sing. If Charlie wasn't there, Ronnie
might do some drums.
In the end I tried to keep it as basic as I could, 'cause that was what fit the
music. Why change something if you know when it's right it's good? Normally
Charlie would be the happiest when he worked out his own groove. Sometimes I
actually got him to play MORE cymbals, accent a few things more. He'd play them
and look in the control room at me.
Steve would encourage us, arrangement-wise, to put in a break. Whereas by
ourselves we might try it once, say, It's too much goddamn trouble, and
just steamroll through it. He'd encourage us to get it right. It's dynamics.
When you don't use a producer those are the things you allow to escape. It's
just too much trouble to play it and be in the control room listening to it.
When you're leaping about doing two jobs at once, dynamics and arrangements are
the first things that suffer... Speaking for myself, this is one of the best
teams I've ever worked with, Dave Jerden and Steve. THEY haven't worked together
before either, so that magical mixture, the chemistry behind the board, has been
one of those things that comes along for the Stones once in a while, like with
Miller for Beggars Banquet.
When we were mixing in New York, Steve Lillywhite changed the speed in one song,
sped it up a little bit, and it was hardly anything. Keith walked in and he just
went ballistic. He goes Nobody, fucking nobody, fucks with the Rolling Stones!
That tempo was cut at that speed and it stays at that speed!
Keith had a baby in the middle of the sessions, and Charlie cut his hand opening
a miniature bottle. We didn't think we could drum for some weeks. All the
frustrated drummers in the band thought, Now's my chance! and rushed to
the drum kit. Mick would keep a rhythm going, and Simon Kirke
(of Bad Company) played a bit. But nothing he did was
used on the album. No, Simon has been coming along to Stones sessions as a mate
for years. If you recall, Charlie came home from Paris because he damaged his
hand, and had to rest. When he got to the airport, the press jumped on this
absurd story that he'd walked out on the sessions and wasn't going back. It had
absolutely nothing to do with that.
I also still play a lot of bass (with the Stones) - four numbers on Dirty
Work.
The record took a year to make, and it was hard. It wasn't an easy record to
make. Mick and Keith were at loggerheads at times.
I thought they were going to break up. They were having a lot of problems, a couple of the guys were stretched out, probably Charlie more than anybody at that time. They were working separately... The peacemaker that kept that group together, as far as I'm concerned, was Ronnie. He just had that extra spirit and life that it takes to be in a band. Plus he was younger, he had the energy, and he was willing to take the beating and be the fall guy for whatever that went down.
I... it's strange, 'cause I usually like to talk about an album I've just made,
but with this, I just feel as though I don't want to say so much. It is Keith's
album to a great extent. I mean, he wrote those songs because of Mick's solo
commitments. I would definitely say it was a Keith Richards-inspired record.
Mick did a little bit as well, but all you need to put about this is that it was
a Keith Richards-inspired record.
Let's put it like this. It's a Stones album. If I've had a little more to do
with it and a little more control over this one, it's the same to me as the
middle-70s when Mick would cover my ass when I was out of it. Because of the
timing of Mick's solo album, he wasn't there as much as the rest of us in the
beginning when the mood was getting set. In that sense, yes, I took over the
job. The same way he would do if it happened to me. We cover each other's ass.
We've done it very well for each other over the years.
In most respects I'm happy with the album but it's not my album. It's OUR album. So there's obviously things I see differently. So does everybody. Of course I haven't been involved in the final decisions. It's always been like that with this band. In the old days, we were all there and got too many opinions. I mean, I would've liked more bass on this album. I would've mixed it differently. But it's not my album and Mick and Keith are the coproducers. That's the way they want it, that's the way the get it. But I genuinely like it, I'm just picking hairs. All my work was done in Paris in 5 or 6 months. I did come to New York in August to do some tidying up - editing 10-minute songs into 4-minute songs to the point where my original bass line was gone, so I had to redo it. From then on, Mick might come up with better lyrics and a song I knew in Paris as Dirty Dog might be released as Back in the USA or something. My job is as bass player. That's what I do. Also some synths maybe. But I don't mix, master, or choose the LP covers. If someone PUSHED themselves in situations like that, this band wouldn't be around any longer. It would have folded up 15 years ago. You can't have too many egos in the same band. You gotta just swallow your pride. We know who's who in this band, and it works well that way. We're all trying to make the best record. Besides, the songs really choose themselves. Out of 30 songs we record, the best 7 will just rise to the top. Then there's the narrow gray area, so we'll start saying, Oh, let's save this slow one when we need a slow one, 'cause we have too many here.
I wanted to put out a real STONES album, which we always manage to do in odd
periods. This was a real concentrated effort. We left a lot of good stuff,
interesting stuff, in the can because everyone wanted to - if we could, if it
could be done again - make a classic Stones record with certain themes that have
recurred over the years, both musically and lyrically... The fact that everyone
has been active has given this record much more of an edge, more of a defined
FEEL as the Rolling Stones, because we didn't have to go in there and start from
ground zero. It has a sort of coherence about it, more than anything since maybe
Some Girls, for me.
I think Dirty Work is a great record but, I mean, there are other things
to do in life (besides go on tour).
This is the first album in a new contract. We'd be IDIOTS (not to tour behind it).
It'd be the dumbest move in the world not to get behind it. We've got a GOOD
album here! Spent a year making it and putting our backs to the wall. Why toss
it away?
Dirty Work I built pretty much on the same idea as Some Girls, in
that it was made with the absolute idea that it would go on the road. So when we
finished the record and then... the POWERS THAT BE - let's put it like that (laughs)
- decided suddenly they AIN'T gonna go on the road behind it, the team was left
in the lurch. Because if you didn't follow it up with some roadwork, you'd only
done 50 percent of the job. (The album didn't do all that well because) there
was no promotion behind it. As it came out, everyone sort of said, Well,
they've broken up or They're not gonna work. So you got a lot of
negativity behind it.
The album wasn't that good. It was OKAY. It certainly wasn't a great Rolling
Stones album. The feeling inside the band was very bad, too. The relationships
were terrible. The health was diabolical. I wasn't in particularly good shape.
The rest of the band, they couldn't walk across the Champs Elysées, much less go
on the road.
(It's n)ot special.
Touring Dirty Work would have been a nightmare. It was a terrible period.
Everyone was hating each other so much: there were so many disagreements. It was
very petty; everyone was so out of their brains, and Charlie was in seriously
bad shape. When the idea of touring came up, I said, I don't think it's gonna
work. In retrospect I was 100% right. It would have been the worst Rolling
Stones tour. Probably would have been the end of the band... (Charlie was doing
drugs and drinking.) Keith the same. Me the same. Ronnie - I don't know what
Ronnie was doing. We just got fed up with each other. You've got a relationship
with musicians that depends on what you produce together. But when you don't
produce, you get bad reactions - bands break up. You get difficult periods, and
that was one of them.