Dirty Work could only be salvaged if they did do a LIBN jobbie I think.

I lone LIBN. But let's face it DW has no "Let it be", "Across the universe", "Get back", "Two of us", "The long and winding road". I mean look at it. This album was dissed for a Beatles LP at the time and have 5 classics out of 10 on it (save for DI and MM) and the other tracks were pretty ok.

Had the Stones released anything like LIB in 1986 - even with that Poster Child Kid For Never Being Allowed To Have A Head Seen. Ever. - it would have benn hailed a masterpiece.

Anyways.......DW still sucks nuts....and what 71Tele said really hit it on the head - it's a Richards/Wood outing and neither one of them are good enough (particularly Wood) to write a decent Stones album without Jagger at the songwriting healm.

While I agree to an extent with 71 Tele's assessment, they are still definitely Jagger lyrics all over the album even if most songs started with only Keith and/or Ronnie (obvious exception being "Winning Ugly" - "Back to Zero" originated with Chuck Leavell). They may not have enjoyed working together, but neither Jagger nor Richards ever set out to fail.

The weird thing about the outtakes from this album is they always strike me as potential alternates for the songs that made the cut. Bill German reported at the time that a double album was considered. I can't honestly believe that as "Strictly Memphis" would surely pinch-hit for "Harlem Shuffle" just as either "Baby, You're Too Much" or "What Am I Gonna Do With Your Love" would have replaced "Sleep Tonight" and "She Never Listens To Me" would have replaced "Too Rude."

One thing that gets forgotten is the Stones first turned in the finished album in late Summer 1985 and CBS rejected it and sent them back into the studio for additional recording and remixing. The Stones denied this at the time, but they definitely submitted the album and then returned to work on it. I would be interested in hearing that rejected take as it obviously was further along than the bootlegs that circulate.

When you consider Keith had most of The X-Pensive Winos on the sessions, I really expected TALK IS CHEAP to more closely resemble the DIRTY WORK outtakes I was listening to by 1988. I was more than a little surprised that what Keith chose to do didn't really have a "Deep Love" or "Treat Me Like a Fool" or "Crushed Pearl" on it. That's not knocking TALK IS CHEAP, but it was something different again.

The bigger question of future releases of previously unreleased music is really something Mick started with his VERY BEST OF....In 2007, he talked about releasing a CD of the blues tracks Rick Rubin produced of Jagger and The Red Devils. I imagine disappointing sales have scuppered those plans just as Jagger's project with Dave Stewart for Nokia (SUPER HEAVY) featuring Jeff Beck and Joss Stone seems to have disappeared without a trace. Considering the comparatively lackluster sales of SHINE A LIGHT and EXILE RARITIES (even A BIGGER BANG shipped platinum in the USA), I really wonder if they'll bother with additional archival projects.

Quote
Rocky Dijon
One thing that gets forgotten is the Stones first turned in the finished album in late Summer 1985 and CBS rejected it and sent them back into the studio for additional recording and remixing. The Stones denied this at the time, but they definitely submitted the album and then returned to work on it. I would be interested in hearing that rejected take as it obviously was further along than the bootlegs that circulate.

fascinating--I'd love to read the memo that outlined the reasons for rejection.

I'd just like to hear what they turned in and had to go back and re-do. Again, Bill German denied the CBS rejection story, but it made the trades at the time (September 1985) that the album was delivered. If you look at Nico's site, you do see they spent 6 months mixing and overdubbing all told.

Others have remarked that the demos sound better than the finished album. If you listen to the sound Steve Lillywhite got on Aretha's JJF cover with Keith, Ronnie, Chuck, Steve Jordan as the band you instantly notice it's better than the sound of DW. The only exceptions are "Harlem Shuffle" and "Had It With You." I remember buying the 45 three weeks before the LP came out and thinking I was in for a very different LP based on those two tracks.

so you're saying the issue was likely one of audio quality rather than material? and taste in production?

how do you know that 6 months was excessive rather than normal to produce a major label dinosaur rock album in the '80s? I mean, I'm impressed by your analysis of the data--I would have just assumed that's how they worked.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-07-03 00:15 by cc.

I don't know what the issue was, I'm only speculating since the circulating outtakes are clearly earlier than what they had in September 1985. The band spent many months mixing and overdubbing their previous three LP's, but the work was broken up with lengthy breaks for tours, movies, and other commitments. DIRTY WORK was an intense period of concentrated work. In many ways, I don't know if Mick and Keith ever worked harder at something that disappointed. From inception to release, they spent less time on STEEL WHEELS than they did on mixing DIRTY WORK.

I think my point was not that Mick wasn't involved and didn't sing and write lyrics (he obviously did), just that he phones it in and it was second rate. he was obviously more interested in his solo career at that point. Keith and Ronnie took over, but again to me the results are the "Keith and Ronnie Show", which may have produced the random nice thing, but not a particularly compelling Rolling Stones album.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-07-03 03:14 by 71Tele.

Then I agree with you 100%. Sorry I misunderstood.

Quote
Rocky Dijon
Then I agree with you 100%. Sorry I misunderstood.

No apology needed. I am not always terribly clear. Cheers.

Quote
Rocky Dijon
Others have remarked that the demos sound better than the finished album. If you listen to the sound Steve Lillywhite got on Aretha's JJF cover with Keith, Ronnie, Chuck, Steve Jordan as the band you instantly notice it's better than the sound of DW. The only exceptions are "Harlem Shuffle" and "Had It With You." I remember buying the 45 three weeks before the LP came out and thinking I was in for a very different LP based on those two tracks.

IMO, One Hit, Fight and Dirty Work also have good sound.

10th September - 15th October: New York, RPM Studios & 15th November - 5th December is what [www.nzentgraf.de] says.

No telling if there was work done every day...what days at all, just that over one month worth of work was done, a month off, and then just under a month of work was done. All on mixing and editing. So yeah, that's a long time. But Mick was off doing things while this was going on. Who knows where Keith was.

Never heard about the album being turned in and rejected. You look at that site there's no indication at all that they had anything finished to hand an album in by September or whatever.

And if they did indeed reject what they turned in and released what they did - what the fock kind of shit were they (the record label) drinking back then? If that's true then they (the Stones) really focked up with what they turned in and the label must have decided to cut their losses and issued it anyway!

The Paris sessions ended in June. Mixing and overdubbing in New York went on intensely over the Summer with only the break for Live Aid and the Roy Buchanan gig in July.

The mixing sessions were preceded by Mick's short trip to London in June to re-cut his vocal for "Hard Woman" for a new backing track The Hooters had laid down for an outside producer in the Spring, he then shot the song's proto-CGI music video (a day's work for Mick), and finished off "Dancing in the Street" with Bowie (this was the Motown cover Mick cut for SHE'S THE BOSS that Bill German mentioned several times in 1984 so I'm not even sure how much work Mick did in the studio that Summer as the song was, once again, handled by outside producers, although Mick did do production work on the 12" single) and he and Bowie quickly shot the ultra-camp music video.

So the mixing sessions commencing in September that you mention came after media reports that the album was turned into CBS (the album mixed late June through August) and then the band returned to work on it with Mick and Keith largely working separately, sometimes from different studios. What changed between the end of August and the end of the year we can only speculate. Was it the songs themselves? The outtakes again point to plenty of alternates in the same style if one song didn't work. For the first time, they appeared to have a concept of the style of songs they wanted first and then worked up variations that could be substituted. Were the Fall 1985 mixing sessions just production changes? It's hard to know.

CBS did not have an A/R exec policing the sessions (as Virgin would later do) so perhaps it never changed much, they simply hit the end of 12 months solid work and CBS accepted the result. The record promotion for label exec's done in December by Keith and Woody and January on the set of the "Harlem Shuffle" music video would indicate that CBS was determined to deliver the product to the label by year-end to plan how best to push the record. Release was delayed even then. One reason was to add the written and audio dedication to Stu who died in December. Jagger claimed that CBS made Mark Marek (the cartoonist) scribble out some obscenities on the jacket sleeve (specifically the word, c*nt), but clearly "Harlem Shuffle" was tied to the Grammy Lifetime Achievement which CBS bought for the band. No shame there, its common label practice. Even then, the single was given a surprisingly long lead-time (three weeks) before the LP came out. That suggests to me that they thought the song (notably not a Jagger/Richards original) had the potential to sell a disappointing album if it had sufficient time to race up the charts. The launch was definitely the single, and not the album as product which is odd for the eighties. Truth be told, by the time the album hit stores, the single was falling down the charts.

The press junket they did was disastrous. Mick snapped at Keith during a broadcast interview. Keith and Ronnie were clearly high much of the time and Charlie was fall-over drunk during the Grammy acceptance. Mick's remarks at the Grammy's rubbed the celebrity audience in LA the wrong way. Keith's lucid appearance on the Today Show in April was to announce Mick wouldn't tour and mock him for misspelling "tour" on the telegram he sent to the band. The "One Hit" video taping in May was far too late to save the album which shipped platinum and quickly fell down the charts. Band meetings around the "One Hit" taping saw Mick announce his plans to start a second solo album, a planned solo world tour, and movie (ROCKET BOYS or SUGAR) with Bowie. The Stones were effectively dead for at least three years was how it looked.

Wyman quickly went public with Mick's betrayal. Ronnie attempted damage control in interviews where he looked depressed and predicted they would do a reunion in ten years' time. The band clearly thought Mick the solo star would launch. Jane Rose threw Keith into a whole new career move as producer/band leader for Aretha and Chuck Berry since he was hardly ready to launch as a superstar solo act in 1986 when people like CBS head Walter Yetnikoff told the world the guy was wasted and brain-dead and fell asleep during meetings. The "new" Keith campaign Rose planned started off with a fizzle with a disastrous Friday Night Videos appearance in June 1986 (network debut of "One Hit" video) with Keith, high and often unintelligible for his interview with a visibly irritable Paul Shaffer. The planned live performance of "Sleep Tonight" with Shaffer and Marcus Miller and no drummer (Woody was supposed to play drums but missed the taping), was also an embarrassment. It wasn't until the July taping of JJF with Aretha (and Jane Rose's orchestrated video showcasing Keith's new image ready to sell for labels as the competent musician and producer with more screentime than Aretha and his face on the picture sleeve of the 45) worked wonders particularly as Mick's contemporaneous "Ruthless People" was an unexpected disaster. It remains the only flop single granted a Weird Al parody for that very reason. Jagger was a sure thing who suddenly went cold with the public.

The public and media backlash against Mick for "killing" the Stones doomed his solo career and benefitted Keith greatly. This is why TALK IS CHEAP sold and MAIN OFFENDER four years later only saw Keith bring in cult figure dividends (which is what he could amount to without Mick and the Stones name by that point in his career). He could never have turned TALK IS CHEAP into a career sustaining the same level of success (his coke intake at the time assured that as well). Much of TALK IS CHEAP's promotion was built on Keith's Revenge media angle. Keith trash-talking Mick was the interest by press and public and not the songs themselves.

The only choice for both of them was to reunite and follow the Pink Floyd reunion tour model, but bigger and better. They repeated the STEEL WHEELS reunion hype four more times over the next twenty years and every time it worked. What was left by the wayside was their inspiration and creative fire.

Thanks Rocky Dijon for this lucid encapsulation of DW-era events. I remember Mick walking off the Today show and leaving Keith and Ronnie to finish the segment. They were barely even trying to hide their antipathy from the public, but few were aware of Charlie's problems at the time. I do remember Bill lashing out at Mick for "costing him millions of pounds" by not touring. A tour behind DW would have added to the accumulating disasters, so in this one sense, Jagger was right.

The last sentence of your post really sums it up. The Steel Wheels recording and touring reunion was cast as a pure business deal, and that's pretty much what we've had since then.

Thank you Rocky Dijon for taking the time to write your post. I enjoyed reading it. Lots of information I didn't know there!

Here's the Grammy presentation Rocky referred to above. Charlie looks uncharacteristically unwell.

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="

&amp;

Wow Rocky! Damn!

That is hilarious! Some things I've never heard/read before too. It's almost as interesting as their 1968-1972 era!

Could we live without this album??
It's a bad album
There are 3-4 nice tunes
MJ & CW do a terrible job
But i can't imagine my life without DW

Quote
KeithNacho
Could we live without this album??
It's a bad album
There are 3-4 nice tunes
MJ & CW do a terrible job
But i can't imagine my life without DW

It was a terrible period in popular music (if you like rock & roll), dominated by Michael Jackson and pop records that overused the DX7 synth and drum echo. In an alternate universe the Stones would have come out with something fresh and gritty to counter all that, but it was not to be.

Is there any footage of Mick walking out of the Today interview?

I like the album. As always The Stones is up to what happens around them. Sound wise it was how things were at the time, and that is what is one of their strengths are. They are not just doing what they've always done. They are a living band.

Had it with you - a great little rocker and the no bass thing works very well
Sleep tonight - a killer ballad
To rude - well, a killer reggea
Winning ugly - Jagger is intense and on fire

For all thos who are wining about them doing the war horses on the shows, think about how much fun it would be if they did more songs from this album. I would have loved it!

Arrived here by accident, was searching Google/IORR for info on the alternate "Hard Woman" version, and was happy to read this great (as usual !) post by Rocky. Since that was posted the Shaffer/Keith video has surfaced on YouTube so I thought I'd post a link here : [www.youtube.com]

Haven't found the video where Mick snapped at Keith though and left the set ;-)

--------------
IORR Links : Essential Studio Outtakes CDs : Audio - History of Rarest Outtakes : Audio

Quote
Rocky Dijon
The Paris sessions ended in June. Mixing and overdubbing in New York went on intensely over the Summer with only the break for Live Aid and the Roy Buchanan gig in July.

The mixing sessions were preceded by Mick's short trip to London in June to re-cut his vocal for "Hard Woman" for a new backing track The Hooters had laid down for an outside producer in the Spring, he then shot the song's proto-CGI music video (a day's work for Mick), and finished off "Dancing in the Street" with Bowie (this was the Motown cover Mick cut for SHE'S THE BOSS that Bill German mentioned several times in 1984 so I'm not even sure how much work Mick did in the studio that Summer as the song was, once again, handled by outside producers, although Mick did do production work on the 12" single) and he and Bowie quickly shot the ultra-camp music video.

So the mixing sessions commencing in September that you mention came after media reports that the album was turned into CBS (the album mixed late June through August) and then the band returned to work on it with Mick and Keith largely working separately, sometimes from different studios. What changed between the end of August and the end of the year we can only speculate. Was it the songs themselves? The outtakes again point to plenty of alternates in the same style if one song didn't work. For the first time, they appeared to have a concept of the style of songs they wanted first and then worked up variations that could be substituted. Were the Fall 1985 mixing sessions just production changes? It's hard to know.

CBS did not have an A/R exec policing the sessions (as Virgin would later do) so perhaps it never changed much, they simply hit the end of 12 months solid work and CBS accepted the result. The record promotion for label exec's done in December by Keith and Woody and January on the set of the "Harlem Shuffle" music video would indicate that CBS was determined to deliver the product to the label by year-end to plan how best to push the record. Release was delayed even then. One reason was to add the written and audio dedication to Stu who died in December. Jagger claimed that CBS made Mark Marek (the cartoonist) scribble out some obscenities on the jacket sleeve (specifically the word, c*nt), but clearly "Harlem Shuffle" was tied to the Grammy Lifetime Achievement which CBS bought for the band. No shame there, its common label practice. Even then, the single was given a surprisingly long lead-time (three weeks) before the LP came out. That suggests to me that they thought the song (notably not a Jagger/Richards original) had the potential to sell a disappointing album if it had sufficient time to race up the charts. The launch was definitely the single, and not the album as product which is odd for the eighties. Truth be told, by the time the album hit stores, the single was falling down the charts.

The press junket they did was disastrous. Mick snapped at Keith during a broadcast interview. Keith and Ronnie were clearly high much of the time and Charlie was fall-over drunk during the Grammy acceptance. Mick's remarks at the Grammy's rubbed the celebrity audience in LA the wrong way. Keith's lucid appearance on the Today Show in April was to announce Mick wouldn't tour and mock him for misspelling "tour" on the telegram he sent to the band. The "One Hit" video taping in May was far too late to save the album which shipped platinum and quickly fell down the charts. Band meetings around the "One Hit" taping saw Mick announce his plans to start a second solo album, a planned solo world tour, and movie (ROCKET BOYS or SUGAR) with Bowie. The Stones were effectively dead for at least three years was how it looked.

Wyman quickly went public with Mick's betrayal. Ronnie attempted damage control in interviews where he looked depressed and predicted they would do a reunion in ten years' time. The band clearly thought Mick the solo star would launch. Jane Rose threw Keith into a whole new career move as producer/band leader for Aretha and Chuck Berry since he was hardly ready to launch as a superstar solo act in 1986 when people like CBS head Walter Yetnikoff told the world the guy was wasted and brain-dead and fell asleep during meetings. The "new" Keith campaign Rose planned started off with a fizzle with a disastrous Friday Night Videos appearance in June 1986 (network debut of "One Hit" video) with Keith, high and often unintelligible for his interview with a visibly irritable Paul Shaffer. The planned live performance of "Sleep Tonight" with Shaffer and Marcus Miller and no drummer (Woody was supposed to play drums but missed the taping), was also an embarrassment. It wasn't until the July taping of JJF with Aretha (and Jane Rose's orchestrated video showcasing Keith's new image ready to sell for labels as the competent musician and producer with more screentime than Aretha and his face on the picture sleeve of the 45) worked wonders particularly as Mick's contemporaneous "Ruthless People" was an unexpected disaster. It remains the only flop single granted a Weird Al parody for that very reason. Jagger was a sure thing who suddenly went cold with the public.

The public and media backlash against Mick for "killing" the Stones doomed his solo career and benefitted Keith greatly. This is why TALK IS CHEAP sold and MAIN OFFENDER four years later only saw Keith bring in cult figure dividends (which is what he could amount to without Mick and the Stones name by that point in his career). He could never have turned TALK IS CHEAP into a career sustaining the same level of success (his coke intake at the time assured that as well). Much of TALK IS CHEAP's promotion was built on Keith's Revenge media angle. Keith trash-talking Mick was the interest by press and public and not the songs themselves.

The only choice for both of them was to reunite and follow the Pink Floyd reunion tour model, but bigger and better. They repeated the STEEL WHEELS reunion hype four more times over the next twenty years and every time it worked. What was left by the wayside was their inspiration and creative fire.

Thsnks Rocky. Missed it in 2010.good read.
Jeroen

That write-up made me laugh out loud several times at work. Dark from a fan perspective, but very entertaining!

I was 15 and then i heard "Harlem Shuffle". It was the beginning of an incredible trip. After more than 30 years, i still love Dirty Work.

It's an excruciating painful experience for me to try and listen to the album. It is really beyond bad. I think many of us hate it more because there was always 3 or 4 people that tried to bully/convince everyone that these crap songs are either decent or good. There is not much to salvage from it, they could remove this one altogether and it would not change a thing from their career.

While Harlem Shuffle is okay, and One Hit is not totally horrible, they aren't significant enough for any saving grace here. Just give me Too Rude, and throw the rest away!

But the guitars sound real good on the record I just tune out the bad songs.

Worst album by the Stones

Where is Jumping Jack O'Lantern when we need him?