Now That’s What I Call Music

Now That’s What I Call Music! II the British singles compilation juggernaut from late ’84 was my jumping off point for Owning Stones. Lured in by Queen, Nena, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and the Flying Pickets, it was a strange little nugget of negativity and nastiness on the second side of the final tape that caught my imagination. I knew who the Rolling Stones were of course, sort of like the Beatles but grubbier, but this was dangerous sounding, mean, not standard teenybopper fare. Contrast this with the closing track on the same album Paul McCartney’s rheumy eyed ‘Pipes Of Peace’ … (shudders).

Down in the bars the girls are painted blue
Done up in lace, done up in rubber
The Johns are jerky little G.I. Joes
On R&R from Cuba and Russia
The smell of sex, the smell of suicide
All these things I can't keep inside

None of my friends liked this poisonous track apart from me. They were wrong.

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Released in late 1983 Undercover Of The Night was a Jagger composition, allegedly inspired in part by William S. Burroughs Cities Of The Red Night, all that corruption and surreal violence going down in South and Central America*.

I love it to this day. It still sounds confrontational and sharp. The released version features Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare as rhythm section**, amongst various other percussive guests. It is a very unique brand of aggressive dub, at one point Keith Richards just lurches out of the mix at you full bore in a manner reminiscent of James Williamson Stooging around.

I am the kind of wearisome bore that would recommend you seek out Undercover Of The Night 12″, less for the girl’s derriere on the cover and the consequent cheaply named ‘extended cheeky mix’, than just for getting the full works; nastier, harder, dubbier.

Ram that up your exhaust pipe Sir Paul.

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I struggle to remember where I got hold of a taped copy of the Undercover LP, I certainly never bought it, maybe it just found me. Blissfully ignorant of a whole trove of their past glories I really just enjoyed Undercover for what it was, an occasionally upbeat reggae and world beat tinted meat popsicle. These songs sneered in a way I hadn’t really encountered yet, liberally smeared about in violence and sex; all the fluids.

I only bought my vinyl copy during lockdown and I was immediately struck by both the piss poor quality of the graphic design and by how good most of it still sounded.

Take ‘She Was Hot’, a double-time New York back alley cat strut on which Jagger in a rather ungentlemanly fashion narrates a series of fleeting collisions. What strikes me now is just how passive he seems in these scenarios, maybe stars don’t have to try as hard as the rest of us.

The bondage-tastic ‘Tie You Up (The Pain Of Love)’ is next up and again still sounds good and energetic to me. The band sell that old bump and grind one last time as Jagger, rather fittingly, flogs the metaphor for all he’s worth. I like the breakdown section and the rudest lines the Stones ever commercially released, ‘You get a rise from it / Feel the hot cum, dripping on your thighs from it’. Golly!

Luckily we can all take a breather and set some time aside to wipe our thighs clean during the tedious ‘Wanna Hold You’ and the not entirely unsuccessful dub of ‘Feel On Baby”. I like the harmonica on the latter and the vocal, there is a tune in there somewhere that needs springing.

Undercover serves us another 1537 fave with ‘Too Much Blood’, where Jagger treats us to some gruesome stories with a bit of characteristically campy narration. I like the horned groove shuffle and yeah, it isn’t much of a song but it is fun and he swears.

On the other hand I really like the driving darkly bluesy ‘Pretty Beat Up’ where Jagger pleads not to be cut up, beaten up and marked for life. I am also rather partial to ‘Too Tough’ another misanthropic missive to a ex, something about the defiance in the song always rang true for me, daft though the knife-wielding scenario is.

Undercover closes with another goody, ‘It Must Be Hell’ which is where Richards’ guitar gets to ring out like the Liberty Bell one last time while Jagger lists everything that a rich rock star can see is wrong on his TV. It sounds like something of a shrug from Olympian heights, ‘It must be hell living in the world / Suffering in the world like you’. Thanks for noticing us all down here, sir.

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I’m not so interested in all the inter band breakdowns and feuds that Undercover was birthed and shaped from. By 1983 the Stones were in a weird spot, they were big still, but not quite yet the vast stadium tedium tour fixtures they became later in the decade, their history hung heavy around them and they wanted to make music that was worthwhile and, for them, new with different influences. They gave it a go.

Undercover has a nostalgic gloss for me, as does Dirty Work and both are regarded with the same fondness by Stones fans as mouldering dog shit on the soles of a guest’s shoe. I like ’em both, but particularly the intrinsic meanness of Undercover; that probably says more about me than I care to analyse in public.

Keep it undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night

1183 Down.

PS: the instrumental dub version of ‘Feel On Baby’ on the B-side of Undercover Of The Night is surprisingly good too.

PPS: Enjoy

*Jagger was less good at incorporating all the buggery, poisonous centipedes, spiritually unsatisfying drug hits, references to Mayan codices and scabrous scarabs. Shame really as that would have really made it stand out next to Joe Fagin’s ‘That’s Livin Alright’ on Now 2.

**entirely uncredited of course.