‘Dirty Work’: the album that perfectly captured the violence of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
Being cooped up in a tour bus with the same few blokes for decades on end is certainly a test of patience, and one which very few bands manage to survive. Couple that with a cocktail of substance abuse, unparalleled fame, and a certain degree of violence, and you have managed to capture the career of The Rolling Stones. Rock and roll’s biggest and most enduring group, The Stones, have been cooped up together for upwards of 60 years at this point, and tensions have boiled over on more than one occasion.
The Rolling Stones were just teenagers when they first came together in 1962, performing covers of American blues and R&B anthems. However, their rise to global prominence was quick, and pretty chaotic, too. After all, the blues rock outfit represented the rebellion and non-conformity of Britain’s disenfranchised post-war youth, which threatened the conservative status quo of the nation at that time. Throughout their early years, trouble and violence seemed to follow the band everywhere they went.
From riots in Blackpool to drug busts at the band members’ homes, The Rolling Stones couldn’t seem to stay out of the tabloids throughout the 1960s, which inevitably took its toll on the band. Nevertheless, the band managed to stay together throughout the ’60s, albeit with some less-than-glamorous dismissals and various new members joining. Even after the cultural revolution of the decade was over, The Stones carried on writing, recording, and touring together, although that did little to alleviate the tensions within the group.
By the time the band came to record their 1986 record Dirty Work, they had been at it continuously for over two decades, producing 17 studio albums and countless iconic tracks during that time. Inevitably, therefore, certain band members were a little sick of each other. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had always been the core of the group, with their songwriting partnership producing the vast majority of The Stones’ best-loved works, but their professional relationship became incredibly strained during the recording of Dirty Work.
For his part, Jagger was attempting to launch a solo career during that period, releasing She’s the Boss in 1985. Along with being a fairly forgettable record, that album appeared to jeopardise his position in The Stones. As Richards recalled in his memoir, Life, “By the time we gathered in Paris to record Dirty Work in 1985, the atmosphere was bad. The sessions had been delayed because Mick was working on his solo album, and now he was busy promoting it.”
Seemingly, the frontman’s involvement in Dirty Work was limited, as he prioritised the launch of his solo career. “Mick had come with barely any songs for us to work on. He’d used them up on his own record. And he was often just not there at the studio,” Richards remembered. So, the guitarist was tasked with coming up with most of the material for the record, and his resentment of Jagger seemed to bleed through into his lyrics.
“The horrendous atmosphere in the studio affected everybody,” Richards wrote. “Bill Wyman almost stopped turning up; Charlie [Watts] flew back home. In retrospect, I see that the tracks were full of violence and menace: ‘Had It with You’, ‘One Hit (to the Body)’, ‘Fight’. We made a video of ‘One Hit (to the Body)’ that more or less told the story — we nearly literally came to blows, over and above our acting duties.”
To make matters worse, Jagger refused to tour the album after its release, once again prioritising his solo work, which further alienated him from his band. Soon after, when the singer made some disparaging comments about The Stones, tensions within the group reached a boiling point. “I read in one of the English tabloids of Mick saying The Rolling Stones are a millstone around my neck,” Richards shared. “He actually said it. Swallow that one, fucker. […] That’s when World War III was declared.”
Thankfully, the blues rock icons were eventually able to reconcile the differences which had arisen during Dirty Work. In fact, the group are still together to this day, decades later, having written and recorded a deluge of subsequent albums which were notably less violent than that 1980s effort.
