In the weeks after Ian Stewart’s death, the Stones were grieving and traumatized. Those who understood the Stones knew that the loss would have a severely negative effect on the band’s immediate future. “It was Stu’s band, really,” Keith shrugged to friends. On February 28, billed as Rocket 86, the Stones played a private tribute show for Stu at the 100 Club in Oxford Street, in part to squash rumors of the death of the Stones as well. It was the first time the Stones had played a gig together in four years. Charlie was late, subbed for by Simon Kirke of Bad Company until he arrived. When Watts sat down, the Stones played like a muddy R&B band again, with Keith ripping off ferocious leads and urging the others on. Eric Clapton sat in, along with Jeff Beck and other friends of Stu’s, for a sweaty rock and roll wake for the Stones’ irreplaceable straight man. At the end of the night, Keith and Mick left the club with arms around each other’s shoulders, visibly moved by all the emotion of the night.
Dirty Work was ready for release that winter. In February, the Stones gathered in Manhattan to appear in a partly animated video for “Harlem Shuffle” directed by Ralph Bakshi. A cartoon also figured on the inner sleeve of the album, which had a funny strip about a sadistic gym trainer named Olga brutalizing her clients. In fact, the whole album was like a cartoon, including the nightmarish cover shot of the undead-looking Stones lounging in Day-Glo jackets, the first album photo of the band since Between the Buttons in 1967. In the photo, Keith appears to be kneeing Mick Jagger in the crotch.
Dirty Work was produced by Steve Lillywhite and the Glimmer Twins and dedicated to Ian Stewart. Often viewed as a flop and the least interesting Rolling Stones album, it can be seen instead as the model for Keith’s solo albums and the beginning of a presentation style that would sustain the band when it regrouped several years later. The backing voices on the first track, “One Hit (to the Body),” prefigured the chorus of singers the Stones would later deploy in their shows. “One Hit” launched the album on its anxious, contentious course, a narrative program of the Stones breaking up over the course of a year. Jimmy Page rumbled two turbulent guitar solos over cowriters Wood and Richards, whose mean streak continued with the power chords of “Fight,” another passive/aggressive challenge to Mick. “Harlem Shuffle” changed the mood of Sturm und Drang halfway through the first side (and this was the last Stones album to actually have sides, as the compact disc would be the dominant delivery system for music the next time they released an album). It was the old Stones “shuffle and eighths” adapted to the hitchhike rhythm, with Chuck Leavell’s electric piano lick and Don Covay and Bobby Womack singing along with Mick. It clicked on the radio as a novelty Top Ten single that spring.
Back to hell on the next track, the tuneless chant “Hold Back,” set to a Keith riff with Ivan Neville on funky bass. “Too Rude” was a dub-wise take on Sly and Robbie’s reggae song, with Jimmy Cliff singing beautifully along with Keith and Ron.
Side two began with Mick and the girls (Janice Pendarvis and Dollette MacDonald) singing “Winning Ugly,” a rollicking song about competition that could have been on She’s the Boss. Same with a funk workout written with Chuck Leavell, “Back to Zero,” another inter-Stones memo about dissolution. “Back to zero,” Mick shouts (there being little “singing” on this mostly chanted and rapped-out record), “that’s where we’re heading.” There was more of this on “Dirty Work,” which actually sounded like a Stones song with an impassioned, no-nonsense vocal (“I’m beginning to hate you”) from Mick before the track faded into humid, free-floating rage—the angriest song the Stones ever did. Dirty Work skidded toward the finish line with the great “Had It with You,” a hot Anglo-rockabilly workout with Mick playing good harp and rapping a Slim Harpo vocal. Keith’s “Sleep Tonight” was an ominous warning and threat delivered straight to Mick Jagger’s head, a dark ballad (in homage to Hoagy Carmichael’s vintage style) about the loss of dignity that built to a climax and ended in a strange and portentous chorus.
The last track on Dirty Work was thirty seconds of Ian Stewart playing some expert barrelhouse piano. The album’s liner notes ended with “Thanks, Stu, for 25 years of boogie-woogie.”
Dirty Work was Keith’s album, and everyone knew it. He wrote the songs because Mick had gone off on his own. With so many guests, with the Stones’ rhythm section mostly absent, there was grumbling at Black Rock, CBS’s imposing headquarters on 52nd Street, that Dirty Work wasn’t really a Rolling Stones album at all. But, in a pop era dominated by Bon Jovi, power ballads, and the big-hair metal bands that prevailed on MTV, Dirty Work did quite well, reaching no. 3 in England and no. 4 in America.
It would have sold a lot better if Mick Jagger hadn’t decided it would be impossible for him to tour that year. He didn’t like the album, couldn’t see himself performing any of the songs, didn’t think the Stones could physically make it on the road. Before leaving for Mustique to write his next solo album in early April, he sent the band a “Dear Stones” letter.
Keith was disturbed when he read it, incredulous that Mick didn’t tell them in person, humiliated that he was the last to know. “He said, ’I don’t need you bunch of old farts. You’re just a millstone around my neck. You’re too much of a hassle.’ There’s times I could’ve killed him.” The Stones hadn’t toured in four years, and Keith had been counting on playing with his band again. CBS was pissed off. The rest of the band was miserable at missing an estimated $40-million payday, but Mick wouldn’t come around.
“Touring Dirty Work would have been a nightmare,” Mick later told Jann Wenner. “Everyone was hating each other. Everybody was so out of their brains, and Charlie was in seriously bad shape. It would have been the worst Rolling Stones tour. Probably would have been the end of the band.” He told a French writer, “The band was in no condition to tour. The album wasn’t very good. Health was diabolical. I wasn’t in good shape, and the rest of the band couldn’t walk across the Champs-Élysées, much less do a tour.”
So the Rolling Stones flamed out for three years, and Keith Richards had to get on with his life.
In London that spring, Charlie Watts was stopped by a reporter on the street near the Stones’ office. Looking dapper but dazed, Charlie claimed he didn’t even know Dirty Work was out because he’d been playing with his jazz band. “Does it sound good, then?” he asked. He also said he couldn’t even imagine touring with the Stones.
It was a rough patch for the drummer. His wife, Shirley, had gone into a clinic for alcoholism treatment, and Charlie was using heroin. Later he recalled: “Mid-eighties, maybe toward the end of ’86, I hit an all-time low in my personal life and in my relationship with Mick. I was drinking a lot. I nearly lost my wife and family and everything. I took more speed than heroin, though. I slept one day in four for two years. I liked speed, because I’m naturally lethargic . . . In the end, you need someone who loves you to tell you that you aren’t there anymore, because when you look in the mirror, you see someone else.”
By the end of 1986, after he’d brought his jazz band to America, Charlie Watts quietly cleaned up in London and got off drugs. Few knew of his problems until he had solved them.
In London in May, the Stones shot a video for “One Hit (to the Body)” that dramatized the hard feelings among them, with Mick and Keith glaring menacingly and taking stylized pokes at each other. Patti was pregnant and couldn’t travel by air, so she and Keith were aboard the Queen Elizabeth II when it pulled out of Southampton, bound for New York, three days away. During the voyage, Keith had time to think about his predicament.
Keith to Lisa Robinson: “I couldn’t just sit around waiting for Mick to snap his fingers and put the Stones together—if ever. I’d go berserk, right? I’ve got to work. It was frustrating because we were in a unique position, having been together for so long, seeing if we could make this thing grow up. But suddenly I’m asking myself: who the fuck am I going to play with after all these years?”
Jane Rose knew that Keith had to keep on moving, so she got him i
nto business with a vengeance. When the ship docked in New York on June 6, Keith kept right on going on a course that led to a creative renewal that no one could have foreseen. That night, he joined Chuck Berry onstage at a blues festival in Chicago’s Grant Park, and a plan was hatched for Keith to take part in a concert on Berry’s sixtieth birthday later that year. He flew on to Los Angeles where he joined blues singer Etta James at a bar gig. Then back to New York to promote the new Stones album on NBC’s Friday Night Videos.
Mick Jagger and David Bowie appeared at the Prince’s Trust charity show in London before the prince and princess of Wales. Bill had to leave England when he split up with Mandy Smith, now sixteen, and the story broke in the press. By the time the headlines appeared, Bill had escaped, driving down to his house near St. Paul de Vence in France to avoid arrest until he was assured that Mandy’s family and the police wouldn’t press pedophilia charges.
Robert Fraser had never quite recovered from the prison term he served after the famous Stones bust of 1967. He lived in India for a while before returning to England and a series of failed businesses and art galleries. Always ahead of the curve, Robert was one of the first people in England to contract AIDS, and when his finances collapsed, he was supported by Paul Getty. Mick Jagger stayed in touch. “Mick was constant in his friendship for Robert,” Christopher Gibbs says. “He was very encouraging, tried to help Robert, stayed a good friend.” Robert Fraser died in 1986. Brion Gysin, the Stones’ protean connection with Moroccan mysteries, died of cancer that summer.
In early July, Keith and his entourage flew to Detroit to help Aretha Franklin record “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” for a film sound track. The drummer on the session was Steve Jordon, Keith’s main sticksman while Charlie Watts was indisposed. Jordon was a versatile, tuneful, and dependable pro, a black musician in dreadlocks who became Keith’s new creative partner. After Aretha, Keith flew to St. Louis in July to negotiate with Chuck Berry about Keith’s role as music director for a birthday tribute concert and movie deal that depended on Keith’s participation. He convinced an initially reluctant Berry to include Johnnie Johnson, the St. Louis piano star who had helped write the melodies of some of Berry’s classic songs. Berry himself suggested they use Steve Jordon, who had drummed on the Hall of Fame jam. When the deal was done, Keith went back to New York to teach himself how to put a rock and roll band of his own together.
* * *
Cheap Champagne, Brief Affairs, Backstage Love
The Rolling Stones’ ten-year New York period came to an end in mid-1986. Mick Jagger began his second solo album, Primitive Cool, with producer Dave Stewart in Los Angeles and Holland. Ron Wood sold his house, returned to London, and set himself up in suburban Wimbledon. Bill Wyman was hiding in France from London headlines like JAIL THIS WORM WYMAN FOR LOVING MANDY. Charlie Watts was working on a brief American tour with his jazz band.
After the birth of his daughter Alexandra in July, Keith Richards moved his large female household to rural Connecticut, an hour north of Manhattan. Heroin-free, he sustained himself with daily doses of vodka, ganja, and the odd line of cocaine in the evening. He spent September assembling the band for the Chuck Berry gig: Bobby Keys on sax, Chuck Leavell on keyboards, Steve Jordon on drums, Joey Stampinato (from the New York band NRBQ) on bass. Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, Linda Ronstadt, and Etta James were recruited to appear in the concert and film, directed by Taylor Hackford (An Officer and a Gentleman). In October, Keith arrived in St. Louis to begin working with Chuck Berry, an ordeal that almost made heroin addiction attractive again.
Chuck Berry, self-described schizophrenic, was waiting for Keith at Berry Park, his public amusement complex in Wentzville, Missouri. Porno tapes played constantly in his music room, and Chuck would later be arrested when it was discovered that the ladies’ toilet in his restaurant was equipped with a video camera—inside the bowl. Everyone was nervous about the concert. Berry was used to doing things his way, and Keith was after the kind of precision that would work on film, “a very intimate, combo thing,” as he put it. Berry had never rehearsed in his life, and when the rock stars started to come in, there were diffident rows over interpretation. Berry was less than effusive and would sometimes go into a hypnotic trance in the middle of rehearsal. When he interrupted Keith’s playing and reprimanded him for getting the opening of “Carol” wrong, Keith stifled his instinct to retaliate or walk out, and just took it. He let Berry patronize him, often when the movie cameras were rolling, since the rehearsals were being filmed. (Berry kept calling Keith “Jack.”) Keith later said he worked on the concert “not so much as musical director as an S&M director—social director of the S&M band. When you’re working with Chuck, you’ve got to be prepared for anything. I had to remind myself that, to be second guitar to Chuck Berry—’Shit, man, when you started, you’d have thought you’d died and gone to heaven.’ ”
Keith was on a crusade. He’d gotten Berry together with Johnnie Johnson (“two big guys with hands the size of plates”), who’d been driving a bus for twenty-five years and still gigged six nights a week. Keith felt this was a last opportunity to get some good live music out of them. Berry fought Keith right up to the two concerts on October 16 at the Fox Theater in St. Louis. Chuck refused to sing at the sound check until Keith kissed him on the cheek and begged, “Chuck, please, just once.” When they finally took the stage after ten days of rehearsals, all their work was forgotten as Chuck launched “Maybelline,” “Around and Around,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” and his other hits in completely different arrangements, some in different keys. “The band’s looking at me onstage,” Keith later recalled, “and I could only look back at ’em, you know? ’Wing it, boys.’ ”
The concerts went well enough to be the basis for a successful film in 1987 titled Hail Hail Rock ’n’ Roll. Anita and Marlon were in the audience as Eric Clapton played the blues on “Wee Wee Hours” and Robert Cray did “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” with regal confidence. When it was over, an exhausted Keith Richards went back to a beautiful Connecticut autumn and slept for a month.
Keith came out of the Chuck Berry project still respecting his mercurial idol, and armed with a new, highly marketable skill. He told biographer Victor Bockris, “The whole process of putting those bands together for Aretha and Chuck made me realize I had this ability . . . to put certain guys together in the right situation and create a band. If you gave me the right guys, in ten days I could give you a band that sounded like they’d been together for ten years.”
Meanwhile, Mick Jagger worked on his new solo album in Holland with Dave Stewart from the band Eurythmics until late in the year. He had a better fix on his solo style, some strong new songs, and Jeff Beck on guitar. In early 1987, Mick and Jerry Hall moved on to work at a studio in Barbados, where Jerry was arrested with twenty pounds of ganja at the airport on January 21. After a month of hearings in which she claimed she had been framed, she was let off and Mick’s sessions moved to Right Track Studio in New York.
Across town, in a studio on Broadway near 19th Street, Keith Richards was writing songs with Steve Jordon, with Charlie Drayton playing bass. Ivan Neville was on keys. When Keith got wind that Mick was planning to tour his new album, he started to take his own solo career more seriously and opened negotiations with Virgin Records tycoon Richard Branson. When their studio caught fire on April 8, they dragged their amps into the street and kept jamming until the fire trucks arrived.
While Keith spent the summer of 1987 in Jamaica, Mick finished Primitive Cool with high hopes. He had bared his soul, made a Big Statement, sung some candidly personal lyrics. Released in September 1987, Primitive Cool sold poorly despite its hard rock attack from Jeff Beck and his drummer Simon Phillips on “Throwaway,” with its jaded palette of “cheap champagne, brief affairs, backstage love.” Mick wrote his most insightful and soul-baring lyrics in years for nostalgic songs like “War Baby” and “Primitive Cool.” The album was a paradigm of slick 1980s rock, and the finest work Mick Jagger had
done that decade, but it still bombed. Mick’s single, “Let’s Work,” didn’t make the Top Forty. It seemed obvious that the Stones’ loyal army of fans wasn’t interested in Mick Jagger’s solo act.
Privately Keith sort of enjoyed Mick’s album, but felt duty-bound to smear it in public, especially since the record contained a song, called “Shoot Off Your Mouth,” aimed right between Keith’s eyes. Keith accused Mick of having a Peter Pan complex about not wanting to grow up. He was quoted on Jagger’s isolation and his lack of friends, but later in 1987 his comments were more sad than barbed. “The fact is that I wanted to keep the Stones together and he didn’t,” Keith told a reporter. “He has to justify it one way or the other, but the guy just wasn’t there. It was very frustrating. I love him and he’s my friend, but I don’t really feel he’s mine. And there’s no way I can express my friendship if someone doesn’t accept it . . . But I’m not going to give up easily. I’m trying to keep a great band together, and I figure that any day maybe he’ll come around—you know, male menopause, whatever—and the next week it’ll be all right.”
Keith had been in Montreal since August, recording a solo album with his band. Bobby Keys was now on board, and Keith hired L.A. session guitarist Waddy Wachtel to fill out the group he was calling the X-Pensive Winos after he found them passing a bottle of Château Lafite during a break one night.
Mick rehearsed with Jeff Beck for about a month to take Primitive Cool on the road, but the chemistry between the two rock stars didn’t work. Beck didn’t like playing old Stones songs and finally walked out when Mick insulted him with a low offer for the tour. “Mick’s problem is that he’s a meanie,” Beck told the Sun. “He’s no better than a glorified accountant. I’d love to go on tour with the old geezer, but I can’t believe how tight he is.”
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