Customer Reviews

Dirty Work

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Dirty Work was originally released March 25, 1986, it was the first studio album in *17 years* that did not go to #1 in either the UK or the US. This one broke an unparalleled string of 10 #1 albums in a row, dating from the release of Let It Bleed in 1969. Dirty Work only made it to #3 in the UK and #4 in the US, making it the lowest charting for a studio album since the US release of The Rolling Stones, Now! only went to #5 in 1965.

The album includes the single hits Harlem Shuffle and One Hit (To The Body). Most people know the music, so in my reviews I try to give you data on the sessions and interesting facts connected with the songs and the album. Here we go:

Interesting notes include:
.....the working title for the album was 19 Stitches
.....the final cut (Sleep Tonight) is followed by a boogie-woogie piano fadeout memorial to Ian Steward, the real 6th Rolling Stone, who died Dec 12, 1985, just before the album was released and dedicated to him
.....Mick brought essentially nothing to the sessions because he had used all his latest ideas for his first solo album She's The Boss (Keith had threatened to "slit his......throat" if he toured with another band), so Keith took over the sessions and ran the band when Mick left to promote his album. When Mick returned, he used a different studio and worked at times when he would not be in the building with Keith.....If you watch the videos for One Hit and Fight you can actually see the (real) anger between them....they made up when the Stones played a memorial gig for Ian Steward Feb 28, 1986 at the 100 Club in Oxford St, London....They were billed as Rocket 86....(If you don't know rock history, that's the 1st rock and roll record, Ike Turner's Rocket 88, minus Brian and Ian).
.....things were so bad with the band that when a reporter asked Charlie what he thought of the album he said he didn't know it was out and asked if it was any good

The Dirty Work sessions occurred in early 1985 in Paris. Final mixing was done in New York at RPM Studios (Jul 16 - Aug 17 & Sep 10 - Oct 15, 1985) and at Right Track Studios (Nov 15 - Dec 5, 1985).
Jan 23 - Mar 2, 1985 at Pathe Marconi/EMI Studios in Paris
.....One Hit (To The Body)
.....Fight
.....Harlem Shuffle
.....Hold Back
.....Too Rude
.....Winning Ugly
.....Back To Zero
.....Dirty Work
.....Had It With You
.....Sleep Tonight

The Paris Dirty Work sessions produced a number of unreleased tracks, including What Am I Supposed To Do, Baby You're Too Much, Deep Love, Sending Out An Invitation, Some Of Us Are On Our Knees, For Your Precious Love, Strictly Memphis, What Are You Goin' To Do With My Love.

This information comes from "It's Only Rock And Roll: The Ultimate Guide To The Rolling Stones" by Karnbach and Bernson and from my own collection, with some of the notes from Davis' "Old Gods Almost Dead." Both books are available from amazon.com.

Dirty Work is often described as the Rolling Stones' worst album, and also a prime example of what was wrong with music and culture in the 1980s, and so I was intrigued to hear it. I was disappointed. In the context of the Rolling Stones' rich back catalogue it is a stunted little twig, but it is better than some albums I have heard from the period. It came out in 1986, a very poor year for mainstream rock music.

It has two problems, three problems. The first is Mick Jagger's vocal style. Back in the 1960s and 1970s Jagger's voice could do nuance, it was expressive. It sneered, it taunted, it was nasty, it could be heartfelt. But on Dirty Work he uses the exact same unemotive bludgeoning growling shout throughout the whole album. There's no subtlety or nuance, he just growls and shouts. Perhaps he was trying to do a big stadium-filling heavy metal roar, but it doesn't work. It sounds as if he had come up with a wizard new vocal style, and he decided to use it on every track, all the time, whether it made sense or not. It's worst on Hold Back, where he sounds as if he has been gargling something acidic. I wanted to reach into the music and slap his face, to get him to shut up. From what I have read, Jagger added his vocals after everything else had been recorded, and was uninterested in the whole project, and the band as a whole were going through a bad patch, and were on the verge of splitting up.

The second problem is that there's no swing. All the songs have simple, straight 4/4 rhythms. The guitars do a lot of clever stuff but it sounds perfunctory, as if they wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. I don't know if Charlie Watts was augmented by session players, but the drumming seems very simplistic. It sounds desperate, as if the drummer was trying to egg the rest of the band on. The drums are mixed so that the snare drum is very loud, which just accentuates the rhythmic monotony, and my aural impression of the record is a series of dull rockers with smash-smash-smash-fill etc drums. It reminded me a bit of ZZ Top's Eliminator, from 1983, which also had a monotonous "pulse beat" style of drumming. But whereas Eliminator was hypnotic, funky, and catchy, Dirty Work is boring. As I write these words I am listening to Eliminator. It's a great record, a good example of how the 1980s sometimes worked well. It is absolutely of its time, but it still works today. It crushes Dirty Work on every level, and bends it out of shape. It is rockier, funkier, catchier, and there's a cool car on the front.

Dirty Work is dated, it sounds very brash and hollow in a 1980s way, although it's not quite as dated as the cover photograph, which has the band wearing Miami Vice unconstructed pastel suits. I don't want to rock with the people on the cover of Dirty Work. The sonic landscape sounds thinner and less interesting to my ears than the Stones' records from the early 1970s. The same is true of contemporary records by David Bowie and Paul McCartney and all those 1970s artists who survived into the new decade. They had hi-tech studios, infinite time, infinite money, Pino Palladino on fretless bass, etc, and yet the results sound less pleasant than their earlier stuff. It's because they were in love with all the new technology, and didn't take time to stop and listen.

One Hit (to the Body) is a good start. It has the typical Rolling Stones guitar interplay, with a mixture of acoustic and electric guitars. Even though I am now listening to ZZ Top, I can still sing One Hit (brackets) in my head, which is more than can be said of Fight, the second song on Dirty Work. It sounds like a cross between Street Fightin' Man and Jumpin' Jack Flash, but averaged out into nothing. I can barely remember it.

Hold Back has those reverby drums that were popular at the time. Jagger sings like an ancient drunken trawlerman. I can picture the rest of the Stones listening to this for the first time, and wondering what had gone wrong with their lives. The song's message is that you shouldn't hold back, otherwise you will waste your life, which is a laudable message. But the production, the stilted production and monotonous beat make the message sound hollow. After listening to Hold Back I was in no mood to debauch, and that's just wrong. "C*cks*cker Bl*es", the band's infamous banned 1970s tour film, was a much better advertisement for debauchery. In fact Brian Eno's ambient classic Music for Airports is a better advertisement for debauchery than Hold Back.

Too Rude sounds as if it is supposed to be reggae. It's pleasant enough, but it's not very reggae, and I can barely focus on it. Keith Richards does the vocals, swaddled in echo, like a lampshade. I don't dislike the song, but at the same time it seems odd to list it as a highlight of the album.

Winning Ugly starts with the bassline from Dr Who. According to US rock critic Robert Christgau, Winning Ugly was one of "the most unpleasant songs anybody's going to write about the '80s", which he meant as high praise. It sounds like a thinner version of Huey Lewis & the News, or a very poor Robert Palmer b-side. Back to Zero starts off as a groove song along the lines of the stuff on Black & Blue, although it has a conventional middle eight and chorus. Overall it sounds like a very poor late-period Talking Heads b-side but with Mick Jagger instead of David Byrne. The title track is just another anonymous 4/4 rock song, anybody could have written it. The guitars do a lot, but they're mixed lower than the snare drum, and overall I would be surprised if the song took longer to write than it takes to play. It doesn't sound like the Rolling Stones.

Had it With You does not sound like the rest of the album. It's very simple, but not bad - the guitars have a pleasant old-fashioned tone, and the drums are a lot more intimate than the booming rock sound on the rest of the album, although they're still too loud. There's some harmonica as well. Along with One Hit (Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch) it is the most Rolling Stone-ish song on the album, but it's still not very good. If only they had slowed it down, added some more space, and swung a bit.

Sleep Tonight is a slow-dancing ballad, sung by Keith Richards. It's pretty good, but not Wild Horses. I question the wisdom of having Keith Richards sing a slow dancing ballad. Richards sounds like a thinner version of Mark Knopfler, and yet he has smoked very many more cigarettes than Mark Knopfler. Based on the evidence of Dirty Work, I conclude that the Rolling Stones were out-rocked by Dire Straits in 1986. The shame. The shame.

In a review for the New York Village Voice, US rock critic Robert Christgau wrote that this is a "bracing and even challenging record" that "innovates without kowtowing to multiplatinum fashion". The rest of his review is similarly wrong. Dirty work is not a bracing or challenging record, it does not innovate without kowtowing to multiplatinum fashion, it does not innovate at all; it is not an innovative rock record, it is not an innovative Rolling Stones record. It is not a good record, and I imagine that the Rolling Stones do not like to think about it nowadays. I'm going to have a scone.

Better then I thought, I finally got it, since I heard it was their worst, because I stayed away from it for a while, and a while back I listened to some sound clips from it. It didn't impress me then. Its actually not that bad compared to all the whiny ass crap you hear today on the radio. Stones, even in their weakest effort, pulled off a more tolerable album then Nickelback, Creed, Linkin Park, Disturbed and the rest of the crap bands ever could.

Long live the bloody Rolling Stones!!! Even if this is no where near their best work. It still sounds better then I thought it would. I wouldn't make it your first Stones buy though, I would go with Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Beggars Banquet and such.
Enjoy.

I snapped up 1986's "Dirty Work" because I'd taken a real liking to 1989's "Steel Wheels", so I thought I'd kinda work my way backwards. And after seeing so many harsh reviews from fans, I was admittedly curious as to how bad it could possibly be.

Listening to this, I thought back on the numerous negative reviews I'd seen for it, and was asking myself, "What the hell's so bad about it?" Apart from a couple songs--"Winning Ugly" and "Back To Zero" in particular--it doesn't sound partcularly 'mid-'80s-ish at all--it just sounds like a well-produced rock & roll album. And the tunes are CATCHY--"One Hit (To The Body)", the mind-blowing raging rant "Hold Back" (with Jagger totally singing his head off), and the highly amusing title track are all infectious and kickass, and their cover of "Harlem Shuffle" really grooves. "Fight" and the horn-spiked "Winning Ugly" are solidly enjoyable as well. The Keith Richards reggae spotlight "Too Rude" is catchy too--it's rather sloppily executed, but amusingly so.

Surprisingly, the boogying "Had It With You", which I've often seen cited as a highlight, is actually quite weak, sounding frustratingly dull and brittle, despite the venomous lyrics.

I had a feeling "Dirty Work" would turn out to be better than its dubious reputation. I guess some fans prefer the Stones for their boring country songs and don't like it when they really ROCK?

Never in the Rolling Stones catalogue has an album been more hated than 'Dirty Work.' In 1986, when the Stones released this, the band was at a real low point. Charlie Watts, normally the clean and non-rock and roll of the quintet, was in the midst of a major addiction to heroin, Keith Richards was infuriated at Mick Jagger for starting a solo career ('She's The Boss' was a huge seller in 1985), Ron Wood was also battling a major drug addiction and Bill Wyman was caught in the middle of a very dramatic time for the Stones.

So, in 1985, with the band literally on the verge of collapsing, the band went into the studios to record their first album for Columbia Records (Rolling Stones Records had signed a major partnership deal with label in 1984), titled 'Dirty Work.' The outtakes for this album are widely circulating in Stones bootleg communities, and if you listen to some of the outtakes, you can clearly hear the band in the middle of a "midlife crisis" (as I like to call it). However, despite this and all of the circumstances surrounding it, the boys managed to turn in a solid album.

The group worked with Steve Lillywhite, notable for his collaborations with U2, and released 'Dirty Work' in March of 1986. Like a previous reviewer stated, this was the first Rolling Stones album not to reach #1 in America since 1965, breaking a 21-year string of #1 albums. So, needless to say, the years 1985-1988 were not good ones for the "world's greatest rock & roll band."

There's the history report. Now here's the review.

'Dirty Work,' despite what other reviewers say here on Amazon and in "criticland," is not a bad album. Is it 'Exile On Main St.'? By no means. But is it the awful pile of garbage many people here on Amazon make it out to be? By no means either.

Many people on Amazon complain that 'Dirty Work' sounds "dated" and "cheesy." Well, I have listened to the album pretty steadily over the past several weeks, and I don't hear any elements of a "dated" sound (with the exception being 'Back to Zero,' which admittedly has not held up well in the 24 years since it's initial release). It's incredibly well-produced, and it's also interesting to hear the Stones tackle a wide variety of genres -- reggae ('Too Rude'), dance ('Winning Ugly' and 'Back to Zero'), Motown-esque R&B (their cover of 'Harlem Shuffle') and even ballads (the lovely Richards-penned 'Sleep Tonight').

And of course, there's some rockers on here too. 'Had It With You' is actually one of the best Stones songs of the '80s, with Jagger singing with more rage than I think I've heard him sing with. 'One Hit (To The Body)' features some great guitar work by Jimmy Page (yes, you heard me correctly -- Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page), and 'Dirty Work' is a fast-paced and heavily punk-influenced rocker that's also an angry number. Listen to Wyman's bass on this track.

This album is also notable in that Ian "Stu" Stewart, the band's longtime road manager and piano player (as well as a founding member of the Stones before he was "dismissed" in 1962), died shortly after the recording sessions for the album ended. He was 47. The group added a 33-second hidden track at the end of Stewart playing the blues standard 'Key to the Highway' on piano as a tribute to him, and strangely enough, it's actually a highlight here. Very cool to hear Ian solo on the piano without any background instrumentation, if only for 33 short seconds.

The highlight here is probably 'One Hit (to the Body),' which has, over the years, grown to become one of my favorite Rolling Stones songs (I know many Stones fanatics are going to want to kill me for saying that, but it's true). The lowlight is definitely 'Back to Zero,' which just sounds dated today, but it's not a bad song. It's got a nice rhythm to it, and it probably should have been a bigger hit than it was.

Strangely enough, the hit single from this album was a cover of an old R&B song from 1964, 'Harlem Shuffle.' This was the first time that the hit single from a Stones album was not written by Jagger/Richards in ages. And it's a good cover -- the boys certainly do this song justice. And it's cool to hear Bruce Springsteen's future wife Patty Scalfia on backing vocals.

Overall, 'Dirty Work' is no 'Sticky Fingers,' but it's certainly not garbage. Forget the scathing reviews. This album is not a terrible album by any stretch. It's no masterpiece, but it's a well-produced 1980s album from the Stones that encompasses a wide variety of genres and shows a more experimental side of the band. There is nothing dated about this album except for 'Back to Zero' and that album cover with band wearing Miami Vice suits (but it is colorful, nonetheless).

I recommend 'Dirty Work' if you are a seasoned fan. If you are a new fan, go with '40 Licks,' 'Rewind (1971-1984)' or 'Made in the Shade' if you want a compilation, or if you want the studio albums, get the classic four ('Beggars Banquet,' 'Let it Bleed,' 'Sticky Fingers,' and 'Exile on Main Street') and perhaps 'Goats Head Soup' before picking this one up. But if you are a Stones fan interested in buying this, do so and decide for yourself whether or not you like it.

Recommended.

now in most music circles people are quick to dismiss Dirty Work as a big mix of trash that the stones put together. I would say after reading about the recording sessions (which even featured Jimmy Page)realizing the tension between Jagger and Richards, and added the new age music that was taking shape, I've found there to be alot of energy in the album, it's good and bad for the music, the good being the pure soul in Jaggers' voice and emotion in Richards voice. The bad being the poor marketing, and poor overall reviews from the music critics that wanted the Stones to die off. I would recommend this album to collectors and fans, average stones listeners will not find any top hits here...it's just a growing pain (what got them where they are today) This Album was pivotal!!!

The sound on this is mostly straight gritty rock n roll. A great illustration of this is "Had it with you". Probably one of the strongest tracks on the album. It sounds like youre sitting in a small club getting a direct hit by drums,guitars,and Micks harp. No overdubbing here just straight forward rock. The first single "Harlem Shuffle" really sounds like a sound track for a strip club. It just has that feel with the beat and sex drenched lyrics. The album ends with "Sleep Tonight" Keith's lead vocals double tracked on some spots and I think Mick on backing. A really really nice ballad. Everyone has there opinion and I think the low scores are not warranted but to each his own.

A lot of criticism is heaped upon this one, but it's mostly unfounded. True, this is a time when there was some big tension going down between Mick and Keith, and the Stones just sound, well, angry. But it kinda works for them...these are rock and roll's bad boys, remember?

You can almost hear the conflict in some tracks. The title track features some intense Jagger vocals (in fact, his voice is a bit pleading and scratchy on the whole album), which seem to be duking it out with Keith's guitar playing. Other favorites of mine are "Back To Zero" (sure, it smacks of cheesy 80's production, but in that fun Miami Vice sounding way...) and the raucous "Had It With You". Some other standouts are the familiar rocker "One Hit (To The Body)" (where the opening guitars almost sound out of tune, and it works) and the grooving "Harlem Shuffle". Also listen in for the hidden track at the end, a nice piano instrumental by Ian Stewart, the "Sixth Stone" who passed away shortly before the album was released. (The album was dedicated to his memory.)

Even the casual Stones fan would do well to pick up this underrated album.

Am I the Rolling Stones who thinks this is a great album? I suppose so. Yea most of you people won't believe I'm serious. (In fact most veteran Stones fans will think I'm playing some sort of bad joke) But I'm telling the truth. I like this album. The album is full of great blues and dance driven rock 'n' roll. In fact I think the sound is greatly influenced by Tattoo You and laid the groundwork for what became Steel Wheels. Hard blues-Rockers like One Hit (To the Body) and Fight in the first half are the highlights of the album. The second half features some great dance driven somewhat mean spirited songs like Winning Ugly and Back to Zero while the blues rocker Had it With You doesn't get the attention it deserves. The Stones apparently do Harlem Shuffle half ass. (Not one of their prouder moments) And Sleep Tonight and Too Rude aren't some of Keith's more impressive performances either. (Though Too Rude is rather catchy.) Yet all in all this is a fine album on the whole. Plus its the Stones. And even on their bad albums there is always something to offer. (In this case the essential track is One Hit(To the Body) Short and Simple: Fine Stones albums. Don't be discouraged by the bad reviews and give this a listen.

When bringing out this album, the Stones had a lot of intra- band troubles (a quarrel between Jagger and Richards, that ended in the inofficial split- up of the band; the death of the "sixth Stone" Ian Stewart). This also caused that they didn' t tour after it. Dirty Work is probably also the boy' s album which received the least support on stage, but it isn' t as bad as some people say. In contrast to it, you don' t expect them to do such a strong album in such a lousy situation. Track #1 is one of their hardest rockers ever. All in all, this is one of the heaviest Rolling Stones albums. It' s not only the music, it' s also the sarcastic lyrics. It goes on as good, even two cover songs fit the album, which has got the typically rough sound to 100%. When #4 rocks, the drums are very intense. Up to the end (except for the hidden track *g*), this one turns out to be Charlie' s best album. It stops very quiet in comparison to the other tracks: #10 is one of the most beautiful Keef ballads, if not THE one. Too bad that this was the last Rolling Stones recording including Ian, although he did an excellent last job on it.