Dance (The Rolling Stones) (LP 4534 - 4539)

The Rolling Stones  Emotional Rescue (Vinyl, Rolling Stones Records, 1980) *** 

The Rolling Stones  Tattoo You (Vinyl, Rolling Stones Records, 1981) ****   

The Rolling Stones  Still Life (American Concert 1981) (Vinyl, Rolling Stones Records, 1981) **** 

The Rolling Stones  Undercover (Vinyl, Rolling Stones Records, 1983) **

The Rolling Stones  Dirty Work (Vinyl, Rolling Stones Records, 1986) **

The Rolling Stones  Steel Wheels (Vinyl, Rolling Stones Records, 1989) ****

Genre: Rock, pop 

Places I remember: Marbecks Records, 

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Black Limousine (Tattoo You)

Gear costume: Under My Thumb, Twenty Flight Rock (Still Life)

They loom large in his legend (The Album Collection playlists): Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7

Active compensatory factors: It's hard to imagine what Mick was trying to achieve with Emotional Rescue. There are so many different styles on it and the pull of disco was a strong one for him.

It does have some good Stonesy moments - Let Me Go, Where the Boys Go and especially She's So Cold. Then again it has some terribly cringey moments as well - Indian Girl and the title track are just wrong. Charlie and Bill's expressions on the mimed video for She's So Cold are perfect.

Keef's vocal cameo had become a thing on each album and each one, so far, was either great or at least a breath of (authentic) air amid the disco extravaganzas. All About You was a case in point on Emotional Rescue.

Tattoo You continued the blend of styles that had appeared on Some Girls,  but with a great lead off song - Start Me Up. Although the album is made up of songs held over from the last few albums (like Emotional Rescue) it still hangs together far better than Emotional Rescue. 

It certainly has loads of more great moments like Start Me Up. Hang Fire is a lot of fun, Slave has one of Keef's effortless but effective riffs, Neighbours is an excellent punk rush of energy, Black Limousine harks back to Exile on Main St. greatness and Waiting On A Friend is a terrific ballad (great videos too for once).

The fun was sustained during the 1981 American tour which resulted in Still Life. I love this album! Mainly because it's full of oldies but goldies given a new lease of life in the eighties. Under My Thumb starts the arena party and it ends with Satisfaction. They even include a terrific Twenty Flight Rock.

The next studio album was Undercover which suffered from being the start of the schism between the modernist looking Mick (always wanting to embrace the new sounds), and Keef's retro blues rock leanings. For the time being things hadn't yet reached their nadir (that was coming though).

Undercover's highlights: I actually like the title track and She Was Hot but the wild eclecticism means the whole album is very bitty. In the end, I'm in the Keef camp, so, although this album was okay in 1983 when I was living in New Plymouth, I find its Mick endorsed dance style songs have dated quite a bit since then.

Dirty Work was that widely anticipated low point in relations but it's not a completely bad album. Anger is an energy (according to John Lydon) and that fuels a lot of Dirty Work which kicks off with two frenetic songs - One Hit to the Body and Fight - both by Jagger/ Richards/ Wood. 

The mid-eighties production values surface a bit too much for my liking (Keith's Too Rude solo spot is not good), but at least they were recording again after a three-year delay.

Steel Wheels was a major return to form (Mick and Keef had kissed and made up by this time). The big numbers - Mixed Emotions and Rock and a Hard Place set the album up for success.

Where do they all belong? Against the odds (including a poor start to the decade with Emotional Rescue) the band had survived Mick's attempts at a solo career, some mid period stinkers, and had ended the decade with their best eighties album by some distance. They did so by returning to what the Stones did best - rock and roll baby! Could they sustain it into the nineties?