Undercover is another odd one in the Stones pantheon. It came out at the height of the music video trajectory, and it’s evident that Mick’s desire to stay current was at odds with Keith’s keep-it-simple approach.Even with its heavy percussion and open invitation to remix, “Undercover Of The Night” is an excellent single, with great guitars and various stop-times to keep your feet thinking. “She Was Hot” starts out like a typical Chuck Berry rewrite, but the tension in the chorus and digital piano bring it up to date. (The emotional flip of “She’s So Cold”, if you will.) Mick must have been proud of “Tie You Up (The Pain Of Love)” enough to give it a subtitle, but not enough to make it possible to understand the words. Keith’s solo spot is “Wanna Hold You”, built around harmonies and a fast beat, but not much else. Keith was also enough of a reggae fan to endorse “Feel On Baby”, which is just too cluttered with percussion.
Just as side one started with danceable social commentary, so does side two. “Too Much Blood” would barely sound like the Stones if Mick wasn’t singing. There is something of a melody in the verses, but he decides to go on a couple of lengthy raps about mass murderers, in a Cockney accent that only underscores how middle-class he always was. The word on the street is that “Pretty Beat Up” was mostly written by Ron Wood, likely included because of the title. “Too Tough” has promise, but doesn’t come near to fulfilling it. “All The Way Down” does nothing more than remind the listener of Emotional Rescue, and not in a good way. One last bit of reportage on the state of the world comes in “It Must Be Hell”, built around a riff most recognizable as “Soul Survivor”, the closer from Exile.
Undercover simply isn’t a memorable album, outside of the singles and the simple recall of the violence in the song titles. That, along with the strategically placed red-herring stickers on the cover, show their pathological need to be shocking, even in their forties. The band didn’t tour behind it, and instead waited nearly an eternity before they followed it up.
The Rolling Stones Undercover (1983)—2
If my memory serves me well, Too Much Blood marked the first song where the Stones were outnumbered by other musicians. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? I didn't know he was referring to a movie, thought it must have been a real thing and was rather freaked out. Been a while since a song did that to me. And the Talk is Cheap aside in All The Way Down may have inspired Keith. Undercover is another sentimental, coming-of-age favorite. But the title track was anticlimactic live, which was a pity. Side 2 boasted a, dare I say, grungy flavor, certainly at odds with the meditative charms of Side 2 on Tattoo You. At a time when the Reagan-Thatcher alliance was flexing its muscle, for better or worse, and economies started recovering from the inflation crackdown, Mick reminded us in songs like Undecover and It Must Be Hell that vast swathes of the world lived in abject terror. Bianca must have been impressed.
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