Undercover of the Night
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Undercover of the Night" is the lead track and first single from English rock and roll band the Rolling Stones' 1983 album Undercover.
Inspiration and recording
The song was largely a Mick Jagger composition, guitarist Keith Richards going as far as saying, "Mick had this one all mapped out, I just played on it," in the liner notes to the 1993 best of Jump Back: The Best of The Rolling Stones. The song was likely written in Paris in late 1982, where recording began on the album. Guitarist Ronnie Wood described the fractious writing in 2003 as, "...just me, Mick and Charlie [Watts]... [We] took it up into some wonderful adventures with all these different changes... There was a great percussive and acoustic version, which is the kind of song it should be. The final polished, glossed-up version may have been Mick's vision of the song..."
The lyrics see Jagger explore the then-ongoing political corruption in Central and South America;
Jagger said, in those same liner notes to Jump Back, that the song was, "...heavily influenced by William Burroughs' Cities of the Red Night. "Undercover of the Night" is notable as it is one of the few songs by the Stones which overtly explore political ideas, next to "Street Fighting Man", arguably "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)", and the more recent "Sweet Neo Con". Recording began in early 1983 and was resumed later that summer at New York City's famed Hit Factory. Of note are the two versions of this song, one featuring usual Stones bassist Bill Wyman and the other featuring guest Robbie Shakespeare. The song features a very rhythmic feeling, provided by Sly Dunbar, Martin Ditcham, Moustapha Cisse and Brahms Coundoul, on various instruments ranging from bongos to timpani. Organ on the piece is performed by Chuck Leavell, who would later become the Stones' regular pianist. Also of note is the song's considerable use of echo phrasing on the instruments.
