The album consisted of ten new Jagger-Richards compositions, many of them with an edgy, dark atmosphere that was later seen in some quarters to reflect the tensions in the songwriters’ relationship. Either way, “Undercover Of The Night” remains one of the great, “later” Rolling Stones singles, with a lyric created by Jagger addressing the political corruption of the time in South America.
“I’m not saying I nicked it,” wrote Mick in the liner notes to the 1993 compilation Jump Back, “but this song was heavily influenced by William Burroughs’ Cities Of The Red Night, a free-wheeling novel about political and sexual repression. It combines a number of different references to what was going down in Argentina and Chile.” Keith Richards added: “Mick had this one all mapped out, I just played on it. There were a lot more overlays on the track because there was a lot more separation in the way we were recording at the time.”
Apart from the five members of the Stones, Undercover also featured contributions from sax player David Sanborn, reggae notables Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, and the last appearance on a Stones studio album, before his death in 1985, of their beloved road manager Ian “Stu” Stewart. The album met with a solid response, even if its “mere” No.4 peak in the US broke a run of eight studio No.1s in a row there.