RECORDED partly in the sunny Bahamas at Compass Point Studios > all that holiday air must have gone to their heads.

It was near the end of the Bee Gees-led disco era > and the Rolling Stones attempt at the genre in opening song Dance (Part 1) gives you the hee-bee gee-bees.

“Keith, Keith, watchya doing” Mick Jagger shouts in this song > well, not much by the sound it.

This album is devoid of any Keith Richards riff gems > or much else.

Apart from the outstanding Emotional Rescue, that is. Mick Jagger’s in fine falsetto voice on this off-beat funk ballad that showcases the band’s great musical diversity.

Jagger was regularly seen at New York’s trendy Studio 54 disco > somewhere Keith Richard’s wouldn’t be seen dead in > and it was the singer who pushed the Stones into this new direction > a sound dragged across the album.

The only rock song that comes close to troubling the excito-metre is She’s So Cold, despite a fairly flacid beat. Speaking of flacid, Summer Romance and Where The Boys Go are just that > Mick’s mockney accent ruining any chance of the latter song being taken seriously.

There’s Let Me Go > yes … let me go to the next song.

But that’s the even more lamentable and lacking in credibility Indian Girl, a dire ode about Central American revolutionaries. “Please Mr Gringo, please find my father. He ain’t no Che Guevera”. And Mick Jagger ain’t no Pancho Villa.

Down In The Gutter is an average harmonica-laden blues and the Rolling Stones flirt unsuccessfully with reggae on Send It To Me.

Keith Richards’s pained vocals close the album on ballad All About You. “I’m so sick and tired of hanging around dogs like you,” he croaks.

TEEN SHOOTS HIMSELF DEAD IN BED AT HOME OF KEITH RICHARDS’ GIRLFRIEND ANITA PALLENBERG

A 17-year-old boy shot himself dead in the head while in the bed of Keith Richard’s partner and mother of their two children, Anita Pallenberg > at the couple’s New York home in 1979.

The young man, employed to do odd jobs on the property, shot himself while allegedly playing Russian roulette.

He and Pallenberg  had apparently been watching TV together > in bed.

After lengthy questioning by police, no charges were laid against her.

The incident was the final nail in the coffin of Pallenberg’s already strained relationship with Keith Richards.

GUITARIST RON WOOD ARRESTED FOR COCAINE

The Rolling Stones guitarist and partner Jo were arrested in St Maarten, the Caribbean, in February, 1980, on cocaine possession charges.

They spent five days in jail before being deported to the US.

> WORDS by MALCOLM LIVERMORE