Composer: Mick
Jagger
Recording date:
May-July & September-November 1984
Recording locations: Compass
Point Studios, Nassau, Bahamas; AIR Studios, London, England; & The Power Station, New York City
Producers: Mick
Jagger & Bill Laswell/Material
Chief engineer: Dave
Jerden
Line-up:
Drums: Tony Thompson
Bass: Colin Hodgekinson
Acoustic guitar: Pete
Townshend
Electric guitar: Jeff
Beck
Vocals: Mick
Jagger
Piano: Jan Hammer
Strings: Paul
Buckmaster
TrackTalk
Bill Laswell said somewhere that he didn't produce one of the tracks, the ballad Hard Woman, very much. But as far as I'm concerned he did the job. He hadn't any experience with a song like that, but while I was in the studio singing live with the band, he was in the booth. That track has a lot of tempo changes, a lot of... whatever they call it in Italian. It goes slowly, speeds up a little bit and come back down. The producer's job is to make sure that everyone's playing the right notes, and also that the tempo's just perfect. I was out there trying to sing and get the emotive thing going with the musicians, to make sure they were in the right groove, the right attitude. I didn't want to have to listen to whether the tempo was wandering a little bit or this guy wasn't playing a perfect note. That's a production job.
Maybe I was having too much fun (with the
vocal). I don't know. Maybe on that one I added a bit of lightheartedness.
But I think that's permissible. The first time I sang Hard Woman
I did it very white and straight, without any inflections. Then I decided
to take a slightly more hard or soulful approach. I thought, Why am
I doing this so straight? This should have more inflections in it. Then
I started to get OFF on them. But I quite like it. Maybe it's not perfect.
When I said, I'm going to do the strings,
Bill (Laswell) left that to me, because I'm very familiar with making that
kind of record. I wrote the string parts with Paul Buckmaster. He'd suggest
something and I'd say great or no. I'd hum, Maybe like this. Bill
was really busy so I just did that on my own.