'Dirty Work' (1986): The Rolling Stones Album That Captured a Feud, Featuring Jimmy Page's Guitar

By the time the Stones started recording Dirty Work in early 1985, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were barely speaking. Jagger was focused on his solo debut She’s the Boss, and he’d show up to the Paris studio only when his schedule allowed, often leaving Richards and the rhythm section to build tracks alone. The tension bled into the music: the album sounds scrappy, half-finished in spots, with Richards and Jagger trading barbed lines like boxers who refuse to touch gloves.

The most famous symbol of the rift is “One Hit (To the Body),” the opening track. When the Stones needed a fiery lead guitar part, Richards was so pissed at Jagger that he called in Jimmy Page, who was hanging around the same Paris studio. Page’s snarling slide work gives the song an extra layer of menace—and Richards later admitted he didn’t mind, since it meant he didn’t have to play on a track he felt was Jagger’s pet project. The album’s title, Dirty Work, was no accident: it summed up the joyless, contractual vibe of a band held together by a name, not a friendship.