The Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger told bandmate Bernard Fowler that he ‘needed’ to cut an album prior to his heart surgery. The album is Inside Out, featuring The Rolling Stones classics rearranged as spoken-word poetry. Fowler discussed the story in a new Rolling Stone article.
The effect is more like the untelevised revolution of Gil Scott-Heron than the revolution Jagger called for in “Street Fighting Man.” Many of the songs come off the band’s 1983 album Undercover, which even diehard fans may have overlooked, a few are Seventies deep cuts (“Sister Morphine,” “Time Waits for No One”) and then there’s “Sympathy for the Devil,” with all of the original’s “wealth and taste” but a harder-hitting delivery. Fowler clearly enunciates each syllable, so nobody misses the words’ meanings this time.
Jagger gave his blessing to the project when he snuck up behind Fowler while the backup singer was jamming out on one of his reinterpretations at a Stones soundcheck a few years back. “He said, ‘You know, Bernard, I’ve heard Rolling Stones songs many different ways except that I’ve never heard it done like that,’” Fowler recalls. “I said, ‘When the tour is over, I’m going to cut it.’ He said, ‘You should cut it.’”
Since he wrapped up Inside Out, he’s started getting praise from the rest of the Stones as well. “My ‘Brother B’ Fowler puts a whole new Roll on the Stones,” Keith Richards tells Rolling Stone in a statement. “I love it!”
