Bernard Fowler

★★★★ Inside Out RHYME & REASON. CD/DL/LP Rolling Stones songbook as beat poetics by former Tackhead singer. Since 1988 Bernard Fowler has earned his living singing and playing percussion with The Rolling Stones. At a soundcheck during their 2015 tour, he recited one of their songs as spoken word. When Mick Jagger approved of it, he put together Inside Out, an album of nine Stones songs deconstructed or, as the title has it, turned inside out. Educated by The Last Poets, Felipe Luciano and Gil ScottHeron, with whom he collaborated in the mid-’80s, Fowler turns Jagger’s antiestablishment sentiments into fiery sermons. Flowing over rhythms rooted in the African diaspora, Undercover Of The Night, Dancing With Mr D, Sister Morphine et al become ghetto expression and restless reckoning driven by a political conviction Jagger’s street fighting man would be proud of. Lois Wilson