The Rolling Stones — Harlem Shuffle - OFFICIAL PROMO

JUL 01 1986 · 12:00

The Rolling Stones — Harlem Shuffle - OFFICIAL PROMO (1986) Director: Ralph Bakshi Era: Mid-80s MTV Era (1986) - Peak MTV rotational period; post-New Wave, pre-grunge; R&B cover crossover boom; music video as theatrical spectacle coinciding with the Grammy Awards broadcast cycle. Exceptionally high curatorial value as a confirmed intersection of two major countercultural lineages — the Rolling Stones' rock legacy and Ralph Bakshi's underground animation tradition — captured at a precise, documented moment (Grammy Awards premiere, February 28, 1986). Serves as a primary source for multiple research threads: music video form, animation history, and 1980s rock culture. The video's compressed production timeline, its Grammy broadcast premiere, and its MTV VMA nomination make it a uniquely well-documented artifact of mid-1980s music video industry practice. Context: Released in March 1986 as the lead single from the Rolling Stones' album Dirty Work — their first studio album on the new CBS/Columbia Records contract — 'Harlem Shuffle' was notable as the first cover song the Stones had released as an opening single from a new studio album since 1965. The track reached No. 5 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and No. 13 in the UK. The video's pairing of the world's most iconic rock band with Ralph Bakshi, the enfant terrible of American underground animation, was a deliberate collision of two countercultural institutions. Its Grammy Awards premiere gave the video extraordinary cultural visibility. The production captured a band under internal tension — the Dirty Work era was marked by well-documented friction between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards — yet the video's exuberant animated world masked that turmoil in pure visual spectacle. It also stands as an early and high-profile example of the live-action/animation hybrid format that would define a strand of 1980s music video experimentation. Director notes: Bakshi directed the live-action portions of the Harlem Shuffle promo, while animation direction was handled by John Kricfalusi (future creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show). The video premiered on February 28, 1986 at the 28th Annual Grammy Awards on CBS. Production was initiated in late 1985 following a call from The Rolling Stones' manager Tony King, and was completed under severe time pressure — the entire production was compressed into approximately one month after it was decided on January 28, 1986 that the video needed to be ready for the Grammy broadcast. The video combined live-action performance on neon-painted abstract cityscape sets with animated sequences. It was nominated by MTV for a Video Music Award for Best Group Video. Animation crew included Lynne Naylor, Jim Smith, Bob Jaques, Vicky Jenson, and Pat Ventura — the same team Bakshi subsequently deployed on Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures.