did not even appear or the band accomplished almost nothing, what Marshall Chess calls “the rock truck” has now become part of the Stones’ new overall business plan.
Packed to the rafters with £100,000 ($240,000) worth of sixteen-track recording equipment and painted a sickening shade of khaki green for what Marshall calls “camouflage,” the truck has already been used to record several tracks for Sticky Fingers at Stargroves, Mick Jagger’s palatial estate in the English countryside.
To continue recouping their sizable investment in the truck, Marshall says the Stones will be leasing it out to other bands for £1,500 ($3,600) a week. And since Mick will no longer be living there once the Stones decamp to France, Stargroves is being outfitted as a state-of-the-art, live-in recording studio with round-the-clock facilities that can be rented for £2,500 ($6,000) a week.
Now that the Stones are fully in charge of their own financial affairs for the first time, it only makes eminent sense for them to try to get the maximum return from this tour by recording a live album that might do as well as Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! After being released seven months ago, the album sold a million copies in America and hit the number-one spot on the charts in the United Kingdom.
The man who recorded, produced, and mixed that album will be sitting behind the board in the rock truck tonight. A longtime member in good standing of the band’s extended family, Glyn Johns began his career with the Rolling Stones by recording their first demo tracks at IBC Studios in London in 1963. More recently,he also engineered some of the sessions that the Stones did at Olympic Studios for Sticky Fingers.
A tall, lean man with dark hair and sharp cheekbones who is making a definite fashion statement tonight in black leather pants and a red wet leather jacket with a white fur collar, Glyn slowly begins working his way across the cafeteria in search of something to drink before the first show begins. Much like his great friend Ian Stewart, Glyn is one of the few people around the Rolling Stones who never minces words in describing how the band has always gone about making records in the studio.
Long after his time of service with them was done, Glyn Johns would note that the Rolling Stones had no idea what a record producer actually did because until Jimmy Miller came along, the band had never had one. Born in Brooklyn, Miller was a talented drummer who had begun his producing career with the Spencer Davis Group, for whom he had also cowritten the hit single “I’m a Man” with Stevie Winwood.
Impressed by the work that Miller was doing with Traffic in the next room at Olympic Studios while the Stones were recording Their Satanic Majesties Request, Glyn Johns urged Mick Jagger to hire Miller to produce the band’s next album. A quantum leap from their previous work in the studio, Beggars Banquet was Miller’s first effort with the Stones and it became a huge success, both critically and commercially.
As Glyn Johns would later say, “The Rolling Stones, that is to say Mick and Keith, were incredibly difficult to produce. I mean, how do you tell Keith Richards that what he just played wasn’tany good? Actually, you don’t. I once made the mistake of telling Keith he was out of tune and you would have thought I had just told him his mother was a whore.”
Not surprisingly, the key to Miller’s success with the Rolling Stones was his working relationship with Keith Richards. As Glyn Johns’s younger brother Andy would later say, “Jimmy came in and pulled the Stones together and turned them back into more of a proper rock ’n’ roll band than they had ever really been before. He did Beggars Banquet, which was fucking brilliant, and then Let It Bleed, which was bloody marvelous.
“When it came to playing grooves, Jimmy was the instigator. On ‘Honky Tonk Women,’ he went out into the studio and started playing two little cowbells, one
Packed to the rafters with £100,000 ($240,000) worth of sixteen-track recording equipment and painted a sickening shade of khaki green for what Marshall calls “camouflage,” the truck has already been used to record several tracks for Sticky Fingers at Stargroves, Mick Jagger’s palatial estate in the English countryside.
To continue recouping their sizable investment in the truck, Marshall says the Stones will be leasing it out to other bands for £1,500 ($3,600) a week. And since Mick will no longer be living there once the Stones decamp to France, Stargroves is being outfitted as a state-of-the-art, live-in recording studio with round-the-clock facilities that can be rented for £2,500 ($6,000) a week.
Now that the Stones are fully in charge of their own financial affairs for the first time, it only makes eminent sense for them to try to get the maximum return from this tour by recording a live album that might do as well as Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! After being released seven months ago, the album sold a million copies in America and hit the number-one spot on the charts in the United Kingdom.
The man who recorded, produced, and mixed that album will be sitting behind the board in the rock truck tonight. A longtime member in good standing of the band’s extended family, Glyn Johns began his career with the Rolling Stones by recording their first demo tracks at IBC Studios in London in 1963. More recently,he also engineered some of the sessions that the Stones did at Olympic Studios for Sticky Fingers.
A tall, lean man with dark hair and sharp cheekbones who is making a definite fashion statement tonight in black leather pants and a red wet leather jacket with a white fur collar, Glyn slowly begins working his way across the cafeteria in search of something to drink before the first show begins. Much like his great friend Ian Stewart, Glyn is one of the few people around the Rolling Stones who never minces words in describing how the band has always gone about making records in the studio.
Long after his time of service with them was done, Glyn Johns would note that the Rolling Stones had no idea what a record producer actually did because until Jimmy Miller came along, the band had never had one. Born in Brooklyn, Miller was a talented drummer who had begun his producing career with the Spencer Davis Group, for whom he had also cowritten the hit single “I’m a Man” with Stevie Winwood.
Impressed by the work that Miller was doing with Traffic in the next room at Olympic Studios while the Stones were recording Their Satanic Majesties Request, Glyn Johns urged Mick Jagger to hire Miller to produce the band’s next album. A quantum leap from their previous work in the studio, Beggars Banquet was Miller’s first effort with the Stones and it became a huge success, both critically and commercially.
As Glyn Johns would later say, “The Rolling Stones, that is to say Mick and Keith, were incredibly difficult to produce. I mean, how do you tell Keith Richards that what he just played wasn’tany good? Actually, you don’t. I once made the mistake of telling Keith he was out of tune and you would have thought I had just told him his mother was a whore.”
Not surprisingly, the key to Miller’s success with the Rolling Stones was his working relationship with Keith Richards. As Glyn Johns’s younger brother Andy would later say, “Jimmy came in and pulled the Stones together and turned them back into more of a proper rock ’n’ roll band than they had ever really been before. He did Beggars Banquet, which was fucking brilliant, and then Let It Bleed, which was bloody marvelous.
“When it came to playing grooves, Jimmy was the instigator. On ‘Honky Tonk Women,’ he went out into the studio and started playing two little cowbells, one
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