atop of another on a steel prong, and set the tempo for the whole song. Jimmy really knew how to get fantastic grooves and come up with cool sounds and during the late sixties and early seventies, he was seen as quite a magician in the studio.”
Even with Jimmy Miller behind the board in the studio, Keith Richards continued to be just as unpredictable as ever when it came to showing up on time for a session. As Glyn Johns would later say, “While we were making Let It Bleed, there were many occasions when we would work without Keith because he wasn’t there. It would be three or four in the morning and as we would be getting in the car to go home, Keith would arrive and everyone would troop back in like they were in his employ or something. I remember waiting for Keith for three days in Hamburg and he never came and nobody got annoyed. They just accepted it.
“If you want to talk about someone in the band being indulged, it was not Mick. Keith got the Oscar. This was somebody fromthe outside looking in who did not give a monkey’s bum about anybody. Underneath all that, Keith could be an extremely loving, caring, considerate person. There were people he cared about that he would die for. And Ian Stewart was one of them. But in the main, Keith’s general reaction with anybody he was working with or who was around him was that he couldn’t care less about them. They didn’t enter into it because he just didn’t care.
“The most frustrating thing to me was when the Stones would sit and play a track for hours and hours and hours, the same thing over and over again. At the beginning, it would sound fantastic. It had all the spark and the adrenaline. After three days, it was deadening and awful. Everyone thinks the Rolling Stones made pretty amazing records. I can assure you they could have been and actually were at one point fifty times better than they ended up being, at least from a rhythm track point of view. By the time they got the track that Keith liked, they were all worn out or played out. Because by then his part had developed into what he wanted.”
Already working constantly with so many other artists that his patience with the chaos that always ensued when the Rolling Stones went into the studio had just about come to an end, Glyn Johns was about to be supplanted as the band’s engineer of choice by his younger brother Andy. Unlike Glyn, who aside from Ian Stewart and Jo Bergman was the only person around the Stones who was completely straight, Andy Johns would soon become so deeply involved in drugs with Keith and Jimmy Miller that his life would never be the same.
In what was meant to serve as a dry run for tonight’s effort, Glyn was also behind the board of the rock truck as it sat parkedoutside the Empire Theatre last night in Liverpool so he could record both of those shows as well. Taking a quick look around the room to make sure neither Mick nor Keith is listening, Glyn sighs and says, “I hope they play better tonight than last. I really do.” Spinning on his heel, Glyn Johns then walks out the door to begin what will be one of the last nights he will ever work for the Rolling Stones.
Mad as it may seem in this day and age of carefully planned marketing and digital media campaigns designed to sell new albums through every means available to man, the Rolling Stones were touring Great Britain a month before Sticky Fingers was to be released. Although the Stones had no real choice in the matter because they had to be out of the country by April 1 for tax reasons, they did find themselves playing as many as four or five songs from the new album each night that no one in the audience had ever heard.
By this point in the tour, I had seen the band perform “Bitch” and “Brown Sugar” so many times that both songs had burned their way into my brain. Unfortunately, this was also the only place I could hear them once the night’s shows were over. Utterly possessed by those pounding horn parts
Even with Jimmy Miller behind the board in the studio, Keith Richards continued to be just as unpredictable as ever when it came to showing up on time for a session. As Glyn Johns would later say, “While we were making Let It Bleed, there were many occasions when we would work without Keith because he wasn’t there. It would be three or four in the morning and as we would be getting in the car to go home, Keith would arrive and everyone would troop back in like they were in his employ or something. I remember waiting for Keith for three days in Hamburg and he never came and nobody got annoyed. They just accepted it.
“If you want to talk about someone in the band being indulged, it was not Mick. Keith got the Oscar. This was somebody fromthe outside looking in who did not give a monkey’s bum about anybody. Underneath all that, Keith could be an extremely loving, caring, considerate person. There were people he cared about that he would die for. And Ian Stewart was one of them. But in the main, Keith’s general reaction with anybody he was working with or who was around him was that he couldn’t care less about them. They didn’t enter into it because he just didn’t care.
“The most frustrating thing to me was when the Stones would sit and play a track for hours and hours and hours, the same thing over and over again. At the beginning, it would sound fantastic. It had all the spark and the adrenaline. After three days, it was deadening and awful. Everyone thinks the Rolling Stones made pretty amazing records. I can assure you they could have been and actually were at one point fifty times better than they ended up being, at least from a rhythm track point of view. By the time they got the track that Keith liked, they were all worn out or played out. Because by then his part had developed into what he wanted.”
Already working constantly with so many other artists that his patience with the chaos that always ensued when the Rolling Stones went into the studio had just about come to an end, Glyn Johns was about to be supplanted as the band’s engineer of choice by his younger brother Andy. Unlike Glyn, who aside from Ian Stewart and Jo Bergman was the only person around the Stones who was completely straight, Andy Johns would soon become so deeply involved in drugs with Keith and Jimmy Miller that his life would never be the same.
In what was meant to serve as a dry run for tonight’s effort, Glyn was also behind the board of the rock truck as it sat parkedoutside the Empire Theatre last night in Liverpool so he could record both of those shows as well. Taking a quick look around the room to make sure neither Mick nor Keith is listening, Glyn sighs and says, “I hope they play better tonight than last. I really do.” Spinning on his heel, Glyn Johns then walks out the door to begin what will be one of the last nights he will ever work for the Rolling Stones.
Mad as it may seem in this day and age of carefully planned marketing and digital media campaigns designed to sell new albums through every means available to man, the Rolling Stones were touring Great Britain a month before Sticky Fingers was to be released. Although the Stones had no real choice in the matter because they had to be out of the country by April 1 for tax reasons, they did find themselves playing as many as four or five songs from the new album each night that no one in the audience had ever heard.
By this point in the tour, I had seen the band perform “Bitch” and “Brown Sugar” so many times that both songs had burned their way into my brain. Unfortunately, this was also the only place I could hear them once the night’s shows were over. Utterly possessed by those pounding horn parts
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