The 1997 album Keith Richards wanted to disown: “It’s not The Stones”
Anything that Keith Richards ever made with The Rolling Stones always came down to feel.
Some of the greatest songs that they ever recorded came from Richards playing off of the rest of the band, and even if there were some mistakes left in the mix, it didn’t matter so long as it had the right attitude behind it. But there was a fine line between being authentic and synthetic on some of their albums, and Richards could see through that shit in only a few seconds when he listened back to their records.
Then again, it’s not like Richards was innocent when it came to some of The Stones’ stranger songs. He was the one who was behind getting them into country music, and while his voice suited the genre fine, he knew that there was no way that Mick Jagger was going to pull off a song like ‘Far Away Eyes’ and get his seal of approval. But he would rather have failed with a song that he thought could work than try his hand at making some of the more synthetic tunes in his catalogue.
Which is probably why Dirty Work is from the worst period of the band’s career. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the songs, but given how much they were dipping into the flavours of the day, you can tell that Richards doesn’t really want to be there on some of the songs. He was much more interested in seeing what people likeTom Waits were doing by this point, but if that was a step too far, he wasn’t fully prepared for what Jagger had in store during the next decade.
Voodoo Lounge at least set them up on firmer ground in the early 1990s, but Bridges to Babylon is one of the few albums where every member of The Stones seems to clock out at one point or another. The album before had been this grand return to form that almost echoed what Exile on Main St had done two decades before, so when you listen to them trying to work with people like The Dust Brothers, it doesn’t fit their aesthetic at all.
And nowhere is this more apparent than with Charlie Watts. Watts will forever be one of the greatest leading forces behind the band, but if Richards could handle working with someone like Steve Jordan in Watts’s place for the time being, there wasn’t a chance that he was going to tolerate members of the production team coming in and playing some of his parts for him on their records.
It was definitely a new method for everyone to work in, but Richards wasn’t ready for some kid to play on his record instead of him, saying, “On the record, it’s not The Stones. Charlie’s on drums, but they were not cut with The Stones. They were cut with (producer) Danny Saber, and I overdubbed a bit of guitar in there. But those tracks are not the same real Rolling Stone tracks. It’s just another lesson that I hope certain people learn!”
“If you want to make a Rolling Stones record, use The Stones. I have nothing against Danny Saber or the Dust Brothers, etc, except to say, ‘Stay in your own lane.’”
Keith Richards
If it’s any consolation, though, the songs did take on a completely different identity when they played them live. No one would have thought that ‘You Got Me Rocking’ would have become one of their late-career highlights, but when you listen to the way that they attacked the song at the time, it’s a wonder why they put up with the mixes that ended up on the final version of the record.
The Dust Brothers have done some amazing things throughout their career, so it’s not like they were ill-equipped for the job, but The Stones are a much more delicate band to work with than you think. They were trying to make the best rock and roll that they could, and that involved them all being in the same room and hashing things out just like they used to do.
