“Really important to us”: The artist Mick Jagger thought brought an edge to The Rolling Stones
By the 1990s, The Rolling Stones needed a shakeup. It’s understandable. By the start of the decade, the band reached a milestone that few others do as they released their 20th album with Voodoo Lounge. In only a few decades, the band had become one of the biggest acts in history. They had also released a catalogue of music that was so long and only getting longer with no sign of slowing. But it was clear that they needed a refresh, so they invited in some new musicians to help with a makeover.
Really, the band’s mission for a change had started a while back. The core of The Rolling Stones, since the moment they started writing their own material, had always been The Glimmer Twins. As the name given to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards’ musical partnership. After taking a cruise with their girlfriends back in 1968, an old couple kept asking who Jagger and Richards were, struck by their style of dress and charisma. The strangers asked, “Just give us a glimmer”, and the nickname was born.
From then on, the production of their albums was credited to The Glimmer Twins, as Jagger and Richards not only wrote and performed but also manned the sound desk in the studios as they produced the albums. However, by the time the 1980s came around, and as the friend’s relationship struggled and the band in general seemed burnt out, they knew they needed to call in help.
For a while, there would be one other producer alongside the duo. Chris Kimsey helped out on Undercover; Steve Lillywhite worked on Dirty Work, and Don Was worked on Voodoo Lounge. But in 1997, they seemed to swing their doors wide open, inviting in a whole cast of other producers and musicians to help on Bridges To Babylon.
Alongside the Glimmer Twins, five other producers worked on the record, including Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton collaborator, Rob Fraboni, multi-genre producer and multi-instrumentalist Danny Saber, their earlier producer Don Was and The Dust Brothers; a duo that Jagger credits for shaking up the whole show.
While their other earlier producers were all incredibly well-versed in rock and roll, and were keen to immerse themselves in the world of The Rolling Stones, The Dust Brothers existed just outside of it. Consisting of E.Z. Mike, Michael Simpson, King Gizmo, or John King, the producers and songwriters were pretty new on the scene, and so far, they’d largely worked on hip-hop or more alternative projects. So when it came to working with the ultimate classic rock and roll band, they brought something different.
“The Dust Brothers added a slightly different rhythmic edge and that was really important to us,” Jagger said of their work on the tracks ‘Saint of Me’, ‘Anybody Seen My Baby?’ and ‘Might As Well Get Juiced’. To him, having producers with a different backstory and different areas of expertise was just what the band needed. As he said, “They dropped a few quirky little bits of “fairy dust” here and there that perhaps you wouldn’t normally think of.”
Together with the other producers on the album, they helped make Bridges To Babylon a reviving record, giving the group the shakeup it needed.
