Did you cut all the basic tracks here?
They did some overdubbing later, of backgrounds, saxophone and acoustic guitar. But electric guitars, lead vocals, piano and even the percussion was done right there, Jagger did that. Mick Taylor was on those sessions, of course, and during “Wild Horses,” Jim Dickinson showed up, from Memphis.
What happened is that their touring piano player, who was also their road manger, Ian Stewart, he played on “Brown Sugar” some, but during “Wild Horses” Jim Dickenson was out behind the where we put the guitar amps.
Do you remember Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ where we went to double time and the tack piano comes in, the piano kind of goes crazy? That was our tack piano, an old upright piano; we put tacks on the hammers so it sounded like a honky tonk. Anyway, Jim was back there just tiddling on it, playing along with what they had settled on as the groove, and Keith walked by and said, “Hey you need to play that!”
Let’s try to reconstruct how “Brown Sugar” was tracked. First, what mics did you have set up, starting with the drums?
We only had three mics on the drums. We ran a(Neumann) U47 up over the top up over the top, about nose high to the drummer. We had a high stand out in front, with the mic facing downward at the kit, from the bass drum in with a little boom that came over the snare.
So it gave a good overview of the whole kit, so you could play with a lot of dynamics and you could get an incredible sound. In fact, Charlie Watts wanted to buy that microphone! But of course, I wouldn’t sell it. He couldn’t get over the sound we were getting.
On the bass drum we used the Electro-Voice 666, a fantastic dynamic mic for the time. It was on a little stand looking to the backside of the drum.
Then I had a hi-hat mic, which I think was another (EV) RE-15, though it could have been a little (EV) 635A—that remains in question. The RE15 was a better mic, had more response. We avoided using the 635A unless we had to. Actually, if not the RE15 it might have been a (Shure) SM57, more likely than the 635A.
And Charlie brought all his own drums?
Yes, he brought all of this own kit.
What guitar was Keith playing?
It was a Gibson, but not a Les Paul. Do you know that model that was right under the Les Paul, the solid body double cutaway-what is that? Oh yeah, the SG. I think it was an SG, and as I recall it was black. I remember it had those sharp horns on the cutaways. That’s what he played most of the time he was here.
And Mick Taylor?
Taylor, to my recollection, was playing a Strat. And guess what we came up with for Bill Wyman? Do you remember those Plexiglas body basses that were around then?
I checked with David Hood later and he says it was a Dan Armstrong. So to the best of our recollection, that’s what it was. He played through David’s Fender Bassman setup, the tube head and separate box.