#*mt plays loud

KEITH RICHARDS, MICK TAYLOR, and MICK JAGGER performing at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, December 14, 1981

“I stepped through the door of a modern house into a large high-ceilinged room, unfurnished except for a P.A, amps, drum kit and a Hammond organ. Mick Taylor saw me as I walked in, and beamed as he stepped around the cables that were all over the floor. I hadn’t realised he’d played on Bob Dylan’s new album, Infidels, so I was pleasantly surprised to see him there. He told me Bob was getting a band together to promote his new album in Europe, and the tour was due to start in ten days time.

Now I was really excited. I hadn’t seen Mick since he sat in with the Stones in Kansas City in 1981. They’d plugged his guitar cord into an amp directly behind me that night, but as he was at least thirty feet away at the front of the stage, he could hardly hear it, so he cranked the volume all the way up. I’ve never heard anything louder than the sound that came from that amp in my whole life and I ran from the stage to protect my ears and wouldn’t go back on until he left the stage.

That aside, I’d always liked Mick. He’s an affable, unpretentious soul without a bad bone in his body. Colin Allen was sitting at the drums, and the last time I’d seen him was in a cafe on the M1 in 1966, when I was in the Small Faces and he and Andy Summers were in Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band. It helped knowing a couple of the guys because although I’d been introduced to Bob a couple of times before, I was still nervous, not having played for a while.”

PL: Would they [the Stones] make a distinction between, say, "reverb" and "delay"?

AJ: Mick [Jagger] might. He's the only one who really gets in on the mixing. Mick Taylor used to come around, but the lead guitar always ended up being too loud, and so they asked him to leave. During Exile, I remember Keith turning around one day and going, "Listen, man, you're great on stage, but you're awful in the studio. Can you just go away for a bit?" I disagree with that, myself. Mick Taylor never played anything that I disliked and thought shouldn't be there. Whenever he played, I always got a rush.

PL: How about Mick Taylor? How does he record?

AJ: Well, Mick Taylor always plays incredibly loud. That's how he gets all of that sustain. It's not just for tone alone—he likes that level as well. Because he does play so loud, you have to screen him off a lot. You tend to have him the furthest out of all the musicians, sort of on the outside. More than just level, he has a very penetrating sound. He also has a lot of bottom end, which you don't really notice so much when you're listening to him with the other instruments. It goes around the room like mad, though, and we often have trouble with it coming in and through the drums or the piano. This happens even when he's using a Tele, which is a bit surprising.

As far as his equipment goes, he usually uses Fender amps, like a Twin Reverb or something. He also has one of those little Fender Leslies. When we had 16 tracks, I'd often take two channels of him—one the amp and one the Leslie—and send them to opposite sides in the mix. As a general rule, he doesn't use a lot of effects in the studio. If they're about, you can ask him to use them and he'll give it a try, but he's not totally into it.

It's really great to work with Pagey and Mick Taylor and people like that. They're so good that they'll turn you on every time. Just listen to Mick on something like Stop Breaking Down, he's about the best white bottleneck player there is! That's what I really like about it—not the "engineering" as much as working with people who really bring out the best in you. You hear this music coming through and you can't let 'em down—you've got to try to get the best sound possible because it's turning you on so much!