{"id":676098,"date":"2026-11-05T21:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T21:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/676098\/"},"modified":"2026-11-05T21:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T21:14:12","slug":"keith-richards-on-the-recording-advancement-that-sucked-the-soul-out-of-the-rolling-stones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/676098\/","title":{"rendered":"Keith Richards on the recording advancement that sucked the soul out of the Rolling Stones"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exile on Main St.<\/a>, was turbulent at best. Despite Keith Richards’ drug issues, disjointed sessions, gear theft<\/a> and plenty of internal disharmony, however, the band emerged with a classic.<\/p>\n

Much of the album was recorded at the Stones’ French retreat, Nellc\u00f4te, using relatively modest recording equipment. That didn’t stop it from making a huge impact on audiences in the US and UK. And Richards believes the recording technology that followed actually made it harder to capture the kind of performances that had made the album so special.<\/p>\n

Writing in his 2010 autobiography, Life, the guitarist posed a pertinent question.<\/p>\n

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\"Richards\n<\/p>\n

Richards and Anita Pallenberg with their son Marlon at Villa Nellcote, the 19th century mansion in the Cote d’Azur where the Rolling Stones recorded Exile on Main St., May 1971. (Image credit: Alamy)<\/p>\n

\u201cVery soon after Exile\u2026, so much technology came in that even the smartest engineer in the world didn\u2019t know what was really going on,\u201d he said. \u201cHow come I could get a drum sound back in Denmark Street with one microphone, and now with fifteen microphones I get a drum sound that\u2019s like someone shitting on a tin roof?\u201d<\/p>\n

Eight years separate the Stones’ self-titled debut, recorded at London’s fabled Regent Sound Studios on Denmark Street, and the release of Exile. In the intervening years, the Beatles had helped push recording technology forward, with Rubber Soul marking a particularly revolutionary moment<\/a>. The band employed clever studio tricks<\/a> to expand the possibilities of recorded music, and as the record industry boomed, other artists and engineers followed suit.<\/p>\n

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But Richards wasn’t convinced that more sophisticated technology necessarily meant better recordings. Much like guitarists who believe that no matter how advanced amp modeling technology<\/a> becomes, it will never quite replicate the magic of a cranked tube amp<\/a>, he felt that the recording industry had lost sight of what mattered.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody got carried away with technology and slowly they\u2019re swimming back,\u201d he said. \u201cI always felt that I was actually fighting technology, that it was no help at all. And that\u2019s why it would take so long to do things.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Photo\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

He singles out the recording of Goats Head Soup, the Stones’ follow-up to Exile, as an example. Engineer Rob Fraboni, Richards recalls, was caught up in the \u201cnotion that if you didn\u2019t have fifteen microphones on a drum kit, you didn\u2019t know what you were doing.\u201d The album was a commercial success, but Richards wasn’t sold on the approach to recording it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bass<\/a> player would be battened off, so they were all in their little pigeonholes and cubicles,\u201d Richards recalled. \u201cYou\u2019re playing in this enormous room and not using any of it. This idea of separation is the total antithesis of rock and roll, which is a bunch of guys in a room making a sound and just capturing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Exile, by contrast, captured the Stones playing together in the basement at Nellc\u00f4te, with the musicians feeding off one another rather than being isolated in separate recording spaces.<\/p>\n

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\"Photo\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the sound they make together, not separated,\u201d Richards argued. \u201cThis mythical bullshit about stereo and high tech and Dolby, it\u2019s just totally against the whole grain of what music should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

This mythical bullshit about stereo and high tech and Dolby is totally against the whole grain of what music should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Keith Richards<\/p>\n

There’s an interesting wrinkle to Richards’ argument, though: Stones frontman Mick Jagger has also expressed reservations<\/a> about Exile’s sound, suggesting that the disarray surrounding the band at the time found its way onto the record.<\/p>\n

The Stones’ last two albums \u2013 2023’s Hackney Diamonds and this year’s Foreign Tongues \u2013 were recorded with producer Andrew Watt, who has his own innovative ideas<\/a> about making records sound their best. Whether Richards has warmed to the modern recording process is another question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter The making of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":676099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-676098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}