08/08/2022
Keith Richards: So much technology has flooded in in the last seven or eight years—not that it ever stopped, but it’s speeding up a bit now with all the possibilities—and everybody’s going a bit berserk. What you eventually end up with, right, is that you’ve got five million more possibilities of what you can do with all these different pieces of equipment with the result that all records start to sound more and more alike—and most records are made on the same three or four pieces of equipment. A studio will buy a new piece of equipment even if it costs a billion dollars, because it keeps you in the studio. They know that every time they give you another possibility or a choice to make, you have to be making these decisions in the studio and the clock’s ticking and money’s going around. I mean, you can make a movie with the budget of a record for a big group.
“Street Fighting Man” was cut on a cassette player and you know what they were like in those days! The first little Phillips ones, you know. There’s a million possibilities—like overloading an acoustic guitar instead of using an electric guitar. You can get that lovely acoustic dryness and feel but with an electric sound. To make a rock ’n’ roll record, technology is the least important thing. As far as technology is concerned we keep it to a minimum. We’re the kind of band that you don’t . . . . We sound terrible if you try and make it techno-pop with us!
Photo: Michael Donald photography
