I'd say that Don Was WAS the right producer for the Stones. But seriously: A rock song produced as a funk song doesn't hold up in court. The Rolling Stones is not The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Don Was did great job done on VL. To some extend B2B too (But still not even half of it). Flip The Switch is produced very good for instance. Rick Rubin would be great I think. Also the dude who produced GnR's Appetite For Destruction or the bloke who produced Nirvana's In Utero. The guitars of the Stones need to sound "slashy" (Not like Slash. Think the opening riff to SFM on Live Licks). And for crying out loud: Put some distortion on the @#$%&. When you see them playing Brown Sugar today it sounds like there's almost no distortion on Keith's guitar at all. That is also on many tracks on the recent albums. I want distortion.
Back to producing: I also remember reading in the book "Mick And Keith" that for B2B Mick wanted young hot producers to do it. It doesn't matter if the sound is dated two years back or anything. What matters is that the overall sound of the album sounds too mixed, non-coherent and "flat". Let's take the obvious example of the counter part to that: Exile On Main Street has a line in the producing. It all sounds gritty and you can almost feel that heroin is in the studio. B2B does not have that sort of feeling at all. It sounds like it's just a bunch of songs smacked on an album. Maybe Jagger can hear the difference in the producing and say that this and that is good, but I certainly can't on most tracks. If they really wanted to get that back why not just get the album produced and then record it through a shit tape-recorder, just like they did with Jumping Jack Flash. That would be great. I bet you that it would sound like the albums from the golden era all over again. But as you say: Mick doesn't want that. I don't know why he thinks that The Stones have to sound so up to date all the time. I simply don't get it. Look at a song like Already Over Me. A great, great song I think. The only problem with it is the producing. If it was produced like on Some Girls or better yet: Goats Head Soup, it could be a stand-out track on the same level as one of the warponys (I call the songs that are almost warhorses, warponys. Example: Star, Star). It would be in the line of 100 Years Ago, which I think is a very underrated song.
It is time for Keith to stand up to Mick even though he just wants to play as Milo says (In which I agree to some extend). The Glimmer Twins must agree at some point instead of the "I-do-mine-you-do-yours" strategy. If that's the drill for the new album, I think we can expect a lousy produced one. Way too non-coherent, just like B2B. But if they actually get it together, we can expect a very good produced album. With KILLER songs of course. That's a given.
JumpingKentFlash