Keith Richards [to recording engineer Gil Markle]: "I never get a chance to do this. You don't understand. I suppose you think it's all fun being me. Listen, I never get a chance to sing by myself like this—play the piano—without some bastard weirding out and asking me why I wasn't playing the guitar, and looking mean. People have their ideas about me. I bet you didn't think I could play the piano, did you? Or sing classics from the thirties."
1. Darling, Say It's Not You (original by George Jones) 3:42
2. Don't (original by Elvis Presley) 3:50
3. Blue Monday (original by Fats Domino) 2:05
4. Oh, What A Feeling (original by the Everly Brothers) 4:05
5. Sing Me Back Home (original by Merle Haggard) 4:39
6. The Nearness Of You (original by Hoagy Carmichael) 4:05
7. Apartment Number 9 (original by Tammy Wynette) 3:54
8. All I Have To Do Is Dream (original by the Everly Brothers) 3:03
9. Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On (original by Jerry Lee Lewis) 1:18
10. Oh, What A Feeling (take 2) 2:32
11. Apartment Number 9 (take 2) 4:43


Gil Markle: This for studio buffs: we used three Neumann '87 microphones on the Steinway, which Pat Metheny left with us two years ago. The piano, I mean. Mikes in our top-secret positions. Another Neumann '87 on him, close up, with a pop filter; voice highly compressed using an Eleven-seventy-six limiter set at twelve-to-one. Finally, a good measure of live acoustic reverb on either side of his voice, in stereo. Lots of E.Q., on everything. I had only one shot at this, and I wanted it to be right the first time.
The live mix was great all by itself, and the best results of that extraordinary session were in fact recorded directly onto our Studer mastering deck, and not the 24-track. 30 ips; no noise reduction, very hot on AMPEX 456 tape.
Gil Markle: Recording enthusiasts will be interested to know that the eventual edits on these ten or so tunes — classic Keith Richards piano demos — took nearly two weeks' work. I found the time to do it only a month after the Stones had finally gone, and performed the edits on a 7 1/2 ips dub inadvertently left behind at my house on Cape Cod. Editing at 7 1/2 ips is no fun, as you may know. Several hundred cuts were required, since Keith never really bothered to begin or end any of the tunes. He'd just keep on playing, and singing, with me scrambling to keep tape on the tape machines, late at night in the A-Control Room at Long View Farm.
Studio A at Long View is the one people travel considerable distances to use, and I think you'd hear it said at the Farm that I can make it work pretty much as well as anybody can. Mixing tape is what I like to do. I can make really good, live, super-present mixes. That's what got me into all this, back in '72, when I was still teaching Philosophy at Clark. I figured I needed some time off to build a studio to make some mixes in. And that's how Long View came about.
So when I tell you that the live stereo tape of Keith Richards sounded good, you better believe me that it did.
Gil Markle's (Diary of a Studio Owner) site at: [
www.studiowner.com]

