In the early '90s, the Rolling Stones began a fruitful partnership with revered record producer Don Was – but he was convinced he'd never get the gig after witnessing a rather heated discussion with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards during their first meeting.
At the time, Was had worked on studio albums with Carly Simon, Iggy Pop, and the B-52s, plus an expansive box set release with Elton John. With each new release, he was adding to his burgeoning reputation. Working with the Stones, however, was a cut above.
“The label wanted them to have a producer. They sent me to NYC while the band was auditioning bass players at SIR,” he says in a soon-to-be-published interview with Guitar World.
“Mick and Keith came over and sat on either side of me, and both started talking at the same time. Neither one of them yielded to the other guy. My head was whipping back and forth like I was watching a ping-pong match.
“Best I could tell: Mick [Jagger] was outlining what he wanted in a producer, and Keith [Richards] was explaining why they didn’t need a fucking producer,” he laughs. “This went on for about two minutes, which, in that situation, is an excruciatingly long time!”
Eventually, a silence blanketed the room.
“Then Keith said, ‘Are you sure you want to be the meat in this sandwich?’” Was recalls. “I walked out convinced I’d never see them again.”
But he would see them again. Perhaps more incredibly, he even got a small repent out of Keef.
“Four days later, Keith called, apologized for being curt, and said maybe they could use a producer,” says Was. “He told me that he wanted to use Don Smith as the engineer for [1994 LP] Voodoo Lounge because Don had done such a great job on his two solo records with The Expensive Winos. However, Mick wanted a neutral partisan behind the board. Keith wanted me to talk with him about it.”
Four days had passed, but the pair were still at odds. So, once again, Was found himself in the thick of it. But luck was on his side.
“Well, it turned out that I'd been working with Don Smith a lot, that I loved his work, and thought he would be perfect for the album,” he explains. “So, I called Mick and told him that Don was my choice, not just Keith's. Mick relented and, when I called Keith to tell him that Don Smith was in, he said, ‘Your name's not Don Was - it's Don Is.’
“I was hired, and the same pattern of shuttle diplomacy continued for the next 25 years.”
Together, they made four records. They followed up Voodoo Lounge with Bridges to Babylon in ‘97. Eight years would pass until LP three, A Bigger Bang, saw the light of day, and another 11 after that for Blue & Lonesome, with a smattering of live albums, greatest hits packages, and deluxe reissues scattered among them.
The band then turned to hotshot producer Andrew Watt for their 2024 comeback album, Hackney Diamonds, and one GW scribe believes it features some of their finest fretwork in decades. It even saw the band reuniting with former bassist Bill Wyman, despite him not liking the track he played on.
With Don Was, the band found not only a top-quality producer, but a peace maker more than happy to mediate himself with Jagger and Richards’ politics.
The full interview with Don Was will be published in the near future.
