Steel Wheels

Steel Wheels
Missing image TRS_Steel_Wheels.jpg Album cover
LP by The Rolling Stones
Released	August, 1989
Recorded	1989 Blue Wave Studio Barbados
Genre	Rock
Length	53 min 35 sec
Record label	CBS Records/Re-released EMI/Virgin 1993
Producers	Chris Kimsey, The Glimmer Twins
Professional reviews
All Music Guide	3/5	link (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=Aih9ss36ba3xg)
The Rolling Stones Chronology
Dirty Work (1986)	Steel Wheels (1989)	Flashpoint (1991)

Steel Wheels resurrected the career of the Rolling Stones, a band that had been publicly bickering since the early 1980s, when Mick Jagger first signed to release the solo record She’s the Boss (1985). It heralded the last top ten hit the Rolling Stones would ever have in the United States, “Mixed Emotions” charted as high as number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Two other singles cracked the top forty, “Rock and a Hard Place”, #23, and “Almost Hear you Sigh", #39, but by the end of 1989, the singles had dropped off the chart, and the biggest Rolling Stones tour to date had crossed the Pacific Ocean to wind its way westward to Australia, Asia, and Europe. Steel Wheels laid the template for future records and tours. It began the band's partnership with promoter Michael Cohl, and was the first of a recording and touring pattern the band would follow through the nineties and into the new millennium.

Contents

1 Sessions 2 Steel Wheels in the Stones discography 3 Track listing 4 Personnel

Sessions

In February 1989, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards reconvened in Eddy Grant's Blue Wave Studio in Barbados to write new songs for a forthcoming tour and album. Jagger and Richards had been fighting since tour plans for the 1986 album Dirty Work fell apart. As Richards related afterwards to Rolling Stone magazine, the plans were tentative; he told his wife Patti Hansen, he could be back in a week or in three months. The sessions began quickly and past disputes faded. Ronnie Wood was quickly summoned as Chris Kimsey, longtime Stones sound engineer, began recording. Charlie Watts dutiful appeared, cheerfully complaining he was always the last group member to be told what was happening. Bill Wyman, whose last album was Steel Wheels, participated belatedly after having trouble with the ‘Missus’, Mandy Smith, in England.

Steel Wheels in the Stones discography

The album represents the renewed strength of the Jagger/Richards songwriting team, only a song began during Richards 1988 solo record, Talk is Cheap, is otherwise credited. ("Almost Hear You Sigh" is a Jagger/Richards/Jordan composition.) The group compared the recording to their earliest style of composition- working and living together closely. Even a nod to the long departed Brian Jones appears in "Continental Drift", a track recorded with Jones' old discovery The Master Musicians Of Jajouka. Every gig on the world tour began with a short recorded intro of "Continental Drift". Keith Richards repeats his two song lead vocal performance first started on Dirty Work. "Slipping Away" confirms Richards birth as a smooth and tender balladeer.

The album is the Stones' first digital recording.

Track listing

1. "Sad Sad Sad" - 3:44
2. "Mixed Emotions" - 4:40
3. "Terrifying" - 4:57
4. "Hold on to Your Hat" - 3:35
5. "Hearts for Sale" - 4:40
6. "Blinded by Love" - 4:45
7. "Rock and a Hard Place" - 5:20
8. "Can't Be Seen" - 4:05
9. "Almost Hear You Sigh" - 4:25
10. "Continental Drift" - 5:14
11. "Break the Spell" - 3:40
12. "Slipping Away" - 4:30

All songs by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards except "Almost Hear You Sigh" (Jagger/Jordan/Richards).

Personnel

• Mick Jagger - guitar, harmonica, vocals, shaker
• Keith Richards - guitars (acoustic, classical), background vocals
• Ron Wood - guitar, guitar (Bass), background vocals
• Bill Wyman - guitar (Bass)
• Charlie Watts - drums
• Matt Clifford - keyboards, piano (Electric), clavinet
• Phil Beer - fiddle, mandolin
• Chuck Leavell - organ, piano, keyboards
• Luis Jardim - percussion
• Kick Horns - horn, brass
• Roddy Corimer - trumpet, brass
• Simon Clarke - brass
• Tim Sanders - brass
• Paul Spong - brass
• Sarah Dash - background vocals
• Lisa Fischer - background vocals
• Bernard Fowler - background vocals
• Lisa Fisher - background vocals
• The Master Musicians Of Jajouka - percussion
• Christopher Marc Potter - engineerde:Steel Wheels