How 'Black and Blue' Recording Across Four Cities Revealed the Stones' Search After Mick Taylor

After Mick Taylor quit in December 1974, the Rolling Stones didn’t just look for a new guitarist — they turned the whole recording process for Black and Blue into a global audition. Sessions hopped between Munich, Rotterdam, Montreux, and Los Angeles because the band wanted to test-drive different players in different rooms, each with its own vibe. The album itself became less a cohesive statement and more a scrapbook of their search.

In Munich they worked with Jeff Beck, but his style didn’t stick. Rotterdam brought in Wayne Perkins, whose playing on “Hand of Fate” is some of the most aggressive slide work on any Stones track. Montreux gave them Harvey Mandel, and LA sessions featured Ronnie Wood so heavily that he basically earned the permanent gig through sheer stamina and chemistry. The scattered geography wasn’t random travel — it was functional. Each city offered a different sound: the industrial rawness of Rotterdam, the Swiss neutrality of Montreux’s casino studio, the polished LA sheen. The final album sounds disjointed because it was, and that’s exactly the point.