How Don Was and Bob Clearmountain Shaped the Rolling Stones’ ‘Voodoo Lounge’ and Its Lead Single

Don Was was brought in to produce Voodoo Lounge specifically to get the Stones away from the slick, synth-heavy sound of the 1980s and back to a raw, guitar-driven blues-rock foundation. He pushed the band to record live in the studio as much as possible, using a makeshift setup at Ron Wood’s Irish estate, Sandymount, and later at the historic Windmill Lane in Dublin. Was’s goal was to capture the chemistry of the band playing together in a room—warts and all—which gave the album its loose, unvarnished feel.

For the lead single “Love Is Strong,” engineer Bob Clearmountain mixed the song with a signature trick: he slammed the drum bus through a compressor and then fed the snare through a reverb unit that created a huge, cavernous slap. Clearmountain also overlaid a distorted, treated harmonica part from Keith Richards, giving the track its menacing, almost psychedelic edge. That mix became the blueprint for the album’s single sound—polished but not sterile, loud but still breathing.