How the Rolling Stones recorded It's Only Rock 'n' Roll at Stargroves, plus Mick Taylor's bass experiment

For the 1974 album It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll, the Stones ditched conventional studios and set up at Mick Jagger’s country house, Stargroves, using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio truck parked in the driveway. The truck had been built in 1969 and was basically a control room on wheels, allowing the band to record live in the house’s ballroom. The result is a looser, more spontaneous sound than their previous work—Keith Richards later said the country air made everyone play better.

One odd detail from those sessions: lead guitarist Mick Taylor played bass on several tracks, most notably “If You Can’t Rock Me” and the title track. Taylor wasn’t a bassist by trade, but with Bill Wyman often absent or disengaged, Jagger and Richards asked him to step in. Taylor’s melodic, fluid style gave those songs a different bottom end than Wyman’s usual pocket-funk—listen for the way the bass lines weave around Keith’s open-G chords rather than locking into a simple root-note groove.