The Rolling Stones' Mobile Studio: Abandoned in a French Field After Exile on Main St.

The Rolling Stones’ mobile recording truck didn’t end up in a museum or a garage. After recording Exile on Main St. at Keith Richards’ villa in Nellcôte, the truck rolled on for other artists—Led Zeppelin used it for “Houses of the Holy,” Deep Purple for “Machine Head”—then was sold off. By the 1990s it was rotting in a field in rural France, half-buried in weeds, its famous mixing console stripped out.

In 2016, a couple of audio geeks tracked it down, bought it for scrap, and spent years restoring it to working order. The truck is now rolling again, rebuilt with a modern console but still wearing its original beige metal skin. It’s a weird second life for a piece of gear that helped shape rock’s most ragged masterpiece.