“I’d forgotten totally about them,” Keith Richards said in a recent phone interview from his home in Connecticut. “They came up while we were sifting through the vaults,” referring to versions he recorded of Willie Dixon’s “My Babe,” Eddie Taylor’s “Big Town Playboy,” another track titled “Slim” and one more simply labeled “Blues Jam.”
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"It was never, 'Let's make an album,'"keith said of the sessions that resulted in "Talk Is Cheap." "It kind of came about in bits."
It began with some impromptu jams with drummer Steve Jordan, who'd been part of the band assembled to work with Aretha Franklin for her part in the 1986 Whoopi Goldberg comedy "Jumpin’ Jack Flash," and continuing with "Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll."
"By the time we'd all been part of the Chuck Berry band for six weeks, it felt pretty tight," he recalled. "So we started knocking some ideas for songs, and I thought, 'Hey, why not? I'm looking at the Stones’ calendar and it's empty. I'm not just going to sit around and do nothing, so I said, 'Hey, Steve, let's try and put some stuff together.’”
Former Stones guitarist Mick Taylor and the band’s keyboardist Chuck Leavell even pitched in on "I Could Have Stood You Up."
He also made room for more reflective moments such as "Locked Away," something that doesn't come around often with the Stones because "Mick is always like, 'Make it fast!' and I'm always like restraining. At the same time, with songs like 'Angie' and 'Beast of Burden,' when I can get Mick into the right frame of mind, then he gets it. But he does get bored with ballads."
"I did find out in the process that I appreciated Mick's job much more in being the frontman," he said with a laugh. "With the Stones, I can step back with Charlie and play, or if I feel like it I can go out. i have an option. I realized working with the Winos there's no option, I have to be out there all the time.
"I enjoyed it, but it made me have greater appreciation for Mick's job," Richards added. "I got a finer insight into that."
