The Journey
In April of 1971, The Rolling Stones released the album “Sticky Fingers”. At the time, my wife, Donna and I had just started dating. We met in High School during Study Hall. One of our favorite songs was “Wild Horses”, from the Sticky Fingers album. When we were married in 1976, one of our friends played this song as the processional and recessional at our wedding.
At that time, I had no idea about the back story behind the song or the album.
I remember reading an interview with Keith Richards in Rolling Stone magazine. He was talking about the recording of the song, “Brown Sugar”. He said how you can hear the sound of the room on the opening guitar riff. At that time, I thought he was talking about the Stones mobile recording studio.
In the 2000’s I was watching the movie “Gimme Shelter”. This is a sort of documentary about the Stones 1969/1970 tour of the US. In the film, they showed the Stones going to Muscle Shoals Sound Studio and recording the songs “Brown Sugar” and “Wild Horses”. They also recorded the song “You Gotta Move”. lears Later I watched the 2013 documentary, “Muscle Shoals”. In the film there was more back story about the Stones session there.
I decided at that time to take my brother Bill (aka BIg Daddy) on a road trip. He is a big Duane Allman fan so I figured we could start in Macon, Georgia, where the Allman Bros Band spent a lot of time. Then drive up to Muscle Shoals and your both the Fame and Muscle Shoals Sound studios. Unfortunately, Bill passes away in 2021, so the trip was cancelled.
As I mentioned earlier, my wife, Donna suggested maybe we should make the trip during her Spring Break. ( She is a Kindergarten Teacher. Kind of like a Navy Seal in the education world).
So we headed down to Alabama.