Did that headline get your attention? Full disclosure: This isn’t exactly breaking news. Rather, it refers to a magic moment in 1975 when ace guitarist Robert A. Johnson (no relation to the bluesman, and now a respected producer) was called to an audition seeking replacements for Mick Taylor, who’d been the band’s guitarist since the demise of Brian Jones. And that tryout involved recording tracks for the Stones’ next album. It was a dream come true for the then-23-year-old lad from North Memphis, dubbed “The Frayser Flash” by some. Yet for decades, those tracks sat on a shelf.
That made it all the more galvanizing when it was announced that on Friday, November 14th, Interscope/UMe would release a “super deluxe” box set (in four-CD and five-LP versions) of the Stones’ 1976 album, Black and Blue, with remixes of the original tracks, two live concerts from the time, a 100-page book, and, most relevant to Johnson, previously unheard tracks from the sessions. Today, perusing the credits of the soon-to-be-released collection, one can finally see Johnson properly acknowledged on at least one of the previously unreleased cuts, “Rotterdam Jam,” also featuring Jeff Beck and, of course, Keith Richards.
Johnson had known Beck since he’d come to Memphis to record “The Orange Album,” as 1972’s Jeff Beck Group LP is known, with Steve Cropper. He’d even sold Beck a guitar, later immortalized as “The Oxblood” Les Paul that sold for $1,315,708 after Beck’s death. But Johnson was not expecting to see him at a Stones audition.
Of course, this wasn’t your typical Stones session, taking place in Rotterdam while the band floated around Europe in 1974-75. During this period, they tried out a few guitarists.
At the time, Johnson’s reputation across the pond was growing. After some years in Isaac Hayes’ band, he began visiting England, and in September of 1974, he was asked to audition for The Ox, bassist John Entwistle’s solo project when he wasn’t playing with The Who. At the appointed hour, the rehearsal hall, filled with The Who’s gear, had several other guitarists vying for the spot. Johnson walked in and addressed them: “Guys, y’all better go home because I’m getting this f*cking job.” He did.
At a recording session in December, Johnson, still in England, happened to be working with Nicky Hopkins, the legendary session keyboardist who played on classic tracks by the Beatles, the Kinks, and countless others. During a break in recording, Hopkins approached Johnson. “He says, ‘Hey, Robert, Mick Taylor just quit the Rolling Stones. I want to give your phone number to Mick Jagger — do you mind?’”
Johnson gave his blessing, but nothing seemed to come of it. Meanwhile, says Johnson, “All you saw every day in the newspapers, all the trades, New Musical Express, Melody Maker, and Sounds, was ‘Who’s going to be in the Stones?’” Finally, while Johnson was in London, the phone rang and the voice on the line said, “Hey, Robby, it’s Mick. We want to know if you want to come over and have a play with us.” As Johnson recalls, “I was going, ‘Who is this?’ I thought somebody was playing a joke on me.”
As it turned out, it really was Mick Jagger, and by the next morning Johnson was on the first flight to Rotterdam, Holland, where the Stones were holding court in a large orchestral rehearsal space. “I get to the hotel,” Johnson explains, “it’s about 8:30 in the morning, and I buzz the room, and Jagger answers and says, ‘Hey, did you make it okay? How’s your room? Did you bring your guitar?’ Yeah, yeah, of course I brought my guitar. And then he says, ‘Okay, we’re going to bed now. I’ll call you about 5 or 6 o’clock in the afternoon.’”
That evening, Johnson, the band, and their entourage headed to “sort of a side room off this huge auditorium, like a banquet room. And it took me about an hour to find an amp that worked. Of course, they were, you know, ‘partaking’ a little bit. Finally, we got down to a little bit of jamming, and then I look up at the back of the room and there’s Jeff Beck standing with a road guy holding two guitars. He’s got a big cigar in his mouth.”
One of those guitars was The Oxblood, and, as the evening wore on, all of them jammed. Some tracks were recorded with a mobile studio, engineered by Glyn Johns, and then everyone “went back to hotel and proceeded to take over the bar and drink till the wee hours of the morning,” Johnson recalls. “And I was told that night that they’d already chosen Ronnie Wood. They were just trying to get tracks cut and play the field and play with the newspapers and spread rumors, but really they were just trying to get Ronnie out of his contract with the Faces.”
Yet there was more in store for Johnson. The next day there was more jamming, then Beck returned to London and Billy Preston showed up. Johnson stayed into the night as the band worked on the prospective album track “Built That Way.” It was not destined to be included on Black and Blue, nor is it on the new box set, but will likely be in a future compilation of outtakes from the band’s middle era. “We want you to have a blow,” Jagger said to Johnson. “Mick says, ‘We’re dying to get you to have a blow on the track because we know you’re the lead guitar player and more like the Mick Taylor kind of thing.’ And so I put some headphones on and just played that solo. Then Keith said, ‘That’s great!’” Upon playback, Johnson told them, “I can definitely do it much better.” But the Stones weren’t having it. “They go, ‘Man, you’re not touching that!’ And then I had to get back to London because I was in John Entwistle’s band, and we were getting ready to be on The Old Grey Whistle Test.”
While the jams and “Built That Way” have since been leaked on bootlegs, the new box set is the first official release of Stones material featuring Johnson. And, he says, they didn’t even get those credits right. In addition to “Rotterdam Jam,” on which Johnson solos and contributes choppy funk guitar, “Freeway Jam” also features three guitars (Johnson, Beck, and Richards), with Johnson’s Memphis soul licks clearly audible, while Johnson also identifies his guitar, muted but bleeding through, on “Blues Jam.”
Today, Johnson, who’s traveling to London this week for a VIP listening event centered on the new box set, is both delighted and “frustrated.” He finally has that credit on one Rolling Stones track, yet he knows he was on two others. “Of course, I was just a young kid when this was all happening,” he reflects. “But hey, man, I’d have been super bummed if I wasn’t on [the box set] at all. I’ll take it, and if I am on these other tracks, I’m just gonna say [to the Rolling Stones], ‘You can make it up to me by letting me play on one song at one of your concerts.’”