The concept for the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio came about in 1968 when the Rolling Stones, tired of the 9-to-5 limitations of commercial recording studios and being billed for studio time sometimes spent rehearsing or composing, decided to find a way to record at
Mick Jagger's new
Stargroves country estate. Since recording at this residential location would require all of the necessary recording equipment to be transported to Jagger's house, the band's road manager and pianist
Ian Stewart introduced the idea of building a recording studio control room within a truck. Under Stewart's guidance, a number of top engineers and producers, including
Glyn Johns, were consulted in the project's creation, which was then taken to Dick Swettenham's company
Helios Electronics. Known for making mixing consoles for some of the most exclusive studios of the time, the company then produced the first working version of the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio. Originally intended only for use by The Rolling Stones, the RSM soon gained popularity with other rock bands, such as
The Who,
The Faces and
Led Zeppelin. Several classic albums were recorded with the Mobile Studio, including most of Led Zeppelin's
Led Zeppelin III (1970) and
Led Zeppelin IV (1971), much of The Rolling Stones'
Sticky Fingers (1971) and
Exile on Main St. (1972), as well as the Stones' 1969 Hyde Park concert. The unit was used in a large variety of locations, everywhere from halls to barns to castles and the
casino at
Montreux, Switzerland. During the making of the sixth Deep Purple album,
Machine Head, the Mobile nearly caught fire as it stood next to the casino, which was set ablaze during a
Frank Zappa concert. This incident became the inspiration behind Deep Purple's most famous song, "
Smoke on the Water", which mentioned the Mobile in the lyrics ("We all came out to Montreux ... to make records with a mobile") and later referred to the Mobile as the "Rolling truck Stones thing". In spring 1973,
Tapani Tapanainen was hired as the RSM's permanent assistant sound engineer. During
the Rolling Stones 1973 European Tour, Mick McKenna joined the RSM and, working with Ian Stewart until his death in 1985, undertook the future development of the mobile studio to suit the changing patterns of work. From 1974 to 1975, the RSM was upgraded significantly. The 16-track recorder was upgraded to a
3M 24-track recorder and 12 new inputs were added to make a total of 32 inputs. Additionally, a large amount of work was done to improve the acoustic sound of the unit. In 1999, the "final" show of
DGeneration, at Coney Island High in the East Village, NYC was recorded from the Mobile by Loho Studios' staff engineer, Greg Di Gesu. The unit is currently owned by the
National Music Centre in Calgary, Alberta, Canada (Cantos Music Collection acquired it in November 2001). == Notable projects ==