From bruce@ashbysolutions.com Tue Feb 07 09:55:15 2006
Subject:RE: Chuck Leavell and the Stones (quickly becoming OT)

At 11:36 AM 2/7/2006 -0500, you wrote:
>Chuck is an amazing player, and it is sort of sad that he's not louder in
>the mix.
>
>However, an amazing number of Stones tunes have piano in them. It's really
>low in the mix, but part of the tune.

Yeah, but many of them could easily do without the keys, and still be great rock songs, IMHO. "Wild Horses" is one that comes to mind. For me, the piano lines are great, and will always be part of what I remember about the song. That said, I've heard a couple of all-guitar covers of the song, and they were really good. I never came away saying, "Aw, it really needed the keyboard part."

To me, if an instrument is constantly low in the mix, it's something of an afterthought or "sweetener," and it seems a shame to sending Mr. Leavell to that job on a regular basis. I'm not saying that he needs to be forefront in each song. Jon Lord's keyboard parts were often "just" a rhythm comp, but take them away and the song was never the same. I don't think that you can really say that about most Rolling Stones songs. If he left tomorrow, the band might miss him dearly, but the audience wouldn't.

I think we should probably just agree to disagree on this one.

Regards,

-BW

--
Bruce Wahler
Design Consultant
Ashby Solutions™ http://consult.ashbysolutions.com
978.386.7389 voice/fax
bruce@ashbysolutions.com

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