Thanksgiving at Muscle Shoals

Over Thanksgiving we visited the bathroom that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards locked themselves into for two hours to write "Wild Horses." It's a small bathroom, as is the building that holds the newly restored Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

My wife Amy's hometown is right next door, in Florence, and we got personal tours of both Muscle Shoals and FAME Studios. Florence Alabama Music Enterprises (FAME) had its first success with the 1961 hit by Arthur Alexander, "You Better Move On," and the studio did move on, to record Wilson Pickett's "Land of a Thousand Dances," Etta James' "Tell Mama," and dozens more records that went platinum and changed the pop landscape. It is where Aretha Franklin launched her soul career in 1967 with "Never Loved a Man the Way that I Love You." I sat down at the very same Wurlitzer piano that Spooner Oldham played for that great opening hook at the top of that song.

Our visit to the second studio-- Muscle Shoals Sound Studios-- was the coolest part of our day. We pulled up to the place and no one was around and the doors were locked. We peered through the windows and didn't see much. We took some pics of the building. Then a man in a pick up pulled in and parked behind us, and he was Noel Webster, the current owner of the studio, the man responsible for restoring the place after a few years of its being shut down, and the man responsible for getting the place on the National Historic Registry. (Sun Studios is the only other studio so designated.)

Noel was happy to see us and we hung out a long time. Saw the bathroom, yes, and the vintage console and the two-inch tape set up. All vintage gear, down to the original orange vinyl sofa and chair used for breaks. But the big deal was the timeless genius of the place itself, the great and rare acoustics: a warm sound, due in large part to the wooden floor and a whole lot of hard and soft surfaces in a relationship that could never be engineered by anything but good fortune. They still get reverb by dropping a mic down into the basement (Chess did the same thing. Did STAX?). Music just sounds good in there. Cozy and warm, it's a perfect place to record a rocker like "Brown Sugar" or a ballad like "Many Rivers to Cross"

Most of us know the history: In 1969, the legendary FAME house band started Muscle Shoals Sound in a tiny ex-casket factory not too far from FAME, out on Jackson Highway, with a loan from Atlantic's Jerry Wexler. The new musician-owned studio went on to create a big chunk of rock and roots history: The Rolling Stones, Bob Seger, Millie Jackson, Traffic, The Staple Singers, Paul Simon, Leon Russell, Bobby Womack, Delbert McClinton, Jimmy Cliff, Willie Nelson, Rod Stewart, and again, Aretha Franklin-- they all went to Muscle Shoals, 65 miles, at the time, from any Interstate Highway, to isolate and do nothing but work inside the music.

Phil Collins and Tom Petty have booked Muscle Shoals sessions this December. Noel continues his cause to get STAX, Capricorn, Capitol, Chess, Motown and other studios on to the National Registry, to restore them as needed and keep them restored and safe from destruction, to honor the music that came out of churches, farms, factories, bars and high schools to change everything. Yeah, everything.

So guys-- how about a trip to northwest Alabama?