UK Discovers Whereabouts of Fabled Rolling Stones Mobile Record Unit (Hint: It’s in Canada)

The Rolling Stones mobile recording unit.  Used to make Exile on Main Street at Nellcôte in the South of France. Parked outside Headley Grange as Led Zeppelin recorded “Stairway to Heaven.”  Immoratalized in the lyrics of “Smoke on the Water.”  It is, quite simply, the most famous and storied mobile recording struck ever constructed.

And it’s in Calgary?  Yep.

I’ve been doing some work with the National Music Centre, a massive project that will eventually rise in downtown Calgary and because home to all the history and glory of Canadian music.  Over the years, they’ve been quietly acquiring artifacts for the new building which will open in 2015.  

When I last visited, a played with a Melltron, mixing desks from both the legendary Olympic and Trident recording studios in London and fiddled with the actual ARP synthesizer seen generating the greeting notes to the aliens in Close in Encouters of the Third Kind.

I was also told that in the basement, they had the Rolling Stones mobile.   Apparently it was purchased from some dude in New Jersey back in 2000 for many thousands in cash delivered in a paper bag.

The plan is to refurbish the mobile so it can once again be used for artists who wish to recorded at the NMC when it’s completed.  

This week, the NME discovered that the truck had made it to the colonies.  Cool, no?