“It was a one-day marathon. We cut 13 tunes in 14 hours, all old blues songs, with Mick singing live”: In 1992, Mick Jagger made a blues album with an obscure LA bar band. It’s never been released

Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones and The Red Devils’ Lester Butler performing onstage.

In the spring of 1992, Mick Jagger was in Los Angeles preparing his third solo album with Rick Rubin. Jagger’s two previous efforts outside of the Rolling Stones, 1985’s She’s The Boss and 1987’s Primitive Cool, had been little loved and fast forgotten. He’d brought in Rubin to lend him some much-needed credibility. The producer had made his name piloting the Beastie Boys and Run DMC to international acclaim and was fresh from the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ multi-platinum BloodSugarSexMagik album.

Rubin was also working with an LA bar band called the Red Devils at the time, masterminding their debut album for his own Def American Recordings label. A fiery blues collective, the Devils had come to his attention playing a weekly residency at a poky LA club called the King King, a former Chinese restaurant on the corner of 6th and La Brea.