Unlike their prior effort eight years before, the sprawling and eclectic "Bridges to Babylon", which had a bewildering array of producers, musical styles, and guest musicians, the Stones set out to make a basic, hard rock album that hearkened back to their 1970s heyday. A single producer, Don Was, was brought in to co-produce the album alongside the band's principal songwriting and production team of vocalist Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Joining the two were band members Ronnie Wood on guitar and Charlie Watts on drums, contract players Darryl Jones on bass and Chuck Leavell on keyboards, and multi-instrumentalist Matt Clifford. Most of the basic tracks were recorded as a simple trio of Jagger, Richards, and Watts, with overdubs added later by other players.