Mick Jagger’s Lost 1992 Blues Album With the Red Devils Has Never Been Released

A one-day marathon session at Ocean Way Recording produced a raw blues record that Jagger shelved in favor of a more commercial sound.

In June 1992, Mick Jagger walked into Ocean Way Recording studios in Hollywood with LA bar band the Red Devils and producer Rick Rubin and cut 13 blues tracks in 14 hours. Jagger sang live, the band tore through standards by Muddy Waters, Bukka White, and others, and Rubin left convinced he had an album. More than three decades later, that session has never received an official release.

How Jagger Ended Up in a Blues Bar on La Brea

The story begins with Jagger’s commercial struggles as a solo artist. His first two solo records, 1985’s She’s The Boss and 1987’s Primitive Cool, had been, as one account put it, little loved and fast forgotten. Looking to rebuild his credibility for a third solo effort, Jagger brought in Rick Rubin, who had made his name with the Beastie Boys, Run DMC, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ multi-platinum BloodSugarSexMagik album.

Rubin was simultaneously working with the Red Devils, a fiery blues collective who held a weekly Monday night residency at the King King, a former Chinese restaurant on the corner of 6th and La Brea in Los Angeles. The club had drawn an unlikely mix of devotees: ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, AC/DC’s Angus and Malcolm Young, and actor Bruce Willis had all been spotted in the crowd, drawn by the band’s raw energy and the harmonica work of frontman Lester Butler.

In May 1992, Rubin brought Jagger down to the King King. Jagger was impressed enough to get up and jam with the band, performing versions of Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love? and Little Walter’s Blues With A Feeling. The following month, Rubin took Jagger and the Red Devils into Ocean Way Recording in Hollywood.

The Session: 13 Tunes, 14 Hours, Mick Singing Live

The recording day was, by any measure, a sprint. “It was a one-day marathon,” recalled Red Devils guitarist Dave Lee Bartel. “We cut 13 tunes in 14 hours, all old blues songs, with Mick singing live.”

The tracks were completed in three or four takes each. The repertoire leaned on deep blues canon, including Muddy Waters’ Forty Days And Forty Nights and Bukka White’s Shake ‘Em On Down. By all accounts, Jagger sounded as engaged as he had been in years, his voice described as raw but impassioned. Rubin left the session convinced he had the album in hand.

• Muddy Waters — Forty Days And Forty Nights
• Bukka White — Shake ‘Em On Down
• Bo Diddley — Who Do You Love? (performed live at King King)
• Little Walter — Blues With A Feeling (performed live at King King)
• Sonny Boy Williamson — Checkin’ Up On My Baby (the only track Jagger officially released)

Why the Album Was Shelved

Jagger ultimately decided the Red Devils recordings sounded too rough for release. He pivoted toward a more commercial direction, recruiting high-profile session players including keyboardist Benmont Tench and drummer Jim Keltner, and spent months with Rubin refining a slicker set of songs. The resulting album, Wandering Spirit, came out early in 1993 and went Gold in the United States, though it barely resonated culturally. It would be Jagger’s last solo album of the 1990s before he returned to the Rolling Stones.

Of the entire Ocean Way blues session, Jagger has officially released only one track: a cover of Sonny Boy Williamson’s Checkin’ Up On My Baby, which appeared on his 2007 Best Of compilation. He has shown no inclination to revisit the rest of the material.

The Red Devils’ Harder Fate

The Red Devils never recovered the momentum that the Rubin association had promised. Their Rubin-produced album, a live record also titled King King, earned strong reviews but sold poorly. The band dissolved in 1994, worn down by frontman Lester Butler’s escalating substance abuse. Butler died of a heroin overdose in 1998 at the age of 38.

The Ocean Way session has not entirely disappeared. The full recording has been posted on YouTube, and physical copies have circulated, with one listed on Amazon for $25. But an official release, with Jagger’s blessing, has never materialized.

What we know

• Mick Jagger recorded a blues session with the Red Devils at Ocean Way Recording in Hollywood in June 1992, produced by Rick Rubin.
• Guitarist Dave Lee Bartel described the session as a one-day marathon in which the band cut 13 tunes in 14 hours, with Jagger singing live.
• The tracks were completed in three or four takes each and included blues standards by Muddy Waters and Bukka White.
• Jagger shelved the Red Devils recordings, judging them too rough, and instead made Wandering Spirit with session musicians including Benmont Tench and Jim Keltner.
• Wandering Spirit was released in early 1993 and went Gold in the US.
• Jagger has officially released only one track from the session: Checkin’ Up On My Baby, which appeared on his 2007 Best Of compilation.
• The Red Devils disbanded in 1994, and frontman Lester Butler died of a heroin overdose in 1998 at age 38.
• The full session has been posted on YouTube and physical copies have been listed on Amazon for $25.

The take

The Ocean Way session sits in a long tradition of rock royalty making private pilgrimages back to the blues, usually with more artistic satisfaction than commercial result. What makes this case unusual is how close it came to being a genuine artifact. Rubin in 1992 was arguably the hottest producer in rock, and his instinct to pair Jagger with a live, unvarnished blues band was sound. The Red Devils were the real thing: a working bar band with no studio gloss, the kind of ensemble that forces a singer to perform rather than construct a performance. Jagger’s decision to pull back toward a polished sound was commercially rational but creatively costly. Wandering Spirit sold respectably and then vanished, while the bootleg session has accumulated a cult following precisely because it sounds like something at stake. The broader pattern here is familiar. Legacy artists who attempt raw, genre-committed side projects often retreat when the results feel uncommercial, and the shelved recordings become the most mythologized work of their later careers. Think of the recordings that circulate for decades as bootlegs before anyone considers a proper release. The Red Devils themselves deserve a footnote beyond this story: their King King album remains a legitimate document of the early-90s LA blues underground, and Butler’s harmonica playing was by all accounts exceptional. That the band’s highest-profile moment exists only as a YouTube upload and a $25 Amazon listing is a particular kind of rock and roll tragedy.

Why it matters

For Classic Rock listeners, this session represents a road not taken in Jagger’s solo career, one that might have repositioned him as a serious blues interpreter rather than a polished pop-rock solo act. It also underscores how much unreleased material from the analog era continues to surface or circulate informally, decades after the fact. With the Red Devils’ key figures gone and Jagger showing no interest in revisiting the recordings, an official release seems unlikely, which makes the bootleg’s existence all the more significant as a historical document.

What’s next

No official release of the Ocean Way session has been announced. The full recording remains available on YouTube, and physical copies continue to circulate through secondary markets. Jagger’s only official contribution from the session remains Checkin’ Up On My Baby on his 2007 Best Of compilation.

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