The “beautiful” guitarist Keith Richards called everything he wanted
It doesn’t really take a lot of convincing for Keith Richards to want to play with any band.
He loved the idea of jamming with anyone, and even though he liked the idea of keeping The Rolling Stones together at all costs, what made him work so well was being able to have a bunch of musicians that he could relate to every single time he performed live. Being in a band like that involved everyone speaking the same language, and some people were better at speaking that language than others.
Then again, not being able to gel like that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a bad musician. Ian Stewart was clearly one of the most accomplished musicians that The Stones had up their sleeve, but when you look at his musical background and his interest in more sophisticated genres like jazz, it wasn’t like he was going to be playing the perfect counterpoint to every Keith Richards riff.
It all had to do with how you fit in with the rest of the group, and Ronnie Wood practically looked the part before he even auditioned for the job…anyone else would have expected someone like The Faces guitarist to end up in the band at some point or another, and even with all of the great tunes that he has written on his own, hearing the way that he plays off of Richards makes them sound like brothers who have been playing since they were kids.
But every guitarist brought their own sense of showmanship to the table with The Stones. No matter how much Brian Jones didn’t like the idea of getting ridiculed by his bandmates, he could play virtually anything and manage to get it on the record if it sounded honest. And while his dismissal was a long time coming, Mick Taylor was the answer to the band’s prayers the first time he played.
No one would have guessed that the band would get a more mild-mannered guitarist, but that all changed once Taylor started performing. He was willing to dissect every single part of his playing to get what he wanted out of it, and Richards was just happy to try and keep up with what he was doing every single time he worked on a riff or brought a song idea to the table on their classic records.
Taylor wasn’t going to be the bad boy like everyone else, but Richards felt that no one made the band sound better back in the day, saying, “My position was, I’d play with anybody. We could only find out by playing together. And we did the most brilliant stuff together, some of the most brilliant stuff the Stones ever did. Everything was there in his playing – the melodic touch, a beautiful sustain and a way of reading a song.”
And for someone primarily focused on lead guitar, that’s the most that you could ask for. Taylor wasn’t trying to show off every single time he made a solo, but when you listen to him weaving his lines throughout every Stones song, he found the perfect middle ground between their bluesy foundation and the more freeform mentality that was coming out of more accomplished bands like The Allman Brothers or Santana.
There was a lot more room to grow with someone like Taylor, and while he only lasted for a few more years before leaving of his own accord, Richards still had a soft spot for his playing. Everything about his playing was perfect, and even if Wood does a great job these days, there’s no one who could manage to make any of their solos feel as easy as Taylor did whenever he picked up a guitar.
