“A big influence”: how Mick Taylor saved The Rolling Stones
In the creative arts, comparisons are often pointless and futile. With so much subjectivity involved, arguments over who was the best guitarist or which was the superior album are usually impossible to resolve. That said, one can say with a degree of confidence that Revolver was better than Beatles for Sale and that John Entwistle was a better bassist than Sid Vicious. Hence, when discussing various guitarists of The Rolling Stones, it is wise to judge each on their individual merits.
Keith Richards, the spiritual hub of The Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger’s songwriting partner, is the band’s longest-serving guitarist. Throughout much of the band’s material, they profit handsomely from two guitarists trading licks and chord progressions. While many rock bands delegate rhythm duties to one and lead to the other, Richards and his partner, be that Brian Jones, Mick Taylor or Ronnie Wood, tended to trade duties.
Jones, Taylor and Wood, who traded places in The Rolling Stones in that order, marked out three distinctive chapters in the band’s history. The latter two are often compared directly since one succeeded the other as Richards’ guitar partner. However, we generally consider Jones a multi-instrumentalist; while he adhered faithfully to the blues, he cast his instrumental net much wider.
As far as Jones was concerned, The Rolling Stones accomplished their mission at the end of 1964, when their cover of Willie Dixon’s effort ‘Little Red Rooster’ reached number one on the UK Singles Chart. This was undoubtedly the proudest moment of his career, and since the song remains the only blues song to achieve such a feat, this stance was justified.
Through the mid-1960s, the Jagger-Richards partnership grew from strength to strength, gradually derailing Jones’ blues-centric vision in the name of popular acclaim and original composition. As a chasm formed between Jones and his bandmates, he became increasingly withdrawn but jumped on the psychedelic bandwagon to exhibit his instrumental dexterity, with an alto recorder on ‘Ruby Tuesday’, a sitar in ‘Paint it Black’ and the mellotron in ‘She’s a Rainbow’.
Jones finally bowed out following Beggars Banquet, the 1968 album that saw The Stones return to their associated blues rock sound after a psychedelic excursion. His contributions were limited but highlighted by the brilliant slide guitar work on ‘No Expectations’. His departure was mostly amicable, amid a spiralling drug habit, but far from congenial.
When Jones died, less than a month after leaving The Stones, Richards and Jagger were notably absent from his funeral. “Because he’s dead, I can say, ‘Oh, Brian was a fantastic musician’, but it wasn’t true. Brian wasn’t a great musician,” Richards appraised in a 1974 conversation with the NME. “He did have a certain feel for certain things, but then everybody in the band has that for certain things, too. And there was a nice bit of chemistry there for a while, which unfortunately didn’t stay.”
Jones was famously difficult to work with, especially later in the 1960s, and it is apparent that resentment lingered. However, Richards detailed that Jones’ weakness was songwriting and composition. “Brian, as far as I know, never wrote a single finished song in ‘is life,” he added. “He wrote bits and pieces, but he never presented them to us. No doubt he spent hours, weeks, working on things – but his paranoia was so great that he could never bring himself to present it to us.”
Following Jones’ departure in June 1969, John Mayall recommended one of his Bluesbreakers, Mick Taylor, as a replacement. As far as the 20-year-old prodigy knew at the time, his first meeting with The Stones was for session work. Little did he know, it was an audition of sorts. Hugely impressed, Jagger and Richards invited Taylor to return to the studio to record overdubs for the Let It Bleed tracks ‘Country Honk’ and ‘Live With Me’ and the accompanying single, ‘Honky Tonk Women’.
Taylor played his first concert as a Rolling Stone on July 5th in Hyde Park. It was a poignant and pivotal day for the band, during which Jagger released a box of butterflies in tribute to the recently deceased Jones. At this moment, the baton changed hands, and a new chapter began.
It is difficult to say how the next few years would have panned out for The Stones had they not found Taylor, but they likely wouldn’t have been quite so impactful. Fortunately, Taylor joined at a time when Jagger and Richards’ writing struck a zenith of blues rock ingenuity, and the new guitarist had a vast impact on the new creative direction, coming up with “line after beautiful line,” as Richards remembered in a 2022 interview with Guitar World. “What a player!” he added.
Let It Bleed, The Stones’ first album working with producer Jimmy Miller, was a dip of the toe before the full creative immersion of Sticky Fingers. “I really think Mick Taylor had a big influence on the direction the band took,” engineer Andy Johns once noted. “They started working with Jimmy Miller… obviously, it got very much more rock and roll. Then Mick comes along, and it really sort of puts the icing on the cake. They went in that direction because they could start jamming again. They hadn’t been jamming for a long time.”
As a senior member of the band, Richards was both impressed and covetous in the presence of Taylor’s innovative virtuosity. “I could sit and listen to Mick Taylor all night,” Johns continued. “He would never make a mistake, and every take would be different. And he’d make you cry. It really was good … I loved listening to him play night after night after night. It was not boring.”
Richards and Taylor soon developed chemistry in the studio that remains unrivalled in the rock guitar pantheon. Any envy the elder of the two had going into the Sticky Fingers sessions gave way to mutual appreciation after they realised that, trading licks together, they could create something truly exceptional. “Generally, I tried to bring my own distinctive sound and style to Sticky Fingers, and I like to think I added some extra spice,” Taylor once mused. “I don’t want to say ‘sophistication’ – I think that sounds pretentious. Charlie [Watts] said I brought ‘finesse’. That’s a better word. I’ll go with what Charlie said.”
Many fans regard Sticky Fingers and its follow-up Exile on Main St. as The Stones’ finest releases. Greatness came before and after, but never in such abundance and consistency. While one would be hesitant to attribute this triumphant period entirely to Taylor, his instrumental talent and infectious creativity were a vital presence. Without this crucial chapter, the band may have run out of steam long ago.
In 1987, Richards reflected on the three chapters as defined by his guitar partners. “I think some of our best work was probably with Mick Taylor,” he told Rolling Stone. However, he maintained that he always had the “most fun” playing with Wood because he is “the most open”. He concluded, “Ronnie’s incredibly underrated in a lot of ways.”
