The one musician Mick Jagger would join in a heartbeat: “I hope”
The Rolling Stones feel more like family to Mick Jagger at this point.
Even though the band members have their moments where they disagree, the fact that they have sustained for over half of their lives and remained one of the biggest bands in the world proves that they at least did a few things right. And while Jagger and Keith Richards are still one of the most unbreakable teams in rock history, there are bound to be a few people that Jagger would have never wanted to fall by the wayside.
But being in The Stones is a major tightrope for someone to walk. Anyone would have loved the idea of playing nothing but rock and roll every single night, but the real test is being able to play off of the rest of the band with the right kind of swagger every time you take to the stage. Ronnie Wood might be looked at as the new kid all the time, but there aren’t many people who would argue that he deserved to be a member before he even left The Faces.
Then again, it does get a little bit complicated since Jagger and Richards weren’t the ones who started the group. Brian Jones was the brains of the entire project when they first started, but it was clear that he wasn’t going to go the distance with the band. He was heartbroken about not being able to get all of his ideas out, and while he met a grizzly end far too young, Mick Taylor was the perfect glue that held them together throughout their career.
He was the epitome of a lead guitarist, and even though he was a great musician, he was never in danger of stepping on Keef’s toes… No one was going to worry about him trying to bust out a riff, but there was always a piece of Taylor’s style that never really clicked with the band, which sounds weird considering that he appeared on some of the best albums that the band ever made.
No one’s arguing that Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St are some of the greatest records in their canon, but Taylor’s playing style had a much more fluid style than anything that Richards was used to playing. During Wood’s time in the band, Richards and he would complement each other perfectly, whereas Taylor was looking to make something a little bit more ambitious than the traditional rock and roll song.
You can’t really blame him for wanting to go in different directions, but Jagger admitted that he would have had him back in a heartbeat if he could, saying at the time, “I don’t want to say goodbye to him. I hope I can work with him again. If I do something on my own, I’d like to have Mick along to play, you know? We’ve already talked about this the other day. Maybe I’ll work with him again, quite soon, I hope.”
Anyone else would have called Taylor a complete idiot for jumping off the bandwagon when he did, but it also makes a lot of sense that he didn’t want to carry on. Being able to fit in between Jagger and Richards as songwriters was never going to be easy, and even though he had his hands all over their discography, not getting the credit on every one of the songs he wrote probably didn’t feel too good for him, either.
But Jagger wasn’t one to forget someone like Taylor, and even if he spent the rest of his life working with Wood, the frontman knew that their former guitarist offered them something special they didn’t have before. It was a tragedy to lose him, but Jagger knew that the key to the band being one of the longest-lasting bands of all time was knowing how to pick themselves up and move on.
