on guitar, mick taylor!

“The Rolling Stones just sort of materialised, like this amazing mist. I think it was about 3 a.m. Things were getting quieter, and lo and behold this limo pulls up out front.

It astonished me they came that late, because we all knew they had a noon show at Kooyong the next day. [Mick Taylor] was very interested that Robin Boyd had co-designed the house with my father and I remember this very beautifully dressed, stunning and quite shy young man talking at length to Mum.”

KEITH RICHARDS, MICK TAYLOR, and MICK JAGGER in Gimme Shelter (1970)

“By the time we hit Dallas, the band were playing as well as they ever had. Mick Taylor was proving to be an inspired choice on second guitar, playing with a deftness that belied his age. He was a great blues player and his self-effacing surety of touch added immeasurably to the band’s overall sound. Keith was re-energized after several years of having to carry the load, and once more the ‘dueling guitars’ at the center of the Rolling Stones’ sound led the charge.

Mick Taylor was an interesting study in what happens to a man who joins the Rolling Stones. He was an all-round lovely guy, without a hint of arrogance or ego. I did my best to ease his transition, but the Rolling Stones put him to work, swallowed him up greedily, and were eventually to spit him out a wasted and hollow man. [...] On the 1969 tour, Taylor was one of the stars, as musically eloquent as the great B.B. King, who opened many of the shows. The man could play.”

MICK TAYLOR and MICK JAGGER performing at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, December 14, 1981

“There was one moment on tour where Mick Taylor came and played with us on a show, but he was so loud—I don’t know if it was out of nerves or what—that Keith was about to wring his neck. I had to try and block Keith’s path a few times during the songs. He was going, ‘I’m going to kill him’. I don’t know how the two of them managed to make it work as long as they did.”

“He shocked us with how loud he was blasting it... bulldozing through parts of songs that should have been subtle, ignoring breaks and taking uninvited solos.”

“Mick Taylor? He was the guitar player in the Rolling Stones after Brian Jones died. I’ve seen the Rolling Stones four times, but the first time I saw them was on the 4th of July, 1972 at RFK Stadium here in DC. General admission concert, about 55,000 of us. Stevie Wonder opened up, go figure. But Mick Taylor was the second guitar player behind Keith that night.

I met Mick Taylor a few years later in Richmond. He was playing with Alvin Lee and his new band, and they were opening up for Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio. Through hook and crook we got backstage passes and then we got into the hotel room down the road. This photograph is from the hotel. That’s the late John MacArthur in the brown jacket and Mick Taylor sitting in the chair behind him. On the right it’s me when I had brown hair and brown eyebrows and that’s Alvin Lee extending his hand to shake John’s hand. He got cut out of the picture a little bit. Alvin Lee was very cool too.”

“Basically, there’s not really any room for another songwriter in our band. I’d like to be involved if I could, and I’m sure Ronnie Wood would. And Mick Taylor definitely wanted to be, which was one of his frustrations. So it’s a little bit of a drag, but if you only record one album every eighteen months or so, which is what we've done for the last eight years, there’s not much room for anyone else. By the time we get around to recording, Mick and Keith have so many songs ready that they have to weed tunes out.”

“Mick Taylor was a fabulous musician, he really was. So quick and clever at inventing something or learning something … as far as I was concerned, he was the best musician in the band. Technically brilliant. But when [he] was in the band, it became three groups of people … he’s been away from the band for a long time now, and he hasn’t got his shit together.”

“I was more concerned with paying a good homage to—and making a good representation of—all the things that Mick Taylor had laid down during the period while he had been with the band; his melodies and his virtuosity. If I am playing a song like All Down The Line it’s a tribute to Mick Taylor’s playing, and if we play Can’t You Hear Me Knocking I’m doing Mick Taylor, only now I can take it off somewhere else.

I always thought that I would never be able to play like Mick, while he thought he was no good—he thinks I’m far better than him and I’ll say, ‘Come on, Mick, get out of here,’ but he honestly believes that. I didn’t dwell on it too long. I knew that I had it inside me to play things my way, but to add the flavour of Mick Taylor as well is cool.”

“Mick Taylor and I are two different kettles of fish. I tend to open up the nonsense side combined with getting down to good music whereas Mick was good music and seriousness. And [the Rolling Stones] have realized that they really didn’t dig that when I came around.”

THE ROLLING STONES photographed during rehearsal for the Hyde Park free concert, July 1969

“Mick Taylor remembers their first rehearsal as ‘really ragged. I thought, how do these guys make such great records when they’re so sloppy and spontaneous? But it was because they had this great chemistry.’”

Four days later Mick Taylor was introduced to the world at a photo session beside the bandstand in Hyde Park. With his tall, willowy good looks and clear blue eyes, he looked barely old enough to be out of school. He revealed to reporters hungry for an angle that he was a teetotal vegetarian. “I want to be as naturally healthy and aware as I can,” he explained shyly.

“Why did you choose him, Mick?” someone asked Jagger. “‘Cos I fancy him, don’t I?” he replied camply, and everybody laughed. “Did you really mean all that stuff about not drinking?” Keith asked incredulously later. “Sure.” Mick grinned. “But I wouldn’t say no if you were to offer me a bit of smoke.”

MICK TAYLOR performing his first live gig as a Rolling Stone at Hyde Park in London, July 5, 1969

“Mick Taylor tried shyly to hide behind the hair billowing around his shoulders as he played hopelessly out of time. And I became very aware of how much Brian’s strutting, mincing, desperate to be loved stance had been a vital part of the Stones’ appeal. Mick Taylor appeared to have about as much charisma as Bill Wyman (and you can’t have much less than that).”