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“So sometime in 1987, Mick Taylor showed up at one of our Tribeca bar gigs and sat in for a couple of tunes with the original Chris Carter Band lineup: Frankie Paris (vocals), Chris Cullo (drums), Steve Cullo (bass), and me. THAT was fun!”

“Mick Taylor sitting in with the Frankie Paris band, circa 1987 at the now defunct Galway Bay Bar in Tribeca, New York. He wandered in one night and asked to sit in. I was beyond excited to have the opportunity to get on the same stage with him, but he didn’t have a guitar, so I lent him my strat and took the picture.”

“Mick and myself at the Brick and Wood Café in New Haven, Connecticut, April 1988. Bluffed the owner of the club into meeting Mick backstage before show. Hung out and chatted with him for about 30 minutes. Very cool dude...”

“Sometimes, Mick Taylor would stop because he was out of tune. There was this one little tiny fan in the window up in the corner, which didn’t work very well. Therefore, Ventilator Blues. It’s one of my favorite tunes. It’s about the fan in the window.”

“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.”

“Though I had been producing with some degree of success for some time, Mick and Keith only ever saw me as an engineer. Their process seemed to be getting slower and slower. The flush of Mick Taylor joining the band had subsided somewhat. Substance abuse had changed him almost beyond recognition from the quiet fresh-faced genius I met when he joined the band.”

“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).”

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

MICK JAGGER and MICK TAYLOR performing at Hyde Park in London, July 5, 1969

“The show was meant to reintroduce the band to the public after a seemingly endless hiatus, and to unveil Mick Taylor as the newest Stone, but Brian’s death put a wrench in the works. Killed the buzz, ruined the mood. For a moment, it seemed the show would be canceled. Because: How can you! But Jagger, who always finds a way, simply recast the gig as a memorial. Instead of being the first show post-Brian, it would be a celebration of his life. ‘Brian will be at the concert,’ Jagger told a reporter that morning. ‘I mean, he’ll be there! But it all depends on what you believe in. If you’re agnostic, he’s just dead, and that’s it. When we get there this afternoon, he’s gonna be there. I don’t believe in Western bereavement. You know, I can’t suddenly put on a long black veil and walk the hills. But it is still very upsetting. I want to make it so that Brian’s send-off from the world is filled with as much happiness as possible.’”