I have never heard this side of a debate but found myself in it the tother
night. I was playing 'Nasty Music aka Timeless Europe and 3 of 4 more titles and
a guy said he hated the way Mick Taylor noodled on every song especially 'Happy'
where he says he ruined it.
He said he never understood the greatetness of MT and why some fans love him
over Jones or Wood. he even stated Wood's playing is much closer the original
studio tracks.

Then he went on about MT noodling being extra licks that go nowhere or make any
sense to the song. Blew me away, I just listened and drank...

I personally think MT was a superb choice in 1969, and contributed mightily to Ya Yas, Sticky, Exile, - then, with Keith nodding into his GH soup for much of that album, or playing bass, Taylor's lyricism really shines: on Winter, 100Years, Heartbreaker, etc. However I always felt his work on IORR is overrated, and since he didnt bother to appear for some of the IORR sessions its no wonder. At his worst (Time Waits for No One, Short & Curlies) he's too baroque or predictable. Sometimes on the 73 tour he seems to overplay, other shows he's spectacular. And btw I love Ron Wood.

I get annoyed at MT's noodling sometimes myself. Sometimes in Rambler I wish he would just stop. Especially when they're approaching the big break and Jagger keeps rattling on about 'go down on me baby'.

Ronnie adds nothing, so rather than go see the Stones, your friend can save a few hundred bucks and listen to the album over and over and over and over and over.

I'll take the possibility of fantastic over 'just like the record' any day.

Wow - if you guys get annoying with this playing just what kind of guitar players
do you like???

Thank god there was: Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Hendrix, Page, Frampton in Humble Pie, Alvin Lee, MICK TAYLOR, Gary Moore, Rickie Blackmore, Robin Trower, Dave Mason and the lot when I was going to concerts..

O and the American boys - Duane Allman, Toy Caldwell, Les Dudek...

Miss those days!!!

MLC

noodle ..meaning ?

i know what he means i've heard it; EVERY single line he went down did not EVERY single time strike a pot of platinum grace; sometimes u can hear him reaching, and yes, overplaying...mebbe even bored and myopic at the end; mayber bored and myopic and on lots of tasty heroin too, at the end. maybe that's why he left....he said he left to save himself,...i tend to believe that more than believing he had a superstardom hard-on for the taylor bruce band per se...he had been the hugest star for years. with all that it brings. good and bad.

...i'm a huge huge taylor fan but i know what's being talked about here. i only found this on one or two occasions on boots. i'm sorry i can't be more specific at this moment about which songs on which boots....but i'm pretty sure they're 73 and shows at the end of his tenure...which also IT SHOULD BE NOTED, were amongst the best and most trancendental powerhouse playing he's ever done imo...

so i kinda 'get' what the 'issue' is but i don't give it much credence personally; he is SO consistent....so ON it; i'm sure not every solo he ever played at every concert he ever played was totally articulate with appropriate crescendos after setting some melodious riffs into soaring lines this way and that in a coherent build blahhdy blaah...he still the man.

I agree with Beely --

As to the original post, I agree that his playing didn't totally fit in a couple of places in the version of Happy in question. Still, it wasn't a horrible offense. In my opinion, the strength of Taylor, as opposed to some other hot shot guitarists, is that he did so often fit in. My take on that is that he made a deliberate, conscious effort to do so...It was not quite as true in the Fall of '73 as it had been before, but still...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-07-15 02:31 by texas fan.

I'd rather listen to Mick Taylor 'noodle' or 'overplay' anytime over Ron Wood botching solo's from that era

I love Handsome Girls but Wood's solo on All Down The Line is brutal

Why must these threads degenerate into Taylor good/ Wood bad rhetoric. I'd rather hear Wood's Now Look or Faces or 'No Use Crying' or Handsome Girls and the verions of 'Undercover' or 'You Got The Silver' from 'Shine a Light'....But I can still give credit to Taylor for 4 or 5 great Stones years, and on some occasions since (i.e. w. Carla Olsson)

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john r
Why must these threads degenerate into Taylor good/ Wood bad rhetoric. I'd rather hear Wood's Now Look or Faces or 'No Use Crying' or Handsome Girls and the verions of 'Undercover' or 'You Got The Silver' from 'Shine a Light'....But I can still give credit to Taylor for 4 or 5 great Stones years, and on some occasions since (i.e. w. Carla Olsson)

Wood stinks on "Shine A Light". It's a travesty. The Exile version is majestic. He's essentially playing Keith's part(s) on "Silver", and I agree - on that one he is good - but I would still rather have had Keith not lost his ability to sing and play at the same time. He was doing "Silver" in a chair for a while, and it worked fine, then next thing you know he abandons the guitar completely.

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jjflash73
I have never heard this side of a debate but found myself in it the tother
night. I was playing 'Nasty Music aka Timeless Europe and 3 of 4 more titles and
a guy said he hated the way Mick Taylor noodled on every song especially 'Happy'
where he says he ruined it.
He said he never understood the greatetness of MT and why some fans love him
over Jones or Wood. he even stated Wood's playing is much closer the original
studio tracks.

Then he went on about MT noodling being extra licks that go nowhere or make any
sense to the song. Blew me away, I just listened and drank...

If my "friend" had made such an ignorant comment, he would no longer be my friend. What else has he "never understood", why children love Christmas and puppies?

First, I've made this same "too many noodles spoil the soup" argument on
the internet for the last 15 years (and for at least five years before that).
Plus I'm even a stranger bird in that I was a Mick Taylor fanatic before that,
from when he first joined, and especially since the afternoon I saw them
live at MSG in 1972. I used to live and breathe Brussels too. But eventually
my perceptions changed. Taylor's live playing went from being uniformly
brilliant to my ears to instead being often a whole lot of overplaying,
inappropriate to the structure and emotion of the song. I still think Taylor
is a brilliant player, just one with bad taste. And I still love his studio
work with the Stones, where he was under the firm guiding and editing
hands of big brothers Mick and Keith. They brought out his best. On his own,
Taylor sucks. Some people just need guidance, no matter how much they think
they don't.

1. I like good tasting noodles (or noodling)
2. I like extra noodles in my soup and ramen.

How can you get extra noodles in Ramen? Cook another pack?

For me, some of MTs best solos have a such a majesty that they lifted the Stones to another level. Ronnie added a muscular energy that kept the Stones from becoming irrelevant. Best of both worlds.

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mckalk
How can you get extra noodles in Ramen? Cook another pack?

I work in Little Tokyo (Los Angeles), the Ramen place I go to for lunch will put extra noodles in the Ramen for $1.50.

So sorry, don't mean to hijack thread

<Taylor sucks. Some people just need guidance, no matter how much they think
they don't.>

Not to mention the Stones after '76.I'am talking about music. Not glamour,circus and fame.

Taylor's playing is a little more understated on the '69 Tour and I feel it complimented Keith's style quite perfectly. By '73 however, like some others, I do feel that the soloing was a little much at times. Much of it is brilliant, but sometimes...

Whenever a Taylor and/ or Wood thread seems to be over another one pops in...

To call Mick Taylor´s playing "noodling" is simply not understandable.
There may be some weaker tracks concerning the studio work released by the time
he was part of the Stones,but one can´t blame him for this seriously.

And the live performances of the Stones with Taylor I´ve heard so far from ´69-´73
are mostly very good,some of course excellent, others pure magic.

As much as I like and respect Ronnie for his work and contribution for me Taylor
was much more important and without any doubt of incredible worth to the music of the Stones.

Taylor set a level not only Ronnie couldn´t touch.
And that´s,of course, something Ronnie can´t be blamed for.

the issue of noodling is interesting. If you like the fills, or like the solos, it's not noodling. If, for some reason, you don't find it fits and/or you perceive it lacks focus (according to your own sensibility), it's noodling. I think my notions of noodling are correct; so does everyone else.

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texas fan
the issue of noodling is interesting. If you like the fills, or like the solos, it's not noodling. If, for some reason, you don't find it fits and/or you perceive it lacks focus (according to your own sensibility), it's noodling. I think my notions of noodling are correct; so does everyone else.

Square imo.
You got good noodling and bad noodling.
Taylor's noodling with the Stones and Jagger's singing at the same time always sounded great to me to me.There are no borders in noodling and music in general, as long as it's tasteful.

I always loved Taylor's noodling (with the only exception of his playing on Sugar), and in particular him soloing over Jagger. On the other hand it is very much a matter of personal taste. Some truly hate this. I know a lot of people who just can't stand long solos. I remember having a singer in the band that went mad when I played a solo "a la Taylor" while he sang. OK, in my case I am no Taylor and probably that had something to do with his reaction ...

C

Noodling on Happy? Seems like an odd choice to highlight. You can make the case on some of his other efforts, but not Happy. It's perfect.

Chopin used to "noodle" on the piano too.

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liddas
I always loved Taylor's noodling (with the only exception of his playing on Sugar), and in particular him soloing over Jagger. On the other hand it is very much a matter of personal taste. Some truly hate this. I know a lot of people who just can't stand long solos. I remember having a singer in the band that went mad when I played a solo "a la Taylor" while he sang. OK, in my case I am no Taylor and probably that had something to do with his reaction ...

C

Liddas, I think it's very difficult for a singer to sing while a guitarist is playing along with him or her the way Taylor did. Maybe that explains your singer's reaction. I always have admired Jagger for that, because it surely wasn't always easy for him to do. But it created great music to my taste. The interplay between Jagger, Taylor and Richards, supported in a magnificent way by Wyman and Watts. That's the Stones I love the most. They were more than outstanding during that last week of their 1973 tour. Man, I'll never forget it.

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texas fan
the issue of noodling is interesting. If you like the fills, or like the solos, it's not noodling. If, for some reason, you don't find it fits and/or you perceive it lacks focus (according to your own sensibility), it's noodling. I think my notions of noodling are correct; so does everyone else.

The question is not noodling or not noodling, solos or no solos. The question is taste. Live, Ronnie took (takes?) as many solos as Taylor did. It is the quality of them that is the issue. Taylor worked within the same song structures that Wood did. What he did with his guitar - as a soloist, with fills or even rhythm (as in '69) was spectacular. Melodic, precise, well-thought out. What Wood does live all too often is hack away to fill space. Did Taylor play too "much" in '73? Reasonable people can disagree, and although I prefer the '69-'72 eras, '73 was a very powerful version of the band live, and the end of an era. I like it just fine, and it is certainly better than anything that came after.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-07-15 18:38 by 71Tele.

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kleermaker

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liddas
I always loved Taylor's noodling (with the only exception of his playing on Sugar), and in particular him soloing over Jagger. On the other hand it is very much a matter of personal taste. Some truly hate this. I know a lot of people who just can't stand long solos. I remember having a singer in the band that went mad when I played a solo "a la Taylor" while he sang. OK, in my case I am no Taylor and probably that had something to do with his reaction ...

C

Liddas, I think it's very difficult for a singer to sing while a guitarist is playing along with him or her the way Taylor did. Maybe that explains your singer's reaction. I always have admired Jagger for that, because it surely wasn't always easy for him to do.

I am no expert, so I don't know, but in any case I am quite sure that by 72/73 the stones had stage monitors, so if Jagger was disturbed by Taylor, he would cut him out from what he heard.

C

I agree. "Noodling" is not the correct terminolog; it implies anyone can do it.

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71Tele

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texas fan
the issue of noodling is interesting. If you like the fills, or like the solos, it's not noodling. If, for some reason, you don't find it fits and/or you perceive it lacks focus (according to your own sensibility), it's noodling. I think my notions of noodling are correct; so does everyone else.

The question is not noodling or not noodling, solos or no solos. The question is taste. Live, Ronnie took (takes?) as many solos as Taylor did. It is the quality of them that is the issue. Taylor worked within the same song structures that Wood did. What he did with his guitar - as a soloist, with fills or even rhythm (as in '69) was spectacular. Melodic, precise, well-thought out. What Wood does live all too often is hack away to fill space. Did Taylor play too "much" in '73? Reasonable people can disagree, and although I prefer the '69-'72 eras, '73 was a very powerful version of the band live, and the end of an era. I like it just fine, and it is certainly better than anything that came after.

Obviously, I was not comparing Taylor to Wood. I was just making the point that, what one person considers noodling, another person considers perfectly inspired.

For instance, to gimmelittle drink, yes, I think he noodled on the Brussels version Happy. You think it was great -- no problem. If it helps, I'd certainly agree that Taylor was spellbinding on other songs that show...

What does "noodling" mean. Listen to Bach. The greatest noodler I guess !!!!

yes - that horrific combination of mt noodling and keith's annoying slashing chords ruined what coulda been the greatest tour of all time in 1972. man, i hate it when that happens.