Old friend of 45 years (knew him from high school) calls me. He's stoned, I can tell. He just bought and listened to a CD of "Black and Blue" and wants to discuss it. Hadn't listened to it in years. Some good songs. Some bad songs. The conversation inevitably turns to to "Exile on Main Street," the greatest rock album ever made, and why did Mick Taylor quit the band? If he hadn't quit would the greatness have kept rolling on right up to the present time, one magnificent album after another, a blaze of artistic glory lasting forty years?

We've had this discussion before -- many times. Attempting to change the subject I bring up Janet, who later started calling herself Jeanette, a blond woman who may have invented puffy 1980s hair, his ex-girlfriend, the object of many men's desire, a real beauty with whom he had a torrid affair beginning in a VW bus on New Year's Eve December 31, 1977.

"Oh yeah, her," he says. "I remember her. But what if Mick Taylor stayed with the band?"

They never would've made Shattered.

End of conversation.