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Father Ted

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Naturalust

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Reagan
Ran across this interview (from 2009) on the interwebs. Very interesting. A few details from the man himself that I had not heard before. Nothing earth-shaking, but interesting nonetheless.


[madchesterroadtrip.wordpress.com]


-R

Nice post Reagan, thanks for that. I hadn't heard the story about Taylor being asked to sit in for Keith if his 1977 Toronto bust didn't work out....and him agreeing to do so! Amazing that Jagger had so much faith in MT that he actually thought they could tour with just Taylor and Wood, even Taylor was skeptical. That would have been a totally different Stones story...thanks to a blind girl fan we never had to find out. I do find it a bit cold that Jagger was already planning to throw Keith under the bus, so to speak. Yes I know Keith was risking the bands future by his own actions, but still......

peace

Jagger and Richards had no qualms about ditching Jones when he became a liability. How could the Stones continue as a functional recording and touring band with Keith in prison? He would've had to go if he was jailed.

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treaclefingers


Well there's truth blended in with the sarcasm, and that's what makes it funny and interesting at the same time.

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DandelionPowderman

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71Tele

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DandelionPowderman
Creatively speaking, Undercover was a far more adventurous album than Some Girls.

Whether one likes the output is another matter.

The thing with SG is that the songs are simple, but hauntingly infectious.

More adventurous? Not sure about that. At the time it came out Some Girls was a fairly radical departure for them. As far as the material goes there's no comparison: Undercover is wildly uneven, though I acknowledge a few here seem to like it quite a bit. I bought it the day it was released, but haven't listened to it for 20 years and I don't feel like I'm missing much.

They broke new ground and tried something new with Undercover, their first real album since ER. SG was about getting back to the early 60s formula.

I didn't say that Undercover was better, though, only that it was more adventurous creativily speaking.

U, FOB, TMB, PBU and parts of TYU is a band trying out new grooves, production techniques and song templates.

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DoomandGloom
No one has mentioned Ronnies playing on Rambler last tour In Brooklyn it was the best song of the night and Taylor was not there.

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LieB
(I consider myself a Taylorite, but I think Mick T was only a part of what made the Stones so great in '69-73.)

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DandelionPowderman

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71Tele

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DandelionPowderman
Creatively speaking, Undercover was a far more adventurous album than Some Girls.

Whether one likes the output is another matter.

The thing with SG is that the songs are simple, but hauntingly infectious.

More adventurous? Not sure about that. At the time it came out Some Girls was a fairly radical departure for them. As far as the material goes there's no comparison: Undercover is wildly uneven, though I acknowledge a few here seem to like it quite a bit. I bought it the day it was released, but haven't listened to it for 20 years and I don't feel like I'm missing much.

They broke new ground and tried something new with Undercover, their first real album since ER. SG was about getting back to the early 60s formula.

I didn't say that Undercover was better, though, only that it was more adventurous creativily speaking.

U, FOB, TMB, PBU and parts of TYU is a band trying out new grooves, production techniques and song templates.

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Naturalust

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DoomandGloom
No one has mentioned Ronnies playing on Rambler last tour In Brooklyn it was the best song of the night and Taylor was not there.

Yeah ok, but you help make my point.....I still don't hear ya talking about Ronnie, just the absence of Taylor.

peace

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DoomandGloom

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Naturalust

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DoomandGloom
No one has mentioned Ronnies playing on Rambler last tour In Brooklyn it was the best song of the night and Taylor was not there.

Yeah ok, but you help make my point.....I still don't hear ya talking about Ronnie, just the absence of Taylor.

peace

From the Stones point of view. Keith replaced Taylor and Wood took Keith's role.

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TonyMo

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kleermaker
His biggest mistake, because the so called life saving argument (the drugs issue) was of course nonsense. Not only because he replaced the one drug addict (Keith) with even a worse one (Jack Bruce), but because there were other solutions. Besides he got room from Jagger for his solo activities. A fatal and life determining decision for both Taylor himself, the band and us fans.

For me, perhaps the single most meaningful post I've ever read on this board. The stark reality of "fatal" in this context is something I wish I'd never seen, as it makes me confront the demons that have plagued me for forty one years. I find myself standing at the crossroads, and I believe I'm sinking down (the experts here will recognize that line from Mick Taylor's 'Crossroads' which is mistakenly credited to Robert Johnson)

It seems many of you dealt with the news of Mick Taylor's departure from the Rolling Stones as I did; with grief, shock, disbelief and outrage. After all he'd done, single handedly lifting them from the mire of their downward creative and musical spiral following the death of Brian Jones.

What were Mick Jagger and Keith Richards thinking? Did they not realize that not only were they the 'greatest rock n' roll band in the world' but with Mick Taylor, they now had somebody able to vie with Eric Clapton for the all important title of 'God'? Did not Mick Taylor, with his stinging slide guitar on 'Country Honk' and his indispensable rhythm guitar on 'Live With Me' elevate 'Let It Bleed' from an album on which Mick Taylor didn't play on two songs to an album where he did?

Was it not Mick Taylor's Santana-esque styling's that propelled 'Can't You Hear Me Knocking' past the restrictions placed on any superb three and half minute Rolling Stones song, and into the realm of a song that one was content to listen to in its entirety rather than get up off the couch and move the tone arm to 'You Gotta Move'? Is it not true that if Mick Taylor's solo were removed from Jagger's 'Sway' and the Jagger /Richards composition, 'Dead Flowers', the songs would've had Keith Richards solo's instead? Why, those songs would be unrecognizable had that happened! I guess they would've have to have gotten Jimmy Page to play on them. Don't even get me started on 'Moonlight Mile'. Despite the chords, words, melody and string arrangement, the main reason why that song is considered a classic is Mick Taylor.

One would've thought Mick Taylor's contribution to 'Exile On Main Street' would have been larger than it was. His lack of influence on the two record set is precisely why the album is overrated. Maybe it's because Mick Taylor was already bored with the limited musical ability he found himself surrounded by? Maybe they didn't like the way he moved onstage? Maybe Rose Taylor was the bands Yoko Ono? Still, Mick Taylor plays a crucial role in it's best songs. I'd like to have heard the mess Bill Wyman would've come up with had he played bass on 'Tumbling Dice'. Disc 1 side 1 of that double album suffers from a woeful lack of Mick Taylor's soaring melodicism. Things improve on side 2 of Disc 1, but only slightly. Mick Taylor plays the definitive acoustic guitar part on the opener, 'Sweet Virginia', then, he is mysteriously allowed to disappear for the remainder of the side. Which is why I always mostly skip Disc 1.

Disc 2, side 1 finds Mick Taylor still relegated to a minor role. Even his playing on the great 'Ventilator Blues' (the only song he'd ever be credited for) where I'd argue that he basically invented that whole style of playing a solo while the singer sings over top of the soloing is disappointing, but only because Mick Jagger won't stop asking 'What you gonna do about it?' then answering his own question. The comfort I take from knowing that 'Ventilator Blues' is by far the best song on an otherwise dismal album is not nearly enough balm for my bane.

It is not until Disc 2 side 2 that the fiendish duo of Jagger/Richards, still sick of how fat Mick Taylor was going to be one day but in dire need of a capable guitarist, finally write a song that allowed Mick Taylor to do what he did best; play slide guitar in a featured setting. Even the most dogged critics of Mick Taylor admit that he was once a damn excellent slide guitarist. I even know one personally. Had Keith Richards (or heaven forbid, Ron Wood) played on that song, its title would have been, 'A Little Bit Down The Line'. Thankfully Mick Taylor and not Billy Preston plays the solo on 'Shine A Light'. Billy Preston's solo on 'I Got The Blues' was one more than necessary in any band that employed Mick Taylor. Then we're on to another Mick Taylor song mistakenly credited to Robert Johnson (Johnson shared the Jagger/Richards penchant for denying Mick Taylor songwriting credits) 'Stop Breaking Down', by where Taylor basically invented the Stevie Ray Vaughn style of soloing.

In the wake of Exile On Street, the drug addled Keith Richards finally stepped aside thus allowing the true musical heart of the band, Mick Taylor, to step to the fore; what followed was the apex of the bands career: 'Goat's Head Soup, It's Only Rock n' Roll' and Bedspring Symphony (later to be known as Brussels Affair). By this time, The Rolling Stones had committed a lot of songs to vinyl but none as powerful as the twenty tunes that comprised those two studio albums. Subtracting the title track from the 1974 release (a David Bowie song) along with the Whitfield/Holland composition on the same album, one is left with (subtracting the Keith Richards input) 16 of the greatest songs anyone has ever heard. I defy anyone to name me any Rolling Stones' songs as good as Hide Your Love, Short And Curlies', Silver Train, Till the Next Goodbye, Dancing With Mr. D, If You Really Want To Be My Friend,Dance Little Sister and 100 Years Ago? One wishes Keith Richards would have left all of it to the new partnership of Jagger/Taylor, if only to spare us the dirge that is Angie and Coming Down Again. And dare I say, Stafucker could've used a heaping tablespoon of Mick Taylor's soaring melodocism on lead guitar, as well as the latter's inventive songwriting (perhaps Mick Taylor would have used Major7 chords on the tonic and subdominant?) It doesn't matter, I don't care for groundless speculation.

The live album, Brussels Affair, is simply the the Rolling Stones at their best. And it's mostly because of Mick Taylor. Every one of the 15 songs is better than the studio original. One wishes the Rolling Stones would have taken a couple of carton's of industrial strength benzedrine rather than heroin into Muscle Shoals and Nellecote in order to match the tempo and energy of a large portion of Brussels Affair. From Keith Richards subtle alteration of the Brown Sugar intro (followed by a pace that makes Secretariat look like a Clydesdale) to Mick Taylor's soaring melodicism on Gimme Shelter; making one forget that Merry Clayton ever existed, and later, setting the bar too high for Lisa Fisher to jump over; through Heartbreaker, featuring Mick Taylor's stunning doubling of the 'doo doo doo' chorus (which was erased off the original studio version by a jealous Keith Richards); on into a frenetic Honky Tonk Woman that finds Mick Taylor tripling the output of notes poor Keith Richards efforted on the stunningly dull studio version, begging the question 'who needs time and space in a song when you have a genius in the band?'. At this point you're asking yourself, how can this set be any more virtuosic? The question is answered by Mick Taylor in his rendering of the trance inducing solo on You Can't Always get What You Want'. Mick Taylor was so sublime he basically inventing the whole style of playing a solo using octaves. He played one motif in particular for so long, it still reverberates around Belgium. The deal closer is Mick Taylor's outro on Street Fighting Man. The only word to describe that is 'indescribable'. It's hard to believe that a capable, tasteful guitarist would ever play that way.

Now, I've reached the part of this missive that sets my soul to trembling. I'm glad this is the internet age, otherwise this would be a letter full of tears, literally. When Mick Taylor quit the The Rolling Stones I felt barren. I asked myself, if Leibniz could envision binary numeralism why couldn't I have envisioned the advent of the internet age?

It would have saved me a lot of pain to know that one day I would connect with fellow Mick Taylor admirers to ease 41 years of sorrow. A place where I could share great memories and ask important questions like 'Mick Taylor was a genius, why did that evil Mick Jagger not have him play on his solo albums? Do you think there are more or less than 5,000 people who've ever listened to Mick Taylor's lone solo album? Are people into genius, or not? How do you feel about Keith Richards (of all people) getting Mick Taylor to play on Talk Is Cheap? Should Mick Taylor have told Keith Richards 'I wrote all the ballads, go take a long walk off a short pier'.

It still isn't enough though. No matter how many fan site's and YouTube channels I dedicate to Mick Taylor, no matter my Let It Bleed poster, Exile On Main Street postcards, my Mick Taylor ticket stub from his nearly sold out show at Pat's Bluebird Cafe in East Liverpool, Ohio or my Mick Taylor Facebook and Yahoo icon's, it still can't ease my pain. Forty One Years Later, I still find Mick Taylor's decision to leave the The Rolling Stones a fatal one, for Taylor himself, the Rolling Stones, and me.

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Doxa
Well, there is a truth blended in with the sarcasm indeed, but what it is interesting is that that this dude that was with the band, what? some 10% of its existence, decades ago, still gathers so much attention, interest and insights... I mean, this Woodie guy has been in the band about four decades or something, but still I haven't read one interesting insight about him no matter how many years I have spent here in IORR... Not many brain cells wasted here on him...

- Doxa

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Stoneburst

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Doxa
Well, there is a truth blended in with the sarcasm indeed, but what it is interesting is that that this dude that was with the band, what? some 10% of its existence, decades ago, still gathers so much attention, interest and insights... I mean, this Woodie guy has been in the band about four decades or something, but still I haven't read one interesting insight about him no matter how many years I have spent here in IORR... Not many brain cells wasted here on him...

- Doxa

IMO the interest in Taylor around here isn't so much to do with him or his playing per se, more what he represents. The whole conversation about why he left the Stones and whether it was a good decision or not is redundant. The important point is that he did leave, and for better or worse has spent the past four decades doing things on his own terms. If you still subscribe to all the 'greatest rock'n'roll band in the world' rubbish, Taylor is a bitter pill to swallow, because he disrupts that mythology (who the hell does this guy think he is, leaving the Stones?) But there are also a lot of people around here who dislike the corporate, posturing, play-by-numbers money machine that the Stones have become, and so for them Taylor becomes a sort of antidote. He's disinterested in stardom and showmanship, and the only one of the old Mayall/Yardbirds guitar heroes that still fits the low-key, itinerant bluesman profile. He seems to symbolise the authenticity the Stones themselves have lost.

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DandelionPowderman

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Stoneburst

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Doxa
Well, there is a truth blended in with the sarcasm indeed, but what it is interesting is that that this dude that was with the band, what? some 10% of its existence, decades ago, still gathers so much attention, interest and insights... I mean, this Woodie guy has been in the band about four decades or something, but still I haven't read one interesting insight about him no matter how many years I have spent here in IORR... Not many brain cells wasted here on him...

- Doxa

IMO the interest in Taylor around here isn't so much to do with him or his playing per se, more what he represents. The whole conversation about why he left the Stones and whether it was a good decision or not is redundant. The important point is that he did leave, and for better or worse has spent the past four decades doing things on his own terms. If you still subscribe to all the 'greatest rock'n'roll band in the world' rubbish, Taylor is a bitter pill to swallow, because he disrupts that mythology (who the hell does this guy think he is, leaving the Stones?) But there are also a lot of people around here who dislike the corporate, posturing, play-by-numbers money machine that the Stones have become, and so for them Taylor becomes a sort of antidote. He's disinterested in stardom and showmanship, and the only one of the old Mayall/Yardbirds guitar heroes that still fits the low-key, itinerant bluesman profile. He seems to symbolise the authenticity the Stones themselves have lost.

I can sympathise with this romantic view on Taylor. At the same time, he obviously wants to be a part of this "corporate rock" act...

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Stoneburst
Speaking of Taylor/Wood, I was revisiting the Jimmy Reed shows the other day, hadn't seen this one before - totally brilliant:

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DoctorFreddie

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Stoneburst
Speaking of Taylor/Wood, I was revisiting the Jimmy Reed shows the other day, hadn't seen this one before - totally brilliant:

Awesome. Thanks for sharing. Is this what weaving is about? Woody plays better when he is together with Taylor. And Jagger should pick up the phone and get Taylor back on the road

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DandelionPowderman

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DoctorFreddie

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Stoneburst
Speaking of Taylor/Wood, I was revisiting the Jimmy Reed shows the other day, hadn't seen this one before - totally brilliant:

Awesome. Thanks for sharing. Is this what weaving is about? Woody plays better when he is together with Taylor. And Jagger should pick up the phone and get Taylor back on the road

Somtimes he does, sometimes he doesn't. It's not a constant

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Doxa
About that Wood/Taylor axis... (which seemingly works damn well...)

It was also news to me that Jagger contacted Taylor in 1977 and asked him to join the band if Keith will be locked away (my imagination just can't grasp what it would have been like...)

Interesting that there is also that rumour already from 1973, coming from Nicky Hopkins (!) if memory serves, that Jagger was considering replacing Keith with Ronnie... No idea if that has any truth, but who knows if Jagger really had some sort of Plan B in his mind when Keith's course on dopeville started to look tragical... Who knows if Ronnie's - the most Keith Richards-like of British guitarists - actual choice in 1975 was to get a potential substitute to Keith, just in case...

Strong speculation...

- Doxa