Taylor’s joining of the Stones marked the beginning of their best phase, which included the critically acclaimed and commercially successful albums, Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street, and Goats Head Soup. Keith Richards wrote of Taylor, “Mick Taylor being in the band on that ’69 tour certainly sealed the Stones together again. So we did Sticky Fingers with him. And the music changed — almost unconsciously.” (Farout)
Richards also noted that Taylor being in the band opened up “some beautiful possibilities.” He added, “Especially during recording, because I’d just lay down three or four different rhythm guitars. Mick was very much a solo player with incredible melodic sensitivity about his playing. Most of those early Stones records, the big ones, there’s probably six, seven, eight guitars at times on those tracks, but you wouldn’t know it.”
Mick Taylor was the man who actually did play on Exile, has always remained an elusive figure: The Man Who Dared Leave The Rolling Stones, an effrontery which prompted Keith Richards, similarly appalled by Bill Wyman’s departure years later, to state that “no one should leave this band except in a pine box”. (loudersound)
Drummer Charlie Watts once admitted that “the Mick Taylor period was a creative peak for us. A tremendous jump in musical credibility.”
Mick Jagger added: “He was a very fluent, melodic player, which we never had, and we don’t have now… Some people think that’s the best version of the band that existed.” Asked if he agree with those people, Jagger replied: “I obviously can’t say if I think Mick Taylor was the best, because it sort of trashes the period the band is in now.”
Richards explained, “When I play the guitar, I want to play with another guy, and if he’s providing the other side of the coin, so to speak, if I’m playing down that rhythm, then the compliments that come from the other guitar can then be woven into the rhythm guitar. And that’s exactly what Mick did.”
“I’m listening to these tracks, and suddenly I’m back in that old basement in the south of France,” marvels Richards, phoning in from another tropical paradise, a small island in the West Indies. “It’s amazing, especially for me, that ability to transport myself back in time.”
There’s a distinct tang of bitterness when Richards claims his departure “left us in the lurch”, more so when he delights that, post-Stones, Taylor “didn’t do anything”. Which just isn’t true. Taylor teamed up with Jack Bruce, toured and played with Bob Dylan and other notables like Alvin Lee, Little Feat and the Grateful Dead, made solo records and even reunited with mentor John Mayall in the Bluesbreakers.
