Editor Joe Viglione interviewing Mick Taylor for Visual Radio
The OTHER Mick
By Gary Pig Gold
January 1, 2021
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For
those who arrived at the party rather late – meaning the first new
Stones record you ever bought had a big red tongue splayed across its
label – the five years and ninety-nine minutes contained within Chrome
Dreams’ Rolling Stones: The Mick Taylor Years will serve as a more than
welcome 72nd Birthday tribute this month to, along with the late,
extremely great Brian Jones, the greatest six-stringed foil Keith
Richards ever had. In fact, should you consider yourself a part of the
ever-expanding constituency who swear the Stones’ best work was done
during that half decade between the death of Mr. Jones and the arrival
of Ronnie Wood, this is one documentary which absolutely deserves your
undivided attention.
Beginning as the Sixties became the
Seventies and The Rolling Stones were struggling to grow all the way
from “England’s Newest Hit Makers” into “The World’s Greatest Rock and
Roll Band,” we hear the entire journey recounted by an impressive list
of Stones biographers, historians and even session musicians, plus see
events themselves unfold via clips from the band’s inaugural, free Hyde
Park concert with Taylor clear through their landmark 1969 and 1972
North American tours. Not to mention a slew of primordial promotional
clips spanning “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” to “It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll” which
cover, in fact, a defining era in the Stones’ development as the band
survives Altamont, Allen Klein, and the death of its founding member
only to find themselves tax-exiled and semi-comatose in the south of
France. It is a period during which they also somehow start their own
record company, learn how to make their own records (thanks in no small
part to severely under-sung producer Jimmy Miller) and along with The
Who and Zeppelin forge the soon-to-become fantastically lucrative U.S.
arena-rock circuit.
Now, the point repeatedly made during this
entire film is how key a role Mick Taylor actually played in each of
these remarkable achievements: First, he joins the band at an ideal
time, fully prepared to face audiences who by 1969 were expecting to
listen to, rather than simply scream at, rock concerts which now lasted
much longer than twenty-five minutes. With this, Taylor introduces to
the Stones a new and subtly fluid approach to his instrument – a style
which at first challenges Keith Richards, soon perfectly complements
him, and by 1973 practically supplants him both on stage and in the
studio. Granted, Mick Taylor may never have displayed the highly
adventurous experimentation of his predecessor, but it is hard to
imagine the Stones being able to fully come to terms with
Seventies-scale rock or even rolling with Brian Jones still in the band
…even if he did figure out a way to secure a re-entry visa into the
USofA.
Yet most fascinating to me are this film’s interviews
with Exile On Main St. support musicians Al Perkins and Bill Plummer,
both of whom offer rare and insightful glimpses into the Stones’
recording techniques and intra-band relationships. Sadly, their stories
(not to mention all those involving Gram Parsons) were left completely
untold in the band’s own Stones In Exile film. I wonder why…
Acclaimed S.T.P.:
A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones author Robert
Greenfield then explains how the tale soon starts to wind all the way
down for the band, creatively at least, as he references the
star-studded guest list Atlantic Records chairman Ahmet Ertegun
assembled for Mick Jagger’s twenty-ninth birthday party in New York
City. Rock and roll – and The World’s Greatest Rock and Roll B(r)and
along with it – now found themselves not only fully embraced by high
society, but confronted with its accompanying high-stakes corporate
dalliances as well. Yes, rock was fast becoming Very Big Business, and
Jagger in particular became utterly besotted and seduced by these
unforeseen turns of event …and at the same precise time his partner
Keith was succumbing unapologetically to a degree of drug dependency
which rendered him next to useless when it came to writing and recording
new material. Again, enter Mick Taylor to pick up the slack …not that
it seems he has even to this day ever been given proper (label) credit
for his thankless work in these crucial areas.
Perhaps that had
something to do with the man’s sudden, and surprising – even to some of
his fellow band members it seems! – departure from the Stones in 1974.
As Taylor explains most candidly herein, “My role in the Rolling Stones
was to play guitar. I think after five-and-a-half years I’d really had
enough. I didn’t feel that I could grow anymore. To me, they’d peaked
(by) then.”
Controversial words indeed. But one listen to, say, Goats Head Soup should prove at least most of his point.
So,
to many ever since, the Stones of the ensuing four-decades-plus seem
more concerned with creating financial rather than musical history; a
band which appears to carry onward if only to prove some sort of
statistical point. Be that as it most very likely is, all I will add
here and now is The Mick Taylor Years certainly deserves an immediate
place up on your Stones shelf …even if you do feel more at home Birthday
dancing with December’s children than with Mr. D.
Wednesday Feb 17, 2021 9:30 pm NY Time
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2nZYQOYCYanKbhKTNnunP2
Ball Buster Magazine
https://www.ballbustermusic.com/2021/01/01/the-other-mick/
The OTHER Mick
January 1, 2021
I Love New York! Jack Phillips does as well, and you do too! Feb 17, 2021 #ThursdayThoughts hear on #Spotify Thanks #ThamesValleyRadio @jim_knable @rranimaltour https://open.spotify.com/artist/4tmUzwVoEx5CX53F6S1r0V @JackPhillipsNYC @ILoveNewYorkJP @spotifypodcasts
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