‎

a stone’s throw

[micktaylorist]

curated by cokesympathy and dedicated to the one and only prodigy, virtuoso, the greatest lead guitarist the rolling stones has ever had, michael kevin taylor

[micktaylorist]

“Basically, there’s not really any room for another songwriter in our band. I’d like to be involved if I could, and I’m sure Ronnie Wood would. And Mick Taylor definitely wanted to be, which was one of his frustrations. So it’s a little bit of a drag, but if you only record one album every eighteen months or so, which is what we've done for the last eight years, there’s not much room for anyone else. By the time we get around to recording, Mick and Keith have so many songs ready that they have to weed tunes out.”

— Bill Wyman, quoted in Rolling Stones: In Their Own Words by David Dalton

[micktaylorist]

“Mick Taylor was a fabulous musician, he really was. So quick and clever at inventing something or learning something … as far as I was concerned, he was the best musician in the band. Technically brilliant. But when [he] was in the band, it became three groups of people … he’s been away from the band for a long time now, and he hasn’t got his shit together.”

— Bill Wyman, quoted in The Stone Age by Lesley-Ann Jones

[micktaylorist]

“I was more concerned with paying a good homage to—and making a good representation of—all the things that Mick Taylor had laid down during the period while he had been with the band; his melodies and his virtuosity. If I am playing a song like All Down The Line it’s a tribute to Mick Taylor’s playing, and if we play Can’t You Hear Me Knocking I’m doing Mick Taylor, only now I can take it off somewhere else.

I always thought that I would never be able to play like Mick, while he thought he was no good—he thinks I’m far better than him and I’ll say, ‘Come on, Mick, get out of here,’ but he honestly believes that. I didn’t dwell on it too long. I knew that I had it inside me to play things my way, but to add the flavour of Mick Taylor as well is cool.”

— Ronnie Wood, quoted in According to the Rolling Stones

[micktaylorist]

“Mick Taylor and I are two different kettles of fish. I tend to open up the nonsense side combined with getting down to good music whereas Mick was good music and seriousness. And [the Rolling Stones] have realized that they really didn’t dig that when I came around.”

— Ronnie Wood, quoted in Rolling Stones: In Their Own Words by David Dalton

[micktaylorist]

THE ROLLING STONES photographed during rehearsal for the Hyde Park free concert, July 1969

“Mick Taylor remembers their first rehearsal as ‘really ragged. I thought, how do these guys make such great records when they’re so sloppy and spontaneous? But it was because they had this great chemistry.’”

— Let It Bleed by Ethan Russell

[micktaylorist]

“Four days later Mick Taylor was introduced to the world at a photo session beside the bandstand in Hyde Park. With his tall, willowy good looks and clear blue eyes, he looked barely old enough to be out of school. He revealed to reporters hungry for an angle that he was a teetotal vegetarian. ‘I want to be as naturally healthy and aware as I can,’ he explained shyly.

‘Why did you choose him, Mick?’ someone asked Jagger. ‘‘Cos I fancy him, don’t I?’ he replied camply, and everybody laughed. ‘Did you really mean all that stuff about not drinking?’ Keith asked incredulously later. ‘Sure.’ Mick grinned. ‘But I wouldn’t say no if you were to offer me a bit of smoke.’”

— Up and Down with the Rolling Stones by Tony Sanchez

[micktaylorist]

MICK TAYLOR in The Stones in the Park (1969)

[micktaylorist]

MICK TAYLOR in The Stones in the Park (1969)

[micktaylorist]

MICK TAYLOR performing his first live gig as a Rolling Stone at Hyde Park in London, July 5, 1969

“Mick Taylor tried shyly to hide behind the hair billowing around his shoulders as he played hopelessly out of time. And I became very aware of how much Brian’s strutting, mincing, desperate to be loved stance had been a vital part of the Stones’ appeal. Mick Taylor appeared to have about as much charisma as Bill Wyman (and you can’t have much less than that).”

— Tony Sanchez, Up and Down with the Rolling Stones

[micktaylorist]

MICK TAYLOR performing his first live gig as a Rolling Stone at Hyde Park in London, July 5, 1969

“From that day on the strangest people have come up to us and said, ‘We played with you at Hyde Park.’ It was a lot of fun. Most of the time I’m not too good at having fun at a gig—I’m too worried—but this was a lot of fun, and the first gig with Mick Taylor. He was amazing and looked fabulous in those days, with his long hair; a very romantic period.” — Charlie Watts

[micktaylorist]

MICK JAGGER and MICK TAYLOR performing at Hyde Park in London, July 5, 1969

“The show was meant to reintroduce the band to the public after a seemingly endless hiatus, and to unveil Mick Taylor as the newest Stone, but Brian’s death put a wrench in the works. Killed the buzz, ruined the mood. For a moment, it seemed the show would be canceled. Because: How can you! But Jagger, who always finds a way, simply recast the gig as a memorial. Instead of being the first show post-Brian, it would be a celebration of his life. ‘Brian will be at the concert,’ Jagger told a reporter that morning. ‘I mean, he’ll be there! But it all depends on what you believe in. If you’re agnostic, he’s just dead, and that’s it. When we get there this afternoon, he’s gonna be there. I don’t believe in Western bereavement. You know, I can’t suddenly put on a long black veil and walk the hills. But it is still very upsetting. I want to make it so that Brian’s send-off from the world is filled with as much happiness as possible.’”

— The Sun and the Moon and the Rolling Stones by Rich Cohen

[micktaylorist]

ON THIS DAY, July 5, 1969, MICK TAYLOR performed his first live gig as a Rolling Stone at Hyde Park in London

“To say that Mick Taylor was handed a baptism of fire seems an understatement about the flames of expectation and exposure that licked around his debut gig. As we all know, this was at the free show given by the Stones in Hyde Park—just two days after Jones’s death—announced a few weeks earlier when Brian was still, officially, in the band.”

— Charlie’s Good Tonight by Paul Sexton

[micktaylorist]

ON THIS DAY, July 5, 1969, MICK TAYLOR performed his first live gig as a Rolling Stone at Hyde Park in London

“Inside the hotel room before the show, people milled about. The Granada film crew was there, and, of course, I was there taking the odd picture. Keith lay on a couch next to Michael Cooper, the legendary photographer of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper cover and the Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request. Mick Taylor recalls, ‘Before the concert, the feeling in the hotel room was intense, this sense of pressure on all of us and this feeling of loss.’ As the time to perform approached, you could feel the atmosphere of dread and expectation thicken in the room.”

— Ethan Russell, Let It Bleed

[micktaylorist]

ON THIS DAY, July 5, 1969, MICK TAYLOR performed his first live gig as a Rolling Stone at Hyde Park in London

“The two Micks, Keith, Bill and Charlie limbered up for the event with a week of all-night rehearsals in the Beatles’ basement studio at their office in Savile Row. ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ says Taylor, for whom professional disillusionment came on fast, ‘because there was such a huge difference between the way the Stones sounded on record and the way we sounded down there. Everything was out of tune, sloppy. Most of the magic was down to the people who were producing. We had Jimmy Miller and great musicians like Nicky Hopkins and Billy Preston. Otherwise they could have sounded like any old Camden Town blues band.’”

— The Rolling Stones: Fifty Years by Christopher Sandford

[micktaylorist]

ON THIS DAY, July 5, 1969, MICK TAYLOR performed his first live gig as a Rolling Stone at Hyde Park in London

“For Mick Taylor, the next hour passed in a blur of heat and faces and bodies and their manifold odours; of noise both stupendously near and unreally distant, like sea-echoes in the ear of a shell. ‘I’m always asked if I was nervous, coming out to play with the Stones for the first time in front of 250,000 people. The honest answer is, I don’t know. I can’t remember. It was all over too quickly.’”

— The Stones: The Acclaimed Biography by Philip Norman

[micktaylorist]

ON THIS DAY, July 5, 1969, MICK TAYLOR performed his first live gig as a Rolling Stone at Hyde Park in London

“The Stones had rehearsed long and hard with Taylor and had been quite overwhelmed by his virtuoso brilliance. If anything, he was an even better musician than Brian. Jagger was excited about the Hyde Park concert; the Stones hadn’t given a real show in Britain for three years, and now the newspapers were predicting that more than a quarter of a million fans would be coming to Hyde Park on Saturday. It would be the biggest concert the world had ever seen, they said.

But still, Jagger was worried that the fans would realise that their blonde haired idol had been cruelly mistreated, and he persuaded Keith, Charlie and several Stones employees to phone Brian asking him to come to Hyde Park. Perhaps he could even guest on a few numbers with the band—just to show the world there really were no hard feelings.”

— Tony Sanchez, Up and Down with the Rolling Stones