I hope Taylor gets some compensation out of this. 

"The program also includes liberal performance footage of the Stones . . . " That's because there is no conservative performance footage of the Stones.  Sorry, Riffcote Phelgecar Joe.

A complex observation of the transformative years of the ultimate rock band.

Published on July 06, 2010

The Rolling Stones, 1969-1974 – The Mick Taylor Years - Limited Collector’s Edition (2010)

Interviews: John Mayall, Al Perkins, Bill Plummer, Richard Greenfield, and others. 

Chapters: Introduction, The End of the 60s, New Guitarist in Town, Back On The Road, Dawn of a New Decade, The Drugs Don’t Work, Exile, Goats Head and the A List, It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll, Further Into the 70‘s.


Audio: PCM stereo
Length: 99 minutes
Rating : ***

By 1969, The Rolling Stones were dubbed “the greatest rock and roll band in the world”. However, there was a storm brewing. Due to the ongoing personal and legal problems of founding member, Brian Jones, the group had not toured for three years. In a common narrative for this era, Jones would meet his untimely demise. The Rolling Stones would select their first replacement, Mick Taylor. The 20-year-old had been a member of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, and was considered an accomplished guitarist. In the next few years, the band would release an unprecedented trio of rock classics (Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street), tour the world and become legendary. Taylor’s versatile and creative blues guitar is credited for influencing the musical chemistry.

This documentary, with the help of archival photographs, performance, and interviews with musicians and music critics, attempts to capture this meteoric ascension. Despite the title, the DVD focuses on the leaders of the group, the charismatic lead singer, Mick Jagger and the infamous guitar hero, Keith Richards. There is an emphasis on the power struggle between the two, as well as the creative spirit that united them.

For diehard Stones fans, there are fascinating details of the recording of these indelible albums. For example, it took over one hundred takes of “Tumbling Dice” to produce a song that had a loose unrehearsed feel. The group would get to release Sticky Fingers under their own label with Atlantic Records. Many of the tracks on Exile On Main Street were recorded without the entire group together.  Of course, the culture of debauchery and excess is scrutinized in detail. It is suggested that the early to mid-1970s tumult of hugely popular acts like the Stones and Led Zeppelin hastened the end of the rock era.

The photographs (black & white and color) are evocative, reflecting the atmosphere of popular culture in this time. There is some interesting live footage (a slow bluesy version of “Honky Tonk Women” is memorable), but there should have been more. There is an academic context that is too subdued, and doesn’t convey the excitement of this iconic phenomenon.

-- Robbie Gerson

Audiophile Audition

Heart Of Stone wrote on May 25^th, 2010 at 6:30am:



Know what you mean, but on the other hand, Running Out of Luck, Being Mick, the First Twnety Years were lacking and full of self-congratulatory hokum with a shit-load of stuff left out.
Names like Christgau, Hoskyns and Mayall make it legitimate enough for me. The Stones aren't going to be part of a doc that has the Taylor period as their peak. The Stones think they're at their peak now. The Exile reissue went a long way to re-establish Taylor in the Stones legacy anyway and that's good for me. But I really cannot wait for this to come out. In a way, its probably better without the "Stones" input, without the baggage and revisionism.

New DVD Focuses on Gibson Les Paul Legend Mick Taylor’s Rolling Stones Years

Ted Drozdowski 07.12.2010



If the recent tricked-out reissue of Exile On Main St. didn’t make the point, the new DVD The Rolling Stones 1969 — 1974: The Mick Taylor Years puts a spotlight on Gibson Les Paul Standard virtuoso Taylor’s contributions to the band’s so-called “Golden Era.”

During that period, the Stones recorded Let It Bleed, where Taylor’s slide guitar playing on “Country Honk” and his licks on “Live With Me” were part of his audition for the band, as well as the masterpieces Sticky Fingers, Exile, Goats Head Soup and It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll — a roll call of their greatest studio works, with the possible omissions of Beggar’s Banquet and Let It Bleed.  

The DVD, which features Taylor in concert playing a Gibson ES-335 alongside Keith Richards and Mick Jagger on its cover, blends live performances with analysis from music journalists including Barney Hoskyns of Mojo and the Village Voice’s Robert Christgau, the recollections of Taylor’s pre-Stones mentor John Mayall, Exile session musicians Al Perkins and Bill Plummer, and music historian Alan Clayson, among others — including, of course, Taylor himself. When the conversation turns to the excesses of the arena-rock ’70s, of which the Stones were major architects, there’s even a cameo by Led Zeppelin, with Jimmy Page wailing on a live performance of “Black Dog” with his Les Paul slung low.

The first hour of the DVD focuses on Taylor’s arrival in the band. In mid-1969, British blues legend John Mayall was about to disband the electric-guitar-centric version of his Bluesbreakers that launched the careers of Gibson Les Paul gods Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Taylor in favor of a more acoustic and experimental sounding group. Mick Jagger called, fishing for leads on a guitarist to replace Brian Jones, and since 21-year-old Taylor held Mayall’s lead guitar chair at the time and was about to lose his gig, Mayall suggested him.

Taylor explains that his playing with Mayall “did me a lot of good,” thanks to the considerable freedom the bandleader gave his musicians. During his Bluesbreakers years, Taylor also experimented with jazz and Latin music, on which he’d draw for such Stones tunes as “Heartbreaker” and “Time Waits for No One.”

'Drivin' Sideways' (MT with The Bluesbreakers) - www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjaYgH3ijbE

As the film details the making of Exile, Goats Head Soup and It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll, Taylor is depicted live and in a series of photographs with the armada of Gibsons he used during his Stones years. These include an array of gorgeous Sunburst Les Pauls from the original 1958 to 1960 run, expertly reproduced today by the Gibson Custom Shop as the 50th Anniversary 1960 Les Paul Standard.

Taylor purchased his first ’Burst in 1965 when he was a member of short-lived rock outfit The Gods, and acquired his second from Keith Richards in 1967, when he was in the Bluesbreakers. That Sunburst was outfitted with a Bigsby vibrato arm and can be seen in Richards’ hands on another DVD, the recent reissue of The T.A.M.I. Show.

Other Gibsons employed by Taylor during his tenure in the Stones include the ES-335 he used for the Exile and Sticky Fingers sessions, and an SG he may have used for Exile and carried on the road from 1969 to 1971.

As the tale of Taylor’s Stones years unwinds, the experts discuss Taylor’s lack of writing credits — Taylor has claimed to be co-author of “Time Waits for No One” and a number of other Stones classics that seem to pivot on his playing — and purposeful omissions from Keith and Mick’s decisions regarding the group plus rumors of Richards jealously erasing Taylor’s tracks and replacing them with his own. They offer various reasons for Taylor’s departure to bass giant Jack Bruce’s band in 1974, but Taylor provides his own perspective.

“After five-and-a-half years I’d had enough,” he tells the camera. “I can’t give you one overriding reason for leaving. I can’t say it was totally due to being frustrated artistically. A lot of people say I’m crazy for leaving. ‘Why didn’t you just stay where you were? You could be a millionaire by now.’ But I’ve never really looked at it that way. To me they peaked then, and I don’t think they’ve done as many good albums or written as many good songs as they did while I was with them and prior to the period I joined them.”


gibson.com

when's it out?

A big thumbs down for the new MT DVD:

DVD Review: The Rolling Stones 1969-1974: The Mick Taylor Years

Author: Phyllis Pollack — Published: Jul 31, 2010

“Everyone talks about rock these days; the problem is they forget about the roll.” — Keith Richards



My friend Dave Marsh, a longtime rock critic, who is also heard on Sirius Radio, always seems to hit the nail on the head. A few months ago, Dave offered me this bit of wisdom, and it sums up virtually everything that is wrong with this film: "Most music critics hate rock and roll."

In the wake of the success of the 40th anniversary reissue of The Rolling Stones' Exile On Main St. by Universal Music Group, and the critically acclaimed "making of" documentary, Stones In Exile, others are now trying to capitalize on the hype. Out this week, The Rolling Stones 1969-1974: The Mick Taylor Years is a dreary disappointment.

This DVD isn’t about “Wild Horses,” as much as it is about high horses. Given its title, the film is presumably about Mick Taylor, right? Think again. With the exception of British blues musician John Mayall and pedal steel player Al Perkins, most of this film is really about the rock critics themselves who were interviewed for the film.

The title of the DVD is highly misleading. Again, this film isn’t really so much about the Rolling Stones or about Mick Taylor, as much as it is about the rock critics who infused way too much of their overblown egos as they relentlessly expose their self-inflated opinions of themselves into the mix. In the mind of the producer of this swill and the critics that were interviewed, their opinions of the band were more important than facts. Their likes and dislikes become the centerpiece of the film, rather than The Rolling Stones or Mick Taylor.

Being that I own likely every commercially released Rolling Stones album and DVD, and also some (okay, many) bootlegs, I was amazed that someone could actually make the topic of The Rolling Stones as tedious as is this film, which is heavily dependent on the ramblings and overblown self-importance of the rock critics it features. Mick Taylor is a world-class guitarist, and his years with The Rolling Stones culminated in a brilliant period for the band. Given this, it was stunning to me that someone could manage to make such a mess out of putting together a film about those years, and could actually succeed in making it so mind-numbingly tiresome.

The poor production quality of the DVD is distracting. All of the historical facts offered in the film have already been told countless times, and certainly better. There is scant footage of Taylor, and very little of the rest of the band, other than promotional videos and clips borrowed from Gimme Shelter by the Maysles brothers, Albert and David. A few of gifted photographer Dominique Tarle’s exquisite photographs are seen in the film, but they are much better displayed in works like Stones In Exile.

Surprisingly, it had apparently not occurred to the creators of this film that most Stones fans would already own Stones in Exile, or that the fans would already know enough about the band to not need having the basic details of Nellcôte and Altamont  dryly spoon-fed to them yet again, particularly in such an unpalatable way. As the film progresses, the viewer is bombarded with an increasing number of daft and often ridiculous opinions. Much of the discussion about Nellcôte in The Rolling Stones 1969-1974: The Mick Taylor Years is laced with conjecture and speculation. Haven’t we already gotten enough of that on the Internet fan sites?

Maybe you think I’m just jaded about The Rolling Stones and that’s why I was bored. You couldn’t be more wrong. Still, I needed to take several breaks in order to continue being subjected to the tiresome task of watching and listening to the monotonously dull and uninspired blatherings of rock critics Barney Hoskyns, Robert Christgau, and Nigel Williamson. I would have likely been less bored had I been locked in my hallway, and forced to stare at my Rolling Stones 1972 Winterland “Tumbling Dice” tour poster for the 99 minutes it took to be inflicted with this lifeless piece of drudgery.

With those years having been such an important zenith for The Stones, it's illogical to have not have had more about the band itself rather than solely the usual cliches.

The journalists drooling over themselves in the film is more than a bit tedious. It would have been wiser to include more of The Rolling Stones, themselves, and less of these rock critics spewing the same stories that have been repeated too many times and vomiting their opinions. Why do these guys think people care about their opinions to the extent that they comprise so much of the material? The self-importance of it becomes unnerving.

The reasons given for their condemnations often blatantly contradict each other. Referring to Nellcôte as "wretched excess," and lauding the album, while praising the masterpiece work Sticky Fingers, yet blaming their dislike of subsequent albums they don't like on Richards' drug use, entirely defies logic.

Both Bianca Jagger's first and maiden names are mispronounced.

Rock critic Nigel Williamson is often entirely petty, sounding like a jilted lover. One chapter in the documentary, which slags guitarist Keith Richards, is snidely titled "The Drugs Don't Work."

Delivering judgments that include saying that the album Goat's Head Soup indicates that the band "had become a pop act" is cretinous. "Star Star" a pop track? "Silver Train?" Huh?

"I don't like the lyrics, I don't like the melody..." Who frigging cares? Referring to Jagger as "self-conscious" for having recorded "Star Star," well, how could the band not do an ode to groupies? It would have been entirely disingenuous at that point not to.

How do these critics not get it? I refer back to what Dave Marsh had said to me.

How full of themselves are these guys? In Thomas Arnold's narration of the story line in the film, we hear, "The band was satisfied, but the critics were unconvinced." How over-inflated are these guys' egos to make themselves and their opinions a driving part of the story line of the band's history in the narrative? This is not a documentary about the Stones, but a documentary showcasing the critics' own views about the band and their music.

We also get this quote: "I don't favor" [the album] It's Only Rock and Roll." Why do these guys think the viewers give rat's ass that they don't like it? I thought this was going to be about Mick Taylor. Instead, these guys made a film about themselves.

As far as the three "extras" that are on the DVD, one is titled "Meeting Mick Taylor," and one is a list of the other films made by its producer. What else is included among the extras the DVD has to offer? You guessed it — "Contributors' Biographies," where we can get yet more information about the rock critics that were interviewed in the film.

blogcritics.org


Kinda figured as much when I watched the trailer, which has some generic non-Stones background music - www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtg9cc3R8kI

That's dissapointing - but I'll probably order it anyway. Its no surpirse that critics, the talking heads here, would make it about their own dissapointments about the band. When i was discovering the Stones in early 80s, much of the literature was all about how the 70s Stones sucked to high heaven and albums like GHS, IORR and B&B were just derided and dismissed....
I remember thinking, 'Maybe I'm just a stupid kid, but I love these records...WTF!?'
I realized now that the literature was the cynical assesments of older fans who didn't want the Stones to change, or old-fart critics who, by the 70s, were jaded themselves and were projecting their own jadeness onto the Stones. Those albums have been re-assessed by subsequent generations, so those older Negative Nancies can go fuck themselves....
Just goes to show you that you never let some academic observer tell what's good and what's not good.
I'll still have to watch the DVD and hope that MT gets some kind of props.