wiseblood wrote on Oct 21
st, 2011 at 11:24am:
sweetcharmedlife wrote on Oct 20
th, 2011 at 10:38pm:
wiseblood wrote on Oct 20
th, 2011 at 9:49am:
If we are talking about sheer guitar talent, Taylor. HOWEVER. Lately, I have found Mick Taylor's stage playing rather boring and repetitive, with him really only attacking the same pentatonic runs over and over. (I know, I know....this is screlig...)
In the studio? Mick Taylor all the way.
On stage, if you're into antics, stage presence, and all the things Keith wants you to believe being a "Stone" really is, then Ron.
But we're not talking about lately. We're talking about Taylor in the Stones...and the facts are Taylor was a better Stone than Ronnie. Have the Stones made anything close to Exile or Sticky Fingers or Even Goats Head Soup with Ronnie. No. have they ever sounded as good live with Wood as with Taylor? No.
I don't mean lately as in what Mick Taylor did on his most recent tour. I'm saying I'm listening to shows from the 72 tour and yeah, I'm changing my belief system a little bit (growing up perhaps even at 32) and saying that I think his playing was repetitive at times and he sometimes he never really went out on a limb to challenge anyone. It was just pentatonic runs up and down the guitar neck over and over again. He's an even bigger offender of this type of playing that even Eric Clapton.
Here's my take on Ronnie, which I think you'll agree with.
He was NEVER responsible for making a seriously groundbreaking, ahead-of-its time recording with the Stones. He wasn't a part of that top of the mountain period of 68-73. To me, Ronnie lost his guitar mojo sometime in the 80s and never got it back. he was MONEY with the Faces, lost it with the Stones. Not sure why.
Sticky Fingers and Exile (moreso Sticky) have Mick Taylor's fingerprints all over them and it's a good thing because he was the man, the RIGHT man for that band, and the best second guitarist they ever had.
On that note, I'm extremely frustrated that they are doing a Some Girls deluxe edition because i think that album is terribly overrated. If they do a Tattoo You set next then there will definitely be hell to pay.
Give us the vaults of the 68-73 years...PLEASE!
I think Ronnie lost his mojo in the Stones because you're not really allowed to truly express yourself with them if your name isn't Mick Jagger or Keith Richards. I don't know what the band dynamic of the Faces was but it seems like ever since Brian was sacked, The Stones have been the Mick & Keith Show (with Charlie Watts + sidemen), both in terms of publicity and creatively. For all intents and public purposes, those two ARE the Stones. Everyone in and around them who creatively contributed (like Ry Cooder, Taylor and Billy Preston) was either never credited, or their contributions were downplayed (both at the time, and in the case of Brian, in retrospect his importance has been downplayed by Keith), or they were stolen from outright (Cooder claiming Keith stole the whole open G tuning thing from him, Taylor claiming he wrote songs he was never credited for, Preston not being credited for one of his songs).
I remember reading that Ronnie offered up a couple of songs but they were never taken seriously. His stuff was only used in the mid 80s when Mick and Keith were barely speaking. If I recall correctly, sometime around the early '80s or so, Ronnie gave the Glimmer Twins a tape of some ideas he'd had and Keith scribbled 'Dog Shit' on the tape and sort of threw it away.
Ronnie & Keith may click and Keith may talk like they're chums but weren't there a few occasions where Mick and Keith were seriously considering firing him? Like around 1981, 1982? Also, wasn't Ronnie seriously pissed when Mick T. rejoined the band on stage around '81 or '82?
And getting to him, I think Mick Taylor kinda stopped trying, at least live, around '72 or '73 because he was getting slowly tired of it all; He joined them just as Brian exited, was with them through Altamont, became a tax exile with them; felt underused and creatively constrained; he'd become hooked on drugs with them, wasn't getting credited for his work (Keith getting credit for songs he didn't even have any part in), was getting shitted on and treated like crap by Keith, and it seemed like the Stones were getting stale around '74, that they were running out of steam; I think at the time some thought they were going to break up--I don't think anyone predicted that they'd survive into the 1980s and become this massive moneymaking stadium act. I don't think the idea of stadium acts was even a thought in the rock world in 1974. Not only that, but the idea of spending all of 1974 and most of 1975 with no tour bummed him out--I don't think concrete touring plans were made for '75 until after he left or just before? For a musician, that means almost 2 years of sitting around in a studio twiddling your thumb, while what you play is being erased by Keith or shit on by him.
I think Mick J. sort of took Mick Taylor and his talents and the way they clicked musically for granted until he was gone, and Keith sort of felt jealous or insecure because of Mick's guitar playing abilities, whether he'd ever admit or not.
I think Keith also resented the fact that as he sunk deeper and deeper into Heroin in the '70s, the two Micks became closer and closer creatively--To him, this curly headed kid was stealing his best friend (even if it was Keith's own fault) and was becoming a musical leader in HIS band. During his tenure with the Stones, Mick Taylor was THE lead guitarist in a band that had never had a lead guitarist before, and hasn't since. And I think Keith likes that, because it's sort of a top dog thing--Ronnie is much more genial and lapdogish and doesn't mind playing second fiddle, literally and metaphorically.
Didn't Bill also consider quitting around 1974 when Taylor quit, but didn't because he didn't wanna break up the band? It would kinda confirm that there seemed a sort of deadness to the band around this period. Maybe they were just jetlagged after the 6 year boom from '68 onward--the massive skyrocket in popularity, the chaos of the late '60s/early '70s, them becoming the biggest band in the world, replacing the Beatles, the massive '72 and '73 tours, etc. The idea of having to "top" Exile. 1974-1975 was like the hang over from a five or six year party.
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Alright: Taylor vs. Wood (Read 1,846 times)
