Happy 77th birthday to Mick Taylor!
“It was quite a nerve-wracking experience when I was really young, following in the footsteps of Eric Clapton and Peter Green, but after a month or two I fitted in really well. It was basically all down to John Mayall’s stewardship and everything I learned from him about the blues. Travelling around with him in America made me become a good blues player and I developed my own style. We were playing in lots of iconic places like Winterland [in San Francisco] and the Fillmore East and West. One night at Winterland, Jimi Hendrix was top of the bill, John Mayall and myself and the Bluesbreakers opened the show, and Albert King was in the middle. It was incredible, especially when you consider the fact I was only about 18 years old.”
In June 69, Mick Jagger was casting for a replacement for Brian Jones, and asked Mayall for advice. Mayall recommended Taylor. “Live With Me was the very first track I ever played on,” Taylor recalls, “when they were putting the finishing touches to Let It Bleed. We actually recorded that the night I went for my audition at Olympic Studios, or maybe the night after.
"Then I overdubbed guitar on Honky Tonk Women. But Live With Me was special, because it was the first Stones song I ever played on. I remember [producer] Jimmy Miller jumping up and down in the control room and getting all excited about how good it sounded, having two guitars playing off each other. Because I think they’d missed that with Brian Jones in the two-year hiatus since their last live performance. The Stones actually hadn’t played together for a long time, so when I joined them it was like a new beginning. It was a new phase in their career, a new chapter.
By Rob Hughes (Classic Rock)
Live With Me - The Rolling Stones - Live at The Marquee, 1971
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