Essay: Reunion, Mick Taylor Guest of the Rolling Stones (2012-14) by GimmeMTguy

Essay on Reunion, Mick Taylor's Guest Appearances with the Rolling Stones (2012-14)

stones

Introduction

Over the years, I have developed a view of Stones commentary and opinion. There can be a double standard applied to Mick Taylor, which is only natural. He quit them -- left them in the lurch, even. They were just about to record an album and tour the world in 1975.

Many fans lamented their change in the music (both studio and live) when he left.

When he returned as Special Guest in 2012-14, he was subject to tremendous scrutiny. Interestingly, the critics universally praised his playing as elevating the band from where it had been for recent decades.

Some portion of hard-core fans, however, say he was under-rehearsed or had lost a substantial portion of his playing chops.

Well, in 2012-14, the other guitarists were under-rehearsed too. And it's their band.

Bill Wyman noted that they did not rehearse with him before the two high-profile 2012 London shows.

Everyone had something potentially to gain, and to lose, with Mick Taylor returning for this stint. That needs to be thought about when reviewing these performances.

Keith's playing was basic, compared to past years. He seemed to have to concentrate heavily on executing his essential parts, there was little horseplay or distraction in his approach. He was recovering from serious medical issues and the reason the anniversary shows barely happened in 2012 was the questions about whether Keith could in fact pull it off.

Ronnie was increasingly carrying a lot of Keith's rhythm obligations without being noted for it (or being able to admit or call attention to it). He had had his own recent brushes with health and lifestyle issues, and Mick Jagger had finally breached the boycott of MT by having him play lead on Plundered My Soul for release in 2010. (Check out Jagger's lyrics for a possible message to Ronnie buried within).

The politics and history of the band were thick with intrigue when MT returned for a role of some sort, to mark the special occasion of the 50th anniversary as well as to provide some incentive for fans to pony up again.

All things considered, it worked swimmingly well. But it wasn't 1973 all over again, because the Rolling Stones cannot play like they did in 1973. Not even close.

My reviews do not pull punches. Some performances will always be better than others, and some people will have different views about what is good and what is not as good.

What is common to all of the performances with Mick Taylor is the showing of all three guitarists. There were spectacular moments of levitation, and there were moments when you asked yourself "why do these guys refuse to work out roles in advance? Do they even talk to each other offstage?"

Reunion, Mick Taylor Guest of the Rolling Stones (2012-14)

Part Two: Integrating Mick Taylor into the 2013 U.S. and England Tour Legs:

The five NYC shows (including the four with Mick Taylor) were enormously well-documented by fans and media, especially the Pay-Per-View on the final night in Newark.

Despite the fact that these shows featured an unusual (then, for the Stones) number of special guests, all major figures (Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga, Eric Clapton, John Mayer, Mary J. Blige, etc.), the reviews equally covered the return of the obscure "other Mick" who only played with the band for five years more than 35 years ago.

Those performances with Mick Taylor were just that energized, that exuberant, that musically distinct from what had become the norm, that they engendered commentary, notice and excitement.

At the time, your reviewer, who attended the two 2012 performances in Newark, found many attendees who were deeply moved at what they witnessed and who had never imagined that it could ever happen.

Sure, the band did nothing to re-arrange the song back to how they performed it in the early 1970s with Mick Taylor. The Stones just sort of glommed Mick Taylor on top of the longstanding Midnight Rambler arrangement that had evolved over decades between Keith and Ronnie.

They left him to make the best of it, live on the stage.

Fans analyzed every interaction and every facial expression, stage position and note. Intense study of every clue, with fevered application of wild speculation, used to be called "Kremlinology" back in the days of the entirely opaque governance of the Soviet Union.

From all appearances, the Rolling Stones provided great freedom while also imposing great consequences. History indicates that this is not a group of men who sit down and talk out obvious issues. They generally shun conflict, and exhibit a classic British reserve. Their power struggles are evidenced by erasing another's overdub in the dead of night, and through the overt battle fought by their respective personal assistants.

Watching each show in the order they occurred, both in real time and later again on video, it surely appears that things were allowed to evolve on their own, until suddenly a change was imposed.

One cannot imagine that Mick Taylor was directed to play at certain exact moments, with all the choreography worked out among the band members. It just evolved.

While watching I could not help but imagine what everyone was thinking at each moment.

Sure, MT is the featured player on the song, but where does he stand onstage? Can he stand in the way of people seeing Keith clearly? Does he stay with Mick Jagger all the time and play off him throughout the entire song? Should he honor the other two guitarists during each performance by squaring off with them for a bit? How much soloing is too much? Should he fill every gap in the music (being quick-witted, he can)?

Is Keith disapproving of something, or is that just his new facial expression post-his medical issues? Is Ronnie being overshadowed too much, or is he cool with it? Oh no, Keith and Ronnie are smirking at Mick's dancing, please MT, don't smile with them, Mick might see you! And on and on.

The 2012 shows were marked by lots of exuberance and lots of guitar playing, excesses easily excused under the circumstances. But things would certainly be different on the 2013 tour. The initial excitement of being back with old friends and mentors (MJ, KR and CW are all significantly older than Mick, and he was only 20 when he joined them when they were already international superstars) would quickly need to run its course. The Rolling Stones' image is, by definition, the opposite of earnest. It is cynical, jaded and unflappable in the extreme.

For 2013, it was generally expected that Mick Taylor would play each night on a handful of songs, including those for which his live or studio solos made them what they are. With time to rehearse properly, surely a new arrangement, a three-guitar arrangement, without stepping all over each other, would be worked out.

Well, not so much.

In retrospect, it seems naive for any of us who know this band over the decades to have expected the Stones to have given more than was actually offered.

It's not a band of twenty-somethings trying to do something new. They have already arguably done more than anyone else in rock, and for longer, and more lucratively.

These musicians all have their own dressing rooms and live entirely separate personal lives when not on tour. They are all past retirement age. Watching their interactions onstage, it is apparent that some of them may only communicate with each other while performing.

Much like a large corporation that acquires a young company with a new product, the Stones absorbed the Mick Taylor reunion impact, profited from it, maybe even enjoyed it a while, then ultimately ground it into submission and irrelevance (to them) once all the delectable juice had been squeezed dry.

Nothing personal.

Reunion, Mick Taylor Guest of the Rolling Stones (2012-14)

Part Three: What They Had Him Play On

The Special Guest appearances of Mick Taylor have provided fans with a prodigious amount of new Rolling Stones music and visual output to enjoy.

Just listening to the Midnight Ramblers alone, back-to-back, takes about a half-day (12 hours). There's a lot of Mick Taylor guitar in there, and the other guys don't do a bad job themselves.

Mick Jagger's performances in Midnight Rambler, conducted while he was 69-71 years old, are universally stunning.

True, he doesn't whip a belt on the stage as in the old days, but societal sensibilities have changed since then.

Instead, he not only plays a mean Blues harmonica that is the equal to that of his heroes, he cues the band's many tempo changes during the song, he races around hundreds of yards doing unparalleled dance moves, including rock, disco, ballet, modern and stripper, he also sings, vamps, chants, improvises, extemporizes, and generally rewrites the book he originally wrote on being a rock front man.

Having watched many of his performances over the years, I believe we see Mick Jagger at his most free and genuinely expressive during these Midnight Ramblers. There are moments when his constant self- and audience-awareness seems to fade away and we get the real deal.

Those are also the moments when Keith is most likely to smirk behind his back.

But none of us would trade away a thing -- because you have to take the whole package -- the parts you love are inextricably intertwined with the things you could do without. Just like in life. (And do you really want to do without any of it?)

In addition to the always played Midnight Rambler, we also have handfuls of Can't You Hear Me Knocking and Sway, and occasional performances of All Down the Line, Slipping Away and Streets of Love.

And then there's Satisfaction.

Many of these versions have Mick Taylor playing an acoustic. That in itself is not necessarily bad, but they are so low in the mix that after listening to them all, I can't honestly say I ever heard any sound of Mick Taylor's playing on them.

In his electric guitar versions, you can hear something, especially the solo he did in San Jose.

Fortunately, all of Mick Taylor's performances onstage with the Stones in 2012-14 were captured by fans and have been widely shared, many on video as well as audio.

I was surprised in writing my reviews to realize that the visuals are just as interesting as the audio.

We grew up listening initially to bootlegs of the Stones live, and the video fragments that have emerged from those years are relatively sparse. The Stones probably have released or had filmed less video of their 1969-73 tours than their contemporaries.

Here, we have video of just about everything from 2012-14.

Due to the deep history of this band, watching the interaction as Mick Taylor plays with them is fascinating. It is almost too easy to speculate and infer what is "going on" in their respective heads.

Yet, we also know that in prior instances the band has not shied away from depicting "what was really going on" onstage -- which fuels our desire to read into what was going on here.

When Mick Taylor guested with the Stones for the first time, in Kansas City in 1981, the recordings that emerged, including the soundboard, had almost no audible Mick Taylor guitar on them.

Apparently, his amp was not connected through the soundboard, so it was not on the recording from it, nor did it go out through the arena PA system.

Instead, his sound was solely left to the amplifier they provided him onstage.

After years of straining our ears to hear a note here or there that sounded distinctively like MT, we were stunned to read comments from Ronnie Wood that Keith Richards was upset that MT was playing too loudly during that guest appearance.

It was also added that MT had overstayed his welcome onstage.

Given the implausibility of some of this, fans have every right to make their own assumptions from video evidence of what was going on onstage, just in case it gets characterized someday in a book.

So now we turn to looking at how the Mick Taylor appearances in the setlist varied over time. It was a huge source of interest while the concerts were going on. Fans were avidly wondering "will we get Sway or Can't You Hear Me Knocking, or not?"

Stat-heads might enjoy this breakdown of all of Mick Taylor's 55 Special Guest appearances in 2012-14:

Midnight Rambler: 55 performances (multiple electric solos)
Satisfaction: 48 performances (1 electric solo, 14 electric backing, 33 inaudible acoustic, sporadic backing vocals)
Slipping Away: 7 performances (electric backing, backing vocals)
Can't You Hear Me Knocking: 5 (electric solo)
Sway: 3 (electric solo)
Silver Train: 2 performances (electric solo)
Streets of Love: 1 performance (electric backing)
Love in Vain: 1 (electric solo)

-- Total performances with Rolling Stones: 122 songs
-- Played full solos and backing electric guitar: 67 songs
-- Played only backing electric guitar: 22 songs
-- Played inaudible acoustic: 33 songs

First and last performances:

Midnight Rambler: London, 11-25-2012; Auckland, 11-22-2014
Satisfaction: San Jose CA, 5-8-2013; Auckland, 11-22-2014
Slipping Away: Abu Dhabi, 2-21-2014; Singapore, 3-15-2014
Can't You Hear Me Knocking: LA, 5-20-2013; Glastonbury, 6-29-2013
Sway: LA, 5-20-2013; Boston, 6-12-2013
Silver Train: Tokyo, 3-4-2014; Brisbane, 11-18-2014
Streets of Love: Rome, 6-22-2014
Love in Vain: LA, 4-27-2013

Reunion, Mick Taylor Guest of the Rolling Stones (2012-14)

Part Four: Starting 2013 at The Echoplex Club Show

Midnight Rambler was a perfect choice -- from the band's perspective -- of a song that Mick Taylor could play on.

If you are going to draw a portion of the ticket buyers from those who wanted to witness this reunion, it couldn't be for one single five-minute song.

Midnight Rambler usually comes up in Stones shows as a break in the action, after quick costume changes, lights down low, and a chance to regroup. At about a quarter-hour all told, it provides enough of a showcase to justify the exercise.

It is also not a pop song, was never a hit, is largely unknown to anyone but hard-core fans, and is best known to fans for its live version from the 1969 tour (on Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out) rather than it's more sparse studio version.

The stars on that live version were none other than Keith Richards and Mick Taylor, the powerful chords versus the long, pretty lead lines. This was a completely new invention compared to the studio version that opened side two of Let it Bleed.

Midnight Rambler works for the Stones, even among the "tourists" who are seeing them for the first time, because it is an amalgam of what the band stands for in the public imagination.

Mick Jagger's outrageous dancing, fealty to the old Delta Blues, dark and brazen themes of violence and sex, numerous exciting tempo changes and guitars, guitars, guitars.

There are no horns, no backing vocals, no keyboard interludes.

So Midnight Rambler was played in every one of the 55 Mick Taylor Guest Appearances, one of which was a club show warm-up.

For the four 2012 shows with MT, he only played on Midnight Rambler.

As soon as the lights came up a bit and the harmonica and guitar started their introductory interplay, I was stuck in Newark on both nights that Mick Jagger did not introduce Mick Taylor to the crowd.

I felt slighted on behalf of MT, as it was a chance for some fence-mending on the part of the band. It would also have alerted a large proportion of the crowd to who the man was, and why he was part of their 50th anniversary celebration.

I still can't believe that, even after all of the post-song "acknowledgements" of and "thank you"s to Mick Taylor by Mick Jagger, he never noted once that Taylor was a former member of the Rolling Stones.

There may have been a couple of "old friend"s thrown in somewhere, but they do that for Eric Clapton during his periodic appearances with them, and he was never a Rolling Stone.

That must have been planned, and not a coincidence.

On the other hand, if I were Mick Jagger, had I announced that this guy was a former member, either immediately before or after his appearance, it would raise the awkward question -- "why the heck isn't he a member anymore? They sound so much deeper and richer with him playing than without him."

There's also Keith's oft-quoted phony boast that the only way out of his band is in a pine box. Aside from getting fired (a la Brian Jones) and quitting (Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor), that's surely true (Charlie Watts, we miss you very much).

As the 2013 tour launched, it began with rehearsals in Los Angeles and a secret club show at The Echoplex.
The Stones played an abbreviated 14-song set for Johnny Depp and many other notables, and some not so notables such as me, who managed the crazy process of getting a wristband and $20 ticket.

There was hope that the rehearsals would have resulted in a larger role for Mick Taylor and that Keith's "three-guitar attack" would be very much in evidence, revealed up close and personal in a hip LA club venue.

But it was not until the tenth song that Mick Taylor appeared, perhaps with the "old friend" appellation (I can't recall for certain, and there are no recordings yet known). Since many of the actors and music industry people in attendance were likely quite familiar with Mick Taylor's connection to the band, it would have been bad form for Mick Jagger not to concede his former member status to them.

He came out for Love in Vain, a song not unlike Midnight Rambler in its being both a full-on Blues, as well as one where the live version played by Mick Taylor with the Stones became more famous than the Taylor-less studio version from Let it Bleed (again on Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out, as well as from the Gimme Shelter movie).

I was in awe, standing just feet from Mick Taylor as he played on Love in Vain with the Rolling Stones, and I made an effort to simply experience it rather than to memorize it.

My remaining recollection is that it was not an incendiary solo like from the 1972 tour, and it did not ape his famous 1969 versions either. It was situationally appropriate in a more toned-down mode before a few hundred people, on a tiny stage, delivered just a few feet in front of Ronnie Wood and several more feet away from Keith Richards.

Grandstanding would have been impolitic at the cusp of the new touring opportunity, and it was beautiful and tasteful, as only Mick Taylor can be.

By every account, they did not play it again while Taylor was guesting with the band.

I did think at the Echoplex that it is a tough song to perform, especially in late career. It calls for actual singing at certain points, over a relatively wide range and really does not allow for much movement or dancing around, especially during an extended guitar solo.

Taylor then stayed on for Midnight Rambler, and that was it for him. The band closed The Echoplex show with three high-energy show-ending warhorses (Start Me Up, Brown Sugar and Jumpin' Jack Flash). It was great.

Reunion, Mick Taylor Guest of the Rolling Stones (2012-14)

Part Five: How His Assignments Evolved

As with all of the Stones' 2012 shows with Mick Taylor, the official tour opener at Staples Center in Los Angeles featured MT only on Midnight Rambler, as did the second show of the tour in Oakland.

For the third show in San Jose, California, the Stones had Mick Taylor play on the show finale, Satisfaction. He played a prominent electric guitar solo.

That quickly changed for the next show in Las Vegas. Keith Richards took the solo spot that Taylor had just played the prior night. When he was finished, Keith signaled to Mick Taylor to play a bit, but a momentous die had been cast.

Now, no one would argue that Keith should not do the solo on the song he is most closely associated with as musical author, a classic and influential one at that. It's just interesting that they brought Mick Taylor onto Satisfaction for the first time, and whatever went on onstage somehow resulted in Mick Taylor taking a solo.

And it never happened again.

Indeed, during the next show in Anaheim, during Satisfaction Taylor doesn't even play for a time while Keith solos. At the second Anaheim date, Keith solos on Satisfaction like a man on fire, while MT plays a different guitar than before.

The Kremlinologist in me just wonders what was going on behind the scenes that resulted in this? Or, what was not going on (clear, frank, up-front communications, perhaps)?

Back at Staples Center, again, the "holy grail" show occurs, as the Stones have Mick Taylor play on Sway and Can't You Hear Me Knocking in addition to Midnight Rambler and Satisfaction.

At the time, there was great hope that four songs was a trend, and maybe just the beginnings of even more.

But the next two shows reverted back to only Midnight Rambler and Satisfaction.

In retrospect, maybe because the band was back in LA there were business reasons to showcase Mick Taylor playing on his two most Stones-identified songs (his having been prominent on both their studio versions and in his own live versions during his solo career).

Can't You Hear Me Knocking came back for the second Chicago show, and Sway was the wildcard addition on the third Chicago night. CYHMK came back at the next show in Toronto (Toronto Two).

Montreal got just the MR/Satisfaction pair, and the first night in Boston served up Sway, before reverting back to just the Midnight Rambler/Satisfaction pairing for both Boston Two and Philly One.

Philly Two sported a killer Can't You Hear Me Knocking, where I observed an attractive middle-aged blonde drop down into a crouch while holding her head in astonishment at the unexpected (to her) beauty of Mick Taylor's guitar solo (I know because I asked why she did that).

The final U.S. show in Washington, D.C. provided only Midnight Rambler and Satisfaction. On Satisfaction Mick Taylor arrived onstage with an acoustic guitar for the first time.

My explanation to myself was that the band must have already packed his electric for transit back to the UK that night for the upcoming Glastonbury show. But that did not turn out to be the explanation, because he never held an electric during Satisfaction again.

The Glastonbury Festival gig featured the last performance of Mick Taylor on Can't You Hear Me Knocking. It turned out to be a televised tour de force, and rightfully will be a major monument of Stones fandom forever.

Then the Hyde Park shows reverted to just the MR/ Satisfaction combination.

In 2014, the Asian tour leg curiously featured Mick Taylor for Keith's slotted vocal Slipping Away in all of the shows, along with Midnight Rambler and Satisfaction.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall. Why a Keith song, one from after MT's years with the Stones? Why a non-rocker Keith song? Why not give Mick Taylor a chance to play a solo along with Keith's usually beautiful one? Why have him ostentatiously sing background vocals with Darryl Jones?

I'm not knocking Keith for this, quite the contrary. It seems likely that Keith felt that Mick Taylor should do more than he was being assigned to do. Keith's introductions of MT were pointed, and gracious (but they did not acknowledge he was a former member, either).

And certainly he bolstered the sound with his additional guitar.

But it's just weird and a window into the workings of the Rolling Stones.

The third and final Tokyo show added Silver Train to Slipping Away, Midnight Rambler and Satisfaction, and Mick Taylor got to solo.

The European leg of the 2014 tour (which also included Israel), featured just Midnight Rambler and Satisfaction, until Rome, where Mick Jagger brought Mick Taylor in for Streets of Love, a song highly associated with Jagger. It then returned to just the two for the rest of the leg.

Mick Taylor did not get to solo on Streets of Love, and it was a wonderment to fans about how the decision came about, same as with Keith and Slipping Away. Was Mick Jagger somehow responding to Keith's earlier gesture?

The Australian leg of the tour (including New Zealand) provided just Midnight Rambler and Satisfaction throughout all shows, except for the penultimate show in Brisbane, where Silver Train reappeared for its second performance in 2014.

Over time in 2014, Mick Taylor's opportunities for substantive performance were decreased, even though it is possible to conclude from sequential listening that the Midnight Ramblers were generally only getting better and better. (The Satisfactions were acoustic and MT was inaudible).

At some point, in classic muddled Stones messaging, the band members variously confirmed that Mick Taylor would not be heading out with them on the 2015 Zip Code tour of North America, citing inconsistent reasons therefor.

We invite you to dig into these performances, as well as the reviews of there here on GimmeMT, which we hope will add to your enjoyment.

And we invite you to respond/comment/contest the above with your own postings here.