I’m listening to a Wolfgang’s Vault™ Stones show from 1973. Now their records were about to start getting worse and worse, but the ’73 Stones could cut it live like a motherf***er. And the main reason is that you could actually hear what Keith Richards was doing.
Mick Taylor was a lead guitarist. Not a particularly interesting one. But what he did was give Keef room to breath, provide some spurious top end action. So what we have is Charlie Watts and the Most Elegantly Wasted Man playing flat-out rock’n'roll. Jesus they were good.
I had the misfortune to see them at Earl’s Court in 1976. I was there largely to see The Meters, relegated to playing on a postage-stamp stage with the house lights up and a pseudo-carnival going on. The Stones were dreadful, Jagger yelping with a camp desperation as messrs. Richards and Wood smeared gobbets of crap R&B guitar over anything that moved. After the last number, Charle Watts could be seen putting down his sticks like a clerk clocking off as the petals closed around the stage.
The big problem is Keef was blurred. All concision had deserted those monumental riffs that had carved the Mount Rushmore of Rock: Let It Bleed, Beggar’s Banquet, Sticky Fingers and Exile (with an honourable nod to Get Your Ya Ya’s Out). Wood and Richards essentially duplicate one another. Even if one is soloing (and Keef is a really dull lead player) they are so stuck in each other’s range that it’s just a mess.
If these old codgers really insist on flogging their grisly carcasses around the world’s stages, they could at least try the following:
1. Move Ron Wood to bass. It’s not as though the Stones need a good bass player – they didn’t have one for the first 20-odd years of their existence, and Ron did a passable job a million years ago with the Jeff Beck Group, and we don’t want to sack him do we? The poor poppet’s probably got some alimony coming up.
2. Get a lead player. Maybe make it a rotating scholarship, so you could have Johnny Marr, Visiting Professor of Keeping Out The Way Of Keefology. Or that prat from The Darkness. Whatever.
But what I really want is for them to just bloody retire.
7 Responses to Let’s face it, Ronnie Wood F***ed up the Rolling Stones
I have to agree. As much of an orthodoxy as it sounds these days, the counterpointing of Richards and Mick Taylor on that awesome run of Stones records from 69-72 (alright, ’74 if you must) was a thing of true greatness. One of Keith’s biggest failings was not understanding that dear old Woody is really a feeble clone of himself – and surely one of the most workaday guitar stylists in the history of rock & roll. (Does he even HAVE a style?) Imagine, say, “Sway” with Ronnie in place of Taylor… an awful thought!
Didn’t this exact topic come up in the back of that cab the other week, Barney?! Obviously a hot potato. I was just old and lucky enough to have caught the Stones at the Empire Pool in Sept ’73 (though at the time it already seemed several years too late…), and the difference between that performance at the ’76 shows was immense. The inflatable cock Mick fiddled about with didn’t help, but essentially it was the absence of the dramatic tension that the skilled, aloof and solo-happy Taylor brought to the band. I still think the dynamics between KR and Taylor give Ya-Ya’s its classic live album status, rivalled only by the Hendrix Experience at Monterey and Jefferson Airplane’s Bless Its Pointed Little Head. Oh, and maybe one of those early ’70s Miles Davis double sets. Taylor’s still doing the rounds, I hear, and is apparently still worth catching. Now Ronnie’s got cash flow problems, and Keith’s seemingly battling with arthritis, Jagger might do better to take Wyman and Taylor out next time.
I’m not here to argue with any of you but, having bumped into Ronnie Wood in 2006 and been utterly flabbergasted not only by how drunk he was, but also (and much more importantly) how supernaturally nice he was, I find it hard to hear a bad word spoken about the charming old crow.
Those understandably fantasising about a return of Mick Taylor probably know that the rest of The Stones threatened Ronnie with replacement by Taylor on their 2003 world tour – an umpteenth attempt to get him to dry out and shape up. At the time, I mentioned this to a colleague who had worked with the Stones, and he immediately shot back: “That will never happen. Mick’s fat now.” As superficial as this criterion for deciding on a musical accomplice might sound, he was almost certainly right. Talent schmalent! You can be in the band if you’ve got a face like a lizard’s scrotum, but fat? That’s just not rock’n'roll!
Yes to all the comparisons of 73 to 76 (christ that was painful), but to call Mick Taylor pedestrian?!? That’s harsh. There’s a boot called Unreleased Live Decca that has two extraordinary moments: a solo from Taylor on ‘Love In Vain’ that is a model of elegant perfection and a solo/rhythm in ‘Bitch’ that is a peak of twin interaction. He earns his kudos right there. I’d just like them to get into their 70s and become totally irrelevant. Then they might play some decent blues again, like their heroes. Probably not.
Sir Ronald of Wood is the worst thing to have happened to The Stones, the other being Mick Taylor’s departure. Barney’s comments pretty much sum up my thoughts on the Wood v Taylor arguement.
I want the Stones to get hugely obese very quickly so that they look even more ridiculous than they do now, then no one will will want to shell out zillions of pounds to see lardy MJ and his cronies make fools of themselves once again.
Mark, you’re brutal!
Here’s the thing: the Stones hired Ronnie to prop up Keith at a time when he was listing to port so bad you really did think he’d hit the deck. I’m not talking about musically supporting–I mean literally, physically holding Keith upright– hence the back-to-back guitar playing. If Woody moved, Keith would fall down go boom.
(I had this realization watching one of their New York shows soon after Woody joined the band.)
Also, if you’re Mick you can’t fire Keith from the band because then you can’t call it the Rolling Stones. And from then on your music would suck. So you get him a crutch.
But I have to say that Mick Taylor’s playing, since the time I saw him with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, is immaculate. Don’t know if it would fit with what the Stones are doing now.
And did you say FAT?? Every one of the Stones is a scarecrow; it’s freakin’ frightening. Soon they’ll all look like lollipops.
I went to see The Stones at Twickenham last year.
Woods’ playing was truly electric and left me gobsmacked. He might well have been clean.
Richards’ riffing was horribly messy. He did one appalling solo which went on for 5 minutes too long.
I was thinking: Why the fuck don’t you just shut-up Keith and let Ronnie get on with it? You’re playing like some old drunk.
Maybe they should get Bill Wyman in to replace Keith?
Either that or Keith should send me that skull ring he wears.
That would improve his playing.