Guitar manufacturers Gibson have interviewed ex-Rolling Stones member and guitarist, Mick Taylor. To read the interview see below!

How are you feeling? I understand you had pneumonia this past year.

I had pneumonia and a lot of nasty things, which is why I couldn’t fulfill my obligations and finish the tour I was booked to do. But I’m over that now. I’m still recovering and getting my strength back, but I’m over the worst of that.

And you’re back on the road now, right?

Well, not entirely. A couple of weeks ago, we did a show in Poland and we did three shows in Italy and we came home. And then a week later, we did a show in France and then a show in Suffolk, which is in England. And then we did a show two days later in France. So I’m keeping busy, but I’m not doing any major tours, yet. No, not ready to do that yet.

What guitars are you playing these days?

I’m playing a Les Paul, a vintage reissue. I’ve got two Les Pauls at the moment, neither of them are of that much intrinsic value, like the ones I used to play when I was with John Mayall and with the Stones, but they’re nice guitars. I’m most interested in trying to acquire an SG like the one I used to have in my last year with John Mayall and I used throughout my 1969 tour with The Rolling Stones. That I [used on] Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!

What do you remember about that original guitar?

Well, I just remember loving that guitar – because I must have loved it a lot, otherwise I wouldn’t have forsaken a Les Paul to play that. I played both, but I think I preferred that SG because it had a very wide neck, and a very flat neck, and the action was absolutely superb. And the sound was good, too. And it had a Bigsby arm on it, which I didn’t use a great deal in those days, but I like that kind of effect, as well.

What made you eventually switch to a Les Paul?

I don’t really know. I used to play both. I mean, to be honest, when I was in the studio with the Stones, I used to use a whole variety of guitars. I used to use a Gibson Firebird and, on a lot of the tracks, I used to use a Fender Stratocaster, as well. And a Telecaster. But my main two guitars for doing live shows, both with John Mayall and with the Stones, were either a Gibson Les Paul or a Gibson SG. But I can’t tell you the exact years. [My manager] can tell you the exact year of the Les Paul that I bought from Keith Richards in the three years before I even joined the Rolling Stones. It was a ’59 Sunburst Les Paul with a Bigsby arm. But I guess the SG that I played, ’cause this was ’68 that I got it, must have been the early ’60s or a late ’50s. I don’t know when they started making SGs with Bigsby arms.

SGs debuted in 1961. Not sure if they were adding Bigsbys at that point...

I don’t think it was a really early one, but [it] was a very good one and I really loved it a lot. I played it during my last tour with John Mayall in ’68-’69. I played it onstage at Hyde Park with the Stones and I played it throughout my very first American tour with the Stones in 1969.

You mentioned John Mayall. Do you mind sharing with us the story of how you hooked up with him originally?

By the time I was about 15, 16 years old, I was very much heavily influenced by blues music. I used to listen to the same kind of rootsy American black rhythm-and-blues music that the Stones used to listen to. For example, Chuck Berry. But I used to concentrate more on the guitar players, like B.B. King, Freddie King, Albert King, Buddy Guy. Otis Rush was a favorite of mine, too. And so, I started to go and see John Mayall, because in the early ’60s there was this big blues scene in England, for some reason. The Rolling Stones tapped into it. So did John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. So did Eric Clapton and Cream and Jeff Beck and Peter Green, Jimmy Page – a whole host of guitar players that are now associated with Led Zeppelin or, in my case, John Mayall and The Rolling Stones. And we all used to love that music. And so, there was a club scene in England and blues was very popular, for some reason. In some ways, it was more popular in England than in America at the time. And that’s where it comes from, really.

So you were 16 or so, and Clapton hadn’t shown up for a gig…

I think I’d just turned 16. Yeah, he didn’t show up for a gig, but his guitar was there, which was a Les Paul. So I just went backstage and asked John Mayall if I could do the second part of the show with him. And he said, “Yeah, if you think you can handle it.” I said, “Well, I know all the songs on your ‘Beano’ album, so I’m sure it will sound better with a guitar player than without one.” And he said, “OK, well, Eric’s guitar is here. So sit in with us.” So I plugged into a little 50-watt Marshall combo amp, used Eric’s Les Paul – which sounded great – and I remember doing “Steppin’ Out” and “All Your Love” and all the songs that Eric Clapton and John Mayall were associated with at that time. That’s exactly how it happened. I went to see a John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers show with Eric Clapton and, when Eric Clapton didn’t show up, I sat in for him.

That was pretty cool of John Mayall to, basically, meet a kid and say, “Yeah, kid. Come on up and play Eric’s guitar and take his place.”

Yeah, it was. Yes. I mean, the worst thing he could have said was “no,” but because I was in his dressing room and I knew all the songs, I think he could see that I knew what I was talking about. I didn’t get the call to replace Eric Clapton, though. Peter Green did. But when Peter Green left John Mayall, that was when John Mayall got in touch with me and asked me if I’d like to join the band.

He must have been a little taken aback when you got up onstage and he realized, “Hey, this kid can play.”

I could play a little bit. Yeah. But I couldn’t play like I’d learned to play a few years later after being on the road with John Mayall five or six days a week.

Between the time you got up on stage with him as a 16-year-old and the time Peter Green left, how much had you developed as a player?

I used to practice a lot in those days, all the time. All the time. And not just blues music, but jazz… all kinds of stuff. I’d try anything, but my main focus was trying to reproduce a kind of sound that the legendary American blues guitarists got.

What did John Mayall teach you?

Oh, he taught me lots of things. I mean, I guess the most important thing was he gave me the opportunity to travel all over Europe. More importantly, I traveled to America. I did two tours in America with John Mayall. The first one, I think, was in ’67. One of my most vivid memories is standing with Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Miles, who were both playing on the same bill at the Winterland auditorium in San Francisco. And we were listening to Albert King playing, because the bill for that show was: Jimi Hendrix was top of the bill, and then it was Albert King, and then it was me and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. We were third on the bill. I used to have a poster of that gig somewhere, but that’s long gone. But that wasn’t the first time I saw Jimi Hendrix play. The first time I saw Jimi Hendrix play was in Europe, when I was with John Mayall. I knew him quite well.

How did you get the introduction to the Stones?

That all came about through John Mayall, too, funnily enough. I’d just finished an American tour with John Mayall in ’69. This was my second tour – it was a long tour, about six or seven weeks. And when I got back to London, John had decided to do something that, at the time, was quite revolutionary: he decided to break up that particular lineup of the Bluesbreakers and form a different sort of band without a drummer and without an electric guitar player. So that meant that he didn’t need me anymore. And I was kind of thinking of doing other things anyway. I mean, I may have gone on to form my own blues band or something, I don’t really know. But instead of that happening, he heard from Mick that the Stones were thinking of working again and going on the road again, ’cause they hadn’t done much touring for two or three years… and that maybe they needed a guitar player. So he gave Mick Jagger my number, because by that time John Mayall had moved to America and I was living in a flat in England. And Mick called me up and asked me if I wanted to go down and play with them when they were putting the finishing touches to Let It Bleed. So, I went down there and did that, and a couple of days later I was asked to join the band.

So, you didn’t know you were trying out for the band. You just thought you were showing up for a session.

As soon as I met them, I kind of realized that maybe it was a bit more than just a session, because we all got on so well. And it was obvious they needed a guitar player.

As players, did you and Keith click immediately?

We did, actually. Yeah, we really did. Most of the stuff I did on Let It Bleed was overdubs, except there was one track that we did live at Olympic Studios, which I remember very well, and it was called “Live with Me.” And that was kind of the start of that particular era for the Stones, where Keith and I traded licks. He’d sometimes play rhythm, I’d sometimes play rhythm, but on stage there’d always be quite a lot of lead guitar playing, which I’d do most of. And even on the albums they made during the Atlantic Records years, I ended up playing a lot of solos that the Stones never used to write songs to accommodate, really. They didn’t change their songwriting style, but they tended to leave room for a guitar solo where they didn’t before, you know what I mean?

Was it pretty clear whose part would be whose in a song? Was there much back and forth about who would play the lead, etc.?

No, not really. Working with the Stones was never really as academic or as studied as that. It was very loose and spontaneous. By the time we got around to making Exile on Main St., it was a bit too loose and spontaneous. It took us ages to make that record. But that’s the record that everybody – well, not everybody – but that’s the Stones album that everybody seems to highlight as being one of their best. My personal favorite is Sticky Fingers. It’s certainly their biggest-selling album.

Well, you had a lot of creative input on Sticky Fingers, right? With “Sway” and–

Yeah, “Moonlight Mile.” Yeah, I don’t know why, but Keith wasn’t even there when we did “Moonlight Mile” and “Sway.” We actually recorded those two tracks at a house in the country, which belonged to Mick, called Stargroves. By that time, we had the mobile studio that the Stones had acquired. Yeah, we did have it then, I think. We definitely had it by the time we did Exile on Main St., anyway. But most of the time, we did our recording when we were in England at Olympic Studios.

Olympic Studios was a pretty vibrant place at that time. A lot of big acts were blowing through there. What are your memories of Olympic as a place to hunker down for a month and make a record?

Well, in those days – I mean before we actually had to leave England, for tax reasons – we never spent a great deal of time in the studio, like they did later on. We used to try and do what we could as quickly as possible. I mean, sometimes we’d end up jamming blues songs, sometimes Mick would come in with a song that was finished, sometimes we’d make it up in the studio. That’s what tended to happen later on with Exile on Main St., especially… Goats Head Soup and It’s Only Rock ’n Roll. But most of the songs on Sticky Fingers were written [beforehand], so it didn’t take a lot of time to make Sticky Fingers.

You mentioned Exile, and there’s been a lot attention on that album lately, with the re-release. What are your memories of those sessions? You mentioned that it really dragged out.

Just that. I don’t know whether you’ve seen that documentary that the Stones released. It was pretty much like everybody says it was in the movie.

Was it a little bit frustrating how things dragged out in France, given – as you say – how productive the band was on the Sticky Fingers sessions?

Oh, no. I can’t honestly say it was, really. No. I mean, it was just the way things were, you know? When you try and make a record in somebody’s house, albeit in the basement of their house, and you’ve got people flying in from all over the world to have a holiday and, you know, everybody’s holiday time and your work time and Keith’s own personal, domestic life all get sort of mixed into one surrealistic portrait, don’t they? I mean, Exile on Main St. is a little bit like the artwork, really. [laughs] A bit like a circus. A bit freaky, you know? But it was just the band being themselves and trying to write some songs and, more often than not, coming up with a great song like, for example, “Shine a Light”… and some of the other ones. And then, coming up with – not all the time – some fairly ordinary songs, like “Ventilator Blues.” I mean, it was the Stones making blues music their own music.

With the re-release, you actually got to go back and take another shot at one of the tracks, “Plundered My Soul.” What was that session like?

Oh, that was very quick. I mean, because the track was already there for me to overdub on, and Mick had already done a rough vocal, so it didn’t actually sound too much like an outtake from Exile on Main St. Well, it did, except Mick had added vocals and back-up vocals and all it needed was some lead guitar, which I did… very quickly. I think it took about two hours for me to do about four or five different passes on the guitar.

Over the years, you’ve stayed in touch with the Stones. You’ve shared stages with them. With their recent announcement that the upcoming tour is a farewell tour, has there been any talk about you joining them for any of the shows?

Not directly, no. I don’t even know whether they will do a tour, but it would be nice if they did. But I haven’t heard from their office or Mick or anybody directly about that.

I just know that when I play with them, all the stuff that I used to do in the past – even now – it’s just such an instinctive thing for me and I fit into that role quite easily. I mean, you know, there’s not too many people like Mick Jagger as a frontman, so I don’t get a chance to play that type of rock and roll very often. I really enjoy it, because it’s a different aspect of my playing. It brings out a different side to my playing.

I know the question you always get asked is, “Why did you leave the Stones?” Can you tell me about the year leading up to that decision?

Most of 1974, I took a long holiday in Brazil, which was wonderful, and then I came back and we started doing recording on It’s Only Rock ’n Roll fairly quickly. The very track we recorded, that I remember anyway, at Musicland Studios in Munich was “Time Waits for No One.” And it was done very quickly, so that was a song where most of the song must have been written before we even got into the studio, by Mick. ’Cause although it always says “Jagger/Richards,” that doesn’t necessarily mean that they both always write the songs. You know, there are some songs, maybe, that Keith had written on his own, like “Happy,” but by and large most of the songs, especially when it comes to lyrics, are written by Mick.

“Time Waits for No One” was a great track.

Yeah, it’s very different from (other Stones material). I mean, Mick Jagger does write these sort of ballads. Well, I don’t know that that was a ballad, because it’s medium tempo, but yeah, from time to time he does write these songs that aren’t like “Start Me Up” or “Brown Sugar” or “Honky Tonk Women.” They have a slightly more lyrical, gentler side to them. They’re a little more evocative. And throughout his career, he’s done that. I mean, on his solo albums he’s done that, as well.

So you came back for those sessions. Did you have an inkling, when you returned, that you might want to leave at that time or was it more an on-the-spot decision?

It’s such a long time ago, it’s hard to remember it clearly, but I do know that – although we’d done two major American tours and we’d done two European tours – the time I enjoyed with the Stones most of all was when we’d arrive in the studio, making a record, or when we were on the road. And in 1974, there were no plans to tour or anything, and it seemed very sterile. The band had gotten very… I don’t know. To me, anyway, It’s Only Rock ’n Roll is not a great album. It’s got some good songs on it, some wonderful songs, but it’s not as strong as Sticky Fingers or Let It Bleed or Exile on Main St. or even Beggar’s Banquet, which actually was the album that made me really take notice of the Stones as more than just a blues band that did covers, but was a band that wrote their own brand of really good rock and roll songs and had a kind of English originality about it, that was unique to them.