Should you join an already-established band, your first gig with them will likely be a bit of a nerve-racking experience. Will you fit in musically onstage like you did in rehearsal? Does your onstage presence fit in with the rest of the group? Will their audience be different to what you're used to?
Now, imagine you're joining no less than the Rolling Stones – at the absolute peak of their popularity and cultural sway. Oh, and your first gig with them is a free show at London's Hyde Park. Attendance? At least a quarter of a million people.
Oh! And the man whose shoes you're filling just died tragically two days before, making said show an incredibly bittersweet experience for your new bandmates.
Such was the situation guitarist Mick Taylor, barely out of his teens, found himself in in early July 1969.
Despite his youth, Taylor already had plenty of prestige, and road miles under his belt. At the tender age of 17, he was selected by John Mayall to fill the lead guitar slot in his Bluesbreakers band – the same position once occupied by Eric Clapton and Peter Green.
Brian Jones, whose place Taylor was taking in the Stones, had also once been a formidable presence – but his decline into drug addiction in the two years prior to his tragic death at the age of 27 prevented the band from touring, and made him an increasingly rare presence in the studio.
With his youth and experience following in the footsteps of larger-than-life players, Taylor was seen as the natural choice to give the Stones a new lease on life.
Due to their aforementioned live hiatus, the Stones were quite rusty as a performing unit as they geared up for their comeback performance – to the point where it took their newest member by surprise.
Reflecting on his debut performance with the band in a 2002 interview with Guitar World, Taylor shrugged, “The Rolling Stones were never great musicians.
“When we were rehearsing for [the July 5, 1969 performance at] Hyde Park, when I first joined them, I couldn't believe how bad they were. I thought, ‘How do they make such great records?’”
To hear Taylor tell it, it was Jimmy Miller, the storied producer who manned the boards for all three of the band's golden-era masterpieces – 1969's Let it Bleed, 1971's Sticky Fingers, and 1972's Exile on Main St. – who helped the band's music transcend any lack of technical acumen.
“When I met Jimmy it all fell into place,” Taylor told Guitar World. “It's not about being great musicians but about a certain kind of chemistry the band has, a certain kind of dynamic between Mick [Jagger] and Keith [Richards] and then me and Mick and then Jimmy Miller.”
