How good was Mick Taylor though ......
What can you say? Taylor was the better lead player forty years ago and he still is today. Ron Wood is technically probably not any worse than Taylor, but he doesn't have the gift - or the desire - of playing a 2 minute + solo and keeping it interesting (even for himself), let's not even talk about tone. Solos for him are part of the arrangement, not a journey. And to his credit: He never played in a setting where he had to be the guitar hero. The Faces never took lead guitar journeys (they let their opener on early seventies US tours do that: Deep Purple) and neither did the Stones, the five or six Taylor years being the exception in a 50 year career. And IIRC, the Jeff Beck Group had
that other guy playing lead so Ronnie was largely unbothered there with guitar improvisation as well ...
Richards, who never connected with Taylor, wanted an integrated lead/rhythm player sparring partner and he got just that with Wood, they interweave nicely (though I can't see them playing at a Wishbone Ash or Allman Brothers convention!
) and Wood's rhythm guitar playing in particular is now so close to Richards' (the latter's idiosyncratic timing excepted) that I for one have a hard time telling them apart when I'm not seeing them.
It was a nice move to take those two (Wyman and Taylor) on stage for the concerts though, most likely a Mick idea. And Jagger probably thought as he stood there with Taylor in the O2:
"The greatest present I ever made to Keef was letting this guy go and the other guy into the band". Which is probably correct and an integral reason why the Stones are still around today as a live band.
90% of the O2 audience probably had no idea who Mick Taylor was or is or saw him as some kind of surprise resurrection: "Didn't he drown in his swimming pool?"
