A STONE’S THROW

With an autobiography on the horizon, the ex-Bluesbreaker and former Rolling Stone MICK TAYLOR tells a condensed tale to ALAN CLAYSON

Mick Taylor, one of the most distinguished rock guitarists this country has ever produced, has had a long and continuing career that began in 1966, when he first impinged upon the pop world as the latest wunderkind in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

Having proved himself the equal of his immediate successors, Eric Clapton and Peter Green, Taylor’s would be among the names that kept cropping up in discussions about a replacement for Brian Jones in The Rolling Stones – and he’d be where the late Brian had once stood on stage when the group hit the road again, in autumn 1969, after a three-year hiatus.

The journey to this most public summit began with the biggest treat of Taylor’s Hertfordshire childhood, when he was taken to see Bill Haley & The Comets during their 1957 tour of Europe. After his parents conjured up the cash for a guitar, young Michael Kevin Taylor progressed beyond Haley’s countrified picking via The Shadows instrumentals to the terse passagework and soloing of T-Bone Walker, B.B. King and other principal post-war black guitarists.

Nevertheless, he achieved parochial renown after his beat group, The Juniors, mimed There’s A Pretty Girl, a 1964 single of more mainsteam pop persuasion, on children’s television. While the combo sundered …

by ALAN CLAYSON
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