1974
And the guitar player gets restless
Mick Taylor: "Time Waits for No One"
The best one (on that album) - for a guitar solo, anyway - is Time Waits for No One, which is the first song we recorded for It's Only Rock 'N Roll. We hadn't seen each other for about 3 months, and it was done in one or two takes. We had done a bit of a layoff because we'd finished an American tour (sic), and everybody went to different parts of the globe and had a rest. I went to Brazil, which is possibly why there is a little Latin influence there. |
March 1974: Mick Jagger
attends the American Film Institute's tribute to James
Cagney in Los Angeles with John
Lennon.
Keith Richards: The spring '74
sessions
We finished off writing the songs that hadn't been completed lyricwise, because a lot of them had been written in a very loose framework to start with - maybe just a chorus, a hook line, or something. Then we got on and did the vocals and I left Mick for a couple of weeks to do his solo vocals, because he often comes up with his best stuff alone in the studio with just an engineer. Then he doesn't feel like he's hanging anybody up. |
April 14, 1974: The
Rolling Stones' first full-length concert film, Ladies
and Gentlemen, the Rolling
Stones, filmed in 1972, is premiered in New York City.
April 29, 1974: Mick Jagger
is in New York at the Record Plant, where John Lennon
drops by and spontaneously
produces the song Please Don't Ever Change.
Late April-June 1974: Mick
Jagger, Keith Richards and Mick Taylor contribute to the
recording sessions of Ron
Wood's first solo album at the latter's home studio in
Richmond, England.
May 13, 1974: Bill Wyman's
solo album, and the first solo album by a Rolling Stone, Monkey
Grip, is released.
Mid-May 1974: The Rolling
Stones hold a band meeting in England to discuss tour plans
and business &
tax
issues.
May 18, 1974: Eric Clapton
jams with Ron Wood and Keith Richards at the former's home
studio, The Wick, in
Richmond, England.
May 20-25, 1974: The
Rolling Stones hold overdubbing and mixing sessions for It's
Only Rock 'n Roll
at
Island Studios in London, England.
June 1, 1974: The Rolling
Stones shoot promotional film clips for It's Only Rock
'n Roll, Ain't Too Proud
to
Beg and Till the Next Goodbye at studios in
London, England.
June 28, 1974: Bill Wyman
performs with Buddy Guy, Junior Wells and Muddy Waters at
the Montreux Jazz
Festival in Switzerland.
July 13-14, 1974: Keith
Richards performs in Ron Wood's band at the latter's solo
concerts at the Kilburn Gaumont
State
Theatre in London.
Keith Richards (1975): No tour in
1974
I can't live without being on the road. Every minute spent off the road I either turn into an alcoholic or a junkie 'cause I've got nothing else to do. It's just a waste of time. I can turn into anything: a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a psychedelic treat, a Jehovah's Witness, a junkie - anything can happen 'cause I'm not doing THAT. That's what I do. I mean, most people that do things at least have the opportunity of doing it pretty regularly. We're in this unique, so they say, position of not being able to expose ourselves too much. So you've got these horrible extravagances of people saying, I don't want to work this year. That's why I did the album with Woody. I couldn't stand it anymore. To write off a whole fucking year in one sentence is stupid. |
July 26-27, 1974:
The Rolling Stones' first single off their next album, It's
Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It), is released.
July 27, 1974: A day after
his 31st birthday, Mick Jagger holds a big party in
London, which Rod Stewart, Pete
Townshend and Mama Cass attend among others.
August 1974: Charlie and
Shirley Watts spend time with Bill Wyman and Astrid
Lundstrom in France. Mick Taylor
produces and
plays on Robin Millar's Cat's Eyes album at Apple Studios
in London.
August 18, 1974: Mick
Jagger does additional mixing for the It's Only Rock 'n
Roll album at a studio in
in
London, England.
September-November 1974:
Keith Richards spends time in Switzerland, and gets his
teeth fixed. He also
attempts
nsuccessfully another heroin addiction cure.
Keith Richards (1974)
I reconciled myself to what I was years ago (laughs). I'm not gonna last forever. I'm changing my image. I'm finally getting my teeth fixed. |
September 13, 1974: Ron
Wood's first solo album, I've Got My Own Album to Do,
is released.
September 16-17, 1974: Mick
Jagger spends one of these evenings with Bob Dylan at
A&R Studios in New York City,
as
the latter is recording Blood on The Tracks. Mick
Jagger also spends time at John Lennon and May Pang's
apartment in New York this month.
Late
September 1974: Mick Jagger and John Lennon attend the
fall opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New
York City, then hang out in Montauk, Long Island.
October 9, 1974: Mick Jagger
attends Lou Reed's concert at the Felt Forum in New York
City.
October 16-18, 1974: The Rolling Stones'
14th U.S. and 12th UK studio album, It's Only Rock 'n Roll, is
released.
October 24, 1974: Bill Wyman
spends his 38th birthday at home in France with French
poet André Verdet.
October 25-28, 1974: The
Rolling Stones join Keith Richards and hold band meetings in
Geneva,
Switzerland, discussing plans for the next year. Mick Taylor
gets angry and leaves after a day.
Keith Richards (November 1974): A
two-year plan
Well - what we're thinking of is something like this: We'll go and do some sessions in December to start recording a new album which we hope to have out by May. Because, hopefully in June we'll be starting out a tour which will last a year altogether. It would start in America and go through there until about August, with maybe South America and Canada thrown in somewhere during. After which there will be a break when we hope to be able to get a live album out - of the American tour. Following that - starting around November, or October or something, will be the second half of the tour, which will probably be Australia, Asia, and ending up in Africa. There we hope to be able to make some kind of a movie, not just a documentary... Anyway - that will take us until about Christmas, when we'll have another break, and we'll have to start recording another albunm because by then it will have already beeen a year since we will have done the one we're planning to do now, if you follow me. Yes (laughs), and then it goes on for the third part of the tour which would be Europe, hopefully the Iron Curtain, England, etc.... which would take us a year from the start of the tour. That would then be one June later, and it would end in June 1976. That's basically what we talked about. |
November 1974: Bill Wyman
is informed of Mick Taylor leaving the Rolling Stones.
Mick Taylor: Leaving the Rolling
Stones
It was inevitable. I was becoming so depressed and frustrated that it was rubbing off on the group. I had a lot of personal problems which had nothing to do with the group. I was bored. Not bored with the Rolling Stones but bored with myself. I knew I had a lot more inside me, and it needed to get out. I was actually getting very bored with the inactivity and the lack of direction. You know, for a whole year we just really didn't do anything. We didn't see each other and nothing was happening. And there were all sorts of things going on that had absolutely nothing to do with the band and being on the road and making records, which, I think, interfered with relationships within the band. I think if I'd have been a little older, I don't think I would have left actually. You know, I don't REGRET that I left, but because I hadn't been involved with them right from the beginning, there was much more of a sense of urgency about needing to do something else, inside me, you know. Whereas with the rest of them, they always knew inside themselves that no matter how difficult things were or how crazy things were, they'd sort of always be together, they'd get through it. |
Bill Wyman: Thoughts of leaving the
Rolling Stones
Around the time Mick Taylor quit I just wanted to leave. I couldn't see myself standing it any longer. But I didn't want to be the person who caused the breakup of the band. |
November 14, 1974: Mick and
Bianca Jagger attend a party at New York City's
Hippopotamus Club for the play
Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, mingling with John
Lennon and Ronnie Spector.
December 6-15, 1974: The
Rolling Stones, minus Mick Taylor, start work on their next
album, Black
and
Blue, at Musicland Studios in Munich, West Germany.
They record the basic tracks for Fool to
Cry
and Cherry Oh Baby.
Engineer Glyn Johns: starting Black
And Blue
We started the record in Germany, the night before Mick Taylor left the band. The five of us, as it turned out to be, getting back together as the original crew on our own, with Nicky Hopkins, and Stu. And it was FANTASTIC, because it was just like the old days but without Brian. We cut eleven tracks in - I think we were there for just under two weeks. We overdubbbed on a lot of them. Cause they got on quicker than they'd ever been before. We had a GREAT time. The material was pretty good. We broke for Christmas or whatever... |
December 12, 1974: The
Rolling Stones officially announce the departure of Mick
Taylor from the group.
Mick Jagger & Keith Richards:
Living & playing with Mick Taylor
Mick: Living with someone like that for five years, being with them so much, makes you very close to them. So, as far as we're concerned, he was just as close as anyone else in the band. There's no question of his being frozen out of the group or anything like that. Five-and-a-half years is a long time to spend with one band, especially these days, I think. And people talk about him not having a kind of Stones image. I think it's only Keith and me to a certain extent, who have what you'd call that kind of image. Mick and I used to get on very well, and we used to go around a lot together. I think it's just that he has a lot of ideas and he wants to try them out. And I hope he does. I don't want to say goodbye to him. I hope I can work with him again. Keith: My playing relationship with Mick Taylor was always very good. There is no way I can compare it to playing with Brian, because it had been so long since Brian had been interested in the guitar at all, I had almost gotten used to doing it all myself - which I never really liked. I couldn't bear being the only guitarist in a band, because the real kick for me is getting those rhythms going, and playing off of another guitar. But I learned a lot from Mick Taylor, because he is such a beautiful musician. I mean, when he was with us, it was a time when there was probably more distinction, let's say, between rhythm guitar and lead guitar than at any other time in the Stones. More than now and more than when Brian was with us, because Mick Taylor is that kind of a player; you know he can do that. |
Mick Jagger (December 1974): Plans
for the new year
We have got American dates coming up about May, and we'll be touring extensively next spring. Mick's departure doesn't really affect the plans, by then we'll probably have a new man anyway. |
Late December 1974: Bill
Wyman holidays in Bermuda.
December 23, 1974: Keith
Richards joins Ron Wood and The Faces for a concert in
London.
December 26, 1974: The
Rolling Stones appear on UK radio's Hunky Chunky Radio
Show, speaking on
the
phone with hospital patients.