At Mr. Mod’s suggestion, I am posting a few choice tracks from Mick Taylor’s spottily excellent solo album, entitled simply “Mick Taylor.” I admit to having serious nostalgia-colored glasses as far as this record is concerned; I bought it when it came out, and it was a key part of the soundtrack to most of my high school years. I pumped my fist angrily through the rockin’ numbers, incompetently noodled along to the introspective, jammier pieces — and shed a lonely tear or two to the accompaniment of the treaclier ballads (Carla Boswell, how could you?!). Anyhow, as I said yesterday, the album is pretty good, if a bit dated. Mick’s lyrics are kind of dumb, for the most part, but — like one of the better Jeff Beck albums from the era — the LP is a masterpiece of guitar wankery. All in all, it could have been a lot worse, and I struggle to think of how it could’ve been any better, given what it is and who wrote it. I’m sure Mick Taylor wanted to produce a solid album that put the music first, and that showcased his talents to the best degree possible. To that extent, it’s a winner — and there are a few particular tracks (including those that follow here) for which no excuse or explanation is necessary.
This stuff’s definitely ringing a bell. Nice work, HVB!
It’s not bad, but it’s not great. I mean, the guy played an integral part in Exile on Main St.! That’s an odd one to have be a major part of your teenage years, especially considering what was going on then. Pretty adventurous, if you ask me.
Then again he also had too much influence on Goat’s Head Soup and It’s Only Rock N’ Roll, so I guess it’s no surpise that it’s a real hit or miss affair.
I’m listening to those John Phillips songs so I can decide which ones to post. I am really dedicated to you people!
That last number sounds like a Jackson Brown song with some extra chords in the middle.
Adventurous? You make it sound like I had a choice. You’re new-ish around here, so you’ve not heard my droning on and on about where I did the high school thing. I lived in a teeny-tiny country in Africa, where records were basically not to be had. We had to travel to Johannesburg to get that kind of stuff, and even then, a.) the selection tended to be pretty weird; and b.) I had to make every… penny… count, since it could be *months* before I got the chance to buy anything again. Add to that the fact that my only connection to rock and roll culture was four month-old music magazines and a dog-eared copy of the original “Rolling Stone Record Guide,” and you can perhaps understand why I would seek such an unlikely album out. My buying decisions were absolutely dominated by the music pundits of the day, since I had no real rock youth culture to guide me. (Come to think of it, this may also explain why I have such a love/hate relationship with the rock “journalism” crew.)
Anyhow, this hyper-selective buying pattern yielded some choice finds, like this Taylor LP (not a bad record to own in one’s formative years); Skynyrd’s “Street Survivors,” which I still maintain is one of the greatest *American Music* albums ever made; and “Empty Glass,” which I wore the fuck OUT over those years. On the flip side, there was the “For Everyman”/”Late For the Sky” twofer — but that definitely is a story most folks around here have heard once too often.
Sorry — to be clear, I should have written:
…there was the “For Everyman”/”Late For the Sky” COLLOSSAL TURD twofer…
HVB
You know, stories about discovering that JB is for the turds never get told too often for my taste.
“Noooo hard chords….on the car radio…”
I wanted to listen to these on good speakers. Thanks for posting them. I used to hear Leather Jacket on the radio. I remember the mouth percussion.
Listen to the guitar sound at the beginning of Slow Blues. The sound itself is unremarkable, even kind of cheesy. But as soon as he really starts playing, he makes that pickup/amp combination sing. To me that demonstrates that tone is in the fingers, not the knobs.
Speaking of singing, it was a bold move for Taylor to sing, but I’d much rather hear him use his admittedly so-so voice to sing his heart out like this instead of hiring a singer, or worse, sing more carefully and guardedly. Occasionally his singing reminds me vaguely of Lowell George, and I recall that he played on the live version of Apolitical Blues that’s on Waiting for Columbus, so maybe there was some influence.
Isn’t Black and Blue the first album without him? Because Broken Hands sure reminds me of a Stones song, but I don’t know if it’s Crazy Mama or something more Some Girls. And the beginning of Giddy Up reminds me of Hey Negrita. Maybe there was a place for him in the next phase of the Stones, but he had to quit for the sake of his health, not for musical reasons.
The synths on Giddy Up are most unfortunate.
BigSteve said:
Listen to the guitar sound at the beginning of Slow Blues. The sound itself is unremarkable, even kind of cheesy. But as soon as he really starts playing, he makes that pickup/amp combination sing. To me that demonstrates that tone is in the fingers, not the knobs.
I say:
We REACH!
BigSteve wrote:
“Listen to the guitar sound at the beginning of Slow Blues. The sound itself is unremarkable, even kind of cheesy. But as soon as he really starts playing, he makes that pickup/amp combination sing. To me that demonstrates that tone is in the fingers, not the knobs.”
To me, everything you wrote before “To me” demonstrates that tone is in the circuits, the knobs, the pedals, the pickups, the strings, the speakers, AND the fingers. Why sell your own great observation short by capping it with that false binary?
I’ve had a chance to digest these tunes, and…boy do i feel sick.
*to me*, one’s playing is only so important; i can enjoy mick’s “tasty licks”, but the late 70s / post “Jeff Beck: Wired” framing of those licks makes them really hard to swallow.
Hey, Saturn:
That ain’t no false binary. If you agree that a crappy guitar player can make any guitar/amp combo sound like shit, then you agree that one’s capabilities as a player make all the difference.
BigSteve, i guess we’ll have to disagree. i don’t it’s not “knobs” or “fingers”. i think it’s both.
“good knobs” can’t overcome “bad fingers”, we agree.
but unlike you, i don’t think “good fingers” can make a tone i don’t like into a tone i *do* like.
i’m not as tolerant of those guitar sounds as you art…no matter how eloquently mick plays.
fair enough?
oops. i meant “as you are”, not “as you art”.
BigSteve, you are the one RTH regular who has NEVER made me feel like I was talking to myself!
That’s touching, except you were responding to something *I* wrote!
Joke’s on you, Saturn!
Your favorite colloquist,
HVB
saturn says:
I guess we do disagree, because what you just wrote is exactly what I hear at the beginning of Slow Blues.
“*to me*, one’s playing is only so important; i can enjoy mick’s “tasty licks”, but the late 70s / post “Jeff Beck: Wired” framing of those licks makes them really hard to swallow.”
Could you go into more detail: how does the post “Jeff Beck: Wired” framing change the way Taylor sounds?
All i’m saying, john, is that i don’t like the approach to sound (the production values, guitar tones, the drum setup, the mix aesthetic, and even the writing), which remind me of jeff beck’s album ‘wired’. so no matter how *good* (i.e. technically proficient) his playing is, i can’t fully enjoy it.
hvb, BigSteve, or anyone else: let’s get to the nitty gritty
which statement is more true?
“tone is in the circuits, the knobs, the pedals, the pickups, the strings, the speakers, AND the fingers”
OR
“tone is in the fingers, not the knobs”.
be honest…i know the latter statement is a much more romanticized view of the player’s role in things, but this “either / or” thing…this idea that tone is *this*, not *that*….I just don’t buy it. and i think that deep down, neither do you. both of you are such gear heads…even moreso than i am! i would love it if your statement was *really* true.
Talk about a false binary! Here’s what I know: a good guitar player can find a way to make *any* instrument work with what’s goin’ on. Seems to me what you’re saying is that you do not think Mick Taylor has succeeded at this, and, thus, that he ain’t all that as a guitar player. I think you’re full of shit for saying so, but that’s your prerogative.
And be careful about those gearhead assumptions, bro! I think you’d be surprised at how little I know and/or care about that stuff.
so you go into attack mode because i don’t like these slicked back tracks by mick, and i don’t think his playing overcomes the roland jazz chorus-esque sound of his guitar?
what a friggin’ baby you can be. quit your wimpering.
sorry i desecrated one of the more pathetic sounding efforts of a great guitarist.
i understand that you’re all dewey – eyed with teen memories, but could you be a big boy about this instead?
mick makes a *bad* choice with his tone. that’s on him, not on me. in my admittedly subjective way of hearing, he does not overcome that tone. it severely compromises my enjoyment of these tracks.
that’s my visceral reaction to the songs, which is what you asked for, isn’t it?
i don’t think that’s an unfair statement.
you didn’t answer my question, either, mister pouty-face.
my choices are not a false binary. they can’t be, all things being subjective (which i’m willing to admit, and you rarely ever are).
hvb, another question to move our discussion forward:
can you clarify what “finding a way to make *any* instrument work with what’s goin’ on” means, exactly?
you seem to be suggesting that mick’s tone was a limitation on his playing, imposed on him, but he managed to “make it work” anyway, trooper that he is.
is that true?
Good LORD, Saturn — what on Earth is the matter with you?
Your concerned friend,
HVB
Mr. Ismine gives a fellow Townsman a hummer over the internet:
BigSteve, you are the one RTH regular who has NEVER made me feel like I was talking to myself!
I say: Saturn! Where’s the love? If the Good Lord meant me to listen, He would’ve given me ears! I thought you were *always* talking to yourself.Can I be the inside spoon when we snuggle this time?
slocum: I realize that in praising BigSteve’s responsiveness i managed to take a shot at everyone else. sorry. it wasn’t meant to come out that way. i love you too.
hvb: so we get into a discussion about guitar tones, we disagree, you tell me i’m “full of shit”, i try to continue the discussion anyway, and all you can do in response is ask me what’s the matter with *me*? pret-ty lame, milhouse. now I’M concerned for you!!!
whatev….
Dude — since when are you unable to handle the colloquial expression of disagreement “you’re full of shit”?
The sum total of our discussion on this topic can be summarized as follows, at least in my mind:
BigSteve: Mick Taylor is good.
HVB: Yes.
Saturnismine: No he isn’t!
HVB: You’re full of shit!
Saturnismine: Asshole!
Now, there was a lot of interesting stuff that fleshed out these respective positions, and I strongly urge you to go back and re-read my responses to your questions if you still believe I was rude or unresponsive. Beyond that, I consider this topic closed.
closed? we’re just beginning.
first of all, i never said mick taylor isn’t a good guitarist. those are words YOU put in MY mouth, your interpretation of my distaste for MT’s tone.
beyond that, i asked you for clarifications of some of the things you’ve said.
and fritz, you can paint me as being over sensitive if you’d like, but nobody likes to be told they’re full of shit after they feel they’ve offered a few leads for a discussion.
and for the record, i never called you an asshole either.
gimme a break.
we could continue by talking about the topic at hand rather than talking about *how* to have a discussion, couldn’t we?
Let me see if I can make this clearer. You say:
in my admittedly subjective way of hearing, he does not overcome that tone.
Not only do I flat-out disagree with what you say here (I think he *does* overcome that tone, producing a memorable solo worth listening to), but this seems to implicitly disagree with my assertion that a good guitar player can find a way to play *any* tonal combination such that it sounds good in the context of the song being performed. If you don’t agree with me here, then we have nothing further to discuss. We just see things differently.
Respectfully, I wonder if you’re guilty of putting the guitar tone cart before the horse. If I were, for example, to cite Jeff Baxter’s work on “Boddhisattva” as a great example of a talented guitar player taking a turdular guitar sound and making it essential to the song, would you say: “no, that sound ROCKS!”? Would you give the credit to the gear, or to Jeff? If you gave it to the gear, I’d urge you to consider a scenario where Baxter’s Baldwin guitar was switched with, I dunno, an Ibanez Steve Vai model, played through a Randall Metal-Tron 2000. If you don’t think Baxter could find a way to make *that* hideous tone combo sound good, for *that* song, then, again, we just have a fundamental difference on the actual importance of gear and how much it really matters.
Another way to look at it: imagine Baxter’s Baldwin guitar being plucked out of his hands just as he’s about to launch into his “Boddhisattva” solo, and given to Poison’s C.C. DeVille. Same settings, same mics, same everything. You don’t think the song would totally suck as a consequence?
Help me out here, Sat. I still think you’re fulla shit on this one. But maybe I don’t understand you.
HVB
once again, in the spirit of moving the discussion forward, i’ll re-paste the questions i’ve asked regarding MT’s tone, knobs, and so on and so forth.
1. in the context of MT’s tone, can you clarify what “finding a way to make *any* instrument work with what’s goin’ on” means, exactly?
2. which statement is more true? (also, say why)
“tone is in the circuits, the knobs, the pedals, the pickups, the strings, the speakers, AND the fingers”
OR
“tone is in the fingers, not the knobs”.
for my part, i know i said “i just don’t buy” the second statement, but honestly, that wasn’t meant to short circuit the discussion, and i apologize if i came off that way. i didn’t think either question posed would provoke the responses they did.
just go for it, dude, i won’t bite.
we were posting at the same time. you don’t have to answer my questions if you don’t want to.
thanks for deciding not to pick up the football and go home!
now we’re getting somewhere!!!
you got to the heart of the matter!!
this is the age-old question of how to separate the dancer from the dance!
we also venture into the dangerously choppy waters of ‘taste’ here: what you may think is a great listening experience, i might not.
it IS a brilliant guitarist who can make a “turdy sound” work in the context of the song.
but remember, both guitarists made choices…weren’t saddled with those tones. they never thought of them as “turdy” to begin with.
so no, i don’t think making the tone work is necessarily “in the fingers, not the knobs”, so to speak.
it’s in how the approach to playing and the tone relate to one another and to the whole song / mix / arrangement.
i’m not particularly fond of either the MT example or the Skunk example as a listener. but i think Skunk’s playing shows more imagination, and as you suggest, he makes the tone go places that a lesser player might not take it. but that’s not because of his technique: it’s because he *thought* about how to make that abrasive, boxy sound work. clearly, all that fast picking he does is in reponse to the tone he chose, or he chose that tone because he knew he wanted to do all that fast picking.
MT, on the other hand, sounds to me a little lost with his tonal choices. his playing isn’t all that different from his stones work, but the tone is this late 70s processed cheese whiz. i don’t think his choice of tone was nearly as inspired as skunk’s. it doesn’t sound like it was inspired by an idea. i’m SURE you hear it differently.
i remember our discussion about the japanese guy, and i really couldn’t stomach the production at all on that stuff, which sounded drab, and out of the box to me. you thought it was super inventive.
i think we’re bumping up against the same roadblocks in taste here.
mick plays some brilliant, tasty licks. no doubt about it, he really does make it sing. but i can hear him do the same thing in a much more pleasurable sonic context, and with a tone that sits more easily on my ear, on so many other records.
some guys have great fingers, but they’re not always on top of the other choices they’re making. and i think that’s the case, here. i also don’t think it’s an outlandish thing to suggest.
1. Evidently not.
2. Here’s that false binary again! Look, tone is obviously in everything, so to speak, but fingers always — *always* — make gear limitations irrelevant, if the player is any good.
Now would you mind responding to my previous post?
You say:
but that’s not because of his technique: it’s because he *thought* about how to make that abrasive, boxy sound work.
I say:
How is thinking not part of technique?
I think Mick Taylor’s choice of tone would have been to try to maximize radio play at the time. He didn’t want to come across as some blues guy, because he’d never have gotten any play on the radio in 79. I don’t think Mick always makes the best decisions regarding his career. He should be a guy that is as easily recognized as one of the truly greats, like Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page, yet most people don’t have any idea who he is.
So far as gear and fingers, don’t the same fingers turn the knobs on the gear as hit the strings? I can’t imagine a guitar player setting up a tone he felt uncomfortable with, especially if the name on the album was his.
still so touchy, hvb!
you’ve taken disingenuousness to new heights with your “how is thinking not part of technique” question. surely you knew that i was talking about one’s fretting technique; after all the discussion has mostly been about fingers vs. knobs.
but i respect the question. and, yes! absolutely! thinking is part of technique. and it’s the part where mick has failed, in my estimation. in this regard, these solo songs show pretty clearly why he needed to be in a band that was already staffed with visionaries, a machine that was the whole package, in order to do his best work, but couldn’t produce anything truly memorable when left to his own devices.
he’s great at *playing* the guitar, but this is only one aspect of the more comprehensive act of being a great rock guitar player.
2k has it right, i think.
i also think mick should be recognized as one of the greats. but there are reasons why he isn’t. it’s not just a blind injustice.
(i hit send by accident)…
and finally, it’s not just *fingers* that make gear limitations irrelevant!
hvb, you yourself admitted as much when you finally asserted that thinking is a part of technique. thinking is where all these decisions about tone come into play, as your skunk baxter example suggests.
oh shit! one more thing hvb!
you can’t bust out terms like “randall metal tron 2000” (whateverthefuck THAT is) in the same thread where you claim not to be very much of a gear head and get away with it!!!
you’re not fooling anybody! wasn’t it you who attempted to disprove my comment that people had told me the new gretsches didn’t have a good clean sound (an absurd notion, that…proving that people didn’t tell me something they actually told me) by popping off a concise history of guitar manufacturing in the post-war era?
you truly are a glorious piece of work, my friend!!!
The answer to number 1 for me is that I think there may be some guitar/amp settings that are irredeemable. There are many more that would give nothing for a guitarist like say me to work with, but which someone like Mick Taylor can actually turn into gold. That’s why I said tone was in the fingers, because I meant good tone was in the fingers. The equipment settings obviously have to be there to create any sound at all, but without the right pair of fingers bad tone will be the result. Judging from the title of the song Slow Blues, it may have started out casually as a jam, with Taylor just strumming plugged into an amp that hasn’t been especially fiddled with. Somehow he found his way to a sweet sound, because his fingers are geniuses.
On the other hand, there are some tones that should make anyone sound good. The other day I alluded to the guitar sound in Spirit in the Sky. If you hand me that guitar plugged into the same amp adjusted the same way, my E chord would still sound groovy, purely on a textural level
So in question 2, the second statement is obviously more true, but without the right fingers good tone can be elusive, no matter what the setting.
I may have told this story before, but I recall some guitarist reporting that he was hanging out with Pete Townshend and handed him a Tele to check out. Pete at that time was a Les Paul guy, and the other guitarist (I wish I could remember who it was) thought this was a chance to see how Pete would handle a completely different kind of animal. He said Pete sounded exactly like Pete.
I also admit that selecting guitar/pickup/amp/effects settings can be a real art form, and it’s a skill I wish I had.
Why you gotta be such a hata, Saturn?
Here’s my philosophy: gear is increasingly irrelevant, the further up the talent scale you go. There are weird exceptions to this rule, but these artists (I’m thinking, for example, of Billy Gibbons in particular) don’t seem to understand how irrelevant their gear actually is.
For the record (sigh), the Randall Metal-Tron 2000 is something I made up. I do know that Randall amps are used by, uh, Zakk Wylde, I think. I know this (sort of) because I found a laughably awful YouTube clip of him at some Randall amp clinic. At least I *think* it was Randall. I don’t know why I feel compelled to point this out, but there you go.
And having a compulsive interest in the history of gear doesn’t make me a slave to the stuff. I wonder what you think is in my “rig”? Wait, how about I tell you?
1. $130 made-in-China Tele knockoff
2. Pawn shop Blues Deville amp
3. Cable
*Now* will you leave me alone?
(Incidentally, my lazy-ass guitar setup in no way asserts that I fancy myself a guitarist of any great capability. I play better than some, and worse than others. It *does* mean that I know that “more” does not equal “better.”)
I read a great Andy Johns interview – I’m pretty sure that’s the engineer I have in mind (I was researching his work on Television’s first album) – in which he was asked about his techniques for recording guitars. He told a story about Duane Allman coming to play on Derek and the Dominoes’ Layla sessions. He was looking forward to seeing Allman’s gear and learning more about what makes a great-sounding guitar. Allman and Clapton showed up with Fender Champs, or something tiny like that, set them up atop the piano, and waited for Johns to mic them. Johns asked Allman some questions about his gear, but he soon realized that the Duane Allman Sound was the result of Duane Allman’s fingers on the fretboard, any fretboard. His job, as engineer, was to capture that sound for what it was. He said that from that point on he trusted that great guitarists would do most of the work toward establishing his reputation as a great engineer for guitrar sounds. Or something like that… I’m sure I have a few details mixed up, but I do think that we all give off certain vibes, for better or for worse, that are as responsible for our sound as anything.
All that said, a pointy or headless guitar played through a Roland Jazz Chorus is bound to sound like shit!
hvb, that last gear head comment wasn’t to be taken seriously…after many listens to ‘learning curve’ i know that you’re pretty much going right into the amp.
what were you doing youtubing randall promo’s? i wonder what search produced that, ya gearhead! kidding.
we’re not so different in practice. i have a tremolo pedal, sometimes a wah wah, and three distortion pedals (a rat that is permanently in the ‘on’ setting, an mxr distortion plus with the knobs broken off, and a tube screamer). i set all of the distortion knobs just a hair above “0”. they’re really there to provide different levels of volume.
i play a chopped fender twin through an old kustom 2 x 12 bass cabinet. it’s nice and loud with a surprisingly dirty natural distortion. but when you play it with a soft touch, it’s as clean as wally cleaver. the guitar is a mid 70s gibson melody maker, at least, i think it’s a melody maker: it’s two single coil pickups in an s.g. body.
BigSteve, thanks for answering in earnest and even-handedly.
i want you and hvb to understand…despite my problems with these songs, i definitely DO have a GREAT appreciation for MT’s ability to play a guitar.
i love these stories about the minimal setups and the guys who make any guitar sound like them. they’re almost like tropes of guitar legends.
little amps and low volume are definitely where it’s at in the studio! the mod’s post directly above mine is the perfect capper for our discussion on tone, at least where i’m concerned. watch the keef in the ‘sympathy for the devil’ clips. he got the sound for that nasty solo by playing a black les paul through what looks like a fender champ. mod, i read that same story about about duane and clapton about twenty years ago, and it was one of the reasons why i started trying little amps at low volume in the studio.
but that last statement, mr. mod…very eloquent…nicely done!
So THAT’s what the line is in X’s “The Unheard Music”! I could never figure out the “no hard chords” part and never bothered looking it up, though I’ve always loved the song. Thanks saturn!