Okay, much as Mick Taylor’s leaving The Stones really never led to anything great, it did lead to several things that aren’t bad. This collaboration isn’t one of them. John Phillips ended up releasing the session as Pay, Pack and Follow, probably as a result of this bootleg getting out. The sound quality here was more than good enough for me so I never bothered to get the official release. I remember at the time getting up on my fanboy soapbox and loudly proclaiming, “The Rolling Stones are nobody’s backing band!”
Anyway, here are four tracks. I can get you the other two, including the icky “Zulu Warrior” if you really want. Just let me know and we can work it out. But I really think this is enough to burden the Hall members with. Do they all seem much longer than they really are to you? They do to me.
Enjoy!
I’m in a public place with no headphones in my bag, otherwise i’d listen.
2k, i have a question: i keep reading about MT appearing on stage with the Stones “for almost the entire show” at Kemper Arena, sometime in the late 90s. Any boots of that out there? Have you heard it?
Mick Taylor did play with The Stones for a good part of a show at The Kemper Arena in Kansas City, but it was 1981. There’s an excellent soundboard of it (like there is with most 81 shows), but Taylor isn’t really high in the mix as I recall. I’d be happy to send it to you if you want.
Thanks, 2K. On first listen these tracks aren’t as bad as I’d expected. I’ll have to listen to them again later today. I thought they would have more of skid row/panhandler vibe.
Has anyone else been checking these songs out? They’re pretty weird – and no less mediocre than the Mick Taylor traxx HVB posted a few days ago, don’t you think? The first song and “Wilderness of Love” are oddly poppy. The latter, in fact, could pass for a Brinsley Schwarz song, or something Ian Gomm would have done shortly after leaving that band. The solo sounds like it took a lot of thought on Mick Taylor’s part, no? NOT one of his finest efforts.
“She’s Just 14” doesn’t sound any better or worse to these ears than some any-Exile blooz number that the Stones would have put out around this time. Is the song supposed to be about daughter Mackenzie? Is it dirty? My thoughts kept turning to her turn in American Graffiti.
“Oh Virginia” also rings of post-Exile country tonkisms with Phillips’ more natural, Gram Parsons voice than Jagger’s early-70s blackface approach. The solo is actually promising on this one. A few more takes and Taylor may have gotten all he could have from his ideas. I’ll take this number over a lot of similar Stones traxx in this vein.
2K, I’m left with one question: Just how bad is “Zulu Warrior”? If you’ve got the time this week, I’m sure I’m not the only Townsperson who’s waiting for a follow-up featuring that track. Thanks!
I’ll try to get the other two songs up later today, then. The only song I can stomach is Oh Virginia, but like all these songs, it seems like they’re all well over six minutes long to me, but they’re not even close to that length. I can hardly hear Keith Richards, and if I had him at a session back then, I’d ride that horsey straight to Top 40 heaven.
Wilderness of Love gives me stomach cramps.
Yeah, when I started cueing these up, I began with that “14” song, and was secretly happy about how bad all this was gonna sound. Then it all just sort of turned “okay,” in a slight AM pop-meets-heroin-burnout kind of way. I think, BTW, that the sloppy solos you’re hearing are Keef, Mod. The tidy, artsy ones are Mick’s.
Thanks for the clarification re: solos, Hrrundi. I’m curious to hear from Mwall on how these traxx function according to the laws of Psychic Oblivion.
I really like Phillip’s first solo recortd, but all the songs except “Oh Virginia” (which sounds like a reject from that record) shows the ruinous effects drugs had on his songwriting.
I guess he thought because he lived the Stones’s lifestyle, he could do a sort of Stones-lite record. Just another bad decision in a life of unwise career moves.
I need to hear that “Zulu Warrior” track!