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  And how long did it take him to get clean?

  MARSHALL CHESS: It took me years to get straight, properly straight. You stop taking drugs but it takes forever for your brain to start working normally again. I still smoke marijuana but I think of that as like having a beer. I haven’t touched anything harder since 1978. It’s really difficult to come off all that stuff. It’s like climbing Everest. When you get to the top you get a tremendous sense of well-being.

  Jagger has stated definitively that the song isn’t about Angela Bowie, pointing out that they hadn’t met when it was recorded. He has speculated in some places that the song is named after Keith’s daughter. Keith solves the mystery—sort of. He was in Switzerland receiving treatment for heroin addiction.

  KEITH RICHARDS: When I was in the clinic, Anita was down the road having our daughter, Angela. Once I came out of the usual trauma, I had a guitar with me and I wrote “Angie” in an afternoon, sitting in bed, because I could finally move my fingers and put them in the right place again, and I didn’t feel like I had to shit the bed or climb the walls or feel manic anymore. I just went Angie, Angie. It was not about any particular person; I didn’t know Angela was going to be called Angela when I wrote “Angie.” In those days, you didn’t know what sex the thing was going to be until it popped out. In fact, Anita named her Dandelion. She was only given the added name Angela because she was born in a Catholic hospital where they insisted a “proper” name be added.

  What can you make out of all this? It’s up to all of us, really. Once a work of art is thrown out into the world, it no longer belongs to the artist. It doesn’t matter what Robert Frost meant by “The Road Not Taken.” What matters is what YOU think it means. The same goes for “Angie.” Personally, I like this post on the Internet from Angie in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, who wrote on a thread about “Angie”: “I think the song is about me!”

  One final postscript: “Angie” is the biggest-selling single in the whole Rolling Stones catalog. Keith’s perceptive observation?

  KEITH RICHARDS: When you get the middle of the road market, sales are amazing!

  KEITH GETS A BLOOD CHANGE . . . OR DOES HE?

  One of the most famous Stones’ urban legends is that when Keith went to rehab in Switzerland in 1973, he had all his blood transfused as a way of beating his addiction. Keith himself was the source of the rumor as he claims he told a journalist he was having his blood changed to mess with him. In Tony Sanchez’s highly unreliable account of being Keith’s bodyguard, he does add some rich detail to the story, which has no doubt helped to propagate it, but according to both Keith and medical sources, the rumor is false. You can’t cure addiction by merely detoxifying the blood. The problem—as Keith has proved over and over again—is staying clean afterward.

  CHAPTER 33

  TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE

  THE TIME BETWEEN the recording and release of It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll in 1974 and the recording and release of Black and Blue in 1976 marked another critical and volatile juncture for the Rolling Stones, and much of the turmoil revolved around the newest Stone—Mick Taylor. Mick’s arrival in 1969 reenergized the group and put them back out on the road. The first three albums he contributed to—Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main St.—are regarded as a trilogy of the group’s finest work.

  So why did this partnership last only a little over five years? Multiple reasons, of course. Some combination of drugs, interpersonal jealousies, recording studio squabbles, and, most important of all, an unhappy lead guitarist.

  Taylor recalled the period in a 2010 interview with Gibson Guitars:

  MICK TAYLOR: Most of 1974, I took a long holiday in Brazil, which was wonderful, and then I came back and we started doing recording on It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll fairly quickly. The very track we recorded, that I remember anyway, at Musicland Studios in Munich was “Time Waits for No One.” And it was done very quickly, so that was a song where most of the song must have been written before we even got into the studio, by Mick. ’Cause although it always says “Jagger/Richards,” that doesn’t necessarily mean that they both always write the songs. You know, there are some songs, maybe, that Keith had written on his own, like “Happy,” but by and large most of the songs, especially when it comes to lyrics, are written by Mick.

  That’s a much gentler and more diplomatic recollection than the one he gave to Gary James in 1974:

  Time waited for Mick Jagger, but not Mick Taylor, who officially left the band in December of 1974

  MICK TAYLOR: I was a bit peeved about not getting credit for a couple of songs, but that wasn’t the whole reason [I left the band], I guess I just felt like I had enough. I decided to leave and start a group with Jack Bruce.

  Then even more telling:

  MICK TAYLOR: I never really felt, and I don’t know why, but I never felt I was gonna stay with the Stones forever, even right from the beginning.

  And in an interview with Mojo magazine in 1997:

  MICK TAYLOR: We used to fight and argue all the time. And one of the things I got angry about was that Mick had promised to give me some credit for some of the songs—and he didn’t. I believed I’d contributed enough. Let’s put it this way—without my contribution those songs would not have existed.

  An eyewitness backs up this assertion:

  ANDY JOHNS: Mick Taylor became discontent with his situation. On the 1973 tour of Europe I spent quite a lot of time with him and he would say, “They won’t let me write any songs. Any time I have an idea I’m blocked out.”

  Mick made a fateful, tactical mistake when he neglected to inform the Stones of his thinking until December of 1974. The group was due to start recording a new album and was in the planning stages of another US tour when Taylor announced his decision. Our best storyteller about these events is the man who had the most to gain from Mick’s departure:

  RON WOOD: I remember the night. There was a party going on for Eric Clapton and unknowing to me, I was in the backseat with Mick. And Marshall Chess and Mick Taylor were in the front seat, whispering and very heavy and all this. I wondered what was going on. And apparently that night he told them he was leaving and I knew nothing about it. The Stones didn’t want to break up the Faces. They didn’t want to say, “Hey Woody, leave that lot, come with us,” which was very nice of them really, because they could have been cutthroat about it.

  Even when we arrived at the party I had no idea what was going on. And later on in the evening, Mick Taylor split. And I asked Mick, “Where’s he going?” And he said, “I don’t know.” And I thought, “That’s very unusual. He’s only been here an hour. The whole party’s just about to happen.” So I just ruled it out that he wasn’t feeling well or something. Mick was giving me these kind of tester questions, saying if it was possible that you could join, would you? And I said, sure, yeah. I definitely would but I still got the thing going with the Faces and Rod, blah blah blah. I don’t want to mess that up because they’re too good friends of mine. So Mick said, “What do I do?” I said, “If you really get desperate and you need me, find me wherever I am in the world and tell me you want me to do it and I’ll do it.”

  The official news came out in two bland “Put on a Happy Face” press releases on December 12 and December 16: “Mick Jagger in Munich, where the Rolling Stones are engaged in the initial stages of recording their next album, confirmed that guitarist Mick Taylor would be leaving the group.

  “He said, ‘After five and a half years Mick wishes a change of scene—wants the opportunity to try out new ventures, new endeavors. While we are all most sorry that he is going, we wish him great success and much happiness.’

  “Asked about the possible replacement Mick Jagger smiled: ‘No doubt we can find a brilliant six foot, three inch blond guitarist who can do his own makeup.’”

  Then four days later from Mick Taylor: “The last five and a half years with the Stones have been very exciting, and proved to be most inspiring. And as far as my attitude to the oth
er four members is concerned, it is one of respect for them, both as musicians and as people. I have nothing but admiration for the group, but I feel now is the time to move on and do something new.”

  Then, just five days after that, Mick Jagger asserted:

  MICK JAGGER: I suppose it was a bit inconsiderate of him to inform us a day before we were about to enter the studios . . . but maybe he hadn’t made up his mind until that point . . . I received a call from the office that Mick Taylor wasn’t coming to the Munich sessions. Then I received a call saying Mick Taylor wasn’t going anywhere anymore with the Stones.

  My favorite version of Mick leaving is the one given to me by Bill Wyman:

  BILL WYMAN: I think he was resentful about not being able to contribute songs, or getting credits on things that he thought he had contributed to. He was trying to assert his strength a bit more than it really was. He was a new member and therefore obliged to accept things in a certain way because they had been like that for ten years. And I think he was being pushed by some people to be a stronger member of the band, rather than laid back like Charlie and I are. It was like a poker game, where you only have a pair, and you bluffed. And the bluff was called, and that was the end of it, because once someone says, “I’m leaving,” you don’t reinstate them again when they feel like it. It was a very inconvenient time he did it, and I didn’t think he did it very politely.

  The timing was definitely an issue for him.

  BILL WYMAN: It was the day before we went in to cut an album, yeah. We finished up that album [Black and Blue] using all kinds of people that just dropped by; it was very inconvenient for us. We all really liked him a lot, but he did tend to get very, very moody and frustrated. It’s the frustration that he didn’t deal with outside the band, you see. Like I was saying before, I had many frustrations, but I dealt with them by doing other things outside the band. You have to do that. He didn’t, and in the end he had to leave to do some of the things he wanted to do . . . which he could have done within the band, with no effort at all. And it shows, because it took him three, four years to cut an album, which was the first thing he was gonna do as soon as he left the band. And then it wasn’t a success, so I’m sure he wished he hadn’t left, I dunno . . . Maybe. It was a great period in our history because he brought something fresh and new—some brilliant playing—to the band.

  As Kenny Rogers put it: “You gotta know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em . . .”

  CHAPTER 34

  IT’S ONLY ROCK ’N’ ROLL

  IN A SENSE, the Black and Blue sessions became the Great Rolling Stones Lead Guitar Search. Just think if Simon Cowell had been making shows in 1975 . . .

  To no one’s surprise, Ron Wood was high on the list.

  Ron Wood (right) left Rod Stewart and the Faces to become a Rolling Stone in 1975

  KEITH RICHARDS: Black and Blue was auditions for guitar players. That’s why you’ve got three or four tracks with Wayne Perkins and two or three tracks with Harvey Mandel. And at the end, it was one of those weird coincidences that seem to happen with us all the time, that just as we were desperately looking for another guitar player, an English player, because that’s what we are—Wayne Perkins is a lovely guitar player, but we’re an English rock ’n’ roll band and we just had to own up that there’s something about having an American guy, that we’re just not common in our upbringing and our culture that would eventually widen. And Woody came in and the Faces just happened to break up at that very moment.

  RON WOOD: At the time they were also recording Black and Blue with Harvey Mandel and Wayne Perkins, and Jeff Beck had come and gone, and Eric Clapton had been approached. All kinds of things were going on. I still get ribbed by Eric Clapton. He says to me, “I could have had that job, you know.” I say, “Ah no, sorry Eric, you haven’t got the personality.” I just rib him about it. Basically, the Stones wanted to remain an English rock ’n’ roll band. Eric was already successful in his own right. All the other lovely English guitarists like Jimmy Page, they were doing their own things. When I finally did join, they all expressed that they were really rooting for me and they said that they were really pleased that I did it.

  So when did it all happen?

  RON WOOD: I had said to Mick, “Only ring me if you get desperate.” They’d been trying all these guitarists, Stevie Marriott, all the ones I said—even more . . . When I was ill after one of the Faces tours, I was bedridden in LA. I was really feeling down. The phone rings and it’s Mick. And he says, “Woody, remember what you said about getting desperate?” And I said, “Well, I see. I’m going back to England when I get better so I’ll call by and see you in Munich.” And he says, “OK then,” and then I went there and I cut “Hey Negrita” and a couple of other tracks for Black and Blue. And they checked me into the hotel in Munich sandwiched between Harvey Mandel on the left and Wayne Perkins on the right. So it was like a whole string of guitarists. I walked in the studio and Charlie says to me, “Christ, out of all these guitarists who’ve walked in here, Woody walks in he starts bossing everybody around, we’ll do this that and the other.” It was no surprise to him that I did get the job just because I was a man after their own heart. Another silly Englishman.

  There was still one last obstacle to hurdle before total commitment to the Stones became possible.

  RON WOOD: At the time, Rod still hadn’t folded up the Faces. So I still didn’t say that I was joining. I said, “I’ll do your ’75 American tour, I’d love to, but before that I have to do a Faces tour and straight after it, I’ve got to do another one.” So that year I played like three horrendously big tours. I said to Peter Rudge, “If you don’t get me in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most overlooked person who has played in front of more people than anyone in one year . . .”

  The definitive word about the transition from Mick to Woody came from Keith, in a 1977 interview with my longtime colleague and friend Dave Herman. Of course it does.

  KEITH RICHARDS: I’ll tell you the difference between playing with them two. The roles were much more fixed. With Mick, either I was going to play lead on one number and that was accepted as that, or Mick would which is what he was good at. And when somebody is as good as Mick Taylor, they tend to not realize how good they are and they tend to desperately want to get into other things, they want to sing, write songs, produce. Which is what Mick wanted to do, wants to do, and probably eventually will do. At the moment he hasn’t done anything. Everything that he’s done since, he still could have done and stayed with us. I’m sure it will eventually, in perspective, it will fall into place and probably a period to turn things over to do what he wants to do next.

  While he was with the Stones, he very much got into playing drums, playing piano, playing bass. Almost like Brian did. Once they got to a point with an instrument, very much didn’t even realize how good they were at what they were doing and rather would learn all those other things. Whereas with Ronnie there seems to be more of a knowledge of what we can do, what we’re good at, and how we can play together. It’s super-sympathetic, whereas with Mick it was sympathetic. It was quite a rigid role to play, much more so than with Ronnie where we can cross lead to rhythm backwards to forwards in a number.

  ROBERT GREENFIELD: Mick Taylor was the sweetest guy who ever lived. Mick was a pure musician and such a pure soul, one of the great players of all time. Keith needs somebody like Ronnie Wood he can smack in the head and is a little scared of him. You can’t say Mick Taylor didn’t belong with the band, because his contribution to the band was immense, because he made them better. And he took them places they would never have gone. But they’re not a solo lead-guitar band. That’s the problem. It goes back to Keith and Brian: they play two guitars as one. You couldn’t tell which was the lead and which was the rhythm. That’s what Keith does as well as anyone except maybe Pete Townshend, he plays rhythm and he plays lead. It’s crazy.

  Just as they’d done in Hyde Park for Mick Taylor in 1969, the Stones needed a
nother attention-grabbing way to introduce Ronnie and announce the Tour of the Americas (TOTA, for short) in 1975.

  CHAPTER 35

  ALL DOWN THE LINE

  ALL I KNEW when I went to work on Thursday, May 1, 1975, was that sometime during the lunch hour of my ten A.M. to two P.M. radio show, I would be handing the baton to DJ Scott Muni for remote coverage of a press conference announcing the upcoming Tour of the Americas by the Rolling Stones. As always, rumors and anticipation of a forthcoming Stones sighting were generating a lot of buzz (was that term in use in 1975?) and rabid fan interest. A press event to address the facts about all of this was scheduled for noontime at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. At the appointed hour, I turned on the mic after playing “It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll,” and informed the audience that we would be switching over to our live, remote coverage of the event.

  To my surprise, and I’m sure to the surprise of my listeners and most of the people in attendance at the actual press conference, noted comedian Professor Irwin Corey (who billed himself as “The World’s Foremost Authority”) strolled to the podium and proceeded to deliver one of his patented, incomprehensible monologues. His shtick was familiar enough to generate some laughs, but it did leave the roomful of hard-nosed journalists scratching their heads, wondering what the hell was going on. Until a voice from the back of the room announced that everyone there should spill out onto Fifth Avenue for a “surprise.”