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Sun 20 September 2026 20:00, UK
Given how integral he’d been to the development of the band’s sound, it would have seemed like a rash decision from The Rolling Stones to fire Brian Jones halfway through 1969 as they were beginning to truly mark their territory as one of the most formidable rock bands in the world.
Of course, there were legitimate reasons for his dismissal, with his drug addiction being the central point as to why his position became untenable, but losing someone so important who had been there from the start and directed so much of their early work would still have been concerning for onlookers.
Not just a stellar guitarist, but a multi-instrumentalist, Jones was always going to be tough to replace given the vast amount of contributions he made to albums like Between the Buttons, Aftermath and Their Satanic Majesties Request, the albums that arguably propelled the Stones to a greater level of success.
The thing is, it’s not like the other members didn’t also have their own issues relating to substance abuse, and while these caused friction in the band, it felt as though Jones’ situation had become increasingly unreliable. As his addictions worsened, he became more and more disconnected from the rest of the band, and forcing him into rehabilitation was not going to suffice as a solution; they had to look towards replacing him rather than soldiering on with him.
Jones would, of course, wind up dead in tragic circumstances merely a month after his departure, and given that this meant there was no going back on their decision, the remaining members had to find a replacement who could instantly fill the shoes of someone who had been a guiding light for the band in a creative sense.
In his autobiography, the band’s ever-present guitarist, Keith Richards, recalled the exact situation the band found themselves in when auditioning for Jones’ replacement, and claimed that they knew early on that the person they’d landed on was going to be perfect for the role.
“By May we were playing in his replacement, Mick Taylor, at Olympic Studios,” Richards confirmed. “[We were] playing him in on ‘Honky Tonk Women,’ on which his overdub is there for posterity. No surprise to us, how good he was. He seemed just to step in naturally at the time. We had all heard Mick, and we knew him because he’d played with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers.”
Further reading: From The Vault
Of course, given his own position in the band, the rest of the band were most curious as to how Richards felt playing alongside this potential recruit. “Everybody was looking at me, because I was the other guitar player,” he added. “But my position was, I’d play with anybody. We could only find out by playing together. And we did the most brilliant stuff together, some of the most brilliant stuff the Stones ever did. Everything was there in his playing – the melodic touch, a beautiful sustain, and a way of reading a song.”
Taylor’s tenure did not last long, with his appointment in 1969 coming to an end only five years later. He was eventually replaced by Ronnie Wood in 1975. However, the fact that he contributed to virtually all of their most celebrated works with some of the finest guitar lines just goes to show how brilliant their recruitment was, and how fortunate they were to have landed on a replacement for someone as important as Jones so quickly.
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