THE STONE WHO NEVER BELONGED — Keith Richards finally reveals the one guitarist who ‘never fit’ The Rolling Stones, why the band’s chemistry rejected him from day one, and the brutal truth behind his quiet exit: ‘He didn’t do anything.’ But buried inside Keef’s cold verdict is a deeper question fans never dared to ask — was Mick Taylor too good… or simply too lost… for the world’s most dangerous band?

Being in a band like The Rolling Stones is about more than simply locking in and playing all the parts.

There’s almost a tribal energy to the way the classic lineup worked together, and while Mick Jagger and Keith Richards weren’t always on the same page, they could at least come together because they knew what every one of their songs needed. But throughout a whole half-century of playing music together, there are bound to be a few people who would fall by the wayside every now and again.

Then again, it’s not like ‘The Glimmer Twins’ had a hand in starting the group. If anything, the heart of the Stones in the beginning was Brian Jones, since he had worked as the manager, band member, and was the one who came up with the band’s name. But when Keef started to make the guitar sing when putting together guitar riffs, it was clear that Jones was going to be playing second fiddle to him in the writing department.

Because if there’s one thing that Jagger and Richards had over everyone else, it was their songwriting credentials. Anyone could have gone the Eric Clapton route and made their living balancing originals and covers, but when they hit on tracks like ‘Satisfaction’ and ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’, there was never any reason for someone to go back and listen to their renditions of old Muddy Waters and Buddy Holly songs.

Although Jones couldn’t deal with being pushed out of the room so often, getting Mick Taylor in the band was a godsend. It’s a tragedy that Jones passed away so soon after leaving The Stones, but when listening to Taylor’s work on everything from Sticky Fingers to Exile on Main Street, he fit in perfectly with everything that the band was doing, usually having a more fluid way of playing than the way Jones would play.

But do you ever notice how little people say about Taylor outside of the music? Although he remains one of the best musicians that the band ever had, he was never going to be the same kind of wild man that Richards was or command a stage like Jagger could. He was simply there to play the best music that he could, and when the inspiration dried up, he figured that it was time for a change.

Anyone would have been shellshocked to see anyone walk out on The Rolling Stones, but when looking back on it, Richards felt that Taylor might have never been comfortable in the band to begin with, saying, “Mick could never explain why he left. He doesn’t know why. But the proof that he didn’t really fit in is that he left. He didn’t want to fit in, I don’t think. I guess he felt that with his credentials from being in The Stones, he’d be able to write songs, produce. But he didn’t do anything.”

And compared to Ronnie Wood’s habit of straddling the line between The Stones, his solo career, and the odd reunion with Rod Stewart, Taylor has kept relatively quiet. He could still play to the best of his ability, but much like Izzy Stradlin did years later with Guns N’ Roses, the guitarist seemed far more content to fade into the background than to keep moving on this massive musical train for too long

There’s a good chance that any other guitarist would have said Taylor was out of his mind for leaving The Stones in the lurch, but sometimes even the best players don’t always click even when they have some of the best artists in the world to work. That chemistry is the nature of the music business, but you still have to wonder how much time went into Taylor ditching a lifetime.