The ex-Stone’s debut solo album from 1979 has its dilemma neatly summed-up not only by Kris Needs’ admirable sleevenotes, but also the shrinkwrap sticker. “Half Stonesy rock, half Blow By Blow” it proclaims – and, apart from being about five years too late to cash in on Taylor’s sojourn with the Glimmer Twins, thereby hangs the tale. His audience wanted the former, but Mick, having hung around with jazzers such as Carla Bley, clearly fancied the Jeff Beck route. Nothing but a schizophrenic album could result.
That said, only two tracks (Broken Hands and Giddy Up) resemble Stonesy rock, and may well have been insisted upon by Sony (CBS at the time) to counterbalance the remainder of the material: weakly-sung folk-rock in Al Stewart vein. The exception is the 12-minute closing track, Spanish/A Minor, which, while tastefully played, is a close relation of Beck’s Diamond Dust from the aforementioned Blow By Blow.
Look out for a slide-guitar cameo from Lowell George in the aforementioned Giddy Up but, if Mick needed anything, it was a vocalist and/or co-songwriter, not another slide virtuoso. That he had covered…
