Why Mick Taylor Quit the Rolling Stones in 1974 and How Heroin and Royalties Splintered the Bond

Most people think Mick Taylor left the Stones because of drug addiction, but the real reason he walked away in December 1974 was a mix of financial frustration and creative suffocation. He was a salaried sideman—earning £20 a week at the start, later bumped to £100—while Jagger and Richards collected the songwriting royalties. Taylor also felt his guitar parts were being buried in the mix on albums like It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll, so he just stopped showing up.

The heroin use didn’t help. Taylor had gotten into smack around 1972, and after leaving the band, his habit deepened while he struggled to launch a solo career. His only real post-Stones effort, the 1979 self-titled album Mick Taylor, sold poorly and got ignored by radio. Meanwhile, the Stones moved on with Ronnie Wood, and Taylor watched his former bandmates rake in millions. He later admitted feeling bitter that the band never let him share in publishing or offered an olive branch during his lowest points. By the 1980s, the relationship was mostly dead—Taylor played on a few Stones tracks in the 2000s, but the old closeness never came back.