Dick Taylor

Mick Taylor wasn't the first of that surname to play in the Rolling Stones--that honor belongs to Richard Clifford Taylor. Dick Taylor formed Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in 1962, while he and Richards were students at Sidcup Art College in London. (He had met Jagger earlier, in Dartford grammar school.) With the addition of Brian Jones to the lineup, Taylor was forced to switch from lead guitar to bass, and left the renamed group later that year. He resurfaced the next year in the Pretty Things, which he formed with Phil May, another Sidcup Art School alumnus, and in which he once again played lead. The Pretty Things have been called "one of the greatest R&B bands of all time" by Van Morrison, and characterized as "always making the Stones look tame" by David Gilmour. In 1967, they recorded what is widely considered the first rock opera, S.F. Sorrow, alongside Sgt. Pepper and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn at Abbey Road. Taylor left the group afterwards, but returned to the fold in the late 1970s and has been playing with them ever since. Had he been content to play bass in the Stones, he might have gained far more riches and fame--and who knows what might have become of Bill Wyman, his replacement--but aficionados of hard-hitting, dirty British R&B are glad he left the Stones and formed the Pretties.