Ever since Mick Taylor abandoned his featured spot with the Rolling Stones in 1974, there's been plenty of speculation about what he'd do next. Rumors of a big project surfaced every now and then, but something always seemed to go wrong. This solo LP has been in the works for several years, so even without much of a publicity buildup, it comes as something of a disappointment.

Mick Taylor is hardly a bad album. Taylor's guitar work is superb, just as it was on John Mayall's Bare Wires and the Stones' Exile on Main Street. Several of the songs—particularly the four instrumentals — are beautifully constructed and executed. "Slow Blues" is a characteristic Southern R&B arrangement in a style that Atlanta Rhythm Section fans will find familiar, while "Spanish" and "A Minor" are stately, lyrical guitar exercises. "Giddy-Up" features Lowell George's slide-guitar playing, which perfectly complements Taylor's interlacing rhythm and lead lines. "Broken Hands," the only vocal track that sustains any interest, kicks with a drunken rhythm pattern, fired by sassy and gangling slide fills right out of Exile on Main Street's "Stop Breakin' Down."

Overall, however, the framework here is too ordinary and unspectacular for Taylor's talents. His singing is merely serviceable, his lyrics forgettable. Without the panache that Ry Cooder employs to justify his own vocals or the good sense that Harvey Mandel and Jeff Beck have shown by abandoning vocals altogether, Mick Taylor comes off as an instrumentalist best heard on other people's records. (RS 301)

JOHN SWENSON