The Mail On Sunday recently caught up with Taylor, describing his two-bedroom house as in “serious need of repair and redecoration,” and noted an “unopened stack of bills and threats to cut off the water, electricity and gas,” as well as a dilapidated car that has sat in the driveway so long that weeds are growing through the wheels.

Taylor played on six Stones albums – Let It Bleed, Get Yer Ya-Yas Out, Sticky Fingers, Exile On Main Street, Goats Head Soup and It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll. His guitar work also appeared on compilation releases Through The Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2), Hot Rocks, 1964-1971, Made In The Shade and Metamorphosis.

However, it’s been years since Taylor received any royalties for his work, saying the band’s management used a contract loophole to stop paying monies owed to him.

It’s been a long time since Taylor’s life of limos, mansions and Keith Richards. The one-time slim guitarist is rather hefty these days, his hair more gray than black and his jowls have succumbed to the effects of gravity over the years.

But when it comes to the Stones, Taylor is pretty much telling the same story as when he left the group in the ‘70s – that the band’s partying lifestyle and his own drug problems were threatening his life.

“People are always asking me whether I regret leaving the Rolling Stones,” Taylor told the Mail On Sunday. “I make no bones about it – had I remained with the band, I would probably be dead.

“I was having difficulties with drug addiction and couldn’t have lasted. But I’m clean now and have been for years.

“My life is so much better now than being a drug-ravaged member of the Stones. So no, I don’t regret leaving.”

Taylor was already an up-and-coming guitar slinger on the ‘60s Brit music scene and had played with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers when the Stones came a-knockin in 1969. The band had just fired Brian Jones and was looking to fill the opening, hiring Taylor for what the guitarist thought was a simple day’s work.

“At the first session, I overdubbed the guitar on “Honky Tonk Women,” but I thought they were all a little bit vain and full of themselves,” Taylor remembers.

“After doing guitar parts on three songs, I said to Mick and Keith, ‘If you guys are just going to sit and mess around, I’m going home. I’ve got things to do.”

Taylor says Jagger called the next day with an offer to join the band. “He came and picked me up in his Bentley,” Taylor said. “I wasn’t impressed by all that and I think they kind of liked that attitude.”

Taylor said the Stones in those days were “not technically very good,” but were a “very raw” band with “great ideas.”

Taylor also described the band’s hedonistic way.

“There was as much sex as you wanted,” Taylor said. “That was part of being a rock musician, especially in America. And they always had people around them telling them how great they were and to try some of this or that. I hated that.”

According to Taylor, Richards’ drug use became an issue sometime around 1972-73.

“Several times the band almost broke up,” Taylor said. “Keith had his own separate social scene and it was obvious there was a lot of drug-taking. There were also problems traveling to certain countries because of all the drug convictions.”

By 1974 Taylor decided he had enough of the band and its lifestyle. These days he plays the occasional gig with friends. As to royalties, he claims the band’s management used a loophole in his contract to cease paying him royalties.

“I should have got a lawyer,” Taylor said. “But instead I called them rude words and asked how they could just stop paying me. They all know it’s not right. In fact it’s outrageous. They get all the money and I get the plaudits and praise, even from Mick.”

Taylor also said hiring a lawyer might be the only way to get the band to take his royalties complaints seriously.

“I’m going to have to do something about it,” said Taylor, “because it’s morally wrong to cut my royalties from those six albums.”

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