Originally Posted by Urban Hatemonger

The more members thing is a bit of a red herring really.

In the Beatles you had 4 members contributing different songs & ideas. Lennon & McCartney had the monopoly on the songs but the other members were free to come up with other material too.

The Stones on the other hand were different , it was ALL Mick & Keef. One of the reasons Jones became such a f*ck up with booze & drugs was because he was getting depressed at not being able to come up with his own material to compete with Jagger & Richards stuff & finding himself on the sidelines of the band he started.
As for Mick Taylor , he was just an employee who was just told what to play.In fact the primary reason he left was because he was frustrated at not being able to record his own songs. As for Ronnie Wood , he came from a blue rock background with The Faces so getting him wasn`t much of a radical departure from what they were already doing.