Bill Wyman
Ella Walker grapples with former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman over his crazy past, the Stones and his current tour with his band, the Rhythm Kings.
So, what exactly do you ask a former Rolling Stone when you’re told – in no uncertain terms – not to ask about the Rolling Stones?
This was the conundrum I faced pulling together questions to ask legendary bassist Bill Wyman who’s visiting Cambridge Corn Exchange with his classic rhythm and blues band, the Rhythm Kings.
One friend said to just start by asking him: HOW ARE YOU SO AWESOME? (Capital letters not optional).
Twitter responded in a slightly less fangirl manner i.e. Ask him about going out with teenagers when he was 50; ask him about The Beatles; and one clever clogs said: “Please end every question with ‘Bill, why man?’” Safe to say that wasn’t an option.
In the end I went for the old lure him into a false sense of security tactic, and then hit him with questions that should stir up memories of his Stones years (all 30 of them). It was that or get hung up on.
So, the Rhythm Kings… Wyman’s been touring with them for 12 years now and is upfront about the fact: “It’s not a career move for me by any stretch of the imagination. It’s not a money earner either. We just do it for the love of playing together and for the love of the music.
“It’s just a joy. That’s the only reason I do it.”
They’ve got Geraint Watkins on piano (“Bob Dylan’s favourite British pianist,”), Georgie Fame on organ and “the great” Albert Lee on guitar, plus special guest Maria Maulder (Bill sings her most famous song, Midnight at the Oasis, gruffly, but sweetly, down the phone).
And I figure that’s that then. We can move onto other topics.
However, at 76, it turns out Wyman’s still pretty wily and is an absolute expert at turning anything and everything back around to the Kings and his other projects – of which there are oh so very many, from photography and archaeology to designing metal detectors and writing books.
For instance: Life on tour must have changed quite dramatically since your early days in the music business (read: during the Stones’ heyday)? “[It’s] more pleasurable, not as crazy,” he admits. “Not as violent, not as loud, not as aggressive, not as mad – I mean mad as in crazy girls leaping all over you and doing two chords of a song and then it was all over because they all poured on stage or something. It’s not like that obviously.” He says it with only a grazing sense of nostalgia, before cutting swiftly back to today’s pre-approved topic of conversation: “It’s much more pleasurable now because we play to an audience that really appreciates us.”
It seems facetious to suggest you couldn’t get fans more appreciative than Stones fans, but this is the problem with not being able to ask outright about his former band: despite Bill publicly announcing he still considers them friends, you can’t help but hear hard edges to every vague reference he makes to them. From whether he feels like he’s different since those mental early days: “I feel the same actually,” he says laughing. “I’m still next to the drums playing bass, I’m not a frontman, never was.” To what he’s most proud of: “I was proud of my 30 years in the Stones and I really love the 12 years I’ve had with this band. It’s very easy going, there’s no pressure on having hit records or charting, or anything like that.”
And then, just as you feel you’re getting somewhere, he’ll fox you completely by going on a bizarre tangent about the struggles of getting your laundry done when you’re performing in a different town every night. This alone shows he must have changed since his Stones days; surely he didn’t give a toss about clean shirts when he was bedding those 1000 women Maxim magazine feted him for?!
“People have to do it themselves, they do their undies, hang ‘em up in the bathroom, I don’t, I just bring more than I need,” he chatters. “That’s probably the most difficult thing when you’re travelling on tour – it sounds absurd but it’s a fact. You’re laughing!”
I was expecting glamorous stories I tell him. “Glamorous stories? There aren’t any,” he says raising his voice. “It’s glamorous from the outside, not the inside. The glamour is two hours on stage every night, that’s where the glamour is. The rest of it is hard work and boring stuff, travelling in a bus for four hours.”
Despite the slight digs at his old band mates, filtered through passion for his current ones, Wyman did join the Stones onstage for their 50th anniversary gigs at London’s O2 Arena last November. Disappointingly he was only asked along for two songs, didn’t get invited to Glastonbury and told the Huffington Post afterwards: “I’ve always maintained that you can’t go back to things, and they can never be the same.”
He’s adamant his comments weren’t presented in quite the right way though. “I never said that. Mick always says that, he don’t like looking back and the past. I do because I write lots of books, I keep diaries, so I have to refer back,” he says, unable to not mention those nine books of his. “I have no problems about looking back into the past at all. The hard thing is looking into the future.”
So I press him on the past. Of all the people he’s recorded with, photographed and written about, who has been the most inspiring and exciting to work with? “That’s difficult. There’s so many,” he says before proving his point by reeling off the likes of Supremes’ Mary Wilson, Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, George Harrison, Chris Rea and Paul Carrack (no Jagger you’ll note).
You get the feeling he could never run out of names to drop, or projects to keep him occupied, and he’s a family man too (“Who am I listening to at the moment? My wife telling me how good the girls are doing at school,”).
Next up he’s writing another solo album: “Which is a bit crazy at my age but it’s turning out quite nice actually, quite different, I like it. I’m singing very low, friends of mine like Bob Geldof are saying it sounds a bit like Tom Waits, J.J. Cale and people like that.”
He’s also working on a continuation of his life story, because his first only told up until the end of the sixties. Does he ever see himself retiring? “I see no point really. If I’d thought of retiring I’d have retired 20 years ago, I just enjoy continuing with five, six, seven projects, taking them to wherever they’re going to take me. Whether it’s finishing a book, or doing a photo exhibition, or upgrading the restaurant or doing archaeology, or whatever I do, you know? I just do it and get pleasure out of it. I’m very lucky.”
He sure is that.
First published by the Cambridge News: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Whats-on-leisure/Choice/Bill-Wyman-Glamorous-stories-There-arent-any-Its-glamorous-from-the-outside-not-the-inside-20131031060000.htm#ixzz2jm8NT0qp
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