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Topic: Bill Wyman Interview Return to archive
March 12th, 2005 02:01 PM
MrPleasant For the record: apparently he didn't say, this time, that "metal detecting is more interesting than the Stones", or something.
___________________________________________________________

Wyman still has 'Thrill' playing
By Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News
March 12, 2005

When Bill Wyman quit the Rolling Stones in the early ’90s, he was leaving behind what was easily the most lucrative bass-playing job on the planet.

Keith Richards confidently predicted he’d be back , but more than a dozen years later, he’s happy beyond his dreams. "Bass player for the Rolling Stones" is a very tight pigeonhole that Wyman never fit. He had other things to do, he said, and he meant it. He threw himself into his long-neglected hobbies — archaeology, history, collecting.

It all has a theme, whether Wyman is digging out obscure songs from old bluesmen or unearthing 14th-century coins on his property in Sussex , England.

The music doesn’t go away, however. Last year he did "Rolling With the Stones," a coffeetable book that was a lovingly compiled history of the band, digging deep into the archives he has kept for more than 40 years.

His eighth solo album, "Just For a Thrill," is in stores, featuring his band the Rhythm Kings and pulling in blokes from around the neighborhood : Mark Knopfler, Dave Gilmour, Albert Lee.

Though no longer a Stone, he still keeps Stone hours, as he did talking via phone at midnight (his time) from his home.

Question: On "Just For a Thrill," you’ve surrounded yourself with musicians who just love to play.

Answer: "It really is that. It’s no sort of career move. It’s something I’ve been doing for five or six years with this band. When I make the records I can bring on guests, so we’ve had George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Chris Rea, Dave Gilmour."

Q: What’s interesting is that you’ve all become better musicians as you’ve grown older. You’ve all got a better sense of the history of music.

A: "I think they appreciate the variety in early music. It’s nice to revive it and revive it in a different way – not just copy it like copycats, but add something special to it, and retain the essence of the original if we can."

Q: How do you choose songs? Do you keep a running list?

A: "In my head and on cassette. I’m always listening to music. Whenever I hear something that’s interesting that might be possible to cover, I whack it onto cassette or CD and just save ‘em. When it’s time to record ? I make a short list of 20 numbers and we got in and cut them in about seven days."

Q: You’ve included the Beatles’ "Taxman" on the new disc.

A: "I did that for George because George played on our last album. He did a track for me, he did a very nice job on it and wrote me a lovely letter afterward , which I treasure. I wanted to do a tribute to him. That’s my favorite track of his ? but it has always been in a very hard rock ’n’ roll way, the way the Beatles did it. I wanted to do it completely different. I’ve got a horn section and a wonderful girl singer as well. We did it more in an old R&B way."

Q: How do you put a new twist on standards like that?

A: "I don’t like just copying things. I like to add and embellish. "Just for a Thrill" is a Ray Charles song. When he did it ? it was covered in flowing strings and girls. I had to completely forget all that, get the essence of that, create new horn lines that turned out really nice, and new backing vocal sounds, but still manage to get the essence of the original song."

Q: How did you come up with the opening track, "Disappearing Nightly"?

A: "I found that on an old cassette that someone gave me years and year ago. I had no idea who did it. I thought it would be perfect for Albert Lee. So we did the basic track, then I thought Mark Knopfler would sound great on this. I phoned Mark up. He lives around the corner; his daughter goes to school with my three daughters. He came in, did a really nice job of it."

Q: The book "Rolling With the Stones" fits perfectly with your passion for history.

A: "I grew up with my grandmother in the wartime and she taught me many things as a small child with the bombs falling. I was going to school at the time while the rest of my family was up north away from the bombing. I wasn’t happy there, so I came back to live with her. She taught me all kinds of things about collecting. That’s always been in my life. I do it musically. I do it with arch a eology. I do it with photography. I do it with art. I did the blues book ("Bill Wyman’s History of the Blues "). The Stones book did fantastic, it sold 300,000 to 400,000 around the world. They translated it into about 12 languages, including Russian. It’s amazing to have a Russian book on my shelf."

Q: How did you archive all this material over the years?

A: "I’m not telling you where I keep it! (laughs) I just collected it as I went along. I was writing diaries before I joined the Stones so it was no hardship to keep a basic diary of events as I went along. The rest of the band thought I was nuts: ‘What do you keep that rubbish for?’ I’d keep a program here, a ticket there, a poster if I could get hold of it, a version of the record from Spain. I ended up with massive archives. They don’t laugh anymore, because (it’s) worth a fortune."

Q: I think fans’ perceptions were such that you were done with the Stones after you quit the band.

A: "Charlie (Watts) always says ‘Bill should write all the books about the Stones because he knows everything.’ I wasn’t done with the Stones. It was just that it was time to move on and do all the other things that interest me in my life before it was too late. I’d been in a band half my life, 31 years. It was time to move on. Since then I’ve gotten married. I have a lovely family with three little girls. I’ve got all these other interests. I do archeology. I’ve found roman sites. I’ve found Bronze-Age things from 4,000 years ago, Iron Age coins. I live in a house from 1480 in the country, with a moat around it, which was built in Tudor times before Henry VIII. I’ve gotten to know all kinds of artists in France. My interests have always been very varied. I’ve always tried to be a little miniature Leonardo da Vinci."

Q: Are you involved in the Stones’ actual music catalog? Will the band finally open the vaults for outtakes and classic shows?

A: "Those decisions are always made by Mick, and Mick hates old tracks. That’s why it took nearly 30 years for "Rock and Roll Circus" to come out. He didn’t like it originally. He does not like to release old stuff. I do, because I’m an archivist. I love history and archives. I would be delighted to do it, but I don’t have that capacity."

Q: Can we talk about some of your classic riffs? They recur in modern music all the time, like the bass from "Street Fighting Man" turning up in Alice in Chains’ "No Excuses."

A: "They all came about in the same way. You’re in the studio and Keith, principally, comes up with a riff. You just mess with it. You might mess with it for a week. Then finally it all jells. Charlie gets the right rhythm, I’m playing the right thing, Mick starts to mumble a few word ideas, and within a day or so you’ve got a track. It was only other times when they came in with a song roughly together like "Satisfaction" was. But it was a country ballad when they wrote it. They thought it was a nice album-track filler. By the time it came out it wasn’t a country ballad at all. It had completely changed in the studio."

Q: Like Paul McCartney in the Beatles, you made the bass line part of the melody, not just a way to keep time.

A: "On "Paint It Black," I had an idea for the bass on that and I laid on the floor and played the organ pedal with my fists. That’s how it got that rhythm. Then I dubbed a regular bass on top of that. Those things happen in the studio."

Q: Tell me about the Miss You bass line.

A: "That was something I came up with Billy Preston, actually. Billy said ‘You might try an octave thing on that.’ I started to do a walking octave on that and it worked very well, and that was the crux of the song. For the two years after that, just about every band in the world did it, used that riff. They used it in funk records, Rod Stewart used it, everyone did. It’s not really stealing, but it’s nice that they liked it too."

Q: You’ve got three Ray Charles song on this CD, which was recorded before he died, so you couldn’t have known.

A: "We’ve always done Ray Charles songs because we do soul things. We do a whole mixture of music, live and in the studio. It’s wide open for anything with this band, and that’s the beauty of it."

Q: What’s next?

A: "In two weeks time I have a new book coming out here in England to do with archaeology: "Bill Wyman’s Treasure Island." It’s a visual book about 6,000 of the greatest treasure finds in Great Britain in the past 500 years. A chest of Roman gold and silver coins, 3,000 gold, 16,000 silver ones, 15 necklaces, 25 bracelets, 15 rings, great silver plates with decorations of Caesar and dolphins. That’s just one treasure that was found, and it’s worth millions. Those things are found in the ground in England all the time by people. Someone just found two weeks ago an Iron Age giant necklace, two foot around, solid gold."

Q: And musically?

A: "We did a tribute to Scotty Moore, Elvis’ guitar player from the early years. We put together a two-day thing where we’re making a DVD and CD thing for him, where we’re giving him most of the money. They chose my band as the house band. We had Eric Clapton do three songs, Dave Gilmour of Floyd came on and did something. It was very, very nice. That’ll be coming out shortly. And 10 days ago, Peter Frampton — who I’ve known since he was 13, a little boy who used to knock on my door when he was learning to play guitar — he called me up and asked if I’d cut two tracks with him for an instrumental album he’s doing. And he asked me if I could put a few people together, so I got Charlie Watts on drums — I haven’t played with Charlie in 12 years. Myself on bass, Chris Stainton on piano; and the four of us just cut very nice instrumental tracks."

Q: You all were once the white-hot center of the universe; now you’re all so relaxed.

A: "It’s just for the love of it, the way you started, the reason you began in the first place. You never thought about fame and fortune. You just wanted to play music and hope there were people out there who just wanted to listen. My life is great since I left the band. I’m great mates with them socially. My life is wonderful now. It’s totally busy. I work till 3, 4 in the morning most nights. It’s midnight now. Life has never been better, I must say. You’re speaking to a very happy man."

More Bill Wyman

• Hear more: Listen to this interview at 6:30 p.m. Sunday on The Latest From the Greatest on 103.5-FM The Fox

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/music/article/0,1299,DRMN_54_3614731,00.html
[Edited by MrPleasant]
March 12th, 2005 02:13 PM
glencar Lil Billy, happy at last. And good for him!
March 12th, 2005 02:19 PM
Soldatti
quote:
Q: Are you involved in the Stones’ actual music catalog? Will the band finally open the vaults for outtakes and classic shows?

A: "Those decisions are always made by Mick, and Mick hates old tracks. That’s why it took nearly 30 years for "Rock and Roll Circus" to come out. He didn’t like it originally. He does not like to release old stuff. I do, because I’m an archivist. I love history and archives. I would be delighted to do it, but I don’t have that capacity."


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