For 30 years, Bill Wyman stood in the shadows of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, anchoring the titanic riffs and ramshackle grooves of one of the loosest bands in the business. But anyone with more than a passing familiarity with such classic Rolling Stones rockers as "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," "Honky Tonk Women," "Brown Sugar," "I Wanna Be Your Man," and "19th Nervous Breakdown" knows the stoic, savvy bassist has an unwavering ear for the almighty rhythms of rock. And those in tune with the inner workings of the World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band acknowledge that Wyman's elemental flatpicked lines had every bit as much to do with embedding these songs in the rock & roll firmament as did Keith's slashing guitar and Mick's cocksure vocals.
Six years after calling it quits with the Stones, 61-year-old Wyman is working on an ambitious new project: a three-CD set of vintage covers and mixed-genre originals that trace the history of American music from ragtime to rock, with a heavy emphasis on the blues. Volume one, titled Struttin' Our Stuff, features guests Eric Clapton, Peter Frampton, Albert Lee, and Georgie Fame.
Keith Richards and Charlie Watts are formidable rhythm section mates, but your bass lines really drive "Satisfaction" and a great many other Stones tunes.
"Satisfaction" is a good example: I'm the only one who changes chords. Keith doesn't change, and there are no keyboards on it there's only me. I just thought walking up to the next chord made it that much better. But when everybody else plays it, Otis Redding did a great cover, they play it on the same chord throughout. And of course the Otis Redding version caused all sorts of trouble because they played the riff in the wrong place, on the root of the chord instead of on the 5th. And the bass just doubled it, staying on the same chord. No one else thought about that at the time, but for years and years afterward, every time we'd rehearse "Satisfaction" Keith would play it wrong. He'd always start the riff on the root: [sings]
It's totally different. I used to correct him all the time, and he'd say, "What do you mean I'm fuckin' playin' it wrong, who wrote the song?!" But you're playin' it like Otis Redding! It should be: [sings]
"Oh, oh, oh, yeah, that's right." [Laughs.]
Still, few bands have ever played so well together.
That's because everything we did came from inside. We didn't think about it; we felt it. But we are all, Keith, Charlie, and I, quite naive musically. This might amaze you, and it might disappoint a lot of people: If someone says to me, "Go from G up to D," I have to think about it because I don't know where the notes are on the bass. Honestly, I don't. I play totally by feel and by ear. So I'd much rather just listen and learn the song than be told, "Go from D to F, then to G for a moment, and then back to the D." I can't think like that, and Keith and Charlie are the same way. If you say to Charlie, "Don't play your bass drum boom-ba boom, boom-ba boom. Instead play ba-boom boom, ba-boom boom," he'd say, "That's exactly the same thing!" [Laughs.]
That musical naivety must have led to considerable experimenting in the studio.
Oh, yeah, Brian [Jones, original Stones guitarist] and I used to try different things all the time, just to see what would work. For instance, we wanted a percussive upright bass sound for our version of Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me" [The Rolling Stones No. 2]. But my hands are just too small to play upright, and even my semi-acoustic Framus Star with flatwounds didn't sound quite right. So I borrowed Charlie's sticks and overdubbed a track of me playing my bass strings with drumsticks. It sounded great.
So how did you tackle the famous bowed upright line on "Ruby Tuesday" [Between the Buttons]?
Once again, my stretch was a problem. I knew where the notes were, and everyone in the studio was saying how right it was for the track, but I just wasn't able to get it together. So I finally said, "Maybe someone else can bow it while I finger the notes." [Laughs.] Keith said he'd do it, so we ran through it once to show him what strings to play and when to watch my hands, and then we just did it. And it worked perfectly.
I did play upright on "Factory Girl" and a few other tracks on Beggar's Banquet, but I had to play very simple bits. Years ago, Sting bought one of those electrified things, and he told me to try it out. But it was the same problem; I just don't have the hands for it.
On the new album, you do some pretty convincing "upright" playing on "Bad to Be Alone," "Motorvatin' Mama," and "Jitterbug Boogie."
Many of the guests who did overdubs said, "You don't play upright, who's that playing bass?" [Laughs.] I spent a lot of time concentrating on the way an acoustic sounds: the length of the note and the shape of the movement from string to string. If you play bass guitar, you tend to play from the bottom up, but double-bass players move much more from the high strings to the low strings. So I had to rethink everything. It was a lot like when the Stones first started doing reggae in the early '70s. That was a big rethink, too, because the style is so totally different.
Which bass did you play for the upright-sounding parts?
My Steinberger. Not the little one I used to play [the L-2], but the red, guitar-shaped one I play onstage these days [the XMZ]. I tried various instruments, including my homemade fretless [see page 34], the Travis Bean, and a very old Framus Star, but when I finally tried the Steinberger it just fit. And I still use flatwounds exclusively. I think that's half the magic of getting that sound.
Is it true you weren't into blues before joining the Rolling Stones?
There really wasn't any blues music in England. You couldn't buy the records, and they never played it on the radio. But in London there was a very small, underground cult, about 30 or 40 people, who were into buying stuff abroad and swapping tapes. Brian Jones was in that scene, and Mick and Keith got into it a bit later. I was sending off to Chicago for Chuck Berry records in '57 and '58, but Mick was sending off for bluesier stuff, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Slim Harpo, by the very early '60s. And Brian was really into Bo Diddley and Elmore James. So even though my band at the time, the Cliftons, was covering R&B artists like Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Larry Williams, and Sam Cooke, I'd never heard of Elmore James and Slim Harpo! In fact, when the Stones gave me a Jimmy Reed tape a week before our first rehearsal, I thought it was a bit slow and dull. But it was fresh; there was something nice in it I'd never heard before.
How do you explain the Stones' immediate appeal in those early years?
Every other band in England in '63, the Beatles, Jerry & the Pacemakers, the Hollies, Herman's Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, you name 'em, they were all playing [sings straight-eighth groove] dut-dut-dut-dut. Every song they played was like that. The Stones were the only band in England, the only band, playing shuffle rhythms. We really swung onstage very early on, and it surprised people. Older jazz musicians could do it, but no one expected young kids to play like that, and people just couldn't keep their feet still. Of course when we went to America Jimmy Reed was on all the jukeboxes, especially in Texas, so the shuffle wasn't such a revelation. [Laughs.]
Who did you listen to for bass inspiration in those days?
Except for the Chicago stuff with Willie Dixon, most of those records didn't have bass on them. So I tried to find something that fit the music, and I ended up with a style that's quite sparse. I leave lots of holes, because I found the best thing to do on a slow blues is as little as possible. Then when I first heard Booker T. & the MG's in '62, Duck Dunn became my favorite player. I just loved his simplicity; he never got in the way. I knew most people were listening to Keith and Mick and didn't really notice the bass, but that's the way I think it should be.
I heard all these incredible, magical bass players in those days, Jack Bruce, John Entwistle, John Paul Jones, Felix Pappalardi, but they're all too busy for me. I totally admire their technique; I just can't stand the way they play! It's like another guitar; there's no underneath. Ronnie Wood plays like that, too. He'd play on the odd Stones song here or there if I wasn't in the studio, and he'd always ask me later, "What do you think of that, Bill?" And I'd always say, "Bloody horrible! Where's the bass?" [Laughs.]
You and Charlie didn't play off one another as much as you played together, like one big instrument.
I think I was one of the first bass players in England to understand I had to play along with the bass drum and really concentrate on what Charlie was doing. Jazz people were doin' it, and all the Americans were doin' it, but in England you didn't think like that; you just played along with the tune. I realized very quickly, though, that I should lock in on whatever Charlie was playing on his bass drum, and that's why we fit together so well so early on. The thing is, there was no one to teach you such things. You had to learn by trial and error. Luckily the band learned all these little tricks very quickly.
How much input did the other Stones have on your bass lines?
Well, Keith runs the band; that's old news. But Mick always had the funniest way of suggesting bass lines. He'd come up to me during sessions and start making playing motions, like Joe Cocker does when he sings. And he'd say, "Play it like [sings busy, atonal bass line]." But he wouldn't sing actual notes, so it was useless! When he'd walk away, I'd turn to Keith and ask, "What should I do?" And he'd mumble, "Play exactly what you played before." So I would, and afterwards Mick would come up and say, "That's better!" [Laughs.] Mick's got his greatness in many ways, but sometimes he wasn't quite with us musically.
Why return now with an album of old-style blues?
When I left the band I didn't want to even think about music for a couple of years. I just wanted to get my private life, which was a bit of a mess, back in order. Also, I had a restaurant going, I was working on three different books, and my father had recently died. So I just forgot about music. But I'd been in it 35 years, and it came creeping back. This time, though, I didn't want to worry about sales charts and image; I just wanted to go into the studio and play anything I liked. So I began going through my record collection, copying onto cassette anything I thought would be fun and interesting to play. It didn't matter if it was a '50s Chicago blues, a '70s rock song, a '30s Fats Waller number, or an old ragtime tune.
After I had a big variety of music to choose from, we began hitting the studio three days a month, cutting five, six, seven tracks at a time. In the end we had enough for three albums, 56 tracks in all. Along the way we hired people who were easy to get on with and good fun to play with. Graham Broad has played drums with a lot of well-known bands, but we discovered the piano player, Dave Hartley, out of the blue. He's stunning.
The whole rhythm section has a great feel.
It's because we never got too absorbed in what we were doing. It was a real pleasure to be able to sit back for a few weeks between sessions and think about what was working and what wasn't, and it came across on the record. But even with no time limits, everything we did was in one or two takes, maybe three. If it got beyond that, I'd say, "Forget it; move on!" Because I think the most important thing about covering this music is capturing the magic of the original, that quality of mood and atmosphere. And you can't do that if you keep playin' it and playin' it and playin' it. You have to be inspired, and you either hit it off or you don't.