Bill Wyman talks about his Rolling Stones audition
December 12th, 2010 9:44 am ET
Former Rolling Stones bass player Bill Wyman (who was in the band from 1962 to 1992) has posted a new video on his official Facebook page. In the video, he talks about the first time that he met the Rolling Stones: a December 1962 audition, which Wyman describes as somewhat unfriendly. Wyman says that the members of the band seemed most interested in him not because of his musical skills but because he had huge bass amps.
Nothing in the video is new information, since Wyman has discussed this first meeting with the Stones in numerous interviews, as well as in his autobiography "Stone Alone."
Here is what Wyman says in the video:
"I had a band in South London, and my drummer Tony Chapman played with the beginnings of the Stones. He came to me and said, 'The bass player's left. Do you want to come up and have a try?' Looking in my diary, on Friday, December 7th of 1962, I went up to the Weatherby Arms Pub in World's End, Chelsea. Entered through the side door. Met Ian Stewart, who was very nice and friendly. He introduced me to Mick [Jagger] there, who was also quite friendly, actually. I was then introduced to Brian [Jones] and Keith [Richards], who were up at the bar. And they were very cool and distant and showed me little interest.
"We got my equipment out and set it up. And everybody was interested all of sudden, because I had a huge bass amp, which I'd made. I had an AC30 Vox amp and another small amp, a Watkins Westminster. I said, 'You can use them. This is mine." They had horrible amps, so they were very happy about that.
"I bought a round of drinks and offered them cigarettes. And of course, they were jumped on immediately, because they all smoked, but they couldn't afford them. And then Mick turned around and asked me if I knew any black blues artists. The only names I knew that were similar to blues artists were Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. So he asked me who else I knew. I talked about the Coasters, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Cochran, Johnny Burnette, Lloyd Price, Sam Cooke, people like that. And I got a very strong look of distaste from everyone. They were a bit too rock'n'roll for them at the time, but in later years, they all got to love those guys.
"We rehearsed some slow Jimmy Reed songs, pretty authentic blues. But they all still kind of ignored me and made it clear to me that I wasn't really the right kind of person. I thought the general opinion on the boys was, 'Really good amps. The bass playing's nothing special, but we'll keep him because we can use the amps.' But they were con artists at the time. They took ages to be friendly with people.
"They asked me to come to the next rehearsal, and I agreed. We returned to their flat, and I left all my equipment there, which was a dodgy thing, because that flat was disgusting. I mean, itt was filthy. The chairs had three legs for people they didn't like, you know. Anyway, Tony and I left and drove back to South London later that evening. And I probably got to bed about 2 in the morning, like I usually do."
http://www.examiner.com/rolling-stones-in-national/bill-wyman-talks-about-his-ro...
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Bill Wyman talks about his Rolling Stones audition (Read 1,610 times)
