9/08/2011
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Bill Wyman's post-Rolling Stones work with The Rhythm Kings has been collected for a 5-disc box set that will be released on October 25.
The collection features Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Nicky Hopkins, Mark Knopfler, Paul Carrack, Peter Frampton, Georgie Fame and Andy Fairweather-Low. Here are the details we were sent:

This five-disc collectors' Edition Box Set, which gathers four studio albums Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings cranked out between their 1998 debut Struttin' Our Stuff and 2001's Double Bill, is a revelation, particularly for those who have yet to discover the rich body of work of Wyman's low-profile/high-revving band. Given the expansive array of material the Rhythm Kings tackle in these recordings, one even might think of this collection as a pocket history of 20th century roots music, with original material written in the spirit of the old songs serving as the connective tissue.

A founding member of the Stones, and half of what may be rock's best-ever rhythm section, Wyman remains a refreshingly humble and down-to-earth character. The notion of an egoless rock star may seem oxymoronic, but Wyman turns out to be the ultimate embodiment of just that. "I don't need an ego," he says. "I never did. Charlie Watts is the same. Charlie didn't give a sh*t about any of that. We'd just do it, get on with it and go home, or back to the hotel. And I'm still like that."

It's this quality that has drawn a jaw-dropping procession of virtuosos to play alongside Wyman in the context of Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings whenever their busy schedules have permitted. Scattered here and there through these 66 tracks are the likes of Eric Clapton, Procol Harum's Gary Brooker, fellow former Stone Mick Taylor, Mark Knopfler, Peter Frampton, Paul Carrack, Chris Rea, acclaimed jazz guitarist Martin Taylor, master percussionist Ray Cooper and, in some of their final recordings, George Harrison and Nicky Hopkins. These greats have slipped seamlessly into the sturdy yet willowy framework provided by core members Wyman, drummer Graham Broad (best known for his work with Roger Waters), singer/guitarist Andy Fairweather-Low (Eric Clapton), legendary singer/organist Georgie Fame, renowned roots guitarist Albert Lee, vocalist Beverley Skeete, horn players Frank Mead and Nick Payn, pianist Geraint Watkins and guitarist Terry Taylor, who doubles as Wyman's primary collaborator on the originals.

As he looks back on the last 20 years of his life and career, the affable, perennially youthful Wyman peppers his conversation with wry laughter as understated as his playing style, onstage demeanor and personality. "In '91, the Stones had a big business meeting," he begins. "They were about to sign the contract with Virgin, and I said, 'I won't be doing that, 'cause I'm leaving.' 'No you're not,' they said. 'You can't leave.' 'Well, I am.' Bless them, they didn't believe me for two years; they left the door open until they were ready to go out on the '94 tour. And in late '93, Charlie and Mick came 'round and said, 'Is it definite? Have you left?' I said, 'I left two years ago.'"

"So then I thought, maybe I should do some music on the side, but not heavy; I don't want to have to worry about charts, image and all that crap. It's not gonna be a career move — I'm just gonna do it for the fun. I got together with my mate and right-hand man Terry Taylor, and I said, 'Let's do something.' We were gonna just do a blues duo and call ourselves the Dirt Boys, and we started to rough up ideas. And then, when we decided to go into the studio just for a couple of days, we thought it might be nice to have a drummer, and, of course, a piano player would be good. So I just phoned up a few mates."

His first calls were to Fairweather-Low (who'd been part of Wyman's '80s group, Willie & the Poor Boys, the stylistic forerunner of Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings), Graham Broad and pianist Dave Hartley, who went on to work with Sting. "We went into the studio, and I said, 'We'll cut anything that meets my fancy,'" he continues. "I dug out a list of early music that I liked and thought might be good to do. It ranged from Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Fats Waller, Ray Charles, into the early rock 'n' roll, like Louie Jordan and Cab Calloway — all the way back to the '30s and upwards. So we went in for three days and cut eight tracks."

The numerous live-performance videos uploaded on YouTube by fans show various configurations of Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings but a palpable spirit permeates every clip. All the musicians appear to be totally blissed out, none more so than Wyman himself, reveling in the experience of simply being one of the guys, making music with friends. "We have a ball," he says. "There's nothing nicer than doing a two-hour show and seeing the entire audience standing and applauding through the last few numbers — and they keep doing it for another 10 minutes after we go back to the dressing room. And it's night after night."

"I discovered that I could write songs in the old styles, because I would analyze the way they did the arrangements, the way the instrumentation sounded, the way people sang and the slang they used for the lyrics. And in the end, the track, when we'd finish it, would sound like a song from the '30s, '40s or '50s. It's almost like an archeological dig into music. But there are very few bands that have the depth and versatility of my band in doing a total mixture of music. We play blues, reggae, soul music, gospel-y stuff, jump music, early rock 'n' roll, we do '70s stuff, it's a whole mixture. We can do anything."

As prodigiously talented as Wyman's band is, it's almost as if Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings have been hiding in plain sight all these years. Part of it has to do with Wyman's aversion to globetrotting — one of the primary reasons he left the Stones after 31 years of it. He's now happy to play anywhere — as long as the band can get there by bus, train or ferry, meaning no further from home than Eastern Europe. "We don't seem to go to another level, because I just don't travel anymore, which disappoints the band a bit," he acknowledges. "But that is not what we do it for. We have a really nice time playing music that grabs us and we go home with smiles on our faces, just like the audience does. That's really all it's about."

And in purely musical terms, that's more than enough. Bill Wyman just can't help keeping it down to the real nitty-gritty as he continues his single-minded career path. "Whether it's been the right direction or not, I don't know," he reflects. "But I've enjoyed it."

What, no "Monkey Grip" ?!

Sounds cool...and i am happy for Bill to be able to put this together...but I must ask:
Is there really a market / demand for this?

Paranoid Android wrote on Oct 7^th, 2011 at 3:18pm:

Well, who cares. I prefer it far over Super Heavy (again, love it that Mick is making music and not retiring). Who would have thought this 20 years ago when he left the Stones. That he would be still this active in 2012. I love it. Have seen him twice and in some weird way I enjoyed it maybe more than a Stones (stadium) concert. He is a true musician and a very nice guy. Still would love to see him one more time playing with his old mates.

Bill Wyman: The Rhythm of a Stone
Published: 2011/10/19
By Randy Ray



Since leaving the Rolling Stones nearly twenty years ago, bassist Bill Wyman, a founding member with three decades of service with the band, has kept himself quite busy. On November 22, the musician releases Collector’s Edition Box Set, a five-CD set of the first four Rhythm Kings albums recorded in a remarkable three-year period of time. The roots music band has been together for 13 years, and Wyman’s work leading the outfit has been admirably inspired and creatively sound—sifting through prior eras of ancient music like a gifted archeologist to find a fresh and vital way to craft new music.

Jam bands sat down with the legendary original bassist from the Stones and current leader of the Kings during rehearsals for the latter outfit’s six week-plus tour. Wyman was also preparing for the debut exhibition in England of some of his photographic work. The man keeps moving forward—from archeology to books to photography to music, he has truly become quite the Renaissance man in the late stages of an impressive career, with no end in sight. At 75, Wyman is humorous and youthful with more than a fair share of tried-and-true wisdom thrown in for keen experiential measure. In the end, the artist has seen how life can work, occasionally and often unfair, but has managed to offer his own creative voice, threading his art with particularly memorable characteristics, without ever losing sight of his own individual trademark resonance.

RR: It’s unbelievable to me that so much material was recorded in such a brief period of time—1998-2001—on the new box set.

BW: Yeah, we do everything in take one, take two, take three. That’s it. If you can’t get it in three takes, out the window, and start on the next song. That’s the only way to capture the essence of the original. If you go through a Fats Waller song, or Ray Charles, or Chuck Berry, or whatever it is, you’ve got to capture the essence of the song that makes you like it. And the only way to do that is to get a recording of it with the band when everybody is having a good time, they’ve just got into it, and they’re just throwing things in. It works out for us that way; that’s the way we’ve done it right from the beginning.

RR: What is fascinating is how you went back to earlier eras when you were selecting material to record for these albums, but you found new ways to make music, even down to the way you play your bass on these tracks.

BW: Oh, you’re right. Yeah, I had to adapt my playing because over the years I’d gone from blues to R&B to rock and then to heavy rock, really, with the Stones in the big stadiums and everywhere, and I realized that I had to play in a different way because all the songs that we were doing with the Rhythm Kings were roots music, where the bass player was a double bass—all the Chess Records with Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Walter, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon—or, there was no bass at all on them, so I couldn’t play one bass and I had to throw away all my ideas from the past

(laughs) and start again, and think to myself: “How do I do this?” I used to sit down and think, “Well, double bass plays in a different way to a bass guitar.” They pull down from the high strings, usually, and with a bass guitar, you usually play it up from the bottom strings. If you play some boogie, you play [Wyman scats the three different variations of what a bass sounds on a traditional bass guitar], but on a double bass [Wyman scats the percussive sound of a double bass]—you know what I mean?

RR: Yeah.

BW: Pull down from the high strings downward. So I had to play more like that—the feel—and, also, soften my sound, which I did by playing with my thumb, instead of a pick, and doing it very, very lightly. [Author’s Note: Ironically, at this point of our conversation, one of Wyman’s daughters made a rather loud noise on an acoustic guitar.] Careful. So my daughter just smashed the acoustic guitar. (laughter) She just whacked it. She was trying to do it quietly while I’m on the phone. (laughs)

Yeah, I had to really rethink my way of playing, but still play also with an 18-inch speaker, which I’ve always done since the beginning because that gives me that fat bottom that sounds more like a double bass. And after a while, it did start to sound like a double bass on some things.

I’ve fooled a few people. I remember Jeff Beck saying to me once, after he’d done some of the Rhythm Kings because he loves our stuff, and he said, “So, who’s playing the bass on some of the numbers on the early albums?” I said, “I am.” He said, “No. No. No. It’s a double bass, and I know you can’t play a double bass because your hands are too small. You’ve told me that.” I said, “It’s not double bass; it’s me playing on the bass.” He said, “God, that fooled me; I thought it was a double bass on there.” (laughs) It does work once in a while, but you don’t get the slap, obviously, you know. [Wyman scats the bass slap] You can’t get that stuff, but you can get the bottom fatness and you can play like one, so that’s as good as I can do it.

RR: Who is that? That’s Bill Wyman.

BW: (laughs) There you go, yeah—you can fool some of the people some of the time.

RR: Your songwriting process evolved while working with the Rhythm Kings, too. You have formed an important collaborative duo with Terry Taylor over the years.

BW: Terry’s been a friend of mine since late ’69. He was in bands that I produced that toured America, and were quite successful in Europe, as well. Then, he was on all my solo albums, movie scores with me, and all that, so it was he and I that decided to create the Rhythm Kings. We decided to call ourselves the Dirt Boys. We were originally going to come out and do some old 30s blues music—just the two of us—and then, we decided to add a piano, and it might be nice with a drummer, and then (laughs), it became the

Rhythm Kings, instead of this Dirt Boys duo as we first thought.

Terry’s very important, but when I wanted to write songs, I decided to write them in the style of the songs we were covering, which were mostly from the 30s, 40s, and 50s. I realized that in those days people sang differently, horn sections played different lines, backing vocal harmonies were different, and so I decided to write songs with those things in mind, and, also, to use slang of the day, like “keep on truckin’” and all that kind of stuff that I’d heard off blues records and I’d heard off early jazz records of the 30s and 40s. I’d incorporated all that stuff, Terry and I write the music, and I do the lyrics. I write lyrics. I try to write lyrics in the same way, as I said, using the slang of the day. In the end, if it’s done right, and the band put it together in the right way, it sounds like its come from the 1930s, and that’s fooled a lot of people, as well, because people ask me, “Who did the original that you copied that from?” (laughter) And it’s kind of pleasant to fool people sometimes because it shows we are doing it right.

BW: The band I’m going on tour with—which began on October 17, we’re going to do 38 cities in six and a half weeks with maybe four or five days off—it’s the same band I started gigs in 1998 with the Rhythm Kings with the exception of one person, and that’s the keyboard player, the piano player. Georgie Fame has been there, Albert Lee has been there, Terry Taylor was there, Beverley Skeete, my girl singer, was there, the two horn players [Frank Mead and Nick Payn] were there, and Graham Broad, my drummer was there. We’re the same band.

Only, over the years, when someone has been unavailable, it’s a bit like a the real football team; when people get red cards and get sent off for three games (laughs), or get injured, and you have to replace them off the bench with somebody else who can sit in. So, if Albert Lee is working with the Everly Brothers, or is on tour with his own band, and can’t make this gig, I get Andy Fairweather-Low, or someone like that. If my keyboard player, Gary Brooker can not be available, I’d find Chris Stainton from the Eric Clapton Band, or Chris Stainton would also play organ if Georgie Fame wasn’t available. Basically, the crux of the same band has flowed through all the twelve years. It’s only been added to on occasion for certain songs in the studio, and things like that.

We’ve got the same band with the exception of Gary Brooker for four years who got busy with Procol Harum again, and then I had a guy in there, Mike Sanchez who is fantastic and he was with us for about four years, and, now, I’ve got a guy called Geraint Watkins, who is Bob Dylan’s favorite English piano player, and he’s fantastic. He was in Willie & the Poor Boys with me in the 1980s, so it’s all a bit incestuous, you know. (laughs)

RR: How much did Willie & the Poor Boys, many years later, lead into your thoughts about forming the Rhythm Kings?

BW: Unbeknownst to me at the time, that was the forerunner of the Rhythm Kings. Mind you, Charlie Watts was in that with me. I had Kenney Jones in that, as well, from The Who. I had Andy Fairweather-Low, I had Geraint Watkins that I just mentioned, he was in Willie & the Poor Boys, and we even had people like Ringo [Starr] guest on the video. It was a fun band and it played roots music very well, and it was very well-received. It did very good and I did that album, principally, to raise money for Ronnie Lane of the Face’s Multiple Sclerosis charity, at the time, and who died of MS in the end. And it was the forerunner of the Rhythm Kings without me realizing it.

RR: You’ve had a wide variety of musicians play with you from time to time, too. On this tour, you’ve got Mary Wilson from the Original Supremes.

BW: Yes, she’s our guest on this tour. We always have guests, or we try to. For two years, we had Eddie Floyd all over England and, also, Europe doing “Knock on Wood,” and “634-5789,” and all those songs he wrote or co-wrote. And then, we had Gary “U.S.” Bonds; I had him come over because I heard he was still doing the business; in fact, Springsteen’s people told me about him. Steve Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen told me that he was still happening, so I got him over and he did a tour with us and he was great doing all that sort of New Orleans stuff he was doing in the past, but he also sang wonderful Otis Redding songs, as well. I had Dennis Locorriere, the lead singer of Dr. Hook, who we became quite good friends with, and he did a great job, as well.

So, it was time to have someone else, and I thought, “Mary Wilson—why not?” because we did a charity for Prince Albert of Monaco three years ago for the Princess Grace Trust, and the prince asked me to put a band together for the night with as many guests as we could get because they raise a lot of money for the charity. I got Donovan in there, I got Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees, I got a very famous French guitarist, and I got Mary Wilson. I also got a few other people like Gary Brooker, too. Mary was great on it. Then, I went to see her last year when she was touring England, and she was still doing the business great, so I thought, “Why not? This will be a change.” She was delighted to accept, and we got around seven songs in a couple of days time.

We usually rehearse two afternoons, re-learn the set, and put in about six new songs, which we can do in two afternoons as we have to do six new songs with the Rhythm Kings as we always do every tour. We are also doing seven with Mary, so it is 13 new songs and we stretched it to three afternoons. (laughter) This band can do that. When I was in the Stones, we’d rehearse for a month learning all the songs we’d been doing for 30 years. It was a bit bizarre. But this band is very, very conscientious and functional, so we can do that in three afternoons.

RR: The records are very tight and well-crafted. I was wondering how much the band is able to let loose and improvise during the live gigs. Are you the musical director containing that to a certain degree?

BW: I’m pretty much the one who says everything, which is different from when I was in the Stones, obviously. Someone had to be responsible, so I pretty much choose everything that we do with the exception of an odd one or two things that the band suggests. The arrangements are done between us all. I often help with the horn arrangements with the horn players, suggesting ideas, and, also, with backing vocals. But, apart from that, it’s just like a family unit, really. We all love each other’s performances. We all leave space for each other. No one tries to be a prima donna and take over and boss it all, so it’s just very pleasant to do, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it because I’ve got eight different projects going all the time. I’ve got books, I do archeology, I open events at all the big museums in England, I play charity sport for years, and I’ve got a restaurant [Bill Wyman’s Sticky Fingers in Kensington, England], I’m raising a family, and on and on—there is so much to do. I’ve got photo exhibitions, too. I’ve got a big one coming up in London in three days time. I wouldn’t do this unless it was just a lot of fun and just great to do because I’m too busy and I can’t afford to waste my time anyway.

RR: I love how you connect artistic philosophies in your work. Your phrase “land fishing” that I’ve read about—when referencing your archeology—reminded me of some of the music that you are doing with the Rhythm Kings.

BW: I often say that we are doing archeology into music now. I often use that phrase when I talk to people about it—just digging through the past and coming out with a little gem like you would in archeology, and like you would do in fishing, coming out with a little gem from 1928 by some obscure person and rebuilding it and, obviously, trying to capture the essence of the original because that’s important and that’s why you like that particular song—it’s got something about it that’s special. You have to try to capture that, as well, when you record. You don’t just bash it out like a lot of bands I’ve heard do. They do cover versions of songs and smash them out without any thought of trying to capture the essence of it. And that’s why I do things in just the maximum of three takes; that’s when you can capture that.

RR: Your book Bill Wyman’s Blues Odyssey is really quite good. I also appreciate the phrase “odyssey” due to the subject matter, as well. Was that a word that you had thought about for a while when considering writing a book on the blues?

BW: Oh, yeah, that book took me four years of research. The awful thing was that when it came out in America and I got an award for it—bless the people who did it for me; they gave me an award and I gave one to B.B. King and Buddy Guy, personally, when I was over there and they both said that this is the best blues book we’ve ever seen, which was a great compliment—but when I got reviews, I was getting reviews like “Well, Bill Wyman’s popped his name on this, but I wonder if he had anything to do with it,” and I thought, “Oh, God, I spent four bloody years doing this, and I just gave it to someone to write it a little bit neater than me.” It was my ghost writer, you know. I did all the work; I just gave him all the shit to do. ( laughs) And that’s what I’ve done with all my books. It really upsets me when people think you just stapled your name to the book, and it is
really somebody else’s book. They think that someone in my position would not be bothered to make the effort to do anything, so they think people just stick your name on it, and it is going to sell. It’s very tasteful, and it doesn’t bear thinking about, really.

RR: You’ve written some very solid Stones biographies, too. It should be fairly obvious that you’ve undertaken this sort of work in the past as an author.

BW: The book I’m most proud of is Rolling with the Stones, the big book I did, which is the history of the Stones. It has about 3,000 illustrations and 95% of them are from my collection—photos and artifacts and posters and programs and all that. That sold almost half a million copies in the world, and was translated into twelve languages, including Russian, Polish, Norwegian, and all the European languages, so, for me, that was the best book I’ve written, so far. There have been lots of Stones books out—300 books, or something—but a lot of people say that’s the best book ever. Charlie Watts says it: “If you want to know anything about the Stones, read that book.”

If I do anything, it’s got to be as good as I can do it. I don’t just bash things out for the money. That doesn’t interest me. It never has—musically, or in any other projects that I do. You’ve got to do them to your best ability, and then you walk away happy and comfortable about it.

RR: I think that holds true with the timeless rhythms and riffs you played with Charlie Watts, too. That music really stands up.

BW: Yeah, otherwise it is not worth doing. If I can’t get quality into it, then I don’t want to do it. And that’s been throughout my life. I’ve had that in everything I ever do. Now, I’ve got photography and I’ve got these exhibitions going all around the world, including the huge one I’ve got coming up in London, that I mentioned. They’ve taken some of my 35 mm negatives and blown them up to six-foot wide. I’ve seen the exhibition and it’s fantastic. I feel so proud of it, but, once again, I just took photos for the fun of it all my life, and suddenly, people started to say, “These are a bit special. Can we do an exhibition?” (laughs) Which totally surprises me. I say, “Are you sure? (laughs) Do you think people really want to see these?” It’s like telling people to come and watch your home movies. (laughter) Everybody thinks it is going to be the biggest bore ever, and I think like that, too, and I say, “Do they really want to see my pictures?” And there’s been some successful exhibitions—in San Francisco, I had a huge one years ago, and I’ve had a couple of others in California and in Berlin, Tokyo, three in Holland, and they’ve all been very successful, but I’ve never done one in England before, so now I’ve got England coming up this week while I’m rehearsing for the Rhythm Kings tour and I’ve got the box set going on. It’s non-stop. (laughs) That’s the way I like it. It keeps me young. It keeps me sparking and all that. I saw it with the artist Marc Chagall when I knew him—sparkly eyes and on the ball morning, noon, and night, and he lived to 93, so I think that’s a good one to aim for.

RR: That’s a tremendous book, too— Wyman Shoots Chagall .

BW: Oh, thank you. Yeah, that’s a limited edition book. I’ve given that away to a lot of people, and they all like it. They all think it’s a bit special, so that was very nice. He was a lovely man and I wanted to honor his memory because I was friends with him for the last eight years of his life and he was fantastic.

RR: Your down-to-earth realistic attitude is very telling to me. How much has that approach helped you throughout the years so you can do the work you desire, while maintaining your sanity and focus?

BW: It probably held me back. It did. You’re not pushy; you’re not forceful, so people tend not to take too much notice of you when you talk about things, or when you want to suggest things, or when you want to talk business with people. They don’t really take you too seriously because you’re too easy going. You’re not forceful.

I don’t have a business mind. You know. I can’t…even in the Rhythm Kings, if someone starts to do things wrong, I can’t really tell them off. I have to do it in a nice way. (laughs) I don’t like upsetting them. And that can bounce back wrongly on you all the time because then people can take advantage of you—if you know what I mean.

RR: I do.

BW: If you’re nice, you get shit on, basically. It’s the people that are horrible that get away with it and do well. The nice people always get the shit. (laughs) I always say that anyway. It’s my belief. I’ve been shit on a lot in my life, but it’s still a great life and I still enjoy every minute of it.

RR: Entering into conflicts and being demonstrative all the time would get tiring.

BW: Yeah, it doesn’t interest me.

Happy birthday!!

Other onterview
http://blogcritics.org/music/article/interview-bill-wyman-the-legendary-bassist/...


Author: Phillip Barnett — Published: Oct 23, 2011 at 10:46 pm0 comments
BC Music Premium

http://static-l3.blogcritics.org/11/10/23/169781/wyman.jpgt=20111023200300

For almost 30 years bassist Bill Wyman, along with drummer Charlie Watts, formed the rhythm section of the Rolling Stones. By the early ‘90s Wyman left the band, tired of the commercial and physical grind. A couple of years later he formed his own group, Bill Wyman and the Rhythm Kings, focusing on roots music, including rockabilly, blues, and swing. On November 22, four of their CDs (Anywhere the Wind Blows, Struttin’ Our Stuff, Groovin’, Double Bill), spanning the years 1998 to 2001, will be re-released in a five-disc set. Wyman sat down for a discussion that covered the formation of the Rhythm Kings, the material he chooses, and his approach to playing bass. In conversation he came across as gregarious and enthusiastic about the Kings and their music.

A lot of people aren’t familiar with how the Rhythm Kings were created. Can you talk about that, and how this project is different than some of your previous solo projects?

Yeah, absolutely. When I left the Stones  in ’93 — well, ’91, but they didn’t believe me for two years — I stayed away from music for a couple of years. I just focused on my restaurant. I was writing book on archaeology, opening events for the museums and things like that. And getting married, of course. I’m now married 18 years and have three beautiful teenage daughters, so that was a good one. Then I thought maybe I’d love to play some more music, but in a different way. Not worried about charts or record companies and all the bunk that goes with it, all the pressures. Just do anything and have a bit of fun.

So I just started to call up a few mates and just started to record anything whether it came from the 1920s to the 1970s; I didn’t care. I’d do a Fats Waller song and then we’d do an Ethel Waters song from the '20s and then we’d do a Creedence Clearwater song or J.J. Cale, just whatever grabbed me at the time which I thought was a good song, a Jackie Wilson song or Sam Cooke or Ray Charles. We’ve got a lot of singers in the band, six singers all with different styles, so we were able to experiment with learning very quickly any kind of music. It took a while to get our record deal because it wasn’t commercial music. People didn’t know how to sell it. I got lots of great compliments about it, but they said, “We can’t sign you because we don’t know how to work on this kind of stuff. We don’t know how good the market is out there.”

Anyway, we finally got our deal and then they asked us to tour, which I hadn’t even thought about. So I asked the band and we did a few gigs to start with. They sold out instantly. They asked us for double shows in all the venues, so we did and it was very, very popular. So then we decided to do tours after that. And in the meantime we were cutting records, just going in and cutting anything I wanted in one, two, or three takes. That’s it. If you can’t get it in three takes, don’t do it. If you’re playing a Jackie Wilson song and it’s got a bit of charm about it, we don’t want to lose that charm. We don’t want to sit there and do 28 takes like I used to do all the time. So I tried to do that with the Rhythm Kings from the beginning. If we couldn’t get it in three takes I’d say, “Forget that one. Let’s get on to another song.” We’d cut three songs a day and just go in for three days. Not much later we’d go in for another three days and we had a whole stockpile of music, all kinds of areas and styles. It was fabulous. We didn’t have any pressures and it’s all high-quality stuff, because I’ve got great, great musicians doing it. They’re doing it for the same reason as me. They just do it for the love again. They’ve all got their careers. They all work with other people. But we just get together twice a year and in the studio occasionally and just have fun doing it. And then they get back to their normal work.

It’s interesting that you’re use the word “fun.” I take a look at all the different influences that you guys have and I ask myself what seems to be the common denominator? And most of it seems to fall under the heading of “fun” songs.

Good-time music, I’ve always believed that that’s what music is. Music was created hundreds and hundreds of years ago just to make people feel good, especially with the black community in America. Just cheering them up on a Saturday night at a fish fry or the house party, just to get their brains somewhere else just for a couple of hours and have a good time and then get back to the basics the next morning. Fats Domino songs are like that. “Blue Monday” — he talked about it. So I’ve always thought music was for fun and it’s better in small places to play. Stadiums, I lost interest. There was no communication with the audience anymore. I like little clubs, so we started off doing the little clubs and theaters and small concert halls. That’s what we do all the time. There’s no money in it really because it’s a 10-piece band, plus our guest; we always have a guest on tour. And we just do it for the love, the whole band. [The musicians] turn down gigs, good-paying gigs, to play with us. [Singer] Beverly Skeete has turned down [an] Eurythmics tour to play with my band, which was such a compliment.

That really is. You were talking about some of the genres that you draw on. Can you describe some of the artists and what you get out of them? What are some of your influences?  I know it’s  tough question.

I’d be all day. I’ll give you an example. Ethel Waters in the 1920s and '30s. She became — you might know about her — she became a great actress in movies in the '40s. I think she got an Oscar.

That’s right. She did.

I’ve got all her stuff and I’ve always listened to her for years and years and years. One song stood out, “My Handyman.” It’s from the '30s. It isn’t really rude but it’s a little bit saucy, a few double entendres. I said to Beverly, “My dear, I want to do this song. And let’s do it really simple.” And I had this fabulous piano player that I’ve used on the first three albums called Dave Hartley who later went on to work with Sting and the Olympics. I said, “Dave, you can play [it] on the piano, can’t you?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Beverly, lean against the piano like Ethel Waters would have done in the 1920s. Just lean against the piano and just sing it with Dave.” And they did it in one take. It was beautiful.

We did only a few Stones songs, because I don’t like to use it as a crutch. We decided to do “Melody.” It’s a great song. Billy Preston was involved in it and he sang it with Mick [Jagger]. And I thought I could do that really good with Beverly and Georgie Fame, my wonderful organ player. You know of Georgie Fame?

Yeah, I know a little bit about him.

He did “Yeh, Yeh” and all those songs in the '60s. He’s a brilliant musician. I asked him to do it together. We’d cut the track and they got on the mic to sing the vocal and they sang and it was wonderful. It was the first thing that Beverly ever did with us. I said, "That’s fantastic and we’ve got it in one." And they said, “Can’t we do it again?” I said, "Why? Didn’t you think it was good enough?" They said, “Oh yeah, but we’re just having fun. Can we do it a few more times just for the fun of it?" And then they cut a better version. They did it three times and we cut the master. That’s the attitude of the musicians in the band. It’s fantastic. When I was in the Stones for 30 years it was such hard work. So much pressure all the time. It was very difficult to enjoy it sometimes. No disrespect, because I loved my 30 years. We’re still great friends. So it’s not disrespect. It’s just a fact.

By Phillip Barnett, BLOGCRITICS.ORG
Published 08:15 p.m., Thursday, October 27, 201

Picking up from Part One of our interview, music legend Bill Wyman addresses the material he chooses for the Rhythm Kings, his approach to playing bass, and some of the instrument's perceived technical limitations.

When you talk about music from different eras or cultures, you're referring to experiences that you perhaps personally haven't experienced. For example, you may have a country song that's talking about going back to the farm.

I'd love to do George Jones songs, for instance, but I don't have a singer that could do that. Fine, but we can do Ray Charles songs. We can do Sam Cooke or Jackie Wilson or people like that. We can do Chuck Berry. We can do all the early blues singers, some of the early R&B singers. But there are a lot of things we can't do, obviously.

Are there songs that you shy away from because the experience being described is a bit too personal or something that you can't quite relate to?

It's usually down to whether we can do something with a particular song as good, if not better, than the original and still retain the spirit of the original. That is the most important thing for me. To retain the spirit that the first song, the original song, was created. That's why I do just one, two, three takes because otherwise I think it becomes too mechanical after that. But there are certain songs that [we] just cannot do; like Bo Diddley songs, which I'd love to do. The Stones were able to do it with Brian Jones - he managed to do that tremolo effect. We did them beautifully in the early days. But when Brian went, the Stones never attempted a Bo Diddley song after that. And so there are certain things we cannot do, but there's not many, I'll tell you.

I've been very impressed.

We couldn't do a Satchmo song. We could do an Ethel Waters song. We can do a Billie Holiday song. We can do Fats Waller.

To summarize, it's more a matter of the sound and the feel rather than the specific lyrics. Is that correct?

I think you're on the wrong way there a bit. How can I put it? I did a number which was very, very difficult to do. It's called "Hole In My Soul" and it was done by a guy called Sascha Burland, a jazz musician in a big band. But he did it as a single in the late 1950's. "Hole In My Soul" is a bit kind of like an early Mose Allison sort of style, but much more jazzy. It's got lots of breaks and time differences. I didn't know whether we could ever do it, but I asked Georgie Fame who is a burning genius, "Do you think you could do this?" And we did it. But it's so different from anything else we would dare to go for.

There's certain jazz records we cannot go near, you know, because we don't have the quality. I'll give you an example. I met Ray Charles, and chatted for half an hour after a wonderful concert in London in the '90s. He invited me to play on his next album playing bass. I said, "I can't. I'm not good enough to play with you, Ray." I'd love to, but I can't get there. And I turned it down because I know my limits. You could use genius technical bass players, but I'm not that guy. I don't play like that. I don't follow rigorous formats or anything. I'm just looser than that. I'm more like Duck Dunn who is quite the player from the Booker T. band. I'm not technically clever so it scared the shit out of me to be asked by Ray Charles to play for him. I would have adored it but I just knew I didn't have the chops.

I'm surprised to hear that.

Charlie's [Watts] the same. Leon Russell asked me, Charlie and Stevie Winwood to play on his first album when he came up to England, which we did. That morning when we went in, Charlie said, "I'm so scared, Bill. Can you help me through this?" I said, "Yeah, we'll manage." And Steve Winwood was wonderful, of course. And it worked, but Charlie's done that quite a few times to me when we've done things outside the stands. He said, "I never thought I could manage it. I don't think I'm good enough." And I said, "Well, let's go for it." And it worked out

That's fascinating.

Charlie's like that. We both feel we have certain limits.

Can you talk a little bit about your bass playing and how that's evolved over the years? Are you doing anything different stylistically?

When I started playing with the Rhythm Kings, I had to completely change my bass style. I started off playing blues with the Stones and early R&B, black music. And then it became more and more heavy, heavy rock. With the Rhythm Kings it was much more sort of jazzy and bluesy and soul-y and quieter, smoother, more relaxed, laid back. I had to completely change my bass playing because 90 percent of the songs we do in Rhythm Kings on record or live either had a double bass playing or no bass at all. All the way up through Chuck Berry and all that, double bass. So I had to try to adapt my style and sound to sound more like a double bass.

When you play bass guitar, you usually play from the lowest string upwards. When you play a double bass, it comes from the high strings down to the lower strings, rather than from the lower strings up. Not all the time, but that's the basic feel, so I had to re-think the way to play and re-think the kind of lines and notes progressions to play this music. It was a big learning experience for me. But when the first couple of albums came out I had people like Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck saying, "Who played the bass on 'Motivating Mama' on the first CD?" I said, "I did." "No, no, it's double bass, isn't it? I heard you don't play double bass." I said, "No, I'm playing it on my bass." And you fool people. I can't do the slap, obviously, but you can fool people with the sound and the feel of it sometimes.

You're famous for having created the first fretless [electric] bass. Do you ever go back to that?

I used it on and off with the Stones until '86. The last album I used it on was Black and Blue on a few tracks. I used it extensively on Exile on Main Street and many times on stuff before that. I would never take it on tour because I was always shit-scared of it being stolen because it was a one-off. I preempted by five years or six years the first fretless basses which I didn't know [about] until recently.

I've just had a bass guitar made as near to substitute of that as possible. They've just manufactured it now; it's going to be coming out on the market. It's called the Bill Wyman Signature Bass. It's small and lightweight. It's really pretty looking. It's perfect for young people to start learning on because it's short scale. I've got small hands. A young kid can't pick up a Fender Jaguar bass. They're too big. I can't play them; they're too big. So I decided to make this bass which was a copy of my original homemade bass, to help young people. I did this with the metal detector. I had one made for children because lots of children do metal detecting in England. You can find treasure everywhere.

Can you talk about the release that's coming out? It covers the years '98 through 2001, I believe. How did the band evolve during those years?

Yes. Well, it stayed pretty much the same band. When a few people weren't around... Albert Lee might be in America on tour with the Everly Brothers at that time, so then I'd have Martin Taylor, jazz guitarist, come in; or Andy Fairweather Low come in and play guitar with Terry Taylor, my guy. Sometimes when Georgie Fame wasn't available because he was touring in Australia, I'd have Chris Stainton, who's fabulous, out of 's band. So I'd always have the same two horn players. I usually had the same drummer. The rest of the band stayed the same. We've had the odd guest come in and play on various tracks. We've had Eddie Floyd for two or three years. We had Gary U.S. Bonds a couple of years ago when we were in England; he was fantastic. We had Dennis Locorriere of Dr. Hook who did a tour with us. This autumn, starting mid-October, we've got a seven-week tour, 38-cities tour of England with Mary Wilson of the Supremes as our guest. And so it goes on.Eric Clapton

We've got six singers who all sing differently. Albert sings rockabilly and early rock 'n roll. Georgie Fame sings jazz and blues. Beverly Skeete sings ballads and soul music. We can do any kind of music principally. That's what the audience loves about us. The tours and the albums are a variety of all kinds of music. You never get fed up with it because it's changing all the time, from a real Chicago blues with slide guitar and wonderful harmonica to a Ray Charles song to Creedence Clearwater.

Are there genres that you would like to get into that you haven't had the chance to?

A little bit more of the New Orleans stuff from the early '60's - Benny Spellman, the Neville Brothers, the early Dr. John, Archibald, Allen Touissant; all those great piano players. We haven't hit on that too much. We did more when Gary Brooker of Procol Harum was in the band for three years because he does all that stuff.

Is there any chance of an appearance in the U.S.?

I don't fly. I haven't flown for 10 years now. And I don't miss it one bit, I'll tell you. It hasn't changed my life, either. I will if you build a bridge or a tunnel.