Tom
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https://www.loudersound.com/features/bill-wyman-drive-my-car-interviewLosing Charlie must have been a hammer blow.We were always close. After I left the band, until he died, we saw each other every week. He would come to the house. “Can I have a cup of tea, Bill?” And we’d spend an hour or two chatting. So when the Stones had that one track with Charlie on it [Live By The Sword on last year’s Hackney Diamonds], Mick and the producer Andrew Watt called to ask me to play on it, and I was quite happy to do it, actually. Just the one.
I wasn’t crazy about the song, and I wasn’t crazy about the way they’d done it. It was just full of guitars, and there was no air in it. No spaces, no gaps. There are probably eight guitars on there, instead of two. It could have been done so much simpler. But that’s the way they do it, bless ’em. It was hard for me to put a bass in because there wasn’t a lot of room.
Anyway, after I’d finished my part, and was happy with it, I said: “Have you got any other songs that I could do while I’m here?” And they said: “Yeah, there’s another one.” So they set it up, and I played bass on it, and they said: “We’ll save that for the next album.” So I might be on the next album as well. Elton [John] came in after me to put his piano on it, so we had a chat, but you can’t really hear his piano. Just odd little notes here and there, because the track’s so busy. But it was nice doing it because it was me and Charlie again.
That’s the only reason I did it. Because when they asked me to play the O2 in 2012 they didn’t even give me a soundcheck. I said: “I need to soundcheck because I’m playing with [Darryl Jones’s] bass equipment and I don’t know what it sounds like. And I’m playing two tracks. And you only told me which two tracks yesterday.”
They were more interested in getting the sound right for one of the new girls who was on stage [Mary J Blige guested on Gimme Shelter on the first of the two nights that Wyman played], and I just had to wing it, basically. It went over very well in the end, though, so I was very happy.
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The "All Bill Wyman" thread (Read 4,894 times)
