A Conversation with Bill Wyman – HuffPost 11.18.11

Mike Ragogna: Hello Bill, how are you?

Bill Wyman: I’m fine, thank you. I’ve got a day off of my tour, so I’ve got a day off so you’ve got a chance to talk to me.

MR: You’ve got a day off but they still put you to work.

BW: Oh yeah! I had a photo session this morning and I did another interview earlier. Yeah, a day off is not a day off, but I don’t mind that, I’m kind of a workaholic.

MR: I definitely want to get to The Rolling Stones, but first, let’s talk about the Rhythm Kings. What was the inspiration for putting that type of entourage together and to play that brand of music?

BW: Just to do music in a completely different way. I just kind of got fed up with stadiums and losing contact with the audience, and the way music was going. I thought, I love archeology, why don’t I do an archeological dig into music, and just find a whole bunch of stuff from the past that people have forgotten or have never heard and just do anything. So, I got some musicians together and friends, and we just got into the studio for three days every month and cut eight songs. Then a month later, we would cut nine songs in the three days, then a month after that, we would do seven and so on. We ended up with about sixty tracks at the end of the year and they’re all fantastic. They cover everything up from the ’20s to the ’70s. We had stuff from J.J. Cale, stuff from Fats Waller, we had Ethel Waters from the ’20s, Ray Charles, Creedence Clearwater…you name it. It was just a whole mixture of stuff–rockabilly, blues, jazz, soul, gospel, spirituals–and I didn’t know what to do with them. They were all great, and we always cut things in three takes, and if we don’t get it in three, we just dump the song and move on to the next one. A lot of them are “take one,” and a lot of them are either “take one” or “take three.” I started to look around for a record company and everybody loved the stuff and have been playing it in the car back and forth to the studios, but they would pass on it because they didn’t know how to put it out there and exploit it.

I got a bit disheartened, but that kind of happened with the Stones as well. We cut our first tracks in March of ’63 and the record companies turned them down because they weren’t commercial. So, I was hitting the same problems, and finally, a German company came ahead and signed us, then it took off like crazy. Everybody seemed to love the stuff, because there was a lot of variety there and great music, and great musicians. It was great, and then the record company says, “What about touring?” And I thought, “Oh no!” (laughs) I just wanted to make records and stay at home. So, we decided to do a few gigs as a tester, so we put out tickets for a show in Hamburg, Germany, and it sold out instantly, so we had to put a second show in that night. We did a run in Amsterdam, and that sold out, so we had to put a second show in there, and then we did one in London. I had Peter Frampton with me then and Gary Brooker of Procol Harum. The band I’ve got now–Georgie Fame, Albert Lee and we have Martin Taylor who’s a great Jazz guitarist. It was just great fun, and I thought we might as well do this. People seem to like it, they want to come and watch us and we are getting great ovations ten minutes after the show’s ended.

So, we started to do a tour of Europe every spring for three or four weeks–Europe, Scandinavia, sometimes out into Eastern Europe with Poland, Hungary, Prague, Latvia, and Lithuania. Then in the Autumn, we decided to do six weeks in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, and that’s what we’ve been doing. It’s wonderful. We get called back every year and we sell out everywhere and it’s just fantastic. There’s no pressure on us, we just go out there and do it for the love. There isn’t a lot of money in there either, it’s a nine, ten-piece band playing small gigs. That’s not what we’re doing it for though, we’re doing it to play great music, we love to play together and just enjoy it.

MR: Then you guys must be having fun on the road.

BW: Oh yeah, you’ll see that. Everybody says that. When you read the reviews, they will say there is great camaraderie on the stage, everybody seems to be having fun and enjoying themselves. Everybody seems to be leaving space for everyone, everybody admires everybody else’s touches and techniques and performances. Without sounding too corny, it really is like a family.

MR: I imagine your extended family jumps on stage when they’re in the area to have some fun with the gang.

BW: Yeah, jazz guitarist Martin Taylor, who’s fantastic, is going to come in Scotland. He played with Stephane Grappelli for years. He’s been the top jazz guitarist in England for almost twenty years now. Then we’ve got Dennis Locorriere from Dr. Hook who’s going to meet us in Brighton on a show and come on stage. We’re playing Gilford tomorrow, and Gary Brooker is going to come on stage with us because he lives there. We’ve got Mary Wilson of course who’s doing a great job as our guest this year. It’s very nice but the main thing is if you go into the studio, you can have all kinds of people come in. You can’t always get them to perform with you. Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton, people like that can’t do it, but you can ask them to come do that in the studio and play on the album.

MR: Who’s on the road with you now?

BW: The band I’m out on tour with is the band we started with, except we had Peter Frampton and Gary Brooker in it then. We’ve got a different piano player now, we’ve got Bob Dylan’s favorite British piano player, Geraint Watkins–he’s fantastic; Georgie Fame’s on organ, Albert Lee’s on guitar, Terry Taylor’s on guitar, two horn players–Frank Mead, and Nick Payn. They also play harp and other instruments. Frank Mead is a wonderful Chicago blues harp player, and Nick plays harp in a different way, more of a country flavor. I have a beautiful black girl singer named Beverley Skeete who does all of our ballads and everything. I’m on bass and I’ve got a fantastic drummer who Roger Waters uses all of the time when he’s not working for me. It’s a great band and we’re great friends.

MR: Do you have any stories about the recording or creative processes of your five albums as Rhythm Kings?

BW: I will give you an example when we got Beverley Skeete in after the first couple of sessions. She’s been a backing vocalist for just about everybody in the business for years. She’s a black girl and she’s usually one of two or three. She’s worked with Dusty Springfield, she’s worked with Jamiroquai, she’s worked with Chaka Khan, and she’s on all of the Eurovision song contests. She educates and teaches all of the young artists that come through. She’s worked with the Eurythmics and Annie Lennox, and so on and so on. I said, “I want you to do the Stone’s song ‘Melody,’ I want you to sing it with Georgie Fame.” We had the track done, so she came and Georgie and her went into the booth to do the vocal. We usually have a guide vocal…somebody puts it down really rough while we do the track. We don’t layer or anything, we just do it live. They just go into the booth and they sing it, and I say, “Fantastic, that’s it, we’ve got it.” They say, “Can we do it again?” I say, “Didn’t you like it?” They said, “We really liked it a lot, that’s why we want to do it again. We’re just having so much fun. We want to sing it a few more times.” Of course, they sang it twice more and we got a much better take, actually. That’s what I’m talking about–let’s do it because we like it. That’s hard to find in musicians these days, it doesn’t happen anymore.

MR: Bill, why did you leave The Rolling Stones? Was it because you were tired of the arenas, all that, and you just wanted to reclaim your life?

BW: Yeah, and I was tired of traveling the world as well. I wanted more time at home, I wanted to get married again and start a family, which I did. I got married in ’93. If I had still been in the Stones, I wouldn’t have gotten married because the Stones were still working then. I got married and I’ve got three beautiful teenage daughters and it couldn’t be nicer. We’ve been married 18 years now, and I do all of my work from home. I’ve written seven books in the last ten years, I do all kinds of events. I do photo exhibitions running all over the world. I’ve got a big one running in London at the moment, which is getting great reviews. I do charities, I’ve got a very famous restaurant here, I do archeology and work with museums. My life is full and wonderful.

MR: And you also invented a metal detector.

BW: Yeah, when I did archeology. I noticed that lots of young people were doing it, but they couldn’t do it because metal detectors are quite heavy, and they actually tire you out on your arms. I found that with my daughter, my oldest one, wanted to come to metal detecting because she was interested in finding fossils and things. After five minutes, she found a few Roman coins and said she couldn’t do it anymore because her arm ached. I thought maybe somebody could make a lighter weight one, so I talked to a metal detector company. They built me a children’s one, but it was 90 percent as good as an adult’s. So, it wasn’t a cheap and nasty version, but it was lightweight, it had simple controls, and it still worked fairly well. It did the business and it’s sold very well. Kids come back and say that they have one of the detectors. England’s full of stuff, you can go into a field and just find stuff. (laughs) It’s not like America, the history goes back. You can just go back into a field and find Bronze Age stuff, and Iron Age stuff. It’s a whole mixture of stuff.

MR: As you mentioned, you’re an author as well as a photographer. Which do you find you focus more on, your music or your other adventures?

BW: Well, in recent years, I’ve been focusing on photography. I do a lot of nature photography and a lot of landscape stuff. A part of the celebrity stuff. I’ve been shooting photography since ’65, there’s a lot of the Stones obviously on tour or in airports or backstage and whatever. So, I’ve got a whole mixture of movie stars, and friends like that. I’ve been focusing on that, and I’ve had quite a lot of exhibitions around the world. The one I’ve got in London right now is doing great business, and I’ve got great reviews for it, so that’s very nice. I’m taking some of my pictures and putting them six feet wide, it’s fantastic.

MR: Are you still using film or is it all digital?

BW: It’s all digital now because of my eyesight. I was still using a Nikkormat with long lenses until recent years, two or three years ago. I started to realize that I couldn’t get the focus as well as I used to with my eyesight. So, I went on to digital, and I was getting film back and some of them weren’t in focus.

MR: Do you find that what drives you creatively for photography or making music comes from the same place?

BW: Yeah, I just move from one thing to the other when I find something interesting. When the photo exhibition finishes, I might ease off on photography and move onto something different. Maybe onto another book, maybe an historical book or I might go back and do something more musical. I just let it happen as it happens, I’ve always got ideas on the back burner.

MR: Are you in a constant creative mode?

BW: I’m like that morning, noon and night. The only time I stop doing things is when I go to the toilet and eat.

MR: What about your children? Do they have that behavior too?

BW: (laughs) Oh no, they think I’m mad. They’re great, and they’re very talented kids. One is a great artist, another one is a singer and she’s writing songs and ideas. They’re seventeen, fifteen, and thirteen. The little one is doing acting school, and she’s been doing auditions for Harry Potter movies and Roald Dahl plays.

MR: When you look back at the Rhythm Kings years, are they some of the more important one for you making music?

BW: Well, I love my thirty years with the Stones, and the years before that, I played with my little band in South London when I was learning. I loved it in the ’80s when I formed a band called Willie & The Poor Boys, and we did a couple of albums for the M.S. charity; Ronnie Lane of The Faces died of it later but we did those. I had Charlie Watts on that, Ringo was on the video, and I had a whole bunch of artists and musicians that joined me on that one. If I get an idea, I just start moving on it. I’m writing the history of my house in the country, which I’ve had since 1968, and the house dates from 1480–it’s before Henry the VIII. It’s got a moat around it, it’s like a little castle. I’ve written a history book on that. I know every person that’s lived in my house since 1150 when there was a house on the grounds before my house. That’s fascinating too, so I’ve been doing that. I know the history of every person that lived there, I know who they married, where they were christened, where they were buried, how many children they had, what the children did. A lot of it is historical; there’s famous people that came to my house; Rudyard Kipling used to come to my house. Some of the prime ministers of England used to come to my house. Through the years, they were all knights, and sirs and lords that lived there. The big family, the Chamberlin family, lived there for 250 years; the Buckingham family lived there for 150 years. They were all knights. One was beheaded at the Tower Of London. In recent years, we’ve had the worst gangsters in London called The Kray Twins. They used to come to my house before I bought it. The guy who I bought it off was the godfather of the Krays. There’s all kind of history there, that’s an interesting book there too.

MR: There must be some fascinating stories you came across, not just about the famous people.

BW: Oh yeah, it’s great. One of the guys was with The Gunpowder Plot when they tried to blow up the House of Parliament on the 5th of November in the 1600s. One of Guy Fawkes’s collaborators ancestors lived in my house. There’s lots more and there’s no time to do it all.

MR: Looking back at Bill Wyman now and Bill Wyman then, what have been some of the biggest changes that have happened to you over the years?

BW: There’s some amazing coincidental happenings in my life. I’ve had things happen to me that are unbelievable, you could not believe it. I don’t know if I’ve got a lucky streak there somewhere, but there are things I could tell you that happened to me that you would not believe. I was nearly killed in the war when I was a kid coming back from school. The sirens went off at lunch time; me and this other little boy–I was six–we ran to the house where I was living with my grandmother in South London where my family were up North away from the bombing. I was living with my grandma through the war. As we got to the top of our street, there was a German fighter bomber roaring up the street towards us, about ten yards off of the top of the chimneys of the houses machine gunning, and we just ran sideways behind a little wall and he just went past us machine gunning. Then we ran to our houses and my grandmother was waiting and we ran down to the shelter in the garden and he came past again the other way, still machine gunning. Then we went in the shelter. After the “all clear” went and we came out, we were all out in the streets digging the bullets out of the houses. We used to collect things like that. There’s amazing stories, and I’ve talked about them in my books.

MR: Obviously, the elephant in the room will always be The Rolling Stones. May I ask a couple of questions about that period?

BW: (laughs) Go on.

MR: How would you describe your period with the Stones?

BW: Fantastic, I loved every minute of it. When we started off, we all thought it was going to last maybe two, maybe three, and if we’re dead lucky, four years tops. We used to sit and think, “How long do you think it’s going to last,” and suddenly, it was 30 years. I was going to do all of these other things–photography, archeology, write books, etc.–30 years went by, and I hadn’t done any of it. The only thing I had done was a couple of solo records, which were so-so popular–not too bad, and not too good, and I did a movie score and some photography in an amateur way. All of the other things I wanted to do, I didn’t have time for. I really didn’t have time to do the solo albums either, I did them in-between Stones things in pieces, which was unsatisfactory. So, I thought it was time to move on and it’s time to do all of the other stuff I wanted to do. That’s why I left. I wanted to start a new life again, and it’s been wonderful. The great thing is, I’m still great mates with the band. We still send each other Christmas presents, birthday presents. I got a present from the Stones, I’ve got two huge, bouquets of roses, which I’ve got as many roses as my years. I’m 75, I got 75 roses from them and I’ve got a big thing of champagne. That’s what we do, we stay friends. I work on projects with them as well. I was involved very heavily in the Universal 45s single box set because I’m the only one that had all of the singles. So, I did the deal with them and Universal and I gave them scans of everything, so they knew exactly how to reproduce the singles.

MR: It must be lovely to still have that kind of relationship with the band.

BW: I’m very close with Charlie, and we’ve always been very close and we’re great mates. I chatted to him before I went on tour, we’re just trying to get together. I played with him a few months ago when we did the Ian Stewart tribute together. I played bass on three songs with the Stones separately, not at the same time. Then we did the show, two shows actually; Ronnie Wood was on it, Mick Taylor was on it, Charlie Watts was on it, and I was on it. It’s good to do those things.

MR: Once a Rolling Stone, always a Rolling Stone.

BW: Well, that’s the problem, because the taxi driver will say, “Hello Bill, when are the Stones touring again?” I would say, “I left twenty years ago.” People still think of me as a part of the Stones.

MR: Bill, what advice would you have for new artists?

BW: Try to write some decent songs first. Practice, practice, practice. Listen to the people in the past that played the instrument you’re playing and learn from them. That’s the way I learned, that’s the way Mick and Keith learned. Just copying lines and riffs and things, then you can do your own thing. Once you’ve gathered that info, you can do it your own way. That’s the way I do it and that’s the way I always suggest to young musicians. A lot of young musicians come to the show and start asking me about what bass guitar I use, and I just say to them to practice and try to write some decent songs.

MR: What bass are you playing these days?

BW: I’ve been using Steinbergers for the last twenty odd years with the Rhythm Kings up until this year. I’ve had a bass guitar made which is like a clone of the bass guitar I made in 1961, before I joined the Stones and didn’t have money to build one, so I bought one. It was by pure accident, it was the first fretless bass ever made. That’s what I’m using now, it’s lightweight, small scale, and it’s perfect for young kids to learn on.

MR: You’ve been really fantastic and thank you for taking sometime to chat.

BW: Thank you so much.

Transcribed By Theo Shier