Birthdays : Bill Wyman : The Rolling Stones legendary bass player

Happy 89th birthday to Bill Wyman!

Photo: Mirrorpix

"Brian Jones created the band. It was his idea. It was his idea to play blues when blues was unheard of in England, really, apart from probably a maximum of 50 people, I would think, and some people in the jazz fraternity. You couldn’t buy blues records in shops; they didn’t exist. They [weren’t] played on the radio hardly ever. You might get one odd track by Big Bill Broonzy on a jazz program… It was so rare you didn’t know about the existence of it. Brian found out about it and he wanted to form a band to play this, which was totally un-commercial at the time. And then he spent about six months trying to put bands together… various members that knew something about blues.

Ian Stewart was the first to join, the piano player who became our roadie, and we all loved him. He died in the ’80s. And then at a later time, Mick came along and he brought Keith. And then a few other members left. Brian’s idea of blues was Muddy Waters, and Elmore James, and Jimmy Reed and people like that. Whereas Mick and Keith brought him Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and people like that. And they kind of had a pseudo-Stones band from their first gig in July of ’62 up until the end of the year where they played sometimes three or four gigs on a month or something, just odd things with various conglomerations of other musicians and drummers and things. Then I joined in December with my drummer, who’d played with them on and off.

Then in January of ’63, they fired my drummer… he wasn’t that good and Charlie [Watts] joined and the band was formed then. But it was Brian’s thing, he gave the name of the band. He decided the style of music we would play and how and where and he talked to people and got us gigs. He wrote to music papers and jazz papers about the Stones and about blues and things like that. So it was his band, really, and then he just deteriorated over the years and Mick and Keith took over when they started writing.

Interview by Dennis Elsas

The first Bill Wyman I bought post Stones. . . . . love this album . . . speaking of Chris Rea!

and also the Paul Rogers vocals on this . . . . 

Willie and The Poor Boys - These Arms Of Mine