Bill Wyman


Bill Wyman is an English musician, record producer, songwriter and singer. He was the bass guitarist for the English rock and roll band the Rolling Stones from 1962 until 1993. Since 1997 he has recorded and toured with his own band, Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings. He has worked producing records and films, and has scored music for films and television.
Wyman has kept a journal since he was a child after World War II. He has published seven books. Wyman is also a photographer, and his works have been displayed in galleries around the world. He became an amateur archaeologist and enjoys metal detecting. He designed and marketed a patented "Bill Wyman signature metal detector", which he has used to find relics in the English countryside dating back to the era of the Roman Empire.

Early life

Wyman was born William George Perks Jr. in Lewisham Hospital in Lewisham, South London, the son of Molly and William Perks, a bricklayer. One of five children, Wyman spent most of his early life living in a terraced house in one of the roughest streets in Penge, southeast London. He describes his childhood as "scarred by poverty".
He attended Beckenham and Penge County Grammar School from 1947 to Easter 1953, leaving before the GCE exams after his father found him a job working for a bookmaker and insisted that he take it.

Music career

Wyman took piano lessons from age 10 to 13. A year after his marriage on 24 October 1959 to Diane Cory, an 18-year-old bank clerk, he bought a Burns electric guitar for £52 on hire-purchase, but was not satisfied by his progress. He switched to bass guitar after hearing one at a Barron Knights concert. He created a fretless electric bass guitar by removing the frets on a second hand UK-built Dallas Tuxedo bass and played this in a south London band, the Cliftons, in 1961.
He used the stage name Lee Wyman, taking the surname of a friend with whom he had done national service in the Royal Air Force from 1955 to 1957. He legally changed his surname to Wyman in August 1964.

The Rolling Stones and 1980s side projects

When drummer Tony Chapman told him that a rhythm and blues band called the Rolling Stones needed a bass player, he auditioned and was hired on 7 December 1962 as a successor to Dick Taylor. The band was impressed by his instrument and amplifiers. Wyman was the oldest member of the group.
In addition to playing bass, Wyman frequently provided backing vocals on early records, and through 1967, in concert as well. He sang lead on the track "In Another Land", on the Their Satanic Majesties Request album and a single. The song is one of two Wyman compositions released by the Rolling Stones; the second is "Downtown Suzie", on Metamorphosis, a collection of Rolling Stones outtakes. The title "Downtown Suzie" was chosen by their erstwhile manager Allen Klein without consulting Wyman or the band. The original title was "Sweet Lisle Lucy", named after Lisle Street, a street in the red light district in Soho, London.
Wyman has kept a journal throughout his life, beginning when he was a child, and used it in writing his 1990 autobiography Stone Alone and his 2002 book Rolling with the Stones. In Stone Alone, Wyman claims to have composed the riff of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" with Brian Jones and drummer Charlie Watts. Wyman mentions that " Satisfaction" was released as a single only after a 3–2 vote within the band: Wyman, Watts and Jones voted for, Jagger and Keith Richards against, feeling it not sufficiently commercial. In the 1970s and early 1980s he made three solo albums, none commercially very successful but all well received by critics. In July 1981 his " Je Suis un Rock Star" became a top-20 hit in many countries.
Wyman also played on The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions, released 1971, with Howlin' Wolf, Eric Clapton, Charlie Watts and Stevie Winwood, and on the album Jamming with Edward, released in 1972, with Ry Cooder, Nicky Hopkins, Jagger and Watts.
In 1981 Wyman composed the soundtrack album Green Ice for the Ryan O'Neal/Omar Sharif film of the same name.
In the mid-1980s he composed music for two films by Italian director Dario Argento: Phenomena and Terror at the Opera.
In 1985, he was approached by producers working on a movie based on the Vietnam War, who asked him to provide the theme tune. He completed a demo cover version of the 1969 song "Spirit in the Sky" and sent it off to them for review. The producers' feedback was highly positive, but they soon ran out of money and had to scrap the project. The demo tape was apparently lost, but on an audio CD included with Bill Wyman's Scrapbook in 2013, he says that "somebody out there must have heard it because four months later – in the June of that year – Doctor and the Medics appeared with the release of their version of that song which eventually went to number one for three weeks. A coincidence perhaps? Still, such is life."
He made a cameo appearance in the 1987 film Eat the Rich. He produced and played on a few albums of the group Tucky Buzzard.
Wyman was close to Brian Jones; he and Jones usually shared rooms together while they were on tour and often went to clubs together. He and Jones hung out together even when Jones was distancing himself from the band. Wyman was distraught when he heard the news of Jones' death, being one of two members besides Watts to attend Jones' funeral in July 1969. Wyman was also friends with guitarist Mick Taylor. Like the other Rolling Stones, he has worked with Taylor since the latter's departure from the band in 1974.
After the Rolling Stones' 1989–90 Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tours, Wyman left the group; his decision was announced in January 1993. The Rolling Stones have continued to record and tour with Darryl Jones on bass.
On 24 October 2012, the Stones announced that Wyman and Mick Taylor were expected to join them on stage at the upcoming shows in London and Newark. Richards went on to say that the pair would strictly be guests, and Jones would continue to supply the bass for the majority of the show. He said, "Darryl doesn't get enough recognition. He and Bill can talk about songs they want to step in and out of." At the first London show on 25 November, Wyman played on two back-to-back tracks: "It's Only Rock 'n Roll" and "Honky Tonk Women". He later stated that he was not interested in joining the band for further tour dates in 2013.

Later activity

Wyman has toured frequently with the Rhythm Kings, which has featured such musicians as Martin Taylor, Albert Lee, Gary Brooker, Terry Taylor, Mike Sanchez and Georgie Fame. Following his 70th birthday in October 2006, Wyman undertook another British tour.
On 10 December 2007, Wyman and the Rhythm Kings opened for a reunited Led Zeppelin at the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert at the O2 in London.
Wyman was a judge for the 5th annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.
On 25 October 2009, Wyman performed a reunion show with Faces, filling in for the late Ronnie Lane as he had previously done in 1986 and 1993.
On 19 April 2011, pianist Ben Waters released an Ian Stewart tribute album titled Boogie 4 Stu. Wyman played on two tracks: "Rooming House Boogie" and "Watchin' the River Flow", the latter recorded with the Rolling Stones.
On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Bill Wyman among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.

Musical instruments

Wyman's bass sound came not only from his 30-inch short scale fretless bass, but also from the "walking bass" style he adopted, inspired by Willie Dixon and Ricky Fenson. Wyman has played a number of basses, nearly all short scale, including a Framus Star bass and a number of other Framus basses, a Vox Teardrop bass, a Fender Mustang Bass, two Ampeg Dan Armstrong basses, a Gibson EB-3, and a Travis Bean bass. Since the late 1980s, Wyman has primarily played Steinberger basses. In 2011 The Bass Centre in London issued the Wyman Bass, a fretted interpretation of Wyman's first "homemade" fretless bass, played and endorsed by Wyman.
Wyman's amplifiers over the years have included a Vox T-60, a piggyback Fender Bassman, a Hiwatt bass stack, and an Ampeg SVT. Wyman, especially in the early Stones' years, had a distinctive way of holding his bass – almost vertically. He stated that the reason he held a bass in that position was because his hands and arms are small.

Personal life

Wyman, although moderate in his use of alcohol and drugs, has stated that he became "girl mad" as a psychological crutch.
Wyman married his first wife, Diane Cory in 1959 and their son Stephen Paul Wyman was born on 29 March 1962. They separated in 1967 and divorced in 1969.
On 2 June 1989, aged 52, Wyman married 18 year-old Mandy Smith, whom he had been seeing since she was 13 and he was 47 years old. The couple separated two years later and finalised their divorce two years after that. In April 1993, Wyman married Suzanne Accosta. The couple have three daughters.
Wyman lives in Gedding Hall, a country house near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, and in St Paul de Vence in the South of France where his friends include numerous artists. He is a cricket enthusiast and played in a celebrity match at the Oval against a former England XI, taking a hat-trick. He is a lifelong Crystal Palace FC fan. When on a European tour with the Rolling Stones, he feigned a toothache and said he needed to travel back to London to see a dentist when in fact he went to watch Palace at Wembley in the 1990 FA Cup Final.
Wyman started selling metal detectors in 2007. Treasure detecting adventures in the British Isles are detailed in his 2005 illustrated book, Treasure Islands, co-written with Richard Havers.
Wyman is a keen photographer who has taken photographs throughout his career and in June 2010, he launched a retrospective of his work in an exhibition in St Paul de Vence. The exhibition included images of his music acquaintances as well as famous artists from the South of France including Marc Chagall.
In 2009, Wyman quit smoking after 55 years.
In March 2016, it was announced that Wyman had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and made a full recovery.

Discography

The Rolling Stones

See Rolling Stones discography

Solo albums

The last three books and Bill Wyman's Treasure Islands were all written in collaboration with Richard Havers.

Art