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| Background information | |
| Birth name | William George Perks, Jr. |
| Also known as | William George Wyman, Lee Wyman |
| Born | (1936-10-24) 24 October 1936 Lewisham, London, England |
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| Occupation(s) | Musician, songwriter, music and film producer, photographer, inventor |
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| Years active | 1960–1993, 1997-present |
| Labels | Velvel, Koch International, Rolling Stones, BMG |
| Associated acts | The Rolling Stones, Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, Willie & the Poor Boys, the Cliftons |
| Website | billwyman.com |
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William George “Bill” Wyman (born William George Perks Jr., 24 October 1936), is an English musician, record producer, songwriter and singer. He was the bass guitarist for 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 both records and film, and has scored music for film in movies and television.
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 (equivalent to £1,080 in 2015) 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 from a cheap Japanese bass guitar he was reworking and played this in a south London band, the Cliftons, in 1961.
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 (one of which Wyman built himself), but because he was married, employed, and older, Wyman remained an outsider. Wyman was the oldest member of the group.
Wyman 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 “(I Can’t Get No) 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.
Wyman’s bass sound came not only from his homemade fretless bass, but the “walking bass” style he adopted, inspired by Willie Dixon and Ricky Fenson. Wyman has played a number of basses, including a Framus Star bass and a number of other Framus basses, a Vox Teardrop bass (issued as a Bill Wyman signature model), 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. 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 simply because his hands were small.
Bill’s been through just about every short-scale bass except for Gibson and Guild. A Mustang is featured in the photos of “Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out”, and around 1981 in a Guitar Player Magazine interview he was using a custom made Kramer with a short-scale aluminium neck. in that interview he mentions how Keith kept telling him he should have a Fender, but that he just couldn’t play a long-scale neck.
Bass Stuff 