Bill Wyman played bass for the Rolling Stones for an impressive 31 years until he left in 1992. His exit and his replacement by bassist Darryl Jones weren’t made public until 1993. He left at a moment where he had seen nearly everything with the band, including things like the infamous 1969 Altamont concert stabbing, the ups and downs of Keith, Ronnie, and Mick’s egos, the arrests, the party hardy, and the works.
Wyman eventually rejoined the Rolling Stones in 2012 for the band’s half-century anniversary tour, and offstage, he splits his time between London and France; when he’s not playing bass, he likes to run his restaurant “Sticky Fingers”, and fills it with tons of memorabilia in the style and sense of the Hard Rock Café. Setting those things aside, let’s explore a bit of the trajectory of this bass player to find out why Bill Wyman left the Rolling Stones
Bill Wyman: The Bass Within The Stones
Bill Wyman is the bass within The Rolling Stones. His role was to lay down a low-end foundation for the band’s other instruments and vocal delivery. While Keith Richard’s, Ronnie Wood’s, and eventually Mick Jagger’s guitars give soul to iconic rock anthems like Sympathy for the Devil, Gimme Shelter, Angie or Start Me Up, it was Wyman’s style of playing that’s unique in that he chose to employ an unconventional technique, one that produced a sound that was both subtle and powerful at once.
He used two fingers when performing so that he could reach down deeper into the strings and create an underlying groove for the rest of the band to build upon.
This, in turn, created a fullness of sound and provided texture, which was an essential element of the Rolling Stones’ signature sound. As Bill Wyman himself said, “I think of myself as a backing singer with bass guitar.” Wyman never did powerful bass that would shadow the lead guitar; that’s not his thing. Instead, his groove was there. just listen to Sympathy for the Devil, and you’ll notice how bass affects the track.
Appreciating a good bass player is something that music fans learn to develop. Most people claim that “they can’t hear the bass”, and that’s fine to the untrained ear, but in the case of Wyman, his style was never one of overreaching, as he learned to play bass old-school.
Why Did Bill Wyman Leave The Stones?
Bill Wyman chose to leave the Rolling Stones in 1993 for several reasons; firstly, the way royalties are shared in the Stones isn’t equal, and for a man who likes to fancy himself with those kinds of luxuries, living on royalties isn’t enough to pay the bills.
There’s also that refusal to sign a six-year $44 million recording contract that the band had with Virgin Records in 1991, and the music business was getting too political for a dude who only wanted to have fun playing bass as he had been doing for the past three decades.
Then, touring was a bit of a pressure thing for him; while he enjoyed the concerts, the tours, and their pressures were becoming too much for him, and he needed some time off to focus on his life, his family, and his health.
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Disbelief
When he decided to leave, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards almost couldn’t believe it; they shrugged off the press and called Bill on the phone, asking him if he was for real. Bill Wyman moved on to pursue personal projects; he opened a restaurant, did some more music, worked with smaller bands, and kept on playing bass the way he liked to.
Meanwhile, the Rolling Stones kept being the same band; after his departure, the band hired Darryl Jones and recorded albums like Voodoo Lounge, Stripped, Bridges to Babylon, No Security, Live Licks, A Bigger Bang, Shine a Light, Blue and Lonesome and Hackney Diamonds. Bill Wyman chose another path; he left, but he left on good terms, so much so that he rejoined them in 2012 for the 50-year anniversary of the band. And all bad wounds were gone.
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