Wednesday February 3, 1999

Bill Wyman still in motion

by KAREN BLISS -- Jam! Music

The Rolling Stones are still globetrotting, Mick Jagger is still bed-hopping and it's deja vu all over again for this 38-year-old rock 'n' roll band. Former Stones' bassist Bill Wyman, on the other hand, is experiencing joys that only the quiet life can bring, a life he never had until he left the band in 1992 and remarried a year later.

"I've got this little family and I don't like leaving them," says Wyman, who has three daughters, aged 4, 3 and nine months. "I only got two hours sleep last night. My eldest got in bed with us because she had a bad dream, then I had to get up at seven and look after them."

With a home in London and one in the countryside, The Wymans have a nanny during weekday office times and are with them mornings, evening and weekends. Of his nine month old, the doting father says, "She's the only baby I've ever known that doesn't cry. She just has this beaming smile. The other two were very sweet children, no tantrums and no screaming and this one even better than the other two."

And yes, he happily partakes in diaper changing. "I wouldn't do it for anybody else's," he laughs.

But even though Wyman has settled into domesticity, he is no less productive than during his 31 years with the Stones.

Anyway The Wind Blows, the second album in the trilogy from Bill Wyman & The Rhythm Kings is out in North America on Velvel Records on February 23. The three albums revive classic roots music, from swing to blues to early rock 'n' roll, featuring an all-star cast, this one with Albert Lee, Eric Clapton, Peter Frampton, Paul Carrack, Andy Fairweather-Low, Chris Rea, Nicky Hopkins, and others.

The album was released in Europe in October and The Rhythm Kings hit the road for almost four weeks to promote it. In June, Wyman assembled his touring band -- vocalist Georgie Fame, pianist Gary Brooker, rock guitarist Albert Lee, jazz guitarist Martin Taylor R&B vocalist Beverly Skeete, plus a drummer, two horns and two "girls" -- for a three-and-a-half week tour of England. But he says, it's unlikely The Rhythms Kings will make it over to North America.

"There's no financing in this project. It's all done on a shoestring and it doesn't sell enormously, and to get this quality of people you have to pay them quite well to get them in the studio, and then when we go on the road it's a really tight budget because we travel in a bus and we play a very small places. I've got a 12-piece band with five major people in it who have their own careers. I don't think I can do that more than close to home."

One song on the album, "When Hollywood Goes Black & Tan", with someadded punchy horns could likely be a hit in North America given the current swing resurgence.

"I'd have to go on the record company's judgment," says Wyman. "I never knew about this swing revival until a few months ago when somebody told me. I didn't know it was that big. I think traditional music has been pretty much ignored by the radio and television in recent years."

Wyman is working on preserving another traditional music form,blues. He has been researching an independent television series on the history of blues and now has the funding together. Scripting begins this week.

"We'll be selling it around the world," says Wyman. "I'm going totry and make it a real quality thing because I don't think the blues has really been treated that well and really done well. I'm getting as much early footage as I can find, authentic stuff, no pseudo bands that they find around the corner, doing imitations of Muddy Waters and Elmore James. I don't want to hear that stuff. They'll be a lot of talking and showing albums and trying to get people to talk about those times. There's not many of them left, you see."

Wyman also has released a limited edition, signed and numberedbook/CD set called Wyman Shoots Chagall (Genesis Publications), featuring portrait photographs and reminiscences of artist Marc Chagall with whom he had a nine-year friendship in the '70s. He's also just hired a ghost writer for the sequel to his autobiography Stone Alone, after a false start with another writer who didn't do his story justice. He still maintains his restaurant chain Sticky Fingers in the U.K.

So life really isn't that quiet for the former Stone and he hasabsolutely no regrets about leaving the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band. Is he amazed, like everybody else, that the Stones -- which are scheduled to play Toronto's Air Canada Centre February 25 -- are still going strong, selling out stadiums and arenas, with no signs of slowing down?

"I'm kind of amazed that they're still doing it," admits Wyman. "Ikind of thought that there was nothing else to really do without repeating what you've done before and that's really why I left, and gave up a fortune, and I was quite happy to do that. I guess, they really don't have any great interest in their lives that are more important to them. I know Keith hasn't.

"I knew what I was going to do, so it wasn't so much awrench although it was a wrench because it had been 31 years. With Charlie, all he's interested in apart from the Stones is his little jazz band that he runs around with and has a nice time with; Ronnie Wood works on his art and has exhibitions all over the place; Mick's into movies, either doing a bit of acting or trying to produce movies, and that's about all they do. But I just have massive subjects that I'm interested in and projects that I'm doing, which are very varied."

And on a final note, has any other Stones' members expressed interest in the quiet life? "Charlie is probably one the most desiring of that, I think," says Wyman. "But Charlie won't let anybody down and Charlie is indispensable in that band. If Charlie retired, then I think the band would fold, where I knew when I left that I wouldn't happen. They can always replace the bass player."