Bernard Fowler on His Years With the Rolling Stones, Herbie Hancock, and Michael Hutchence

The backup singer has performed more than 800 gigs with the Rolling Stones. “There are still people that would chop their right hand off to have that gig,” he says


Brian Rasic/WireImage

By Andy Greene
March 16, 2022

[www.rollingstone.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2022-03-16 18:46 by bye bye johnny.

Thanks for posting, interesing perspective!

Excellent interview! His stories are very interesting! Thanks for posting this.

Great read. Thanks

Rod

That article came up on my phone earlier today. Great read, and yes, a nice perspective from Bernard.

I can’t imagine the emotion of rehearsing for the last tour when he was in the hospital, and then learning he was dead. The fact you were all together that whole time must have helped a lot.


That helped a lot. That guys held strong through it. You can look and you could tell how people were feeling, but Charlie wanted that show to go on and they were going to do it. Charlie picked Steve to do the gig. I think everybody, I’m sure, had some concerns. Maybe the concerns were all different.

You’d walk into those rehearsals and Charlie wasn’t there, but Steve was so respectful of the chair, of the music. He was in his room listening and he was listening to detail. If the Stones had been playing it this way, I think in some cases he’d be like, “No, that was wrong. It goes like this.”

I remember one day in rehearsals, they played a song and it was incredible. I can’t remember the song. When it was done, I went up to go to the table to make myself some tea. Steve came over to the table. I looked at him and said, “Man, that was so good, man. You killed that song.”

I’m talking to him and I looked down at his feet and he had a pair of Capezios on. I burst into tears. That’s what Charlie wore. When Charlie played his drums, he wore Capezios. And Steve was there, all the way down to the footwear. It was a very emotional moment.



ROCKMAN

Great read!

The man is so genuine, I enjoyed it too, thanks for the share

Apparent "Paywall" so I can't see it, but thanks for posting.

I was recently listening to my vinyl copy of Herbie Hancock's 'Future Shock' album and I had never noticed that Bernard is on it. I guess that was my first record with Bernard contributions instead of 'She's the Boss', as I have always thought.

He said that he met the original Stones band in 1989?

Had a similar experience. I discovered a Disco band called Attitude and their 1983 song Pump The Nation. Loved it and looked it up on Discogs. There I discovered that it was Bernard and Cindy Mizelle on background vocals!

"Sometimes during the first two or three songs, they are onstage by themselves. I don’t need to be there. In that case, I have a television and a sound monitor backstage so I can sing those double parts when they come."

Thought so.