In the wee hours of a brisk fall morning in Hamburg, Germany, Bill Wyman and the Rhythm Kings spill out of the stage door of a 1,200-seat theatre, carrying on like teenagers breaking curfew.

They didn't make any money, but what a great gig, they laugh. The former Rolling Stones bassist suddenly turns to his band-mates and says, "Do you realize that the Stones are playing Giants Stadium in New York tonight to 52,000 people? I hope they had as much fun as we did."

It's doubtful.

Four years after quitting the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band, Wyman doesn't do much for the sake of money.

During a phone interview yesterday from London, the 61-year-old bassist describes his new album, Struttin' Our Stuff, as a pure labor of love. It's the first of a trilogy of albums, collections of blues, R&B and jump jazz tunes, a smattering of classic covers and perhaps an old Stones song or two. Many were recorded in one take. Guests include Eric Clapton, Georgie Fame and Peter Frampton, who also didn't get paid much. Profit was not a motive.

"I'm very proud of this record and I'm sure it's not going to sell very many because it's never going to get heard," Wyman says. "But there's a lot of joy there. I think it's the best stuff I've ever done."

There will be no tour. That's why Wyman left the Stones to begin with. There are more important things in his life at the moment. Their names are Katharine, 3, Jessica, 2, and young Matilda Mae, just born to his third wife Suzanne on Monday.

"Me and Picasso both," Wyman laughs. "He was a bit of a late breeder as well."

He also has a 35-year-old son, Stephen, from his first marriage.

"He was eight months old and then I went on tour and I suddenly looked round and he was six or seven.

"I'd missed all the good bits.

"I don't really want to tour any more. I've done it 30-odd years. I want to enjoy watching my new family grow.

"I don't want to miss their childhood like I did my son."

(What a twisted family tree it could've been: Stephen once dated the mother of Bill's second wife, Mandy. Had they all stayed together, Stephen would've been Bill's father-in-law. "We can laugh about it now," Wyman says.)

Talk naturally turns to his opinion of what the Rolling Stones are doing now - touring as the oldest stadium rockers in the world. Are they just doing it for the cash?

"I can't see any other reason, because we already achieved everything we wanted to achieve," Wyman says.

"Maybe they love the adulation, and they can't do without it. I don't know."

As for his replacement, Darryl Jones, "I think he's a very, very good bass player, but I don't think he's the right kind of player for the Stones.

"I always said when I left, when Mick and Charlie came 'round and tried to talk me out of leaving for the final time after two years of them not believing me, that they should get another bass player who plays in the style like I play.

"Or like Donald Dunn, the kind of a bass player that's inconspicuous and leaves lots of space underneath, simple, basic stuff.

"Just do the business. And they didn't really take that on, I don't think.

"We always had a kind of dangerous. wobbly kind of rhythm which was very infectious.

"It sounded like it could collapse any minute. And it never did.

"That was the magic of the Stones. I think that's gone now.

"It sounds very, very perfected. And this is not sour grapes, because I have no reason to have sour grapes."

Of course, this won't stop Wyman from catching the Bridges to Babylon show when it lands in England this fall.

"I went to the previous one, the, um, what do you call it, Voodoo Lounge," he laughs.

"That was fun. It was my first Stones gig. I'd never been to a Stones show before."