July 26, 2001
At least one of the Rolling Stones keeps his word to return to London
By JAMES REANEY
The last time Bill Wyman played London there was a riot.

But that was 36 years ago when Wyman was a Rolling Stone. Police pulled the plug on the Stones, fans went bananas and everybody's been waiting for them to return.

Wyman, the bass player who quit the Stones in 1993, returns on Aug. 16 with his all-star band, the Rhythm Kings, to play Harris Park.

There can hardly be riots when a band as good as Wyman's plays hits from Les Paul and Mary Ford, Fats Waller, Louis Prima, Groovin' by the Rascals and even Love Letters, the charming ballad Wyman championed long ago when Mick and Keith mocked him about his tastes.

"It is my dream, because I've got them . . . we've got no prima donnas in our band," he says of a lineup that includes vocalists Gary Brooker (Procol Harum) and Georgie Fame and guitarists Albert Lee and Martin Taylor. "Everybody just contributes their best. Everybody surprises everybody every night by doing something magical.

You all know the Rhythm Kings' bass player, the legendary Stone Alone, who will be 65 on Oct. 24. He was 28 when the Stones played the old Treasure Island Gardens (now the Ice House) for the most famous non-concert in London showbiz history. Ironically, the Ice House was among the possible locations considered for the Wyman concert before Harris Park won out last week.

That April night, there were 3,000 screaming fans, way too many for the police's comprehension. The Stones played just four numbers before the police cut off the power. The Stones fled to the Holiday Inn and blamed the police.

Some insiders say the real battle took place backstage and was over whether the Stones would be paid -- their fee was said to be about $3,000 -- by the London businessperson running the event.

"(The police) switched the power off," Wyman recalls. "We were really angry with them. It was a normal reaction from the crowd, which we were getting every day . . . they just couldn't deal with it. They just freaked and ripped the power, which made it 10 times worse. Because then the kids are cheated and they do riot."

But, he chuckles, the Stones did get paid for the gig as far he recalls. Trust Wyman, a meticulous man whose autobiography, Stone Alone, reveals a remarkable recollection for details of songs, money, gigs, sex and all the other business of being a rock star, to remember that.

Just like the hero of a blues song, Wyman's greatness was apparent early.

His grandmother took a look at the two-week-old William George Wyman back in 1936 and told his mom the lad would be world-famous.

Famous he did become as the Stone who stood there, seldom smiling but always looking thoughtful, while Mick and Keith careered around him. Wyman was probably thinking about what kind of band he'd like to have if he were king.

Now, he has it. The pull of the Rhythm Kings is so strong Wyman is on the road with his mates, despite his attachment to his new family, including three kids six years old and under.

"Here I am doing four months of touring after I left the Stones because I didn't love touring," Wyman marvels.

"We don't do this to make money or to do a career move. We do it because we love playing the music . . . it's a 12-piece band, so with travel, food and the hotels there's not much left," he laughs.

So deep is the lineup, Wyman can happily leave the singing to others.

"I don't do any vocals because I've got five great singers in the band," he says. On the nights Brooker feels it's right, the Rhythm Kings will sign off with Procol Harum's A Whiter Shade of Pale. But they could just as easily go out with something like Yeh Yeh, a hit for Fame, a bit of rockabilly from Lee, or bluesy ballads from Beverley Skeete or Janice Hoyte.

"We can cover about eight different styles of music from gospel, blues, jazz, soul, rock, rockabilly, jump music, ballads, just anything, stuff up to the '70s probably," Wyman says.

He's always careful to include a ballad on the Rhythm Kings' CDs, with Love Letters the one to receive the full treatment on the two-CD Double Bill, just out on Velvel/KOCH and a great introduction to Wyman's affection for classic pop and a few of his own songs.

He loved Ketty Lester's 1962 hit and enjoys other Love Letters, including Elvis Presley's take on it. For his approach, he called on buddy George Harrison to add the right touch on slide guitar.

Previously, the Kings had covered Spooky and Groovin', two easygoing rock hits from the 1960s.

"You have the possibility of an occasional bit of airplay. Otherwise you get none," he says of the business reason for recording those ballads he also loves for their own sake. Business is a big theme in Wyman's autobiography and it's probably no accident another cover on Double Bill is Dan Hicks's sarcastic Where's the Money.

Wyman has found new life in such material and new stability in his own life. The 1990s started badly for Wyman when his wife, Mandy, received a $6.5-million US divorce settlement, even though she spent only eight weeks with Wyman during their marriage. They first met when Smith was only 13. Their relationship is discussed with painful candour in Stone Alone, published just before the divorce.

The split from the Stones, in 1993, followed the divorce. Wyman and his former bandmates get on socially, but there's no question of going back.

"Oh no-no-no because I don't have the scope . . . (with the Stones) I can't produce, I can't write. I can't do any of those things. I can't arrange songs, I can't choose.

"The reason I left was because I didn't see anything new happening in the future. I realized if we played for another 10 years I'd still be playing Jumping Jack Flash, Honky Tonk Women, Street Fighting Man and so on until we packed up.

"I didn't see any reason for doing that any more just for the money or anything. That's why I left, just to do things I wanted to do, instead of things I was obliged to do."

It ended an association stretching back more than 30 years, including one early gig in 1963 when the new bass player for the fledgling Stones was introduced as "Lee Wyman"

The road to the Rhythm Kings was just beginning, with a two-year hiatus from music.

"In the two years following my departure from the Rolling Stones in 1993, I hardly touched my bass guitar," Wyman says on his Web site. "During that time I was a busy man. I married Suzanne Accosta, and developed my Sticky Fingers restaurant business. I also found the time to work on a variety of diverse projects like books, archeology and photography -- things I had had no time to get into in a serious way while I was a member of the Rolling Stones."

Even now, as he tours with the Rhythm Kings, he's ready to launch a big book on the blues, due out later in the year.

Happily, he still has time to make it back to London. It figures the busiest and smartest of those Stones of '65 would be the first one to return.