(Credits: Far Out / Bent Rej)
Wed 4 June 2025 19:00, UK
Considering their turbulent history across all manner of rock and roll’s sex, drugs, and sleaze clichés, The Rolling Stones managed to hit their 60th anniversary with a relatively stable and near enduring line-up. No world tours soldiered on by one remaining founding member or second-grade ‘Mick Jagger and his Stones’ successor act, anyone lucky enough to catch the stadium behemoth’s live dates in recent years has seen the core ensemble, and they are still playing incredibly.
Stones lore is, of course, wrapped up with their former bandmate Brian Jones. Founding the group and initially steering the creative course, Jagger and Keith Richards’ growing songwriting partnership began to eclipse his importance, and the drift away from his beloved blues found Jones’ interest wane in favour of chemical decadence and a chronic alcohol intake, later found dead in his swimming pool in August 1969.
Jones would be replaced by Mick Taylor, who lent his scorching lead guitar for a handful of Let It Bleed sessions before departing in 1974 to be replaced by former The Jeff Beck Group and Small Faces guitarist Ronnie Wood. This formed the core line-up for the next 50 years or so until drummer Charlie Watts’ death in 2021.
Picking up the bass upon the Stones’ 1962 inception and slogging it with the band for decades, Bill Wyman formed the classic line-up across all their eras, from early blues outfit, their golden-LP run, Some Girls comeback, and the beginning of the Stones’ corporate machine dropping a perfunctory album and making millions with a world tour every five years or so.
So, what was the first Stones single without Bill Wyman?
Despite being gifted with a quiet permanence among the Stones’ big characters and debauched reputation, the steadfast Wyman finally called it a day after the mammoth Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour. “I left in 1991 but they would not believe me,” Wyman revealed to The Mirror in 2024. “They refused to accept I had left. It was not until 1993, when they were starting to get together to tour in 1994, when they said, ‘You have actually now left, haven’t you?’. “And I said, ‘I left two years ago’. They finally accepted it, so they say I left in 1993”.
Some 30 years in the world’s biggest band is a fair stretch, especially as Wyman was several years older than the rest of the Stones. With his millions made, Wyman sought to explore what else life had to offer in middle age: “I just had enough. It was half my life and I thought, ‘I have got other things I want to do…I wanted to do archaeology, write books, have photo exhibitions and play charity cricket”.
Playing bass for the last time on 1989’s Steel Wheels, his final single with the band was the promo ‘Terrifying’. Having made his exit official shortly after, 1994’s lead to Voodoo Lounge ‘Love Is Strong’ was the first Stones cut without their founding bassist, former Miles Davis and Sting backing band member Darryl Jones stepping in and forming the Stones’ live personnel ever since.
Wyman formed his Rhythm Kings band in 1997, then joined the Stones at London’s O2 Arena in 2012 for two special live numbers as part of their 50th anniversary. Wyman would also return to the studio on 2024’s Hackney Diamonds, lending his bass on ‘Live by the Sword’.
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