The Beatles famously helped the Rolling Stones land their first chart-topping hit with \u201cI Wanna Be Your Man,\u201d and 15 years later, an \u201chonorary Beatle\u201d would do the same thing with a disco-inspired bassline that would become the foundation for one of the Stones\u2019 most popular songs.<\/p>\n
By 1978, the Beatles were no longer. But their influence and importance to the Rolling Stones persisted well past the Fab Four\u2019s official split, even if only by association.<\/p>\n
The \u201cHonorary Beatle\u201d Behind This Rolling Stones Hit<\/strong><\/p>\n While Keith Richards was busy with his h***** possession and trafficking trial in Toronto, Canada, in the late 1970s, his bandmate, Mick Jagger, was busy workshopping material at the El Mocambo club in town. Jagger, along with the help of Billy Preston, brainstormed what would later become the Rolling Stones\u2019 1978 track, \u201cMiss You.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBilly had shown me the four-on-the-floor bass-drum part, and I would just play guitar,\u201d Jagger recalled to Rolling Stone<\/a> in 1995. \u201cI remember playing that in the El Mocambo club while Keith was on trial in Toronto for whatever he was doing. We were supposed to be there making this live record. I was still writing [the song], actually.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Bill Wyman, bassist for the Rolling Stones, agreed that the majority of his part in \u201cMiss You\u201d came directly from Preston. \u201cWe\u2019d cut a rough demo a year earlier after a recording session,\u201d he later said<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019d already gone home, and Billy picked up my old bass when they started running through that song. When we finally came to do the tune, the boys said, \u2018Why don\u2019t you work around Billy\u2019s ideas?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI listened to it, heard that basic run, and took it from there,\u201d Wyman continued. \u201cIt took some polishing. But the basic idea was Billy\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n What Made Billy Preston The Fifth Fab Four<\/strong><\/p>\n Billy Preston was a prolific musician independent of the Beatles, but his association with the Fab Four makes his contributions to the Rolling Stones that much more interesting, considering all the Beatles did to catalyze the Stones\u2019 career. And if there was any one musician worthy of the title of the \u201cfifth Beatle,\u201d<\/a> it was undoubtedly Preston.<\/p>\n Preston and the members of the Beatles were friends since the early 1960s, which naturally led to collaborations among the musicians. The keyboardist contributed to the Beatles\u2019 Get Back sessions and to the group\u2019s smash-hit record, Abbey Road. Preston is also the only musician to earn his own credit as a co-performer on a Beatles tune.<\/p>\n Starting in 1973, Preston became a Stone when he picked up a gig touring with the band in support of albums like Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main St.<\/a>, Goats Head Soup, and more. His musical prowess not only kept the Rolling Stones\u2019 touring set solid, but it also helped create one of the band\u2019s biggest hits (and one of the only ones they ever released that someone could reasonably call disco<\/a>).<\/p>\n Photos by Larry Hulst\/Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Beatles famously helped the Rolling Stones land their first chart-topping hit with \u201cI Wanna Be Your Man,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":122110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[171,975,4185,978,40010,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-122109","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-rock-music","11":"tag-the-beatles","12":"tag-the-rolling-stones","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114978722024642348","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}