Bill Wyman

Bill Wyman, who is 90 years old this week, and was for 31 years the bass player of the The Rolling Stones, is our guest today. Bill talks to Gyles about his wartime childhood in south-east London, and some of the really visceral experiences he had during the war of bombing and evacuation. He talks about his grandmother - who taught him to read, got him started on piano lessons, and made delicious bread pudding; and his dad, who was a tough disciplinarian who didn't like the airs and graces that Bill picked up at grammar school. Bill talks about the early days of the Rolling Stones, when Mick, Keith and Brian Jones lived in a squalid flat in Chelsea and could barely afford to feed themselves. He talks about his close friendship with Charlie Watts and their reputation as the best rhythm section in rock and roll. He talks about the instrumental role the Beatles played in the Stones being discovered. And he talks about leaving the group and finding success - and happiness - in collaboration with other musicians and artists later in his career. This is a fascinating chat with the "oldest living rocker" on the planet, who was there at the heart of it all. Bill has a number of releases coming up to mark his 90th birthday, including The Best of Bill Wyman, available here https://townsendmusic.store/product/bill-wyman-the-best-of-lp-vinyl, and Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings, Ultimate Collection, available here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wymans-Rhythm-Kings-Ultimate-Collection/dp/B0H2S564DS?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE. Our heartfelt thanks to Bill for this conversation, and a very, very happy birthday from all of us at Rosebud! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:11Speaker 02

  Wherever you are in the world, whatever you're doing, whoever you are, I really hope you enjoy this episode of Rosebud. I'm Gyles Brandreth, and here we are. Cue the music.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Hello, this is Gyles Brandreth, and yes, this is Rosebud. I'm wearing one of my favorite jumpers today. It's the one that has a birthday cake on it. And the reason I'm wearing it is because I feel I'm at a birthday party. I'm about to meet a new R2, a birthday boy. Born on the 24th of October, 1936, his name is William George Perks. Or that was his name then. Eventually, he changed it to Bill Wyman. Yes, that Bill Wyman, one of the Rolling Stones for many years. I think now, he would describe himself as the oldest living rocker in the world. He certainly does rock still, and he tells an extraordinary story.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  It's completely fascinating. I always feel privileged when we have people of his vintage, 90 tomorrow, coming on because they can tell us what the Second World War was like, what growing up in the 1940s and 50s was like. And in this person's case, what it was like meeting the Beatles in the 60s. Actually, the Beatles changed the life of the Rolling Stones, as Bill Wyman will reveal to us. The early days of the Rolling Stones, his friendship with Charlie Watts, his view of Mick Jagger, his, well, his love life, that comes into it. I first met him when he was going out with a young girl called Mandy Smith, who I think he married. I don't think he'll be talking necessarily much about that.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  All I want him to do, actually, is tell the story he wants to tell. This is his life. This is his story, told his way. I have to tell you, you are in for a treat with this conversation with the birthday boy, the oldest rocker on the planet. Please welcome Bill Wyman.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  This is Bill Wyman. This is a birthday special. I'm very excited to be with you, Bill. I think I'm right in saying that you were born on the 24th of October, 1936.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Which is 90 years ago.

• 4:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, it will be in five days, five weeks.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  When we get to it, when we get to it, it will be. What were you called when you were born? What was your name?

• 4:13Speaker 03

  William George.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  William George.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  Perks.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  William George Perks.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was the name of my father because he was always named after your father if you were the first son.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Ah, well, we'll come on to how it changes as the years go by in a moment. But you are William George Perks, born 24th of October, 1936. I have to ask you, Bill, what is your very first memory?

• 4:37Speaker 03

  When the doctor came with his black bag when I was three years and two months old on the 11th of December, because my mum was ill in bed in the other room, I wasn't aware of her being big or anything. But when the doctor came out, we had a baby, I had a baby sister. And I said to my dad, "Where did the baby come from, Dad?" And he said, "The doctor brought it in his big bag, you know, in his big black bag. He brought the girl in his big black bag." And that was the first thing.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  First memory of that. Now, what year would that have been, in fact?

• 5:20Speaker 03

  1939.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  1939. Three years and two months. Your first memory is the bag that brought your sister into the world.

• 5:28Speaker 03

  And then two weeks later, I remember having my first Christmas gift.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Which was?

• 5:34Speaker 03

  A little biplane, wind-up biplane, which went along the ground and flipped it, did a flip, you know.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Backward flip.

• 5:45Speaker 03

  Over the hill thing, and then it's carried on again. And I don't know whatever happened to it, but I used to love it, you know.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  So where is this happening? Where are you living when you're?

• 5:56Speaker 03

  In Lower Sidnum.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Lower Sidnum.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  And who are your parents? Who is this mother? Who is the father?

• 6:01Speaker 03

  My dad is William George Perks, of course. My mother is Kathleen May Jeffrey. And she came from Penge, Beckenham, where the Jeffreys had a little, something to do with a farm out there in the countryside.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  And how did they meet, your parents?

• 6:21Speaker 03

  My dad went on his 21st birthday. He went with a friend who took him for his birthday from Lower Sidnum to walk to Penge, because they didn't have transport in those days, to go to the theater, which was the Penge Empire, to watch the musical. And they ran up into the gods and sat in the cheap seats at the top, which were just sixpence each, I think he said. And they sat next to two quite attractive girls. And then in the interval, they got chatting and asked the girls if they could walk them home afterwards because nobody had any transport.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  And the girls said, "Yes, we just live around the corner, but yes." So my dad turned to my friend, his friend, and said, "So which one do you fancy?" And he said, "Well, they're both cute, aren't they?" And my dad said, "Well, let's toss for it." They tossed a coin, and my dad called tails and took my mother home.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  And I've often wondered, what would have happened if that came up heads?

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Well, you'd have looked slightly different.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  Well, I wouldn't be here.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  No, you know, you might have gone off with the other one. You'd be there, you'd still have the same dad.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  So it's one of those moments when, you know, just the flip of a coin. So whenever I ever tossed a coin or I had to do any argument with any sport or anything, I always called tails.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 7:49Speaker 03

  Obviously.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  A lifetime's rule because it's give birth to you, tails. So these two go off together. He is called Bill or William?

• 7:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, Bill.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Bill. And your mum was called what, day to day?

• 8:00Speaker 03

  Kate, oh, Molly.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  Molly.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  For some reason.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  Even though her name was Catherine, she was called Molly. So it's Bill and Molly. And what do each of them, what age are they then? And what do they do for a living?

• 8:09Speaker 03

  Dad was 21 and she was 17. And they went down to, I think it was Clacton or somewhere, for the day. And I've got a photo of them sitting on the, in a little photo studio. With sort of decorated background of the sea and all that, dressed with the odd funny hats on, but then dressed in their normal clothes. My mum in little bowed shoes, you know, and a short skirt, long skirt, and looking really quite nice, actually.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Lovely.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  It's one of the rare things I've got.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  So these pictures, the pictures you've got of them on Clacton when they had the photographs taken, this is before they got married? During their courting days?

• 8:56Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  But they were young when they got married?

• 8:59Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. And were they happy in the early days?

• 9:02Speaker 03

  They must have been, they had five children.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Five children?

• 9:05Speaker 03

  Well, six, actually, but they lost one.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Oh, well, we'll come on to that in a moment. What do they, when she was 17, your mum, what did she do for a living? Did she have a job?

• 9:12Speaker 03

  No, but my dad was a bricklayer. Started at 14 years old. And they just struggled, you know, with very little money in the early days, as was the case right the way through my childhood, actually. We're quite poor.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  What's your best memory of seeing them together when you were a little boy? Your sweetest memory of your mum and dad together?

• 9:39Speaker 03

  I don't really have one.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  Meals together, Christmas Day together?

• 9:45Speaker 03

  No, I don't. I remember um after the war, when I would be eleven, probably ten or eleven, when we had a Christmas party, when my dad played the piano, of course, and he played accordion as well. So um he used to play piano and my mum used to sing.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Oh, so that's a happy memory.

• 10:06Speaker 03

  And my dad's mum used to pull her skirts up and dance everybody to the floor. And my grandfather, his father, used to tell all these, sing all these um songs from the, from, you know, the.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  The musical type songs.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  Musical, yeah.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  My old man.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  George Robey.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, all that lovely. Right.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  So um they were quite nice parties, actually. I remember them.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Going back out here, you're the eldest, your sister comes along, you remember that vividly.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  I've got a brother, John, who was two years younger. Then Anne, three years younger. And then later in the war, in nineteen forty-two, my sister Judy was born, Judith. And then my brother Paul at the end of the war. And then David, who died in hospital.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  And how did that affect the family? Because by then you were old enough to notice it happening. Did that affect your mother badly?

• 11:01Speaker 03

  It was devastating, actually. Um I was eleven and I remember the, I might get emotional here, I'm afraid. I remember the car coming and then bringing out the tiny, they were gonna bring out the tiny little thing with him in it.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Oh, the coffin.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  And so I went round to the market round the back and I had a penny. And I bought a little, little bunch of fillets. And I went back quickly and they were just bringing the, the thing out. My mum on the other side of my dad crying and that, you know, and people around. And I reached over and put the flowers on top of the, you know, on top of it. And my mother, without thinking at all, picked them up and threw them in the street.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  And it devastated me.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  And it stayed with me for years and years.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  Well, it stayed with you until you're ninety. I mean, it's all your life.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  Still with me. Um she did it without thinking because they're probably less, less tidy than the other.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Yes, she just thought, what's this? Yes, because she would have been in a terrible state herself, a woman.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, she was thinking elsewhere, you know.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  But um, yeah, I would later, I would later reflect on it. It came back years later when I was having talks with Stephen Fry. We had like a two-hour thing together. And um so it was embedded in there and it was good to get it out finally because now I'm, I can deal with it. Now I can understand why it happened.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  And with your other brothers and sisters, have you always had good, were you good with them when you were young? And have you kept in touch with them as the years went by?

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Well, I acted after them, being the eldest, I was responsible. So if they misbehaved, Bill got the blame, you know, but that's normal.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Did you share a room with your brothers and sisters? I mean, what?

• 12:56Speaker 03

  The three boys shared a one bed in one room and my two sisters shared a bed in the back room. My mother and dad were in the front room. It was just a three up, three down.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Did you have any toys that you remember?

• 13:09Speaker 03

  Not really, no. We used to get a Rupert book every year.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  The Rupert annual.

• 13:15Speaker 03

  Which we shared.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  Lovely.

• 13:17Speaker 03

  And so that became treasure, a treasure. So in the years, I've collected the entire set.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  The illustrations are wonderful.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  Which started on my, the year of my birthday, nineteen thirty-six.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  So you've got a complete?

• 13:29Speaker 03

  I've got a complete set.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Oh, well, they're worth something now.

• 13:32Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, but I've, you know, fostered that over the years.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  Oh, lovely.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  Because it meant a lot to me because when my children, my three daughters started to grow up, I used to read them Rupert stories, which they loved, you know.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  And was the world of Rupert for you, the escape from?

• 13:48Speaker 03

  Oh, it was amazing, wasn't it? That Nutwood, you know, that little village with all the thatch cottages and all his animal friends, you know, Bill Badger and Algy Pug and all that lot, and the Fox Twins, you know, Freddie and Ferdy, I know, I know them all.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  And the mother figure was a bear, wasn't she?

• 14:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, mother bear and father bear, yeah, they were cute.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  I loved those. Did you read the verses underneath or did you just look at the pictures?

• 14:12Speaker 03

  I read the verses and the stories.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Because it was done, there was a project bit, wasn't there?

• 14:17Speaker 03

  There were rhyme and verses underneath.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  And then the story told in prose.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  And we wanted to be in Nutwood rather than in, in Sydenham.

• 14:23Speaker 03

  Or in Penj, yeah.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  On Penj.

• 14:25Speaker 03

  Which was, we were in after four years, yeah.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  So you moved from?

• 14:29Speaker 03

  Well, we were moved about during the war, obviously.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  You were, were you evacuated during the war?

• 14:34Speaker 03

  We were evacuated to Nottingham, Mansfield Woodhouse, actually.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  And with the whole family or just the kids?

• 14:39Speaker 03

  Mother, me and my brother and sister.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  What was that like?

• 14:43Speaker 03

  Father was in the military.

• 14:46Speaker 03

  And um it was, it was wonderful going on that first train from Houston up there, you know, for two hours. And, and then enjoying the countryside because I started to go to school there. Um and I used to have to walk about a third of a mile through, through the country lanes um where there were horses and cows and sheep and all that. So I hadn't seen anything like that, so it was. And I, there were bird's nests, you know, and we, we saw frogs and we saw lizards and, you know.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  It was almost like being in Nutwood.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, it really was. And then I'd get to the school and, and I, and then unfortunately I had bad times in the school because we had a lady teacher, looking back, she must have been late teens or early twenties, I would think. And she always tried to change my accent because I had a bit of a Cockney accent, coming from South London. And she kept trying to change, make me speak in a Nottingham accent. And when I didn't, she used to smack me all the time. And so eventually I played tournant.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  And I joined two or three other boys who didn't like her either. We used to sit around the campfire in an old church ruin and spend our times there.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  You created your own fire in the sort of?

• 16:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  In the graveyard?

• 16:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think I got matches, I stole matches. And um not a graveyard, in a, in church, in a, in a church ruin.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  Oh, actually, a ruined church within the church?

• 16:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And then um my mother found out.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  And she decided, she called my grandmother, I got in touch with my grandmother in South London, Penj, and asked her if she could look after me because there was too much going on. She had the other two children, she was pregnant now with my other sister.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  And she couldn't deal with anything more, especially me being a naughty boy, playing tournant and not being at school and all that. And so my grandmother agreed and my mother took me, I remember it vaguely, I mean, I remember it precisely. She took me on the bus to Nottingham and she took me to the railway station. And she gave me a little, I had a little um sort of sandwich of jam, I think it was, and a little bag with a few bits in it. And she put me on a train and sent me to London.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  On your own?

• 17:22Speaker 03

  I was five.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  And um.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  At least you had a jam sandwich with you.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  And I remember, yeah, I remember.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  And your grandmother was going to meet you the other end?

• 17:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I remember that she cried when she said goodbye to me. The first time I ever saw her cry, I think. And um there was a lady in the carriage, an old lady, and she said to the old lady, can you keep your eye on him? You know, when you get to London, and the lady was very nice. I used to sit there and she used to talk to me and, and then she gave me little drinks from a flask. And um and then when I got to Houston, my grandmother met me and I lived with her through the war.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Oh, and what?

• 18:01Speaker 03

  With all the bombing and all that.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  And do you remember the, are you, were you aware of it at the time? Do you remember the bombing?

• 18:05Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, because we were going to school with gas masks and we had to always carry gas masks. We were being shown propaganda films. Um and having posters of things called the squander bug, like this bug with all the swastikas all over it. You know, save, save, save things, save, save um all kinds of rags, paper, um everything, don't throw anything away.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Don't squander anything because that helps the enemy.

• 18:36Speaker 03

  It was called the squander bug. And there was all this, and then we were, we were shown film, films of um things that Germans were dropping, anti-personnel weapons. And they were dropping something called a butterfly bomb, which was a little thing, looked a bit like a little aeroplane. And we were shown, I was like six then, I think. We were shown this film of a boy going out into his garden and seeing one of these things on the ground and going down to pick it up and being blown up. And then we were so, don't ever touch anything, don't ever, if you see anything, report to the A R P man, you know, the air raid precautions man.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  Or anybody around, but don't touch anything if you don't know what it is and all that. So, and then, then we were told, you know, if you're caught out with an air raid,

• 19:29Speaker 03

  lay in the gutter.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  That was what you had to do, just lay down in, right in the gutter. Don't stand against a building or anything like that. And we've got all these sort of things told to us.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  And did that frighten you, the idea of the war? Were you frightened or excited or what was your reaction to it? Do you remember?

• 19:47Speaker 03

  I didn't really think the, of the ultimate.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  Problems until we were caught once in bed. Um, at a later date because my pet, my mum came, they came back briefly when the worst of the bombing just happened briefly, but then it started again. And she threw herself over us in the bed.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  Your mum did?

• 20:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, with the bombs coming down. And then I kind of realised that she loved us.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  And um, and then there was quite a horrific thing happened. Um, I left school at lunchtime to go back to my gran's for lunch. And round the corner from where the school was in Maple Road, Penj, there was a big pub. And round the back of the pub, there was a fence which had knot holes in it. We used to go there and look through the knot holes. And on the other wall of the back of the house in the garden was a cage with monkeys in.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  Goodness.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  And we'd never seen monkeys before. And we're looking at these monkeys, you know, so we used to see them every day. And this day we were looking through and monkeys and the sirens went off. And me and this guy who lived down my road, his name was Dennis Stutley. See, I remember everything. We ran to our rundown Maple Road, round the corner, and then went to go down the top of our road. And there was a German fighter plane coming up the street shooting.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Literally, no level.

• 21:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, coming from the top of the.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  The houses.

• 21:26Speaker 03

  Coming straight up the street, just above the.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  God.

• 21:29Speaker 03

  The roofs. And it was, we could see fire. And we had houses with little coping walls outside where people kept, kept their bikes.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  And bits and pieces.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, the dustbins might be, yeah.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  And we just ran behind the very first one and as it roared past, machine gunning. And then we just ran home. And my gran was waiting for me. And I ran up to her, she was on the flat above, you know, grabbed me. We went to go down the back stairs and we heard it coming back. And there was a big window on the back stairs. And um, we, she stopped and we saw the plane go straight past. And I imagined this horrible face of this person, you know, obviously didn't see anything. And then we ran to the shelter and it was all right. But then later that day, we heard that that plane was involved with other planes dropping a bomb

• 22:28Speaker 03

  on the scho, on the school in, in Catford. Where it took down half the scho, half the school at school time, lunchtime. Killed like five teachers and about twenty odd children who were between the ages of about five and seven. And they were machine gunning, apparently. It's in the, it's in the news. I saw it and I've seen it on the, on the internet. They were machine gunning the people running in the, on the playgrounds, you know. And it was that, it was that event which was just two miles away where the plane had obviously was going around just using up its ammunition before it flew away.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  So you saw the war up close and personal?

• 23:10Speaker 03

  Well, I also saw doodlebugs.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  What was the doodlebugs? It had, was it the noise and then it went silent?

• 23:16Speaker 03

  Rocket plane with a flame on the back. And that, when it ran out of fuel, it just fell and exploded.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  Where it ran out of fuel?

• 23:23Speaker 03

  It was the V one, it was the V one bomber. Um, and I was taken out of the shelter once to see one of those flying over at a distance. And um, and then of course we were bombed out with one. Just missed us and landed in the next street and took down about twelve houses. In the, that was in Penj and um.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  You said bombed out, did you have to move?

• 23:47Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. We were all in the shelter, three families, because it was on the three floors of where we lived.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  So this is an Anderson Shelter in the garden?

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. And you just waited with sandwiches that the ladies made. And you just waited for the planes to go over. And as they got louder and louder and louder, all the ladies were all praying and then they'd go past, you know. And then silence, explosions. But then one got louder and louder and louder and then just stopped right above us. And all the ladies jumped, jumped across all the kids on the bed, big bed. And there was just silence. And then suddenly it was just like womph and the whole ground moved. And all this stuff flew into the shelter, bits of, bits of tree, branches and leaves and dirt

• 24:40Speaker 03

  and all that and covered us all in this muck. Luckily, we had a shelter with a side entrance. And the bomb had gone that way, you know, if, if we'd have been facing, it would have all come in. Anyway, we had to wait till the all clear and then we went out and the whole, the whole garden was smashed, trees. And then we looked round and all the, all the backs of all our houses, all the windows were in the gardens. We had these big French windows, they were all lying in the gardens. We went, when we went in the house, all the furniture was all slung against the wall nearest to the explosion. And I, I thought it should have been the other way. But it was all sucked.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Sucked towards it?

• 25:26Speaker 03

  And it was all smashed against the wall, you know, facing the thing. We learned later that it landed in the next street and took down about twelve houses. So my dad was given military, you know, leave. And my mother and my brothers and sisters went back to Nottingham again. Because they'd come back when the worst of the bombing had stopped, when, when.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  When Hitler had gone to Russia and given up on attacking England. You know, because Goring couldn't, couldn't defeat the.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  The English, you know, planes.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  We had won the Battle of Britain.

• 26:04Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  And therefore the war over London wasn't as severe.

• 26:08Speaker 03

  It eased, you still had, um, you know, bombing happening, but it was occasional.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  And you stayed with your gran?

• 26:14Speaker 03

  I was still with my gran, but my parents then came, my mother and the children came back to Massey Road in, in Penj, which my gran found. And then I joined them briefly for six months. And then she, they had to go back after that happened. And then I went back to my gran again and lived the rest of the war.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  And this gran is your mother's mother?

• 26:34Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  And tell us about her, what sort of a woman was she? And what has she meant to you in your life?

• 26:39Speaker 03

  She was the greatest person in my life, basically. She taught me everything. She taught me to keep a diary, keep a scrapbook, collect, um, um, all kinds of things like cigarette cards, which were popular then in behind, in the cigarette packets. And um, stamps, few coins. Um, and then she read me all the classics.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  Oh, wonderful.

• 27:17Speaker 03

  You know, over the years. Then she taught me all the nursery rhymes and all the, the little nonsense rhymes.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Can you remember a favourite?

• 27:25Speaker 03

  This is the house that Jack built, you know.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, all those.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  There was a crooked man who found a crooked star, who found a crooked sixpence against a crooked style. Called a crooked cat that killed a crooked mouse. And they all lived together in a little crooked house. They're all like, all those little things, you know.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  What did she look like? Was she tall, short, dark, pale?

• 27:43Speaker 03

  She was short, plumpish.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  Rosie faced. She also taught me all my, all my maths tables.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 27:51Speaker 03

  And improved my writing and everything.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  And you were lucky because you were like an only child with her. She just had you to focus on.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  Did she cook nice food?

• 28:00Speaker 03

  She was brilliant.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Because the war, there was wartime austerity, but rationing and all the rest.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, but we just had, well, we didn't have electricity, of course, so we had gas lighting.

• 28:11Speaker 02

  And gas lighting as well, that, gas lighting and gas heating and gas.

• 28:14Speaker 03

  Well, I never had electricity in my, in my life until I was sixteen. It was all gas. Um, so we'd never had the amenities that electricity provides.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  What's the favourite food she did? What can you remember?

• 28:30Speaker 03

  Bread pudding.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  Big, big things of bread pudding, which were about that thick and so juicy with sultanas. I don't know where she got them from in those days. Sultanas and raisins and a crispy top, you know. It was the best thing I ever tasted. And then she made all the basic foods from stuff that was available that filled you up.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  You know, all the milk puddings and all the, what do they call it?

• 29:02Speaker 03

  Plum duff and all those, you know, all those kind of fatty things.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Rather comforting.

• 29:08Speaker 03

  That filled you up, but they were cheap to make.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  What was her name? I mean, obviously you called her Nan, did you, or Gran, or what did you call her?

• 29:15Speaker 03

  Just Granny Florence.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  And was she a widow?

• 29:19Speaker 03

  Her maiden name was Florence French.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Oh, rather classy name.

• 29:23Speaker 03

  And when she was a child, this is extraordinary, when she was a child, she worked for a family in Upper Sydenham, next door to a very retired W G Grace.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Goodness, the great cricketer, the great Victorian cricketer.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  Yes, who lived next door, and she should sit, you used to see him in the garden and he used to say hello to her.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  So at one remove, you've shaken the hand of W G Grace, that's something.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  Well, I don't know whether she shook hands with him.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Well, over the garden wall, I'm sure.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  She was always a bit afraid of him, she said, because he had big whiskers and all that.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  He had this famous beard, didn't he?

• 30:00Speaker 03

  But he was always very polite to her, and it turned her into being a great cricket fan, which she turned on me. And so in later years, I played charity cricket for eight years with all the greats, you know. And so that was something really special, just out of the blue.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  How wonderful.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  And was she a widow? Was she living alone?

• 30:21Speaker 03

  No, no, she lived with my grandfather, but he was disabled.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  So this good woman looked after her husband and looked after you.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  And my mother's younger sister.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  Who also lived there.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  Yes, her younger brother was in the military, he was in the Eighth Army.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  So this Florence French is a very good woman.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  I owe her everything, yeah. So when I finished my, when I was doing my military service in Germany, years later, and I must go there, I came home on leave, and my mum said, you don't have to sleep with your two brothers anymore in the big bed. We've got a pull-up sofa in the front room now, you can sleep there on your own. So I said, great, so where's all my stuff, you know, all my, all my diaries and my crap books and all my school reports and everything? She said, oh, I threw them out. She said, they'll be just kids' stuff, weren't they?

• 31:19Speaker 02

  This is, this is your mum doing this again.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  The same lady has, I'm afraid, threw the violets off there.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  And that, that really upset me.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  I'm not surprised.

• 31:28Speaker 03

  Because I'd lost, even all my school reports from the grammar school, because I went to grammar school, and everything was gone.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  So the best of you education is because of your grandmother, because she was teaching you at home.

• 31:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  You go to a primary school, and then you get into the grammar school.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  So this is the era of the eleven plus, you took an exam and you were bright enough.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  Well, there were two of us passed out of a class of fifty-two. Two boys and one girl.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Well done.

• 31:54Speaker 03

  So, yeah, because she advanced me, you know, so well.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  And did you enjoy school? How was school for you?

• 32:00Speaker 03

  It was tough because I was from a slum street.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  And when I went there, I was mixing with boys from Pettswood, Orbington, Bromley, all usually middle and upper-class kids who spoke very poshly. So I had to try to change my accent to sort of match them, and then when I came home, I got told off by my parents and my friends and kids in the street about being posh, you know. And so I was sort of stuck between the two problems.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  In your head, what did you want to be? Did you aspire to being the grammar school boy?

• 32:36Speaker 03

  My gran, when I was ten, she started me with piano lessons.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  So she had aspirations for you?

• 32:42Speaker 03

  So I, I did piano lessons, and then she took me twice to the Royal College of Music, opposite the, behind the Albert Hall, where I passed my first two exams, she took me both times. And, and I was in the choir at the church, local church, so I was singing, you know, all the hallelujah stuff, and, and also

• 33:06Speaker 03

  doing weddings and things where you got a little payment, which was kind of nice. So she taught me that music as well.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Did your parents resent this? Did your dad feel?

• 33:16Speaker 03

  They did.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  They did, ah.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  My dad did.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Oh, explain that to me, please.

• 33:21Speaker 03

  Well, he just always said to me, you know, stop trying to be posh, you know, you're not posh. You're, you're working class and you should stay, you should know where, you know, where you should be. You're, you're working class, you're nothing else. And so three months before I took my, my exams at fifteen.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, what have been the O levels of the day?

• 33:47Speaker 03

  He pulled me out of school.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  My gosh.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Three months before.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  And my headmaster, um,

• 33:56Speaker 03

  wrote to him especially, I've got the letter still, I kept the letter. I was begging him not to, not to do it because I was just three months away. But he completely ignored it.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  And he put me into a job in Duke Street, London, which is opposite Selvages, working in an office for a bookmaker.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  And so when I looked for another job and they said, what was your previous job? And I said, oh, I used to work for this bookmaker. I didn't get the job.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 34:29Speaker 03

  It was, it blocked me again, you know, it was really difficult.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  And thinking about it years later, why do you think he did this? Why did he deny you the opportunity of education?

• 34:42Speaker 03

  I think he resented.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:45Speaker 03

  Maybe he resented it because he didn't have the opportunities I had.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  He good enough for me?

• 34:50Speaker 03

  Maybe.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  You're fourteen, fifteen, get up to work like I did.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Um, and at the time, did you resent it at the time?

• 34:58Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Did you argue with him? Did you say, no, dad?

• 35:01Speaker 03

  No, he's too bossy, too tough.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  But he wouldn't have beat you or anything, beaten you? Oh, he would?

• 35:07Speaker 03

  He had, he had hands like rocks.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Well, he was a bricklayer, he worked with his hands.

• 35:12Speaker 03

  And where we sat around the table, I was always next to him, and if anybody misbehaved, I would pop the back of my head, you know.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  So were you frightened of him?

• 35:23Speaker 03

  Well, very respectful, I must say.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  I mean, do you love him now, in retrospect?

• 35:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, we, we, we united later because I was able to retire him in his forties. And, and then he, he lived on my estate in Suffolk, you know.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  So eventually he became proud of the boy, he tried to?

• 35:43Speaker 03

  Well, I think he did, although he never said it to me, but my mum always said he'd said it to other people. How proud he was, but he never, ever congratulated me.

• 35:53Speaker 02

  But I suppose it was difficult for him. He'd had quite a tough life.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  I understand it.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  He never had any, anything decent.

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• 37:54Speaker 02

  So you're playing the piano, which is great. Are you listening to the radio, the wireless? Are you listening to...

• 37:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  What's the popular music of the late 40s, early 50s? What do you listen to? What's the first music that makes a difference to you?

• 38:06Speaker 03

  Well, there wasn't very much, actually, until I first heard Les Paul and Mary Ford.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Tell me about them.

• 38:12Speaker 03

  The first guitar performances. Otherwise, it was just English singers doing carpets of American ballads, really. You had Dickie Valentine, all that lot, you know. Lisa Rosa and Alma Kogan, all those copying "Moon in June" things, you know. And there was nothing more until Lonnie Donigan appeared, playing skiffle.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  And when you joined the army, you had to do...

• 38:45Speaker 03

  Air Force.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  You joined the Air Force. Had he been in the Air Force too? Is that why you did the Air Force?

• 38:49Speaker 03

  No, I was in the military, in the army.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Oh, and why did you choose the Air Force? Because when you do national service, you have a choice, do you?

• 38:55Speaker 03

  Because I was talented with maths. So I got immediately into the Air Force because I was able to do charts, graphs, and, you know, mean averages and things. So that's why I got in the RAF, I think. And then I got sent straight to Germany. I spent my career out there and...

• 39:17Speaker 02

  Was it a good time?

• 39:19Speaker 03

  Bloody freezing. North Germany in the winter. Oldenburg, it was, right next to Bremen. Hamburg was so cold in the winters, you wouldn't believe it. But it taught me to be independent, taught me to have strength in myself and confidence, which I didn't have before. And enjoy the companionship of other people, which were in the same boat. And also, I was able to hear the beginnings of rock and roll in the summer of 55.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  This is the era of...

• 39:57Speaker 03

  Through the American military.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Of course, this is Elvis Presley's heyday, isn't it?

• 40:02Speaker 03

  Well, Bill Haley.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  Bill Haley, of course.

• 40:03Speaker 03

  Originally. Yeah, the American Forces, AFN, radio, which we could hear. BFN wasn't very good, British Forces, because they played all that mundane stuff. But then we heard the beginnings of Elvis, Bill Haley, Fats Domino, you know, and Platters and so on. And I immediately went down to the town and bought an acoustic Spanish guitar. And then I formed a skiffle group. And I built myself a T-chest bass, you know, one of those horrible ones with the brumando and the string. And every time you played it, it cut you. That size of a string, you know, it cut my fingers. But...

• 40:47Speaker 02

  And when you came home from your two years in the RAF, did you expect to go and live with your parents again? Was that the plan?

• 40:51Speaker 03

  Well, I had no option.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what you did. And what did you go back to on your living doing?

• 40:58Speaker 03

  Well, I tried to get a job, but every time I said where I'd played before, you know, I'd worked before, they just weren't interested. And I eventually got a job with the importers in the Royal Victoria docks, you know, near West Ham. And I used to cycle there from Beckenham just to save a pound a week. They're about, which was pretty miles, actually. In the winter, it was horrible. But it did save me a bit of money. And, well, I was only getting like six or seven pound a week then. And I was there for about six months. And then I got a job in Streatham Hill, working for a diesel engineers.

• 41:41Speaker 03

  And that's where I started to earn a decent bit of money and...

• 41:44Speaker 02

  And had you in the...

• 41:45Speaker 03

  And get married.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  Ah, because had you discovered girls by then? When you were in the RAF, did you discover girls? When did you discover girls? What's your first...

• 41:52Speaker 03

  Four lines.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Well, tell me. What was your first experience with a girl? The first time you locked eyes? Your first kiss, your first cuddle, your first encounter?

• 42:06Speaker 03

  Well, it was first with a girl I used to write to. Pen pals. Because we all had pen pals. I had probably five, and the other guys in the room had three or four each.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  This is in the RAF?

• 42:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, in Germany. And I wrote to this girl called Sue Carlisle in Hull.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  And who set this pen pal idea up? How did that work?

• 42:28Speaker 03

  It was everybody.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Everyone just had pen pals?

• 42:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, they all had pen pals.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  People that necessarily met, but they got in touch with our boys in the forces?

• 42:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, and everybody wrote...

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Good for morale, and you wrote back, and you just formed a friendship?

• 42:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. And anyway, we wrote to each other, and it got very romantic.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  You hadn't met?

• 42:45Speaker 03

  No, of course not.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  You sent photographs of each other?

• 42:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then we...

• 42:51Speaker 02

  What was her name again?

• 42:53Speaker 03

  Sue Carlisle. And she came from a Hull bruff, near Hull in Yorkshire. And she invited me to come on my next leave, to stay with them. Her mother and her... Her mother was divorced. It was her, her mother, and her little son, little brother. And so I went there and stayed a week with her. Why should I say this? I shouldn't say.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a long time ago, and it's a charming story.

• 43:25Speaker 03

  Well, she crept into my bedroom the second night, and we spent lovely evenings, nights together. And I think her mother knew. Because there's no way she wouldn't know. And it was a bit special, actually.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  I imagine it was very special.

• 43:40Speaker 03

  Because it was the first time. But then I started to go out with a few German fruelines, so learned all the wrong words in German.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  But the good times. You remember them well?

• 43:55Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  And were you a nice boyfriend?

• 43:57Speaker 03

  In detail. I always treated them as well as I could.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  I mean, no, no. I mean, being serious.

• 44:02Speaker 03

  I still am in touch with girls that I was friends with in the 60s. One lives in Australia. She's a grandmother. And there's two or three others, you know, that we're still in touch with.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  How did you meet your wife, and who was she, and what happened?

• 44:18Speaker 03

  Her name was Diane Corey. She lived in Upper Sydney. And we just became friends, hit it off. And then we used to win the jive competitions every week.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  Ah, you danced together.

• 44:33Speaker 03

  Because we used to jive, which I never did later years, you know. And we all used to win the prize and then get free tickets for the next week. It was in the ballroom of Frank and Peggy Spencer, who were very famous dancers.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  Of course, they were a famous dance couple, yes.

• 44:52Speaker 03

  They had this little ballroom, and that's where we used to go. And so we eventually got married. We had no money to go on honeymoon or anything. But I said to my wife, my new wife, what we could do is... Because we both had to be working on the Monday, and I think we got married on the Friday. And I said we could spend the weekend going in my dad's old car, because he had an old Morris 10 from 1930s, up to Birmingham, where my best friend from the military lives. It's nothing special, but it's at least somewhere to go.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  And we can go on the new motorway, the M1, if it had just been created. So I borrowed my dad's car and got enough money for petrol, and off we went. We got halfway up. It's another crazy story. We get halfway up the motorway, and I says to my wife Diane, I said, "Well, give me his address, because he moved last week." And he gave us the new address and all that. And she said, "Well, I gave it to you at breakfast on the breakfast table." I said, "No, no, you didn't. I thought you had it." And I said, "Well, I haven't got it." And she said, "Well, I haven't got it." So I said, "Well, we'd better turn around and go home, because it's just a waste of time."

• 46:20Speaker 03

  And I thought, "I will use every bit of logic I can get out of my brain and go for it." And she says, "You're mad." And I got bad earache, you know, for the next hour. "Why are we doing this?" And I drove into Birmingham. This is gospel, too. It's like a miracle.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  And I thought, well, I know he lives in Smedwick, so I saw signs for Smedwick and I followed them. And she's going, now what we do, you know, turn around and go home. And I thought, well, I know he lived in a house with three figures. It was like a hundred and something or a hun- two hundred and something. So it's a long, long street.

• 47:08Speaker 03

  And we came out of traffic light. I swear this gospel truth, this is all gospel truth. And there was this big road up on the left. I said, well, let's try this. And she says, you're mad. And I thought, if he lives in this street, it's impossible to stop at the beginning. I should go to the middle. Because it's more possibility of being where. So I drove up the sort of rise of this big, long street and parked. And she said, what do we do now? And I said, I've got no idea. And I looked across the road and there was a lady cleaning her step with that stuff they used to do, you know.

• 47:50Speaker 03

  And I said, I'm gonna ask her. And she said, you're mad. So I went over and I said to this lady, excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you, but do you know a, um, a couple called Jim Bottrall, um, who, um, moved about a week ago? They got a little baby. And she said, well, there's a couple two doors down that just moved in with the baby. You could check there. And I went two down the doors and knocked on the door and it was him. And I swear that's gospel truth.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  But it was the first row as well.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  Oh, no, but it was a miracle.

• 48:25Speaker 02

  It was a miracle. It was a miracle.

• 48:26Speaker 03

  A complete miracle.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  You were led.

• 48:27Speaker 03

  She never, never, ever after that argued when I said I was gonna do something.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  Oh, well done. Oh, that was a triumph.

• 48:36Speaker 03

  And we had our li- two little days there and then we went back and just carried on with normal work.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  But normal work changed quite quickly because soon after your marriage, your music career begins.

• 48:47Speaker 03

  No, it wasn't. It wasn't. It was five years later.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  Oh, I've got that wrong. Well, tell me what happened then. So you've got married, you carry on. What are you working at now? You've got quite a good job.

• 48:56Speaker 03

  I work at the diesel engineers. I'm getting like thirteen pounds a week, which is a bit better.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  And you got your own home with Diane?

• 49:04Speaker 03

  We had this horrible flat in Beckenham, which was, they had peeling, wallpaper peeling off the walls, all damp and horrible. And there was a hole in the wall in the front room, behind the sofa, a hole in the wall, which went to the outside of the front garden, which we just pushed the feet against. And I stayed there until, um, I was, I formed a band, a little band in South London with a workmate called Steve Carroll, who played guitar really nicely. And we put a little band together and called it The Clifton's. There was this guy with Cliff, drummer was Tony, so we called it Cliff Tones.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  Very good.

• 49:46Speaker 03

  And we did very well actually, but a lot of the promoters didn't pay you afterwards, you know, they cheated on you, which was common in those days. Especially a guy called Roy Tempest was the worst one. He never paid us for dozens of gigs.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  It's good to name him.

• 50:02Speaker 03

  I know. We used to go and sit in his office all day and he'd ignore us. But anyway, then my, my drummer, Tony Chapman, started to do some gigs with the, these guys in Chelsea who were trying to put a blues band together.

• 50:23Speaker 03

  And he said, so why didn't you come up with me for the next rehearsal? So I went up there on the sixth of December, nineteen sixty-two, to Rotherby Arms Pub in the Royal Zen Chelsea, where I met Mick, Keith and Brian. All long hair, scruffy, dirty, hungry. They had no food. And started to rehearse with them.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  Just like that?

• 50:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  I mean, literally, they're, they're there in the pub.

• 50:47Speaker 03

  But I had to make my own bass guitar by then. I'd made a bass guitar because I couldn't afford to buy one.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  But their background as people was quite different from yours. Did you get on with them immediately?

• 51:00Speaker 03

  Well, Mick and Brian were coming from middle-class families. Keith was working class.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Did that affect you or not? I mean, or you just got on with the music straight away?

• 51:11Speaker 03

  Well, I knew music, you know, because I played for two years. Um, and I knew the formation of music because of my piano lessons. So I knew when you played a piece of music, I knew where it was gonna change. And where it was almost certainly gonna change to the five, four chord or wherever it was. So I was always able to pick up songs quicker than the others and remember them and remind them of how they went some- sometimes. And, uh, and then we started to do a few gigs. We didn't really much make any money. Sometimes you'd get a pound each if we were lucky.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  Did the band have a name at that stage?

• 51:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, they were called The Rolling Stones, but Rollin', I N apostrophe.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  Ah, The Rollin' Stones.

• 51:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, which Brian Jones created them.

• 51:57Speaker 03

  And, um, we used to get about sometimes a pound a week, pound each for a gig, you know. We'd get five pounds shared out or something, or seven pounds. And then Brian had borrowed money for the running of the flat.

• 52:13Speaker 03

  It's so cold, you know.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  The, the, the flat is where they were living?

• 52:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  As a group?

• 52:17Speaker 03

  Edith Grove, Chelsea, yeah. In this horrible slummy flat.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  Edith Grove is now rather smart, but it wasn't then.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  Well, that flat was nice, I'll show you. Um, they had chairs with three legs, which they let other people who didn't like sit on.

• 52:35Speaker 03

  They had all kinds of tricks like that. They had, they had microphones fixed up to the toilets. So they could listen to people go to the, all these terrible things. Anyway.

• 52:51Speaker 03

  Um, come the January, after we'd been doing some gigs, they eventually said to my drummer, you know, we don't need you anymore. Um, because they found Charlie Watts, who was playing jazz at the time.

• 53:07Speaker 03

  So he said, come on, Bill, let's go and make a new band. And I said, no, I'm quite happy here actually, Tony. So we, we left, parted on bad terms. I stayed. Charlie joined, January sixty-three, and that was the five.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  That was The Rolling Stones?

• 53:21Speaker 03

  That was the beginning, yeah.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  And you then changed your name?

• 53:24Speaker 03

  I'd already changed my name. Brian Jones was calling himself Elmore, Elmore Lewis or something. Because he was called Lewis Brian Jones. His name was Lewis Brian Jones, but he called himself Brian. But then he was calling him Elmo, Elmo Lewis or something on stage. And I thought,

• 53:44Speaker 03

  Bill Perks is not a very good name for someone on stage. So I changed my name to my best friend in the military, a guy called Lee, uh, Gordon Lee Wyman. So I took the name.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  It's a good, strong name.

• 53:59Speaker 03

  And he stayed friends with me way into my career with the Stones.

• 54:05Speaker 03

  And, um, I eventually officially changed my name in nineteen sixty-four.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  So there are five of you.

• 54:12Speaker 03

  By Deedpole.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  There are five of you who are now The Rolling Stones and your life is beginning to change. Within that quintet, I get the impression that Charlie Watts is your closest friend.

• 54:27Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  Why is that? And what was your feeling about, I mean, what was your feeling about the others?

• 54:32Speaker 03

  Because we were the rhythm section.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that you naturally worked together. Yeah.

• 54:36Speaker 03

  Drums and bass are the, the foundations of the, of the music. And so, and we were always unreliable. We were always trustworthy.

• 54:47Speaker 03

  We both had jobs, so we were, we were working, so we looked pretty decent. Well, they looked like three layabouts, you know, they really did. Because they had no money and we used to have to feed them. We used to have to put money in the, in the thing to heat the room because they had no heating. They were like star- starvation levels.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  Gosh.

• 55:08Speaker 03

  We'd bring fish and chips in and they'd just devour it in seconds, you know.

• 55:14Speaker 03

  Um, and I didn't have enough money to share with them really, because I was bringing up a child by then. I had a little boy in, in, in, uh, March sixty-two. So I had an eight-month-old child when I joined. Um, so I had to deal with that as well and this horrible flat.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  But things started to improve. You know, we started to be, taken more notice of. We started to break records of the, you know, the most at the ballroom and all that kind of thing.

• 55:47Speaker 02

  And when did the breakout happen financially?

• 55:50Speaker 03

  Two years later.

• 55:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it took two years.

• 55:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, summer of sixty five, I would say.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  But you just kept going, you and Charlie, who ultimately become known as the most reliable rhythm guys in the world. That becomes, that's the bedrock of it.

• 56:06Speaker 03

  They always, we were always regarded as the best R and B, both best rhythm section in, in rock and roll, actually. Which was a bit of an honour.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 56:17Speaker 03

  Which we both took with a bit of pinch of salt, actually. But that's what we referred to as.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  Well, it's nice. That's good.

• 56:25Speaker 03

  It was good, but it was a bit embarrassing.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  And the writing of the songs, who was in charge of that?

• 56:31Speaker 03

  Well, the band wrote quite a few in those days before Mick and Keith were able to start coming up with real songs.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 56:41Speaker 03

  They were band songs, there were like twelve songs we put together as band, which we all earned a little bit of money from.

• 56:48Speaker 02

  Oh, good. And dad, because later I think you don't earn.

• 56:51Speaker 03

  No, because it's all Mick and Keith, yeah.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  I mean, give us a flavour of what it's like. I mean, we've got the flavour of the flat and how ghastly that was. But what was it like being in the early days of the Rolling Stones? What, what, what was going on between the, between the five of you in the room? What's it like?

• 57:08Speaker 03

  Well, it was us against the world, basically. So we were completely united, both musically and personality wise and financially as the little team that had the world against us.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  Why was the world against you?

• 57:26Speaker 03

  Because everybody hated us because we didn't wear uniforms on stage. We didn't have makeup, we didn't do the fancy walks, we didn't have the same guitars, like everybody else did. We didn't smile in, in, you know, photo shoots. We didn't jump off walls again, you know, and all this, like Freddie and the Dreamers and the Beatles and everybody else. We didn't do that shit, you know. We said, take the bloody picture. If you want to take the picture, take the picture. And sometimes we used to be so annoying, some of us used to disappear. We really didn't care.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  Did you find?

• 58:04Speaker 03

  We didn't abide by any of the rules of, of music business.

• 58:09Speaker 02

  Mick has driven it all these years with great ambition, some would say ruthless ambition. Were you aware of that then? Comfortable with it? Did it actually ultimately rub you up the wrong way?

• 58:22Speaker 03

  No, I was never rubbed up the wrong way at all, at all. We just, when we weren't working, we just separated into our own lives, basically. We didn't live together like the Beatles did. People thought we did. People thought we all lived in one sort of house in London or something. They all thought we all lived in Edith Grove, but Charlie was a, you know, he was a designer. He worked for a design company. I worked for Diesel Engineers. Ian Stewart worked for the I C I, you know, the keyboard player. And Mick was in the London School of Economics.

• 59:02Speaker 03

  And Mick and Keith were just doing nothing, just laying in bed all day and playing guitars and keeping warm.

• 59:10Speaker 02

  So when did it change? When, when, when is the moment? Can you remember the moment you actually realised we can now give up our jobs? We are now the Rolling Stones. We are going to be the biggest band in the world. When, when did that happen to you?

• 59:21Speaker 03

  We never thought of that.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  You never thought that at any stage?

• 59:24Speaker 03

  Of course not. We, we were, we were playing uncommercial music. We were playing blues. You couldn't get in the charts with blues. You had all this pop stuff going on, you know. You love you, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bits and pieces, you know, so it was all bum, bum, ba-dum, ba-dum, bum, you know. Freddie and the Dreamers, oh god. And then Jerry and the Pace, I like it, I like it. And Dave Clark Five. We were playing blues. We were doing shuffle music, not eights like that. They were playing da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. We were playing like blues, like jazz.

• 1:00:07Speaker 03

  And so we were taken into a studio in the March of sixty three, when we'd just been together two months, by Colin Johns, who became the great producer and engineer, worked with everybody. And he was playing in a band in Sutton, where we played, in this, in this pub. We met him and he, he said, I work in this studio. I B C Studios in Portland Place, London. He said, I can get you a couple of hours recording. We went, recording? Yeah, he said, I can, I can do that. So, think of some songs.

• 1:00:49Speaker 03

  And we just went in the studio and played five blues songs. Two by Jimmy Reed, two by Bo Diddley, you know, I'm a Road Runner.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:01:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, that, that song. And, and did them all in, in like three hours. They sounded fantastic. And they were played to all the record companies, who all turned them down. Who said they're not commercial, we're not interested. We thought that's the end of that. So we just carried on doing gigs and just working and building our name, basically.

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  But there is a transition point where this life changes.

• 1:01:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, when we were, when we were discovered at Station Hotel, Richmond by Andrew Oldham and Eric Easton.

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  That was an actual occasion. They came into the room and discovered.

• 1:01:39Speaker 03

  Well, we'd been there. Georgio Gomoski got us into there and paid us five pounds for the first gig. And then we played to thirty people. And then the next week it was eighty, next it was hundred and twenty, next it was three hundred, the next it was four hundred and people were in the street.

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  Word of mouth.

• 1:01:57Speaker 03

  And it just built and built and built. And we had students coming from Twickenham and all that.

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  But then these two guys come along.

• 1:02:05Speaker 03

  No, but before that, the Beatles had seen us.

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 1:02:09Speaker 03

  The Beatles were recording in Twickenham, doing a TV thing. And Georgio went because he was talking about doing a little film with them at the time, which never happened. But he told them about us. And he said, on the way back to London, you should pop into the Station Hotel, see this band called The Rolling Stones, they play great blues. So we were playing there in this, you know, in the shadows and in the dark with the smoke. With people up on the chairs and up on the top with their shirts off swinging as they did. This jungle music, like we played to Bo Diddley, you know.

• 1:02:51Speaker 03

  All this atmosphere. Hey, Bo Diddley. So like that, you know. And suddenly I'm looking up and I see four black figures standing right in front of the stage in black leather. And I turned around to Brian and I said, fuck, it's the Beatles. And it was. And then we broke. They just stood there and listened to us. Then the interval, they came back with us and we had drinks and we got friends with them. Then they stayed for the whole of the second half.

• 1:03:33Speaker 03

  And then we all went back to the, to the flats in World's End. And they stayed for about three or four hours. And then Ian Stewart ran them off in his van back to the hotels where they were staying. And that was the friendship that began and stayed forever between us. Although the media always made us enemies.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  I had no idea.

• 1:03:56Speaker 03

  But we were always the closest of friends.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  So they were there right at the beginning?

• 1:04:01Speaker 03

  And it was George Harrison that said something to someone in the newspapers in, in, back in Liverpool about this band that are playing in, in Richmond. They were fantastic. And, and I think Dick Rowe of Decca was approached by Andrew Oldham. And he'd already turned down the Beatles in earlier times. And he had that on his conscience.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  Didn't want to turn down another band?

• 1:04:34Speaker 03

  I don't want to turn down another one, so we were signed to Decca.

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  Gosh.

• 1:04:38Speaker 03

  And that's when it took off.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  So we owed all to the Beatles and George Harrison in particular?

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  No, we owed it all to our music.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  But nonetheless, the opportunity.

• 1:04:46Speaker 03

  And, and with help from them, yeah.

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  They helped open, help, they helped open the door. They helped open the door. And then it did change. Everything then did begin to.

• 1:04:55Speaker 03

  Slowly change, yeah.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  Um, and.

• 1:04:58Speaker 03

  Then we started breaking records all over the country and. But then all it was, all we talked about was long hair and saying we were dirty clothes. It wasn't true, that we never washed, that we had fleas. Or everything that was insulting that you could possibly say. Filthy clothes, never bathed, never washed. Brian used to wash his hair twice a day. But, you know, you had to live with that. And then it got written in the bloody newspapers that we were animals, we were called Neanderthals. We were called gorillas. I mean, I'm talking about in the media.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  But you were kept together because you thought, still, it's us against the world, we're going to do this.

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

  Yes, I mean, that's what carried us through.

• 1:05:57Speaker 04

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• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  And then, of course, with success came money, came fortune and fame.

• 1:07:29Speaker 03

  Well, not really fortune, but we did get money, yeah. We did start to earn a bit.

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  And how long, how long did you stay the course, you personally?

• 1:07:39Speaker 03

  What?

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  With the Stones? How long were you part of it?

• 1:07:43Speaker 03

  Thirty-one years.

• 1:07:44Speaker 02

  Thirty-one years.

• 1:07:45Speaker 03

  Zero of ninety-three. See, in the meantime, my marriage was a failure.

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  And why was it a failure?

• 1:07:51Speaker 03

  Well, it didn't really start off very well to start, it didn't, it wasn't very successful at the beginning.

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  But you had a nice boy, you had a...

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, eventually, we had a son, which I loved, and I'm still so close to, obviously. But I was divorced in sixty-eight, and I managed, thank God, after the rest of the band, except Charlie, had been done for drugs the previous year, and imprisoned, and then taken out. The judge actually gave me custody of my child.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  Well done.

• 1:08:32Speaker 03

  At the divorce.

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  Well done.

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  And so I was able to bring him up.

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  Can I ask why it came to that? Why there was a custody hearing? Why couldn't your wife and you work it out? Because...

• 1:08:48Speaker 03

  Well, she'd gone to South Africa to stay with friends. She took my son with him as soon as she knew that I'd had a new girlfriend.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 1:08:56Speaker 03

  And he was there for about six months. And then I had him back for the three, for the three weeks I was allowed in the summer. And I saw that he was malnutritioned.

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh.

• 1:09:15Speaker 03

  Thin, he had toothache, and a lot of his, all his mouth were... I said, "How long have you had toothache?" He said, "Well, mommy said, I can wait until daddy can get me sorted." And so I took him to the dentist. He had like, three out and five fillings immediately, you know, he was, he, he wasn't being treated right. And I decided that he wasn't going to go back. And I just kept him and said, "He's not coming back. I'm never going to give him back to you." And there was this huge fight and all that, but in the end, we went to court and the judge gave me...

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  Good.

• 1:09:53Speaker 03

  The rights to have him.

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. And all these years later, you're still close?

• 1:09:58Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  It's great. It's great.

• 1:10:01Speaker 03

  So I brought him up.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:03Speaker 03

  Got him into boarding school where he was very happy.

• 1:10:04Speaker 02

  And when you say you brought him up, you then moved into your own home? You could have a different home? You would afford by then to bring him up?

• 1:10:10Speaker 03

  Well, I had a little place in Keston, which I managed to, a little chalet. And I lived there for a few years with him, and he went to the little local school, which was called Bramblewood School. I mean, they had this, and it laid, the radio, it was Mrs. Prin. I mean, they were all like Rupert's.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  We never get very far from Nutwood with your story, except we do occasionally, because, well, I'm very pleased that the judge recognized that you were a good father and good father material. And unlike some of your colleagues in the Rolling Stones, you had not got involved in drugs, but there was some excess in your lifestyle. Certainly when it came to the girls. If, if the cuttings are read...

• 1:10:52Speaker 03

  I do have to go there.

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  You don't have to go there. You've been there, but that's why I got a drink for you, in case you would, you deserve one. What was all that about? What, what, why did that happen to you? Given...

• 1:11:06Speaker 03

  Well, my grandmother died in sixty-one.

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 1:11:09Speaker 03

  And I never, apart from her, I never really had any love from anyone when I was growing up. My mother didn't really show love. She had too much going on, I understood. My dad never showed love or affection. He never acknowledged birthdays or anything like that. And so I was always searching, I suppose, subconsciously, to be loved.

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:11:41Speaker 03

  Because I'd lost my gran before I was a musician. And I wasn't getting any love from my first marriage, which was a disaster. I think I was just searching for love and affection.

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  And how have you coped? I mean, us talking about this, it's because the rock and roll lifestyle, all the publicity, a lifetime of publicity. You obviously, you seem, you're so settled now, and eventually your, your current marriage...

• 1:12:11Speaker 03

  Well, I always was settled, because...

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:13Speaker 03

  Whenever work was over, I went home.

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:16Speaker 03

  And as Charlie did, when everybody else was partying at the Adlib or whatever, or going to events, we just returned to our homes, because we were the first two that were married, first two that had children. So we were the stable ones. We were the reliable ones. We weren't drunk at studios. We were there to do work and all that. We were on time. We were, we were ready.

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:44Speaker 03

  So we were the two Mr. Reliables. And we were both very proud of it, I think.

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. And right to be.

• 1:12:52Speaker 03

  Whereas the other ones were a bit flaky, but I don't blame them. They were a bit younger and they just approached things in a different way to us.

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  Let's just finish your matrimonial story before we get back to you, the musician. You eventually have a third wife. You have Astrid, then you have Mandy, who becomes your wife?

• 1:13:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, very briefly, yeah.

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  And then you have your now-wife.

• 1:13:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:15Speaker 02

  Just tell us about meeting her and how wonderful she is. The moment, because you remember everything. Can you give me the date, the room, what you were wearing the day you first clapped eyes on your wife?

• 1:13:25Speaker 03

  I was in Paris, recording with a band. She was modeling. It was August of, when would it be? Seventy-nine?

• 1:13:41Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:13:42Speaker 03

  I had a friend called Tony Kent, who was also a friend of Keith's, who was a photographer, did lots of photos for Vogue and all that with all the models. And he comes, he comes, you know, to have lunch with me, as he often did, and said, "Bill, you haven't got a girlfriend here, have you?" And I said, "No, not at the moment." He said, "Well, I'm going to this event tonight. I'm going to this models' cocktail party for Models One." He said, "Do you want to come along? Maybe I'll meet somebody," you know? So I said, "Great." So I went with him. We're having drinks. And I looked across the room and I saw two very, very pretty girls sitting quietly by themselves. I said, "Do you know them, Tony?"

• 1:14:26Speaker 03

  He says, "Yeah, I know both of those. One's called Suzanne and one's called Kelly." So we, so I started chatting with them. She said, "What do you do?" And I said, "I'm a musician." She said, "Well, have you, have you got a band?" And I said, "No, I'm in a band." And she said, "Well, what band is that?" And I said, "The Rolling Stones." And she went completely white and sort of stuttered a bit, and she didn't say any more. And then afterwards, I pulled Susannah aside and I said, "Can I have your phone number?

• 1:15:08Speaker 03

  Maybe we can go to dinner or something." And she was reluctant to give me her phone number, actually, but then in the end, she said, "Okay," and gave me something. Apparently, she told me later that next morning, she went down to the record shop and looked at the Rolling Stones albums to see if it really was me, which is quite funny. And then she saw it was. Anyway, we had dinner, and then a few days later, we were romantic.

• 1:15:44Speaker 03

  And we stayed like that for a week or two. And then I had to go back to England, she had to go back to Los Angeles. But we stayed in touch. And we stayed friends for thirteen years. And whenever we happened to be in the same town, we'd get together for a couple of days. Or if we were in Paris, or if we were in Saint-Tropez, or wherever it might be. Um, we, in New York, um, we'd, we'd get together and keep, retain a sort of a casual friendship. Because there was always a spark there, which I didn't feel with a lot of other girls, you know. Um, and then eventually, um, thirteen years later,

• 1:16:28Speaker 03

  I was asked to marry me.

• 1:16:30Speaker 02

  And she said yes?

• 1:16:32Speaker 03

  She said.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  Or did she?

• 1:16:35Speaker 03

  Yes, if you change your ways.

• 1:16:37Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:16:38Speaker 03

  Because she knew about my womanizing, you know. And I said, I swear I will. So she came over for ten days. The spark was still there. We agreed that it could be possible to be together. She went back to L- L A. Then rang me again. And we talked about it, and she agreed. And then she moved over. And she gave up an acting career. And her, and her clothes, she made clothes.

• 1:17:10Speaker 03

  She had a design, she was a clothes designer. She went and did that when she finished modeling. She got a degree in clothes design, and she used to make clothes for Cher and all kinds of people like that, act, uh, people on, in the, in the movies. And she was doing a c- a- acting career because she'd been in about seven small parts in films. She just gave all that up and moved over. And we got married.

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  And she did change you?

• 1:17:35Speaker 03

  And it's been beautiful ever since.

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  And she has provided you with the solid love.

• 1:17:40Speaker 03

  Every single thing I've ever desired.

• 1:17:42Speaker 02

  You needed. And that enabled you to change your ways.

• 1:17:45Speaker 03

  Together with three beautiful daughters.

• 1:17:49Speaker 03

  And a life which I'd never change.

• 1:17:51Speaker 02

  How fantastic.

• 1:17:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  And?

• 1:17:54Speaker 03

  So it all gelled in the end.

• 1:17:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's lovely.

• 1:17:58Speaker 03

  Through all those strange happenings in my life, that were strange

• 1:18:05Speaker 03

  things that were, took me different ways, which I shouldn't have done, you know. Tangents here and there, um, and then finally, everything just beautifully gelled.

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  I want, before I want to ask you why you eventually leave, uh, The Rolling Stones, because you do eventually after a long time. Uh, what for you, again in your head, comes as the most glorious memory of the Stones' years? Either the track that for you says, yeah, we're at our best there, or a performance, a gig, that, it just worked? The magic moment of being one of the Stones?

• 1:18:42Speaker 03

  Um,

• 1:18:44Speaker 03

  Hyde Park

• 1:18:47Speaker 03

  in sixty-seven.

• 1:18:50Speaker 03

  Um, the year Brian died.

• 1:18:54Speaker 03

  Uh, when we played half a million people for free in the street, in the.

• 1:19:00Speaker 02

  In the park.

• 1:19:00Speaker 03

  In the park. And the whole of London seemed to close down. We heard people were just standing out in Oxford Street, Regent Street, still lis- listening to the music.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  And when you're on the stage performing it, what is happening in your head?

• 1:19:14Speaker 03

  All I saw

• 1:19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:15Speaker 03

  from the stage, when I looked out, was just the tops of people's heads

• 1:19:22Speaker 03

  to the horizon in every direction. And it just looked like a huge, multi-colored carpet. I mean, it was in every direction, with people in trees as well. There was just this blanket of stuff that just went to the horizon in hundred and eighty degrees. It was extraordinary.

• 1:19:42Speaker 03

  And, uh, they, they, afterwards, they cleaned the park up and everything, it was absolutely beautiful. There was no, no violence, no problems, no, no criminal stuff, nothing. It was really peaceful and beautiful.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  And you are?

• 1:19:58Speaker 03

  And we did it in honor of Brian Jones, who had died three days earlier.

• 1:20:01Speaker 02

  Ah, so that was in your head, that made it emotionally much more a special occasion.

• 1:20:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, because Brian was pretty close.

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, to you?

• 1:20:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, because when we toured, Brian shared rooms with me.

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 1:20:13Speaker 03

  All the time.

• 1:20:14Speaker 02

  And what was special about him?

• 1:20:18Speaker 03

  Well, he could be the sweetest and the most horrible person at the same time. He was a real mixture.

• 1:20:26Speaker 03

  You know, he'd, he'd do lovely things and be the sweetest, and then the next day, he'd, he'd put a cigarette out on your hand or something when you're in the car or something stupid like that. He, uh, he had a sort of a little evil bit about him, but he was very clever. He had like three A levels and ten O levels or something. Um, he spoke in a proper English accent, like the Queen. Um, and he was very, very good on the g- on the guitar.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  And you wanted to live in Nutwood, and he ended up living in the house where Winnie the Pooh was written.

• 1:21:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, he did, yeah.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  Bought that house, didn't he, to belong to A A Mill?

• 1:21:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, he did.

• 1:21:13Speaker 03

  For, for a short time.

• 1:21:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:15Speaker 03

  Just a year, I think.

• 1:21:16Speaker 02

  And did everything change after his death? Within the band?

• 1:21:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, Brian, um, Keith and Mick became more, more dominant and ran the, ran the band more. But they'd already done that for a few years, actually. Brian started off as a leader. And Brian made all the decisions. Wrote to all the, wrote to all the rest, all the, um, magazines, wrote for gigs. He did all that kind of thing, Brian. Um, but he, he ended up, like Mick ended up being the front man, of course. And so the attention became on, on Mick. And eventually, he and Keith threw the songwriting, sort of took over the running of the band.

• 1:22:02Speaker 02

  Did that annoy you?

• 1:22:04Speaker 03

  Not me, I think it upset Brian a bit, but it, it was fate, you know, it was meant to be.

• 1:22:11Speaker 02

  I mean, this is an impossible question, but nineteen studio albums you're on.

• 1:22:15Speaker 03

  Is that all?

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  Uh, well, that's what it says here.

• 1:22:17Speaker 03

  Thought it was.

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  But, and you're playing on, I mean, all the greats, Paint It Black, Jumping Jack Flash, Sympathy For The Devil, Honky Tonk Women, Brown Sugar, Miss You, you're there, it's you there. To ask you, is there one track that is for you? Actually, yeah, that's the one for me. Is there one you?

• 1:22:34Speaker 03

  Well, the one I liked best was Honky Tonk Women and, um, Paint It Black.

• 1:22:40Speaker 03

  Because when we did Paint It Black, and it was kind of finished, and we were listening in the studio, in the control room, I said, um,

• 1:22:53Speaker 03

  there's not enough balls, there's not enough balls, it's too light, it needs more guts. And they said, well, you play bass. I said, yeah, and, and bass drum, but it's still a, still needs something more.

• 1:23:07Speaker 03

  They said, well, what do you suggest? And I said, well,

• 1:23:10Speaker 03

  well, I don't know, put organ pedals on it, you know.

• 1:23:12Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:23:15Speaker 03

  They said, okay, give it a try. I said, yeah, but I can't play them. I can't play organ, I can't play with my feet, like organ players do. I said, but I can try. So they set up the mics, and I laid on the floor

• 1:23:32Speaker 03

  with my fists. And I, as the music went out, down, down, down, down, down, down, whatever it was, I start

• 1:23:43Speaker 03

  and now when you listen to Paint It Black now, you're here.

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  And that's you on the floor?

• 1:23:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's me on those pedals and it filled it out perfectly, so. So I do have a soft spot for that.

• 1:23:56Speaker 02

  Why for you, though, then did it come to an end?

• 1:23:59Speaker 03

  Oh, it was time to. I had so many other things I wanted to do in my life.

• 1:24:06Speaker 03

  You know, when you're in a band, you expect it to last two, three years. Whenever we were asked, Mick was asked, Keith, Brian, me, anybody, how long do you think it's gonna last? Maybe another two years. And we were talking about that in sixty-three, sixty-four, sixty-five. Couple of years, we asked the Beatles, how long do you think, no, maybe another year, year or two? Nobody thought of anybody being in a band for more than two or three years in those, they said, they never were.

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:24:33Speaker 03

  You know, the only ones that had lasted a bit were Cliff and The Shadows. But Marty Wild, Adam Faith, all those were just very brief.

• 1:24:40Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:24:40Speaker 03

  Although they did great records. So we always thought we'd be, and I, I was interested in photography. I spent all my time reading science fiction books when we were traveling. So I knew all the, all the, uh, Asimov, High Line, I knew all of them, you know.

• 1:24:58Speaker 03

  John Wyman.

• 1:25:01Speaker 03

  And I wanted to do photography.

• 1:25:05Speaker 03

  I wanted to do art if I could. I wanted to maybe write, maybe

• 1:25:14Speaker 03

  play sports, maybe, all these things. And I couldn't do it. I tried to make records in those days because I wasn't being used as a writer. So I started to do solo records.

• 1:25:27Speaker 02

  Did you talk to them about being a writer? Did you say to Mick and Keith, "Come on, why can't I do the, you know, they even let Ringo write one number?"

• 1:25:36Speaker 03

  It didn't happen in the band.

• 1:25:38Speaker 02

  It just, that's the way.

• 1:25:39Speaker 03

  Well, it happened in every other band. I mean, John Empressor in The Who was invited to do things. Harrison and Ringo were invited with The Beatles. And many people in other bands were given the opportunity to do their own thing within the band. It wasn't there.

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  It wasn't their style. It was never gonna happen, and you knew that.

• 1:26:03Speaker 03

  Yes. And so I started to do my own records and did them completely different. See, anybody who was in a band and went solo ended up playing music with like the band they're in. If you listen to John Empressor's music, it's like The Who. If you listen to George Harrison's, it's like The Beatles, only a bit more esoteric. But it is, Ringo's a bit like, you know, Fun Time with The Beatles. And so on and so on. So I went completely out of my way to pick all the musicians I loved in America to play with me and do different music from The Stones, completely different. So I had Dr. John, I had Leon Russell, I had all the players. I had the Pointer Sisters singing with me.

• 1:26:49Speaker 03

  Everybody I could choose would come and play with me. And it was fantastic. And then I did two albums, which were quite successful. And then I did a third album, which also was quite successful. Not big, but then

• 1:27:06Speaker 03

  when I went more solo in the early eighties, I had the big hit, Just Real Rockstar, which was top ten worldwide. And I had four other top forty singles off that album. And so suddenly I'd done that. And I didn't mess with music for a while. And then I decided to leave. I thought, I've had enough. Finished. I'd had a bad marriage with Mandy, which didn't work. I wish it had, but it didn't.

• 1:27:39Speaker 03

  So that was gone. I was divorced, separated from her.

• 1:27:44Speaker 03

  I'd left The Stones. I wanted to get married again. I wanted to have a family. I wanted to do my own thing. And that's what I did.

• 1:27:53Speaker 02

  Very successfully.

• 1:27:54Speaker 03

  I just left.

• 1:27:56Speaker 02

  And you've.

• 1:27:57Speaker 03

  Got married to Suzanne. And formed my own little band after two years called Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings with Georgie Fame, Gary Brooker, Andy Fairwell Delo, Peter Frampton, anybody that wanted to play with me could play with me. And we did great music, just a variety of great songs from the twenties to the modern day. And had fantastic twenty years of touring.

• 1:28:29Speaker 02

  Your story, we're coming to an end now. Your story is a good story. I mean, it's extraordinary, the life. The highs, the lows, the dramas.

• 1:28:35Speaker 03

  I've had other amazing things. You know, I played eight years of charity cricket. And I played with all the great cricketers. I batted against Viv Richards. I bowled against, I took a hat trick at the Oval, which I should never have done with my leg spin. And then I, then I met all the artists in South of France. I became best friends with Mark Chagall, who was my great friend for eight years of his last eight years of life.

• 1:29:00Speaker 02

  Chagall, the great Chagall, you and Chagall.

• 1:29:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, eight years, his last eight years of his life. I was great friends with him. I went to his house all the time. We went to events together. I did two books with him. Then I knew Armand, I knew Caesar and Mancini, the sculpture. So I met all the artists and then I got into, involved in art. I mean, these things shouldn't be happening to a working class kid in South London.

• 1:29:27Speaker 02

  Have you worked out in your head why this has happened to you?

• 1:29:30Speaker 03

  I have no idea, but it happens every time I do something. Something magical happens. I don't know why.

• 1:29:36Speaker 02

  Well, I think something magical has happened here today. Talking to you. I've got three more quick questions, Bill.

• 1:29:43Speaker 03

  All right.

• 1:29:45Speaker 02

  Because you're gonna have this birthday. Do you see old friends? Do you still see The Stones? Do Mick and Keith and people?

• 1:29:51Speaker 03

  I don't see Keith because he lives right over in Connecticut, so he hardly ever comes to England. I see Mick quite regularly.

• 1:30:00Speaker 02

  And are you going?

• 1:30:01Speaker 03

  We're friends with Jerry, because Suzanne and Jerry are good friends. So I see Mick's kids.

• 1:30:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:05Speaker 03

  I know all them. And we go to events.

• 1:30:08Speaker 02

  Did he understand why you left? That you had a life you wanted to lead? Or did he just think, oh, he's gone?

• 1:30:13Speaker 03

  They all had sour thoughts about it when I left, actually. They weren't very nice. But after about six months, they got to understand, and then we were friends.

• 1:30:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, good.

• 1:30:22Speaker 03

  So we always send each other birthday presents, Christmas presents. I see Woody. I see Mick occasionally.

• 1:30:33Speaker 03

  It's all right.

• 1:30:34Speaker 02

  It's good. It's good. This is, this is a good life.

• 1:30:38Speaker 03

  It's like, it's like old family. You don't wanna be with them every day of the bloody week. It's nice to see them a few times a year.

• 1:30:45Speaker 02

  Three more questions. I want from you a moment of joy. What comes into your head when I say a moment of joy in the life, the long life of Bill Wyman?

• 1:30:53Speaker 03

  A moment of joy. Good.

• 1:30:55Speaker 02

  And it can't be the birth of any of your children, because that's too obvious.

• 1:31:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it was when we were when we all had a business meeting in nineteen ninety-one to work out, I'm talking about The Stones, to work out what was happening for the rest of the year.

• 1:31:16Speaker 03

  And I said, "It doesn't matter to me because I'm leaving." And I just stood up and walked out.

• 1:31:24Speaker 02

  Had you told them before?

• 1:31:25Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  You at a business meeting, planning the rest of the year, and you said, "Doesn't matter to me because I'm on my way."

• 1:31:33Speaker 03

  I'm out, yeah, I'm out of here. And they went, "Daddy daft." And I tell you what, I walked out of that building and this gigantic cloud just lifted off my shoulders.

• 1:31:46Speaker 03

  And it hasn't been there since.

• 1:31:47Speaker 02

  Great. A moment of sadness.

• 1:31:50Speaker 03

  A moment of sadness was when I went to America for the first tour with The Stones on the first of June nineteen sixty-four. And three days later, I heard

• 1:32:04Speaker 03

  that my best friend, Steve Carroll, who built the Clifton's with me, was killed in a car crash on his way to a gig.

• 1:32:15Speaker 03

  He was twenty-one.

• 1:32:18Speaker 03

  Another guy who knew him well and played with him was called Andy Bowen, who's a well-known musician. And Andy, quote, made the nicest quote, he said, "Steve Carroll was the greatest guitarist that the world never heard." I mean, he was fantastic. He'd play, play in one Chuck Berry record and he could play it. He could play all the parts. And that devastated me, actually, because I wasn't even here to go to his funeral.

• 1:32:51Speaker 03

  Or anything. That was the worst, maybe one of the worst.

• 1:32:55Speaker 02

  The very last question is, what has life taught you? Here you are, Bill Wyman, about to be ninety years of age.

• 1:33:01Speaker 03

  Oh, you know, I'm the oldest living rock star on the planet.

• 1:33:05Speaker 02

  Oh, that's impressive.

• 1:33:08Speaker 03

  I found out like six months ago.

• 1:33:11Speaker 02

  I can believe it, you are.

• 1:33:12Speaker 03

  I am.

• 1:33:13Speaker 02

  They've all gone.

• 1:33:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. The only ones that are older than me who are not music, who are not rock and roll stars are Willie Nelson, Who's Country. He's the only guy that I know who's older than me and is in music.

• 1:33:28Speaker 02

  The oldest rock star in the world.

• 1:33:30Speaker 03

  On the planet.

• 1:33:30Speaker 02

  On the planet. What a privilege. Now, what I want to ask you, since I have this unique opportunity.

• 1:33:36Speaker 03

  Crazy, isn't it?

• 1:33:37Speaker 02

  What has life taught you? What have you learnt that you'd like to share?

• 1:33:44Speaker 03

  I try to stay pretty humble

• 1:33:51Speaker 03

  with whatever happens to me. Try to be normal, live a normal life. Be normal to people. Treat everybody the same as they are, I am with them. I don't think of myself as a star or

• 1:34:08Speaker 03

  or whatever people call you, you know. I try to be a normal person, I think, who's been very fortunate and and had some very magical things happen.

• 1:34:21Speaker 02

  Thank you for sharing the normal part of you and the magic part of you. And a happy birthday, if I may say so, to the oldest rock star on the planet, Bill Wyman. Here's to you.

• 1:34:33Speaker 02

  You're the best.

• 1:34:33Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:34:39Speaker 02

  Happy birthday, Bill Wyman. I think you are remarkable and I love the way you tell your stories. And thank you for giving us your time. And many happy returns to you. I'm going to get the box set of everything. Now, before I go, have I got an email? Yes. Look at this that Harriet's given me. Lisa Hattersley has sent us an email because we were talking about car parks the other day. Because last week, we did the introduction to our wonderful conversation with the great Dame Jacqueline Wilson from a car park. Harriet very kindly gave me a lift to Paddington Station because I was on my way to the Cheltenham Literary Festival and where it seemed to be awash with alumna from Rosebud, particularly

• 1:35:24Speaker 02

  Prue Leith. I had a lot of fun with that day. Anyway, we said, have you had an interesting car park story to share with us? Early memories of car parks. And look, Lisa Hattersley has. She writes, "You asked for your earliest memory of something memorable happening in a car park. If my son could remember as far back as the moment of his birth, that would be his. Knowing that second babies tend to arrive more quickly than the first, we didn't hang around long at home before jumping in the car for the 25-minute drive to the hospital." 25 minutes, it turns out, was too long. "We were so happy to see a free space that we

• 1:36:06Speaker 02

  pulled straight in. My waters burst quite dramatically at that point, and I tumbled out of the backseat onto the tarmac while my husband ran off to find a wheelchair. Having just moved to the area and only registered at the hospital two days before, we weren't familiar with the size or layout of the car park. So we didn't realise we'd parked about as far away as it was possible to get. With the next contraction, my son's head came out." Good grief. "It was midnight and there was no one else around. Hearing a shocked 'Help!' from me, my husband had to abandon the wheelchair plan, come sprinting back to me through the darkness and prepare to catch his baby. Baby Sam arrived under a full moon

• 1:36:50Speaker 02

  next to space 137. After some tense calls to the hospital switchboard, where we struggled to explain whereabouts in the huge, multi-storey car park we were, we wrapped him in a top and waited for a very surreal eight minutes, occasionally calling out 'Help!' in case anyone could hear us. Then, in a moment we will always remember, with a lot of emotion and a deep appreciation for healthcare heroes, what seemed like about 10 people appeared on the horizon. Someone shouted, 'Found them!' and they all started to run towards us. They lifted Sam out of my husband's arms and checked him over, wrapped us both up and gurned us

• 1:37:34Speaker 02

  inside." If there were ever to be a baby number three, it would definitely be a home birth. And I'm interested and glad that they decided to call the child Sam, because I'd have been tempted to call it Space 137. Well, what an amazing story, Lisa. That really, I don't think anyone's going to beat that as a car park story. If you think you can, the address is quite simply [email protected]. There we are. If you are having a birthday this weekend, if you shared a birthday with Bill Wyman in your 90s as well tomorrow, happy birthday to you. Whenever your birthday is, have a good one. And, well, thank you for being part of the Rosebud family. We'll be with you, if you're a family member, on

• 1:38:17Speaker 02

  Sunday. Otherwise, we'll be with everybody next Tuesday for another episode of the Rosebud Podcast. We love your company. Oh, and we're on YouTube, too. You can listen to us, you can watch us. Just be part of the world of Rosebud. Cue the music. Je suis un rockstar.

• 1:39:24Speaker 01

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