Blue plaque erectors of the future please take note!

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In the latter 1950s a certain William George Perks was inspired to turn to music having witnessed a white-suited Chuck Berry duck walking and raising hell performing “You Can’t Catch Me” on the big screen at the Beckenham Regal cinema (now Odeon) in the groundbreaking film “Rock, Rock, Rock”. In a thousand years’ time, that spot will probably be a towering block of housing (or pile of deserted rubble), but the name Bill Wyman will still be just as familiar to music historians as that of Chuck Berry--or the man who rolled over to make way for their subsequent onslaught on western youth--Beethoven.

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The band that Wyman made this name with was powered by some of the most original and perfectly suitable electric bass guitar playing that will ever be known. This won’t be the stuff of legend because Wyman’s story is true, accurately documented and of course, the recordings will be everlasting anyway.

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A few years after his departure from the Rolling Stones, he formed the band that would be his musical vehicle for the next seventeen years--Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings. Although that outfit released a handful of wonderful albums bearing his name as leader on the front cover, none of the songs that the records contained were by his own hand. The last occasion that Bill’s songwriting had received an airing was on his eponymous 1982 album, because he rarely sang his songs in public.

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After retiring from touring in 2014 he told me that there was a new Bill Wyman album ready. It was the result of some rare visits to the recording studio dedicated exclusively to work on his own material featuring him singing, playing bass and also contributing some piano. With an “A” team of musicians including ex-Rhythm Kings colleagues Terry Taylor, Graham Broad, Frank Mead, Nick Payn and Beverly Skeete plus Robbie McIntosh and Guy Fletcher, Bill had produced his first genuinely solo album in thirty-three years and we released Back to Basics on Proper Records in 2015. Just as you’d expect from Bill, it’s a very English sounding record but it has echoes of, JJ Cale, Tom Waits and even Leonard Cohen about it.

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The market has changed dramatically since 2015 and that’s why, ten years after its first release, I have decided that the time is right to re-issue these tracks.

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To make it special, it’s a blue vinyl album in a limited-edition of one thousand copies worldwide available from 11th April 2025 as well as being on CD and in digital format.

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He is known as “the quiet one” but in my view he is the “quiet one and only - BILL WYMAN”.

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