Q: “Out of Our Heads” (1965) was a pivotal album, with originals that marked a maturing sound — “Satisfaction,” “Play With Fire,” “I’m Free,” “The Last Time.” What do you recall of making it? WYMAN: It was in RCA Studios, Hollywood, wasn’t it? Keith and Mick had started to write a few reasonable songs. I mean, they’d been trying to write for a few years under Andrew Oldham’s commands, I should say (laughs). They started to come up with some pretty good songs by then, so we started to do them, like “Heart of Stone” and things. We were also discovering some more soulful singers, as opposed to blues artists — Otis Redding, people like that. We did it at RCA in four-track. Of course, Brian at that time was experimenting with all kinds of instruments. I was doing a little bit as well, in that way. I tried out a six-string bass on a few numbers, I remember. But we were trying different things with all kinds of sounds. It was a lot of fun. Q: Did you do some gallivanting while in Los Angeles? This was 1965 — still very much “early days” for you boys. WYMAN: It was almost like going on holiday, you know, from England. You went out into the sunshine! There were lots of pretty girls around. There were great places to go. You’d meet people like the Everly Brothers and Phil Spector and Jack Nitzsche, those kind of people. You got to go to sessions for them — Gold Star Studios (in Los Angeles), it was called — and meet the people that were singin’ for Spector, the girls and all that. You’d go into RCA with the sun shinin’, and then come out, and the sun was still shinin’ sometimes, because it was morning (laughs). But it was really pleasurable to do it that way. When we worked in England, you know, it was always “in between.” It was usually in the afternoon that we would record, between doin’ a photo shoot in the morning and gettin’ in a van to go and do some gigs in the evening. We used to do three-hour sessions in the afternoon. And just to have, like, two or three weeks over there, just enjoyin’ it in a really nice hotel — I think it came out in the music like that. They were fun times. Q: Does your costume on the “Have You Seen Your Mother” sleeve— a military lady in a wheelchair — have a backstory? It’s like “Monty Python” before there was a “Monty Python.” WYMAN: Exactly (laughs). A few of my aunts — my dad’s sisters, actually — were members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. I used to stay with the family there, so I did see them backwards and forwards in their uniforms. I thought I’d do that (twisting) with me legs, just for a laugh.
Bill Wyman and smoke in 2000. © Roadrunner Records
