{"id":130901,"date":"2025-09-11T22:26:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T22:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/130901\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T22:26:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T22:26:09","slug":"how-the-rolling-stones-became-acceptable-according-to-bill-wyman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/130901\/","title":{"rendered":"How The Rolling Stones became acceptable, according to Bill Wyman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bill<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ A&M Records)<\/p>\n

Thu 11 September 2025 13:00, UK <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be real here, music biopics are often utter wank. Yet, annoyingly enough, one of the most inspired ways of depicting cultural and musical evolution I\u2019ve ever seen comes from one. Not even a very good one at that, and one that, despite the headline, isn\u2019t even about The Rolling Stones<\/a>. <\/p>\n

1994\u2019s Backbeat <\/a>depicts the relationship between John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe. Particularly how intense and emotionally charged it gets after their band The Beatles begins their performing residency in Hamburg\u2019s red light district. The film itself isn\u2019t much to write home about, but the performance scenes are incredible, because the actors are not playing to the original records. Or even re-recordings meant to sound exactly the way these songs would have done in 1960. <\/p>\n

Instead, they\u2019ve been turned into intense, fire-breathing rock numbers that sound more like offcuts from an Afghan Whigs album than anything else. This is because a supergroup of alternative rock bands was put together to record the music, and The Whigs\u2019 Greg Dulli voiced John Lennon. He was there along with members of Nirvana, REM, and Sonic Youth, and few things have put the rock revolution of the 1960s into context better than that one choice. <\/p>\n

Because while the likes of Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney are literal knights of the realm today, their music sounded the way punk rock sounds to us today. Folks were scandalised by this aggressive, noisy music and when The Rolling Stones broke out, all hell broke loose. They made The Beatles and The Dave Clark Five sound positively staid compared to their intense, deeply sensual blues rock. The kind inspired by obscure, imported R&B records and whipped into shape by performances in the rollicking London blues scene. <\/p>\n

How did The Rolling Stones calm their sound down? <\/p>\n

This lead to the first two singles by The Rolling Stones being almost riotous slices of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll noise, at least compared to the other songs on the charts at the time. \u2018Come On\u2019 was a Chuck Berry standard turned from a classic rock \u2018n\u2019 roll shuffle into a raucous rave up. While it was written by their so-called rivals Lennon and McCartney<\/a>, \u2018I Wanna Be Your Man\u2019 is even more electric. A rock \u2018n\u2019 roll stomp that must have started riots when it was sharing space on the charts with The Singing Nun and Cliff Richard. <\/p>\n

While both these songs were hits, it was clear that the band needed to start showing some dimensionality, and thus a slower-paced third single was picked out. The song chosen was their version of Arthur Alexander\u2019s \u2018You Better Move On\u2019, a soulful R&B number that had been going down a treat in the early live shows by The Rolling Stones. After two singles that catered to a younger audience, the idea behind this song was to have something for everyone. <\/p>\n

Bill Wyman himself said so in an interview conducted in 1982, where he talked about how surprised he was the song was picked for a single. Since it was released on an EP first, he said, \u201cWe liked the song, but we just thought of it as one of the four songs, different from the fast ones, and suddenly that was the thing that everybody was playing. Different fans started to listen to that and grown-up people listened to it. Your MUMS liked it, you know, all that kind of thing! But it was a nice song and it didn\u2019t put you off like \u2018Come On\u2019 did\u201d.<\/p>\n

While \u2018You Better Move On\u2019 wasn\u2019t a massive hit, it was the direction that made them one of the biggest bands on the planet. For all their threatening image, it was songs like \u2018Time Is On My Side\u2019 and \u2018The Last Time\u2019 that made them chart fixtures before \u2018Satisfaction\u2019 blew them into the big time. A reminder for all budding pop sensations that a little texture, a little ebb and flow will help you into the big time better than doing one thing well ever will. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ A&M Records) Thu 11 September 2025 13:00, UK Let\u2019s be real here, music biopics…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[25718,96,128,15747,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-130901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-bill-wyman","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-the-rolling-stones","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}