But in the studio, he repeatedly reached for the same unlikely weapon: the cheap Dallas Tuxedo that cost him about a week\u2019s pay.<\/p>\n
You may like<\/p>\n
It was, in fact, his very first bass. Wyman had started as a guitarist, galvanized, like so many young U.K. players, by the acoustic<\/a>-driven songs of skiffle king Lonnie Donegan.<\/p>\n \n Playing his Framus Star Bass F5\/150 in 1964. This was the first Framus model he played with the Rolling Stones. (Image credit: Alamy)<\/p>\n \u201cLonnie Donegan was doing really well playing three-chord folk songs and old blues tunes. It seemed pretty simple,\u201d Wyman told Guitar Player. \u201cSo I got a few guys together and we tried it.\u201d<\/p>\n Their group, the Cliftons, played in London before the blues boom hit.<\/p>\n \u201cI was playing guitar,\u201d he says. \u201cI wasn’t interested in the bass until it became necessary for the band. I think a lot of bass players have started that way.\u201d<\/p>\n Lacking a proper bass, he simply tuned his guitar down seven frets at first. \u201cIt seemed like they couldn’t go any lower without the strings getting too soggy to play,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n But hearing the full power of an electrified bass guitar<\/a> was an epiphany. At a dance hall show by British pop outfit the Barron Knights, Wyman encountered the full force of an electrified bass for the first time.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember walking from the stairway and through the door and being floored, just rooted to the spot, by this amazing sound,\u201d he said. \u201cIt took me a moment to realize that it was the sound of the electric bass, and I was just thunderstruck by it.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n \n Wyman with the Framus Star Bass F5\/150 at rehearsal for an episode of Ready Steady Go!, in London, February 26, 1965. (Image credit: George Wilkes\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n \u201cI thought, Well, I’ve got to get a bass, because this is where it’s at. I could see the difference immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n There was just one problem: money.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I went looking I found out that basses were something like 115 pounds,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI didn’t have money like that. I was earning about eight pounds a week then and about to get married.\u201d<\/p>\n It was a mess. The tuners were really bad, and the strings went straight over this solid piece of thing for a bridge. But it was a bass, and it was in my price range.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \u2014 Bill Wyman<\/p>\n Salvation came via his drummer in the Cliftons, who tipped him off to a Dallas Tuxedo being sold for \u00a38 \u2014 roughly $15 at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cSo we went and looked at it and, sure enough, it was a mess,\u201d Wyman said. \u201cIt had a thin, flat body with one pickup. The body was big, but it had an incredibly thin neck. The tuners were really bad, and the strings went straight over this solid piece of thing for a bridge and through a hole and hooked on the back. It was also a horrible brown color.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it was a bass, and it was in my price range, so we scraped half of the money together and promised him the other half later.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Playing his stripped-finish Fender Competition Mustang bass alongside Keith Richards in 1970. (Image credit: Alamy)<\/p>\n Before it was even paid off, Wyman began rebuilding it. One of the first bass guitars manufactured in England, the Tuxedo featured a Les Paul<\/a>\u2013style cutaway body and a short 30.5-inch scale. Combined with its slim neck, it suited Wyman\u2019s small hands perfectly, but he decided to reshape the oversized body into something sleeker, with short horns inspired by Gibson designs.<\/p>\n There was like two or three extra inches around the edge, and I went down the road to my uncle’s house and cut it out with his saw.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Bill Wyman<\/p>\n Armed with a cardboard template cut to the desired shape, he marked out the new curves on the body. \u201cThere was like two or three extra inches around the edge, and I went down the road to my uncle’s house and cut it out with his saw.\u201d<\/p>\n The glued-on frets were another liability \u2014 they buzzed badly \u2014 so he yanked them out and left them off. Though he\u2019d never played fretless,\u201cI figured I’d still have the lines in the fingerboard to go by if I took the frets out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n After sanding and refinishing the body, installing a Baldwin pickup and stringing it with Framus bass strings, he plugged into his \u201ceight-watt Watkins\u201d amp.<\/p>\n \u201cIt sounded fantastic,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n \n Wyman plays the modified Dallas Tuxedo bass as the Rolling Stones make their debut appearance on Ready Steady Go!, where they performed \u201cCome On,\u201d August 2, 1963. The bass was rarely seen in public. (Image credit: Tony Gale\/Alamy)<\/p>\n Ironically, the modified Tuxedo wasn\u2019t the bass he brought to his December 1962 audition for the Stones. At the time, he was playing a Vox Phantom through a Vox AC30 combo<\/a>. Wyman later joked that the band was more impressed by the amplifier<\/a> than the bassist.<\/p>\n \u201cThey thought, \u2018Oh, really good amp; bass player’s nothing special, but we’ll keep him so we can use the amp.\u2019 That was the general opinion, I have since learned. You know, they are real con artists, that lot.\u201d<\/p>\n Within a month, though, he was back with the Dallas.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just had a sound that couldn’t be beat.\u201d<\/p>\n As the Stones\u2019 fame escalated, the instrument became too valuable \u2014 and too vulnerable \u2014 for touring. \u201cAfter a while I got really scared to take it on the road because I was afraid it would get stolen. That happened a lot in those days, with the kids pouring onstage and all that.\u201d<\/p>\n Though it occasionally surfaced on television \u2014 including at the Stone\u2019 1965 appearance on Top of the Pops where they mimed to their hit \u201cThe Last Time\u201d \u2014 the Tuxedo largely retreated into the studio. There, it became Wyman\u2019s secret weapon.<\/p>\n \n The Dallas Tuxedo bass was kept in a glass case (left) at Wyman\u2019s Sticky Fingers in London until the restaurant closed in 2021. Wyman and his former wife Mandy Smith are seen here at its opening, May 9, 1989. (Image credit: Alamy)<\/p>\n \u201cI’ve used it on nearly every single record with the exception of the Some Girls album,\u201d he told us in 1978. \u201cI still use it even today for recording certain songs, because the sound is so pure and deep and rich.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"B5WKMJ](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/E6DzDD3ybErnkV2bTRp6mY.jpg\")
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