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Every breath you take.

The bassist Bill Wyman was a member of the Rolling Stones from 1962 until he decided to retire in 1993. He did a lot of things outside music but also recorded with other artists during the following years and even with the Stones a few times live. But it was obviously not an easy decision and his bandmates Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood tried to convince him to continue in the band. He recalled in an interview with Classic Rock how they reacted when he told them he was leaving the band. Bill Wyman recalls how the Stones' reacted when he left the band "Well, I should’ve done it a lot earlier… In the eighties. I hung on for a three-tour ending across ’89 and ’90 [three legs of the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle tour], after seven years of nothing, and I’d ended up with a bank overdraft of £200,000, because we weren’t earning anything. Mick and Keith were totally wealthy, so they weren’t bothered, but me, Charlie and Ronnie were scraping by. Ronnie started to do art to feed his family." "Anyway, I only started playing with them again in the hope it’d only be a couple of years, because I had all these other things I wanted to do. I wanted to do archaeology, write books, do photography, I wanted to play charity cricket, I wanted to do all these other things. And thirty years on I’m still wanting to do them, to tell the truth." He continued: "So I was so happy to leave in the end. Which they absolutely didn’t like, and refused to accept. They said: 'You have not left.' When they were doing the plan for the coming year, I said: 'Well there’s no point me discussing it, because I’m leaving.' And they went: 'You’re not leaving.' I said: 'I am leaving, I’ve left.' And they wouldn’t believe me. Two years went by, and they were putting the band together again to make a new record in ’94. They said: 'Are you still in the band?' I said: 'I left two years ago.'" "Mick and Charlie tried to talk me out of it, bless ’em, but I didn’t want to. I just dropped everything. Cleared the air. Gave up a career, a terrible marriage… Got married again and formed the Rhythm Kings with Georgie Fame and Gary Brooker, just for fun," Bill Wyman said. In 2024, at the age of 88, the original Wyman released his ninth solo studio album, which is called “Drive My Car”. It is his first album in nine years, since the most recent one “Back to Basics” was released back in 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IedlQbF_Lo&pp=ygUWYmlsbCB3eW1hbiBzdG9uZXMgbGl2ZQ%3D%3DThe post Bill Wyman recalls how the Stones’ reacted when he left the band appeared first on Rock and Roll Garage.

Over the past decades, we have always been connected through social media. There are too many people and too much information all the time, which might not always be good for us. Studies show that social media can make us feel sad, especially because we constantly compare our lives to others. Since people usually only post happy moments, we may feel like our own lives are not as good. The Jethro Tull leader Ian Anderson is part of the group who doesn't like social media and he talked about that in an interview with The Prog Report (Transcribed by Blabbermouth). Ian Anderson explains why he doesn't use social media "I'm as uninterested as I was back in 1968, '69, because I think there's a degree to which it's nice if someone gives you a little smile or asks for an autograph at the right time, but I don't depend on it and I certainly don't want to be smothered with affection or congratulatory communications from people." "I'm embarrassed by it. And if people want to be negative and nasty, well, I haven't got much time for that either. So I've never — although we have a presence, obviously, on social media on a number of platforms, which, professionally speaking, we are rather obliged to do. But in terms of personal communication, I have absolutely no interest in reading people's Twitterings on whatever it's called these days, whatever 'battery man' calls it. X, isn't it? It's called X." "It's all of these dependencies that people have, seemingly, on social media, particularly people who are blogging or in some way making their presence felt, they count the happiness of their days in how many followers they have gained and they fall into desperate senses of malaise and self-loathing because the number of followers is reduced. It can really play havoc with your life if you take too much notice of what people think of you. Just have the confidence in your own ability and your own sense of who you are and don't rely on other people to somehow bolster some insecurity or lack of confidence. It's not good for the soul." He continued: "So, no, I don't personally do social media. There are other people who do it on my behalf in the sense of making sure people are aware of what's going on, but not to to and fro with conversations, whether they're upbeat and friendly or negative and destructive. I just haven't got really time or inclination for that kind of discourse. It's not that I'm old-fashioned, because I'm at the front, in terms of operating programs and software in terms of the things that I really do need to do, musically speaking, I'm using advanced stuff in terms of digital recording and when it comes to photography, for example." "I mean, I'm up there with a state of the art in terms of what I do and delivering finished product to people. So, I think I'm not a person who lives in a sublime, dislocated period of either analog or old-fashioned values. I'm very much in touch with what's happening today, including what's happening in terms of news and current affairs and politics and religious strife and all the other things that beset our increasingly crowded planet," Ian Anderson said. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFOv9HHe19c&pp=ygULamV0aHJvIHR1bGw%3DThe post Ian Anderson explains why he doesn’t use social media appeared first on Rock and Roll Garage.

Kiss was formed by Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, Paul Stanley and Peter Criss in New York City back in 1973 and besides their music and incredible live shows, the makeup was an important part of the band's image. They became superstars and some kind of superheroes or cartoon characters to many fans as well. But in 1983 the band decided to finally reveal who they were and take the makeup off. In an interview with Billy Corgan (Transcribed by Ultimate Guitar), Gene Simmons recalled why the band decided to do that. Gene Simmons recalls why Kiss decided to take the makeup off "So, Peter left. We got a new drummer, Eric Carr, who was just fantastic, and tried to come back from (Kiss' 1980 album) 'Unmasked' and, you know, the disco stuff. And so he put out a heavier record, 'Creatures of the Night.' So, all that stuff was going on." "It did not do well in America. Music was changing, but at the very same time, we played Maracanã for 200,000 people in Rio. Vinnie Vincent was in the band. Half the band was gone. We just expect people to accept the new guys." "We liked the record. We're kind of headed in the right direction. But it's not working in America because, at the same time, you've got all these different… Punk and New Romance and Adam and the Ants and everything else happening." He continued: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcj34XixuYg&pp=ygUKbGljayBpdCB1cA%3D%3D "You've got a younger fan base that are more active. So we don't know what to do. So, Paul comes up with the idea of, 'Maybe it's time to take the makeup off.' And I'm going, 'I'm not sure about that. We have a quote legacy,' whatever." "You know, we lasted longer than The Beatles. Beatles lasted seven years and put out all this astonishing stuff and never, as far as I'm concerned, never decayed. Just kept moving, evolving. But of course, nobody is the Beatles. And so, I gave in. I said, 'Okay, let's see what happens.' And this 'Lick It Up' record happened," Gene Simmons said. During their unmasked era, the band released the albums: "Lick It Up" (1983), "Animalize" (1984), "Asylum" (1985), "Crazy Nights" (1987), "Hot in the Shade" (1989), "Revenge" (1992) and "Carnival of Souls: The Final Sessions" (1997).The post Gene Simmons recalls why Kiss decided to take the makeup off appeared first on Rock and Roll Garage.

Bob Dylan is one of the most prolific artists of all time. He has written more than 600 songs throughout his career and has sold millions of records worldwide. Over the past six decades, he has been an inspiration to countless artists, many of whom have covered his songs—sometimes even creating versions that surpassed the original. Bob himself liked many of those covers but there is one that he said was his favorite one. The cover of one of his songs Bob Dylan said was his favorite Bob once said that Johnny Rivers' version of Positively 4th Street was his favorite cover of one of his songs. “Of all the versions of my recorded songs, the Johnny Rivers version of ‘Positively 4th Street’ was my favorite. It was obvious that we were from the same side of town, had been read the same citations, came from the same musical family and were cut from the same cloth. I liked his version better than mine." "Most of the cover versions of my songs seem to take them out into left field somewhere. But Rivers’ version had the mandate down; the attitude and melodic sense to complete and surpass even the feeling that I had put into it. It shouldn’t have surprised me, though. He had done the same thing with ‘Maybellene’ and ‘Memphis,’ two Chuck Berry songs. When I heard Johnny sing my song, it was obvious that life had the same external grip on him as it did me,” Bob Dylan said in his book "Chronicles". "Positively 4th Street" was released by Bob in 1965 as a single. Three years later, in 1968, Johnny Rivers covered the track, being featured on his album "Realization". Johnny Rivers was quite happy about Bob's statement Johnny Rivers was obviously quite happy with Dylan's compliment and mentioned that a few years ago in an interview with Las Vegas Magazine. He said that people who knew him told him about Dylan praising his song in the book. "I need to polish (songs) it a lot because all the facts and the datelines are right. But it needs to be polished into an interesting. You know, how you write a book just like Dylan had somebody… Speaking of books, Bob Dylan’s book, you know, 'Chronicles: (Volume) One'." He continued: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGAWwK9unlQ&pp=ygUYam9obm55IHJpdmVycyBwb3NpdGV2aWx5 "He wrote a whole paragraph on me and he said my recording of “Positively 4th Street,” of all the recorded versions of his songs, that was his favorite. You ought to look that up. It’s on page 61, I think. Read what he said. Everyone called me after tha and said, 'Wow, did you see what Bob Dylan wrote about you in his book?'" "It’s a pretty good compliment. There’s thousands of recordings of his songs. Everybody back in those days, especially in the ’60s, recorded at least one Dylan song on their album, even the jazz singers. So for him to say out of all of those recordings, mine was his favorite … I think he said he liked it better than his record, or something," Johnny Rivers said. Rivers curiously said once that he wasn't into to Rap music but that he believed Bob Dylan was one of the first rappers. The reason were his lyrics, like for example “Maggie’s in the basement, mixing up the medicine...” Rivers toured and recorded from 1956 to 2023 and had many successful hits. Some of them are "Memphis", "Secret Agent Man", "Mountain of Love", "The Poor Side of Town" and more. He has a total of nine top 10 hits and 17 top 40 hits in the United States charts from 1964 to 1977. His farewell tour was announced in 2019 and the last show happened in 2023 at the Commerce Casino near Los Angeles.The post The cover of one of his songs Bob Dylan said was his favorite appeared first on Rock and Roll Garage.