Groupie Accidentally Sleeps with Bass Player
LOUISVILLE, KY – The day after The Academy concert, Victoria Jorgensen, 22, was terrified to realize that she had accidentally slept with the band’s bass player – mistaking him for someone important in the band.
“I can’t believe how stupid I was,” said Jorgensen. “I mean, I went up to the guy and was like ‘are you in the band’ and he was all like, ‘yeah, I’m in the band’ so I did him. Then this morning I was telling my friends and I realized he was just the bass player. This happens to me all the time.”
Jorgensen plans to do more research before sleeping with another band member. “This won’t happen again,” said Jorgensen. “If I’m going to sleep with someone, they’d better be important. I mean, I could find someone here in town as important as a bass player.” Adam Siska, The Academy bass player, was unavailable for comment.
Bass players are the Rodney Dangerfields of the rock world, it seems. I tell ya, they just don’t get no respect. And no wonder! On the day after God created rock stars (sometime around 4 am on a gin-soaked Saturday night in Memphis), he created groupies. And he commanded them: “Thou shalt honor thy singer and thy lead guitarist and have no false rock Gods before thee.”
Meaning, pants-on-fire frontmen and swaggering lead guitarists with cigarettes dangling from their lips get their pick of the chicks. Drummers may not get a lion’s share of booty, but most people can at least name one or two of rock’s most famous beat-keepers.
But who really knows or cares about the lowly bassist, standing stone-faced and static in the shadows? Heck, there are over a dozen websites devoted to bass player putdowns. (Q: What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians? A: A bass player.) There’s even a Facebook page called “Bass Player Jokes.” (Go ahead, it’s okay to LIKE it.) Are bass players really just one rung up the ladder from roadies when it comes to getting laid?
Okay, bassists Paul McCartney (understandably) and KISS reptile Gene Simmons (inconceivably) were highly desired by the types of rock nymphs who haunted hotel hallways and paid roadies in blowjobs for the chance to be smuggled into backstage dressing rooms. But there is one bass player whose sexual adventures far outnumbered Paul’s, Gene’s, and nearly everyone else’s back in the trailblazing days of cocksure rock gods. Yes, one man whose insatiable appetite for women shatters all myths of the ain’t gettin’ any bassist. And that man is Bill Wyman, the dark, diminutive musician who played with the Rolling Stones from 1962 through 1993.
In 2006, Maxim estimated that Wyman bedded 1,000 woman during his career, placing him at number 10 on the magazine’s list of Sex Legends. Only two other rock stars made the list: Motorhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister, at number 8 with 1,200 women, and Simmons, at number 3 with 4,600 conquests. (As a historical footnote, a Venetian hotel porter named Umberto Billo tops the list with 8,000, giving room service a whole new meaning.) And Elvis is, of course, in a class by himself.
Many suggest that Maxim greatly underestimated Bill Wyman’s prowess. It’s actually rumored that he had sex with more than 2,000 women during his tenure with the Stones, sometimes partaking of two or three fans per night over a 31-year period.
In his 1990 memoir, Stone Alone, the poker-faced Wyman presents the following scenario from the Stones’ touring days: “Brian [Jones] and I liked to share [hotel rooms] because we were on the prowl all day long and every night, chatting up girls in shops, girls backstage, reporters interviewing us, fan-club secretaries. In 1965 we sat down one evening in a hotel and worked out that since the band had started two years earlier, I’d had 278 girls, Brian 130, Mick about 30, Keith 6 and Charlie none. People always assume that Mick, particularly, was very active sexually, but that wasn’t so in the sixties.” (Keith Richards has frequently joked about Bill’s accountant-like obsession with tallying tail.)
By Wyman’s own accounts, he started his womanizing ways shortly after marrying his first wife and fathering a son, feeling no sense of guilt because the marriage was “a failure.”
In a 2006 interview with Simon Hattenstone of The Guardian, Wyman describes a favorite pick-up process: “Me and Brian used to look out of the windows, cos we shared a suite, and we would ask the night porter to go out and get the one in the striped thing and the one in the shorts next to her, and they’d come up, and you’d spend a couple of hours with them and say bye and give ’em a kiss, and then about half an hour later you’d say, ‘That one in the red dress.'”
The shameless shagaholic goes on: “They [the girls] helped get over the boring times. And it became habitual…It was better than drugs because you couldn’t OD on it. If you’d had enough your body didn’t work any more, and it was as simple as that. So I thought it was quite healthy.”
But despite the old in-and-out routine, Bill Wyman did attempt to settle down — with a girl he started dating when she was 13 and he was 47. In 1989 he married Mandy Smith, with her mother’s consent, when she hit the ripe old age of 18. They were divorced 2 years later. At about the same time, Bill’s son Stephen was having a fling with Mandy’s mother! Oh, the one-night stands are so much less complicated.
So, there you have it. One bass player has scored with enough women to make up for the thousands who are ridiculed as nothing more than sexless pieces of rhythm machinery. Bill Wyman is an inspiration. He’s a legend. He’s alive and kicking at 79. And we’re grateful he had access to good antibiotics.
Here’s an interesting clip of Bill on a British TV show. Check out his Mick imitation:
By Dana Spiardi, October 24, 2012
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I’ll bet nobody had to ask these guys to get the burner going. What a sight: two of my favorite menfolk slaving over a hot stove, just the way god would want it. Are they barefoot, by any chance?
Ladies, come on! Who WOULDN’T want a shirtless Keith Richards in their kitchen, up bright and early, frying eggs (and maybe serving breakfast in bed, hee, hee)? And everyone used to say that Keef was only alive between 4 pm and 4 am and spent the daylight hours getting blood transfusions! You see the sun shining through that window in the top photo? Ha! Another Keith myth busted. Thanks to some morning coke and coffee he’s no doubt feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, composing riffs in his head.
It turns out these kitchen photos were taken at Andy Warhol’s Montauk, NY, home, where the Stones were rehearsing for their 1975 world tour. (I think Andy liked his eggs silver.)
Keith is known to make some mighty mean ‘bangers and mash’ (we Yanks call it sausage and mashed potatoes). He kindly shared the recipe in his memoir “Life.” Click here to see it.
As for Jimi, I’d love to think he was whipping up some voodoo chili, adding a pinch of his special herb for just the right smokey flavor, but he’s probably only posing. Pose away! I’d rather watch him walk around Chez Blogger modeling that BEE-U-tiful teal suit than have him cook for me.
Jimi may have fancied himself the lord of that manor, but he was actually subletting the ground-floor apartment at 34 Montagu Square in Marylebone, London, from Ringo Starr for £30 a month. The guitarist lived there with his paramour Kathy Etchingham, his manager Chas Chandler, and Chas’s girlfriend Lotta Null.
It was there in late 1966 or early 1967 that Jimi wrote his classic tune “The Wind Cries Mary.” Interestingly, kitchen duty – or lack thereof – purportedly inspired the song’s creation. Kathy (middle name Mary) had stormed out of the house after Jimi berated her for not cooking. The argument got his creative juices flowing. He sat right down and wrote a real beauty. (And not one word of the song has anything to do with culinary matters.) Alas, the apartment hijinks came to an end some time in ’67, when Ringo evicted Jimi for throwing whitewash all over the walls during an acid trip.
Okay, my musician friends: I shan’t cook for as long as I can get away with it. Who’s going to write a song inspired by ME?
And the wind cries….gravy.
© Dana Spiardi, Nov 6, 2015
Images of Jimi by Petera Niemeier.
Images of Keith by Ken Regan.
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I was going to put a lot of work into this column, maybe call an Allegheny County councilman or a Pittsburgh school board member and then grind out some serious public policy analysis. Then I thought, what for? Steve Miller just got elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and he has never agonized over a single word.
In Mr. O’Neill’s column titled “In Steve Miller’s rockin’ triumph, words fail,” he accuses the soon-to-be inducted Rock and Roll Hall of Famer of writing ridiculous rhymes (El Paso coupled with hassle) and repeating phrases ad infinitum. The two prime examples — take the money and run (sung 11 times in less than three minutes) and keep on a-rockin’ me baby (chanted 21 times in three minutes, seven seconds) — are from two of Miller’s highest-charting singles. And then there’s that infamous pompatus of love line from “The Joker” that’s taken on a life of its own and actually inspired the title of a 1996 film. (Hey, who doesn’t know at least one baby-boomer dude who fancies himself a picker, grinner, lover, sinner, joker, smoker, and midnight toker?)
Now, Mr. O’Neill’s not knocking Steve Miller’s musicianship or popularity, mind you. He acknowledges the guitarist’s solid blues roots as a sideman for giants like Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, and references his contributions to the psychedelic hippie music fest scene of the ‘60s. He validates Miller’s commercial success by quoting Sean McDowell, a DJ at Pittsburgh’s premier classic rock station WDVE-FM, who wows us with the fact that The Steve Miller Band’s “Greatest Hits 1974-78” LP sold over 13 million copies, topping sales of both “Abbey Road” and “Elvis’ Christmas Album.’’
I got a nostalgic, summer-breeze feeling reading Mr. O’Neill’s description of the culture of mid-1970s rock fans and their “nights in smoke-filled Camaros listening to the 8-track player.” Ah, memories. In my hometown you couldn’t escape the sounds of Steve Miller’s “Fly Like an Eagle” LP blasting from big black 6×9 speakers jammed up against the rear windows of old VW bugs and Gremlins. Now, that LP may not have been a groundbreaking piece of work, but it was solid enough that Rolling Stone magazine supposedly voted it 1976’s best album and later pegged it at #445 on its list of 500 greatest albums of all time. It stood its own, style wise, among the mediocre mass-produced music that was saturating the airwaves in the mid to late 1970s: disco, Southern California soft-soap, and arena rock performed by god-like figures who shunned underwear.
Okay, now that we’ve justified Steve Miller’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the basis of his musicianship, let’s get back to those lyrics. Abracadabra, they really reach out and grab ya! But keep in mind that Miller is far from being the only Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee guilty of writing repetitious hooks or lame rhymes. James Brown sang the word please 22 times in his 1956 single “Please, Please, Please.” The Beatles sang the phrase all you need is love 12 times in their 1967 hit song of the same name. They sang the single word love 18 times, and pleaded love is all you need 21 times. That’s a whole lotta love.
And on the subject of embarrassing lyrics, no one tops Songwriter Hall of Fame inductee Jimmy Webb, who penned these immortal words: MacArthur Park is melting in the dark. All the sweet green icing flowing down. Someone left the cake out in the rain. I don’t think that I can take it, ’cause it took so long to bake it. And I’ll never have that recipe again.
In closing, let’s hand it to Rock Hall of Fame inductee Alice Cooper, who spoke for many an artist when he wrote those classic “School’s Out” lyrics: well we got no class, and we got no principles, and we got no innocence. We can’t even think of a word that rhymes.
Thanks, Brian O’Neill, for sparking my interest in an artist and an album I haven’t thought about for a long time. Before I read your piece I was going to put a lot of work into today’s blog post, maybe call a local ethnomusicologist to discuss how Bulgarian rhythms have influenced Robert Plant’s solo work, or grind out a serious piece on how and why David Bowie legitimized gender-bending rock in the early ’70s. Then I thought, what for? Steve Miller just got elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And even though there may be other worthy artists who should have preceded him (Joan Baez, Harry Nilsson, Link Wray, and Dick Dale, to name a few), Mr. Miller has earned his right to be there. Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo…that’s living in the USA, for ya!
Here’s a great live clip of Steve in 1972:
(Click here to read Brian O’Neill’s entire Steve Miller column.)
© Dana Spiardi, Dec 22, 2015
]]>Rod, the one-time king of the British Mods, looks fab, as usual. But I always loved Beck’s style, too — despite that shoe-polish black-cat hair that he was STILL sporting at age 70 when I saw him several months ago at the Palace Theater in Greensburg, PA.
The “Truth” LP turned 45 years old in 2013. At that time Rod told Billboard magazine that he had “a brainwave” of an idea for a tour that would unite the blokes from his early ’70s band Faces with those of the Jeff Beck group. (Current Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood played in both those bands, by the way.)
But, reality kicked in. Rod said, “Whether Jeff would want to do it, there’s two chances — slim and none…We were going to do a blues album, a modern sort of “Beck-Ola” (the group’s second LP) maybe, but we couldn’t agree on a great many things. I sent him a Christmas card, or e-mailed him a Christmas card, the year before last and never heard anything back.”
Not returning a Christmas greeting! So ungentlemanly, Jeff!
Beck has long been famous within the music world for his explosive temper. Rod summed it up this way: “When Jeff’s angry at you, he stays angry for a long time.”
Here’s a kind introduction from Rod. “I Ain’t Superstitious” was first recorded by Howlin’ Wolf in 1961.
Here’s the original Jeff Beck version from the “Truth” LP. “Rolling Stone” lists it at #86 on their list of the 100 greatest guitar songs of all time. The magazine said, “At every break, Beck’s aqueous wah-wah tone makes his instrument sound like it’s talking.” The song was used in the soundtrack of Martin Scorsese’s film “Casino.” You’ve just got to give this a listen.
© Dana Spiardi, Oct 28, 2015
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Speaking to an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences panel on October 26, 2006, Mr. Lang said, “I had this inner dream. I grew up listening to Roy Rogers sing ‘Happy Trails’ on the radio and I thought, ‘What a perfect way to end the show.’ He was the only artist who turned us down. He didn’t get it at all.”
Actually, I think Roy did get it, and that’s why he had the good sense to decline Lang’s invitation. I can’t imagine the crowd’s reaction to the crooning cowboy, who was 59 at that time and probably not a fan of counter-culture. They might have thought they were hallucinating (well, they probably were) seeing him on stage, especially if horse Trigger was anywhere nearby. I guess some festival goers might have found his performance a bit quaint — the Cowboy as a symbol of America. Or, they could have seen it as a joke. Whatever the case, a Roy roundup at the end of the show would have been anti-climactic, to say the least.
So, the best was saved for last. Jimi performed 16 songs between 9:00 am – 11:10 am on August 17, 1969. The 13th was his legendary version of “The Star Spangled Banner,” played on a Fender Stratocaster. He wrapped up the 3 days of peace and love with “Hey Joe,” a song about a man heading out to shoot his old lady down. So much for happy trails! I’m glad Jimi chose to go out that way. It was a bold move. “Hey Joe” had been performed in different styles by all kinds of artists, including folk performers in Scotland, going back to the mid-1950s. But it’s his rendition that still haunts the mind.
When I think about all the photos and film footage I’ve seen of Woodstock through the years, the one image that burns brightest in my eye is that of Mr. Hendrix in that gorgeous white fringed shirt adorned with blue beads.
Oh, say can you hear?
© Dana Spiardi, August 17, 2015
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