Bill talks about where the name of his documentary The Quiet One comes from, meeting Ray Charles and the best and worst of his time with the Rolling Stones.

Bill called into the Arts Express radio show on WBAI Pacifica National Radio hosted by Prairie Miller to discuss his musical career and the documentary The Quiet One – and the interview is now available via the CounterPunch.org website.

Read the entire interview at The Quiet One: Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones Phones In – an excerpt is below:

PRAIRIE: And what do you think about the title of the film The Quiet One as a description of who you are–or not?

BILL WYMAN: I’ve always been mentioned as that. In fact, I was looking at an article from 1964 in England just yesterday, and this is not a joke, this is actually gospel truth, and it said, “Bill why are you known as The Quiet One?” It’s in so many articles and documentaries and things that always called me The Quiet One. And they would just say why don’t you ever speak, and I said, because no one ever asked me a question!

When we used to do press conferences, hundreds of them in every country in the world, you know, you’d sit there and they’d direct questions at Mick, and Mick’d say let someone else talk–and they’d direct it to Keith or Brian in the early days. And me and Charlie used to sit up the end and have a cup of tea and talk about where we’re going on holiday, you know, the football scores or something, you know, because we were never questioned! And so, I think it’s a perfect title really because I’m known as that. Although I wasn’t a loud bass player either. I mean John Entwistle of The Who always said to me if you play bass properly, you have to make their ears bleed! I didn’t play — I didn’t play like that. I played very quiet, subdued, so, I’m The Quiet One.

PRAIRIE: You said at one point in the film, “It was us against the world.” What do you mean by that?

BILL WYMAN: Well, wherever we went we were antagonized by the media, the newspapers, the TV, the radio. We were victimized really, we would always be put down as saying we had long hair, we were dirty, we smelled, we wore our grubby clothes, and none of it was truthful, you know, but they always had to gossip. They never talked about the music until much later.

We had to fight that battle in England at the beginning, then when we went to France, went to Germany, went to Holland, and Scandinavia, Australia, America, Canada. Wherever we went, we had to go through that that battle to kind of get the music across and not the image. We didn’t do the image as an image. That’s just the way we were, that’s the way we just wanted to be. It wasn’t planned or organized. You just did it.

Read the entire interview at The Quiet One: Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones Phones In.