last night, for no matter the accuracy of time we would refer to it as a point of last night, there was an incident. as the final embers of the first day of April of this year ebbed away and the second day of the same month emerged i switched over our television set to the wonders of BBC 4. they were screening a look at some of the highlights off of Top Of The Pops from the year that was 1981, look you see.
i would imagine that you don't really need to guess who was on it as there's every chance you have read the title of this post and know, and just want me to get on with it all, but have a guess at who was on......
yes, that is indeed him, ladies and gentlemen. Mr Bill Wyman, the self-styled and frequently voted "7th best member of The Rolling Stones" and occasional solo star in the world of pop. he is pictured here on Top Of The Pops performing the classic single Je Suis Un Rock Star, which evidently charted far better than i had hitherto been aware of. it's a smart song, like, but more of that later.
it is possible to interpret the incident which happened in our lounge as the the broadcast was beamed onto our television set is one in which i disgraced myself. i would accept that, but again more of that later. for now, i am sure you want to watch a snippet of Bill in action, and here is a snippet. sadly not in Camcorder mode, i didn't have that phone handy to film with.
the BBC were certainly very excited to get Bill Wyman on to Top Of The Pops, since they had no less that Steve Wright off of Steve Wright In The Afternoon off of Radio 1 in to introduce him. Steve Wright only ever got called in to Top Of The Pops to introduce the most senior and revered members of the rock and pop establishment, unless at some point he also introduced someone that was total crap, such as Spandau Ballet or Sonia.
the incident, then. what happened when i saw this was that i might have kicked off a little bit. my (considerably) better half, who was doing some sort of painty-doodles and wasn't really paying attention to the TV, got something of a fright when i started shouting at the television with a somewhat giddy, excited, passionate and furious squeal. why would i be doing that? because Bill Wyman once again had his legendary blue suit on.
this is another appearance from this blue suit in 1981 for the collection, then. last year i gave what i felt was a pretty comprehensive rundown on all the times Bill Wyman wore this blue suit, and you can read that rundown by clicking these words in blue. apparently i missed an appearance of it, and indeed the tie. at least he changed his shirt.
what was the deal with Bill Wyman and this blue suit in 1981? it's a very good and pertinent question, even if it seems that i am the only one asking it. i do have some theories on the subject, which i am quite happy to share with you here. if you are not quite so happy to have these theories shared with you, though, then you may well wish to stop reading around about now.
as mentioned, and as we shall get to later, Je Suis Un Rock Star was something of a hit. this will have been quite unexpected, i suppose, and thus there will have been a concerted effort to exploit it.
at this stage of his career - and you have to remember this was all long before he invented a metal detector, or married a sixteen year old - "Brand Bill" was pretty much limited to "the crap dull one out of the Stones" at worst, or "the 7th best member of The Rolling Stones" at best. whatever validity or merit there is in them, none of them immediately suggest "marketing opportunity".
my lead speculation, then, is that someone somewhere told Bill that if he kept on wearing the same blue suit - both in his day job as a secondary but still quite important member of The Rolling Stones and in his classy new capacity as a pop singer - then people would coin the name "Blue Suit Bill" to refer to him as, and that would be smarter than just banking on his ranking within the Stones.
another theory which i had would be that he didn't have a lot of money, and so was wearing this blue suit all the time as he didn't have any others. but then i remembered he was one of the Rolling Stones who was not Ronnie Wood, and so was a bit better at looking after his coins of money.
As for Je Suis Un Rock Star, well, it's a nice enough song i suppose, with an absolutely bonkers bass part on it, and a sort of quasi-chorus that goes "si si". the latter part is, to my mind, more Spanish than it is French, but Bill Wyman, wearer of a blue suit, is an educated man so he would know more than me.
what's the song about? pretty much what the name says, and pretty much what all pop and rock songs were about, once. it's the tale of him seducing a quite willing and possibly of legal age schoolgirl with the promise of a trip to his chateau or villa in France for a bit of ooh la la. basically, seducing schoolgirls and taking them off to France was the motivation and point of practically all pop and rock songs from 1971 to around 1999, maybe 2000. that sort of thing stopped being fashionable or acceptable around the turn of the century, hence the dramatic fall off of rock stars and pop songs over the last fifteen or so years.
no, sh!t, it was Come Back Suzanne that had the bonkers bass part.
why did Bill Wyman do Je Suis Un Rock Star as a solo concern rather than as a Rolling Stones number? personal jealousy, i suppose. the overwhelming majority of Stones songs are Jagger-Richards compositions, as they believe they are the best at them (and evidence tends to suggest yes they are) and they no doubt quite like all the publishing money that comes in as a consequence. Mick and Keith were probably just upset that they didn't think to write a song as smart as Bill had about seducing a schoolgirl and have her pretend that she was his daughter whilst in France, and so had nothing to do with it.
right, that's it for this recently unearthed footage of a further example of Bill Wyman in his quite well used blue suit. if i find any further examples, no doubt i shall kick off about it and hopefully will have the opportunity to bring you a further update here.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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