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[stevie]

Been thinking anout this for ages so decided to throw it out there for discussion.

It seems that Bill never gets mentioned in the same breath as his contemporaries in Macca, John Entwhistle, John Paul Jones, Jack Bruce, etc, yet he provided some of the best bass lines in some of the best songs in rock history.  Was it the shadow of Mick and Keith?

You could argue the same about Charlie's drumming too, I guess, though Bill seems to more in the shadows.  Ironically, I consider his autobiography, Stone Alone, to be the best one ever done by a musician perhaps by any celebrity!  His great memory and detailed diaries of his life made for brilliant reading. Including just about every detail of nights he spent with birds in the Sixties, lol.

Anyway, it's up for discussion.

[nimrod]

Underrated ?
Does his contribution to bass, music, or even society warrant any more notoriety than he already receives? I don't believe so. I don't want to take away anything from his playing by any means.

Him & Charlie played it straight and simple, a good rhythm section, solid, like say The Kinks.

[oldbrownshoe]

I never really consider the constituent parts of a group, it's the overall sound and look that matters.

Bill swears blind he came up with the 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' riff but, like Brian Jones on many songs before that, found that the eventual record went out as a Jagger-Richard composition!

[stevie]

Yeah all good points guys. I think what I was trying to say is we know that he was a damn good bass player but I feel he gets overlooked a bit. Maybe even taken for granted. You listen to the classic Stones songs of 1968-74 and Bill's bass is always prominent.