Darryl Jones, this time around, gets to play bass his own way
Miles Davis rarely asked Darryl Jones to play bass a certain way. Usually, the late jazz master preferred to tell him how not to play. And when he did that, he had one basic instruction: Don’t get stuck repeating the things you know to make yourself comfortable.
“He was cutting off these avenues so that I would come up with something new,” says Jones, who was with Davis from 1983 to 1985. “I remember one time, I just decided, ‘The old man just doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’ Over a few gigs, I started reverting back to the lines I’d been playing. He looked at me and went, ‘Well, damn, if you have to play that, go ahead.’ I thought I was flying under the radar, but he heard everything.”
Jones, 56, no longer worries much about that criticism. His latest gig, for 25 years and counting, is bassist for the Rolling Stones. It wouldn’t make much sense for him to follow Davis’ advice and transform Bill Wyman’s familiar swooping line from “Paint It, Black” into something more fanciful or open-ended. So he puts a subtle stamp on the classics and saves his imagination for side gigs such as the Darryl Jones Project, a new rock combo with Chicago-born singer Nicholas Tremulis and other friends. “You don’t want to come out from the start and play something different than what Bill played,” he says. “You have to just choose a few things and work around them and try to make them yours.”
Jones, who spent most of the ’ 80s as the go-to bassist for touring superstars, working with Sting and Madonna, started his career on the South Side. His father was a jazz fan and drummer, and his mother liked soul music, and Darryl initially took drum lessons. Once he spotted a bass-playing neighbor, he bought a Paul McCartney-style Hofner bass, mastered the instrument and studied at Chicago Vocational High School. He played in school bands and started gigging, as early as 14, with local musicians such as pianist Ghalib Ghallab and guitarist Phil Upchurch, many of whom were family friends.
“A lot of times it was my mother who took me to the gigs,” he recalls by phone from Seattle, where he was about to perform with Davis’ nephew, Vincent Wilburn Jr., in a tribute act called the Miles Electric Band. “I had parents who trained me very well and I knew not to get into trouble. I was clear what I was there for.”
It was Wilburn, a Chicago drummer, who introduced Jones to the pioneering trumpeter in the first place. “(Davis) looked at me, and he looked at Vince, and he said, ‘Vince, this is a weird-looking dude,’” Jones says. The friendly insult broke the ice, and Jones was able to stay calm while auditioning for Davis’ group. He got the job, and went on to tour with Davis’ band and record on 1983’s “Decoy” and 1985’s “You’re Under Arrest.”
The Stones audition came in 1993, when Wyman left the group after 31 years. Jones was one of some 12 prominent bassists to try out, and he had a slight edge because he’d known Keith Richards through working with the guitarist’s sidemen Steve Jordan and Charlie Drayton, and singer Mick Jagger through his Sting connections. But he made a crucial choice while playing with the band for the first time—on a song he started doodling around on, James Brown’s classic “Licking Stick—Licking Stick.”
“It was easy for bass players to walk into that situation and look at Keith and Mick and go, ‘I guess I have to impress them,’” Jones recalls. “That wasn’t the way I was thinking. I was thinking, ‘Let me listen very carefully to what Charlie (Watts, the band’s drummer) is playing. If that works, the rest will work itself out.’”
The strategy worked, and Jones found himself with a steady gig, touring all over the world and playing on Stones albums from 1994’s “Voodoo Lounge” to 2016’s “Blue & Lonesome.” When the Stones aren’t on the road, he concentrates on side projects such as 2012’s 3 Brave Souls, with fellow Davis-band alumni John Beasley (keyboards) and Ndugu Chancler (the drummer who played on Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and died in early February). Where the Souls were rooted in jazz, the Darryl Jones Project looks back to the first records Jones heard as a child, including the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and, of course, the Stones’ “Satisfaction.” The band, which includes Elton John, Curtis Mayfield and Commodores touring veterans, hopes to finish an album this year.
That’s if Jones can find the time away from his top priority, the Stones, who grossed $120 million on just 14 shows last year, according to Pollstar. Will they tour in 2018? “You know, I hear a lot of this stuff from fans: ‘I’m going to see you in … ‘” Jones says. “But I do hear rumblings. I think there’s going to be more.” Two days after Jones’ coy declaration, the band announced 11 spring and summer concerts throughout Europe.