Stones’ bassist keeps projects on side
Miles Davis rarely asked Darryl Jones to play bass a certain way.
Usually, the late jazz master preferred to tell Jones how not to play, with 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,” said 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, worries less these days about such criticism. He has been the bassist for the Rolling Stones for the past 25 years.
He spent much of the 1980s as the go-to bassist for touring superstars, working with Sting and Madonna, after starting his career on Chicago's South Side.
His father was a jazz fan and drummer, his mother liked soul music and Darryl initially took drum lessons.
After spotting a bassplaying 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, at 14, started performing with area musicians, including family friends.
“It was my mother who took me to the gigs,” he recalled by phone from Seattle, where he was preparing to perform with Davis’ nephew, Vincent Wilburn Jr., as part of the Miles Electric Band, a tribute act.
“I had parents who trained me very well, and I knew not to get into trouble,” he said.
Wilburn, a Chicago drummer, introduced Jones to Davis.
“He looked at me, and he looked at Vince, and he said, ‘Vince, this is a weird-looking dude,’” Jones said.
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 and record with Davis’ band.
The Stones audition arose in 1993, with Jones being one of a dozen prominent bassists to try out. He had a slight edge because he had known Keith Richards through his work with the guitarist’s sidemen Steve Jordan and Charlie Drayton, and singer Mick Jagger through his Sting connections.
When the Stones aren’t recording or touring, Jones concentrates on side projects such as 3 Brave Souls, with fellow Davis-band alumni John Beasley (keyboards) and, until his recent death, drummer Ndugu Chancler, who played on Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.”
Whereas 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 the Stones’ “Satisfaction.”