Bill Wyman doesn't hold with all these computer games

Somewhat ironically, considering he was talking at a charity Beatles event piggybacking on the hoopla around Beatles Game, Bill Wyman has been grumbling about Rock Band style games:

[He claimed] they will lead to fewer young people taking up real instruments.

"It encourages kids not to learn, that's the trouble. It makes less and less people dedicated to really get down and learn an instrument".

"I think it's a pity," he said, speaking at Abbey Road studios while recording a charity Beatles song for Children in Need.

Yeah, young teenagers shouldn't be playing computer games; they should be enjoying their time dating elderly rock stars, eh Bill?

Nick Mason - who was hanging about - nodded:

"It irritates me having watched my kids do it. If they spend as much time practising the guitar as learning how to press the buttons, they'd be damn good by now".

Naturally, the makers of Rock Band style games deny they're a bad influence:

But Alex Rigopulos, co-founder of Harmonix Music Systems, which created the Rock Band series, refuted the musicians' claims.

"We're constantly hearing from fans who were inspired by Rock Band to start studying a real instrument," he said.

It's true. After a couple of months using the guitar-style button keypad, many young people progress to the three-button joystick or the fully-programmable trackpad.

Sticky Fingers

You know why we've never got into archeology? It's because whenever we've thought about buying a metal detector, we've never been able to find one which has been endorsed by pop star.

Thank god, then, for the Bill Wyman signature metal detector, yours for just £125. Bill has, indeed, signed the detector. Nowadays, Bill likes uncovering old things, of course, which is a bit of a change from when he was dating Mandy Smith.
[via Stereogum]

Not that Bill Wyman: A conclusion

The attorney who attempted to stop Bill Wyman the journalist using his own name has backed down, sort of.

"We were only worried that people might read an article on music by a Bill Wyman and think that it was an inside account" seems to be the explanation for the outrageous and idiotic demand in the first place. Hmmm. But fair's fair - shouldn't Bill 'stone' Wyman's name - whenever he's doing anything involving writing - also be expected to make it clear that he's not the writer for the Atlanta Jounal-Constitution?

After all, if Rolling Stones fans are now thought to be so mentally enfeebled they can't tell the guy they read in the paper every week from the guy who had a relationship with the thirteen year old Mandy Smith when he was forty seven, isn't there a danger of the reverse happening?

When dinosaurs attack

The joys of cease and desist letters - now crumbly old cradlesnatcher Bill Wyman is writing to people called Bill Wyman telling them to stop using their own name. And, no, this isn't made-up.