How Bill Wyman's Bass and Billy Preston's Clavinet Built the Groove on 'Miss You'

The disco pulse that drives “Miss You” came from a very simple, almost accidental decision. Bill Wyman, fed up with Keith Richards’ usual guitar-heavy direction, started playing a straight eighth-note pattern on his bass—no swing, no syncopation—just a steady, hypnotic thump-thump-thump-thump. He later said he was channeling the basslines he heard at New York’s Studio 54, even though he hadn’t actually been there yet. That locked-in feel gave the song its dancefloor backbone.

The real secret sauce came from Billy Preston, playing a clavinet through a wah-wah pedal at Pathé Marconi Studios in Paris. Preston wasn’t even a Rolling Stone at the time—he was just hanging around the sessions—but he heard the track and started layering in this percussive, choppy clavinet part that sat right between Wyman’s bass and Charlie Watts’ hi-hat. The clavinet added a funky, almost synth-like texture that glued everything together. Mick Jagger loved it so much he turned Preston’s part up in the mix, giving the song its signature lean-forward groove. Without that Paris clavinet track, “Miss You” might have just been another Stones disco flirtation—instead, it became the template.