Wayne Perkins, a session guitarist from Alabama who nearly joined the Rolling Stones and whose slide guitar featured on some of rock’s most memorable tracks, died March 16, 2026, at 74 after suffering a stroke on March 1, 2026.
His brother Dale Perkins confirmed the death, saying family were by his side when he passed. “He was one of a kind, and we loved him very much,” Dale wrote.
Perkins carved out a place in rock lore during a crucial period for the Rolling Stones. After Mick Taylor left in late 1974, Eric Clapton suggested the Birmingham, Alabama guitarist as a potential replacement. Perkins traveled to Munich in 1975 while the Stones worked on material for their 1976 record “Black and Blue,” adding distinctive guitar parts to “Hand of Fate,” “Memory Motel,” and the plaintive slide on “Fool to Cry.”
He also recorded a scorching solo on “Worried About You,” though that cut wasn’t released until the 1981 album “Tattoo You.” For a time, it appeared he might join the band permanently.
The role eventually went to Ron Wood. Keith Richards addressed the choice frankly in his 2010 memoir “Life,” noting that while the band admired Perkins and considered him a lovely player whose approach “wouldn’t have ricocheted against what Mick Taylor was doing,” they opted for Wood because he was English. “It is an English band,” Richards wrote, “and we all felt we should retain the nationality of the band at the time.”
Perkins described the strange experience of those sessions in a 1996 interview with the Los Angeles Daily News: “When I got there, it was the strangest thing — they played like the worst garage band I’d ever heard in my life.” Yet when the mood shifted, the group became something extraordinary.
He also turned down another major act: Lynyrd Skynyrd offered him a spot in December 1976, which he declined. Ten months later the band’s plane crashed on Oct. 20, 1977, killing his close friend Ronnie Van Zant and others. “Something didn’t feel right to me,” Perkins reflected in a 2022 interview with Culture Sonar. “Ronnie was one of my best friends. I knew all the guys in the band.”
Born in Birmingham in 1951, Perkins taught himself guitar at 12, influenced by players like James Burton and Chet Atkins. He left school at 16 to pursue music and became a regular at the famed Muscle Shoals Sound studio, whose session musicians—the Swampers—were celebrated in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.”
His session résumé reads like a roll call of 1970s music. By 1972 he co-founded Smith Perkins Smith, signed to Island Records, and moved to London. Through Island, founder Chris Blackwell brought him in to overdub guitar parts on Bob Marley and the Wailers’ “Catch a Fire.” Perkins played on “Concrete Jungle,” “Baby We’ve Got a Date (Rock It Baby),” and “Stir It Up,” though he wasn’t credited at first. He later remembered Marley dashing out “with a spliff about two feet long, trying to cram it down my throat.”
Joni Mitchell tapped him for “Court and Spark,” where he played electric guitar on “Car on a Hill.” His credits also include collaborations with Joe Cocker, Leon Russell, Steve Winwood, and Jimmy Cliff.
Though he never became a household name, Perkins was much admired by fellow musicians and guitar fans. Harvey Mandel and Rory Gallagher were also in contention for the Stones’ spot during the Black and Blue sessions, but it was Perkins who made the most lasting contribution to the album.
He kept a philosophical outlook about narrowly missing superstardom. Perkins continued to record through the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s and remained respected as a top session guitarist. In recent years he faced several brain tumors before suffering the stroke that proved fatal.
Wayne Perkins may not have joined the Rolling Stones or Lynyrd Skynyrd, but his guitar parts on many beloved 1970s recordings secure his legacy. His slide work on “Fool to Cry” alone ensures his place in rock history.