Wayne Perkins, a versatile guitarist who played on albums for Joni Mitchell and Bob Marley and nearly joined the Rolling Stones and Lynyrd Skynyrd, died on March 16. He was 74.

The Alabama native died after suffering a stroke, Rolling Stone reported. His death was announced on social media by his brother, Dale Perkins.

“For those who haven’t heard, Wayne passed away yesterday peacefully,” Dale Perkins wrote on Facebook. “Our sisters and family members were there with him. We appreciate all the kind thoughts and memories. He was one of a kind and we loved him very much, and thank you all.”

Perkins was a respected guitarist who was recommended by Eric Clapton to the Rolling Stones when Mick Taylor left the group in early 1975.

He flew out to Munich, Germany, as the group was working on songs for their 1976 album, “Black and Blue.”

“It was always one of my goals to play lead guitar with the biggest rock and roll bands in the world,” Perkins told the Los Angeles Daily News in 1996. “When I got there, it was the strangest thing – they played like the worst garage band I’d ever heard in my life. I knew the records, but I wasn’t impressed with them live. Then, the right light in the studio went on and something magic happened. All of a sudden they went from awful to incredible.”

Perkins played lead guitar on three songs from “Black and Blue”: the ballads “Memory Motel” and “Fool To Cry” and the rocker “Hand of Fate,” AL.com reported.

During those sessions, Perkins played a solo on “Worried About You,” but it would not emerge until the song appeared on the Stones’ 1981 album, “Tattoo You,” Rolling Stone reported.

Ultimately, the Rolling Stones chose Ron Wood to replace Taylor.

“We liked Perkins a lot,” Stones guitarist Keith Richards wrote in his 2010 memoir, “Life.” “He was a lovely player, same style, which wouldn’t have ricocheted against what Mick Taylor was doing, very melodic, very well-played stuff.

“It wasn’t so much the playing, when it came down to it,” Richards added, according to AL.com. “It came down to the fact that Ronnie was English! Well, it is an English band, although you might not think that now. And we all felt we should retain the nationality of the band at the time.”

After he was passed over by the Stones, Perkins declined an offer to join Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rolling Stone reported.

“Something didn’t feel right to me,” Perkins told Culture Sonar in a 2022 interview. “I turned them down in December ‘76 and the plane crash was in October ‘77. I think about that one from time to time. Ronnie (Van Zant) was one of my best friends. I knew all the guys in the band and I would have made a ton of money.”

Perkins grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and began playing guitar when he was 12, Rolling Stone reported.

He found a job as a session guitarist at Muscle Shoals Sound studio in Alabama. He would become one of the musicians known as the “Swampers,” who received a nod in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s hit “Sweet Home Alabama.”

Perkins appeared in sessions with Joe Cocker, Leon Russell, Jimmy Cliff, Bobby Womack, Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi, AL.com reported.

While in Los Angeles, Perkins played guitar on Mitchell’s song “Car On a Hill,” AL.com reported.

In 1973, Perkins played guitar with Bob Marley and the Wailers during the band’s “Catch a Fire” sessions.

“I’d never played on anything like that,” Perkins told the New American Journal in 2025. “But I’d been thrown in the mix with a lot of heavy-duty bluegrass players so you couldn’t really scare me with anything.”

“If I had joined,” he said in a 2009 interview, “by now I’d probably be a dead millionaire.”

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