Wayne Perkins, Guitarist to the Stars, Dies at 74

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Wayne Perkins, Guitarist to the Stars, Dies at 74

Mr. Perkins worked with Bob Marley, Joni Mitchell and many others, almost joined the Rolling Stones and turned down an offer from Lynyrd Skynyrd.

By Richard Sandomir
April 8, 2026

Wayne Perkins, a versatile guitarist who injected Southern rock into the reggae of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ breakthrough album, “Catch a Fire,” auditioned for a spot in the Rolling Stones and turned down an offer to join Lynyrd Skynyrd, died on March 16 at his home in Argo, Ala., outside Birmingham. He was 74. ... His sister Nadine Sims said his death was caused by a stroke, and that he also had ongoing medical issues related to brain tumors and severe back pain.

Mr. Perkins was a laconic, self-effacing musician rooted in the Southern twang of country and blues. But he could adapt to a wide range of styles, including the melancholy pop of Joni Mitchell’s “Car on a Hill” and Mr. Marley’s swaying “Concrete Jungle.” ... “He was a monster guitar player — I called him a guitar slinger — who had a monster voice,” the journalist Glynn Wilson, who has written extensively about Mr. Perkins, said in an interview.

Mr. Perkins recorded and toured — mostly in the 1970s and ’80s, his most productive decades — with A-list artists like Joe Cocker, Leon Russell, Percy Sledge, John Prine, Roger McGuinn, Jerry Jeff Walker and Bobby Womack. ... His work on tour with Mr. Russell’s Shelter People band in the early 1970s impressed Eric Clapton, and in 1975 Mr. Clapton recommended him to Mick Jagger, who was looking for a guitarist to replace Mick Taylor.

Before Mr. Perkins’s audition, at a theater in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, had begun in earnest, Mr. Jagger and the band’s drummer, Charlie Watts, stood onstage beside him, staring straight ahead — “like they’re posing for an album cover,” Mr. Perkins later told the journalist Ed Reynolds.


Wayne Perkins in 1972. A versatile guitarist, he could adapt to a wide range of styles, including the melancholy pop of Joni Mitchell’s “Car on a Hill” and Bob Marley’s swaying “Concrete Jungle.” via Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

“They wanted to see if I looked like a Rolling Stone,” he said, “and I hadn’t even played a note for ’em yet.”

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Richard Sandomir, an obituaries reporter, has been writing for The Times for more than three decades.