Bill Wyman: I've got better things to do than join the Rolling Stones again

WHEN I ask 76-year-old Bill Wyman if he's thought of retiring, he simultaneously laughs and looks insulted.

By: Joanna Della-Ragione
Published: Mon, April 8, 2013



"I work non-stop, morning, noon and night and I've done that all my life," he tells me over a glass of sauvignon blanc at the Groucho Club. "There's no question of retiring. What would I do? Sit and vegetate? That's what people do and they die. I'll go on working for ever."

It's not as if Bill has ever had a regular job to retire from. Three decades as bassist for The Rolling Stones, arguably the world's greatest rock and roll band, ensured convention was kept at bay.

And his reputation as a womaniser, (he is rumoured to have slept with a thousand women) and short-lived marriage to 18-yearold Mandy Smith in 1989 after meeting her when she was just 13, further distanced him from any semblance of "normality".

However nowadays life is as normal as it has ever been. He has been happily married to former model Suzanne Accosta since 1993 and they live in Chelsea with their three teenage daughters.

"I feel lucky that while most men my age are grandfathers, I still get to be a dad to my girls. They keep me young," he admits. "I've just got to keep my eye on the boys. It's the boys who are the problem.

"So I've got a sign on my door 'Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again' and whenever the boys come in I say, 'See that?' And they say 'Yes Mr Wyman'."

Last November he joined his former band mates on stage for the first time in 20 years. "It was great for five minutes because that's about as long as they let me play," he says. "I thought I was going to get quite heavily involved because I was led to believe that throughout the year by them.

"Keith [Richards] in particular made me think that I would be a large part of it but when it came to it they told me they only wanted me to do two songs. It was fun but I regretted not playing more. I was a bass guitarist, a rhythm guitarist, I have to be on the button from the moment Charlie [Watts] does that first drum roll.

"I came off just as I was warming up and getting into it. When they asked me to go to America for two weeks to do three shows there, I said for two songs? No thank you."

But, says Bill, that doesn't mean to say the old boys are on bad terms. "We still have a relationship. We send Christmas and birthday presents. They are like family. Jerry [Hall, former wife of Mick Jagger] is a great friend of my wife's and all the kids knew each other growing up.

"Our lives are still intertwined but it's social - it's not business any more," and then he backtracks. "Although I am involved in business with them because all the projects they do usually involve me so I'm always asked for historical information."

And if Mick were to ask him back on a permanent basis? "I'd say 'no'," he says resolutely. "Thirty years was great but I've got better things to be doing now. That time has gone."

The "better things" refer to the many pies Bill has his fingers in. He is a restaurateur, owner of the Sticky Fingers burger joint just off London's Kensington High Street serving up the "best burgers and ribs in town".

He is also an accomplished photographer, still gigs with his own band the Rhythm Kings and is author of several books. The latest is released today and is entitled Bill Wyman's Scrapbook. It is a retrospective of his whole life; an annotated picture book full of photographs, letters and various other paraphernalia.

"This is completely different to anything I've done before - it goes right back and tells the story of my life and everything I did. It doesn't focus solely on the Stones. It also covers growing up through the war. I still have my ration books and identity cards; I collected all that stuff. Letters, postcards, photos, documents.

It's a whole mixture of stuff.

I have a huge archive."

"Only a certain sort of person collects things, don't they?" I ask.

"Yeah, the wise ones," he replies without missing a beat.

But his archive, as he refers to the collection of items he's amassed over the past half a century, is not stored in his home. Rather he has a warehouse where everything is kept under lock and key.

"I'm not telling you where. People will come and burglarise me. It's worth millions. Sotheby's came to check it out about 15 years ago and said they couldn't value it because it was so unique."

AFEW years ago Mick Jagger asked Bill for access: "I've got the letter, it said 'I'm doing this book so of course I'll need access to your archives'. And I went 'Not a chance'. So he had to give the money back because he couldn't remember anything," says Bill with a giggle.

"So he never wrote the book but he expected me to give him all the stuff and it wasn't on so I didn't do it of course. No one else besides me kept anything."

It was Bill's grandmother who instilled in him both a passion for collecting and a thirst for knowledge which still endure today. "I used to write a diary in the war and cut things out of magazines. When I was 18 I went into the military in Germany and when I came home on my first leave I said to my mum, 'Where's all my stuff?' And she said, 'We threw it away, it was kids' stuff'. I was devastated, it was a b***** crime.

"So this project was an effort to revive that; my early life, getting into music, the Stones, then getting into charity cricket and then my books and my band and my restaurant and archaeology," he says reeling off a list of the things he's turned his hand to over the years. "The amazing thing is whatever I've done has been successful. Even with the cricket, the most unbelievable things happened that would happen to a sportsman but shouldn't happen to a musician.

"I took up archaeology and then found Roman sites that were previously unknown. I found 300 coins and brooches."

And what about touring with the Stones, I wonder? That must have been terribly exciting.

"Nah it was a bore," he says. "You can be bored every minute on tour, the only time you're not bored is when you're on the stage for two hours. It's all airports and limousines and hotel rooms. You're hang-hours. It's all airports and limousines and hotel rooms.

"You're hanging around backstage and ordering hotel food and a cup of tea which takes another hour, and then it's horrible as they give you Earl Grey or something and the water is lukewarm.

"The most important thing? Getting your laundry done. It's perfectly true. If you're only staying in a hotel one day you cannot get your dirty washing done. Why do you think Buddy Holly died? By travelling ahead through a snow storm on a light plane to get his clothes washed for that evening.

It is gospel truth. They went ahead to wash their tuxedos for the show. That's why he died."

Then he tells me with much more enthusiasm the story of how his parents met at a music hall in Sydenham, south London, on his father's 20th birthday.

"He went to the Empire with his friend and they were sitting next to two girls. They got chatting and the one boy turned to the other boy and said, 'Which one do you fancy?' And he said, 'I don't mind, they're both pretty'.

"So they tossed a coin and my dad called tails and took my mum.

What would have happened if it had come down on heads? None of us would be sitting here now.

"It's extraordinary; it all came down to the toss of a coin. 'Tails You Win' - that will be my next book. Whenever I toss a coin I always call tails."

Bill Wyman's Scrapbook is available now. Order online from www.concertlive.co.uk. RRP £229. Each book is signed by Bill, numbered and certified. Strictly a limited edition set of 1962 copies (the year Bill joined the Rolling Stones).

[www.express.co.uk]

Bill Wyman on love, marriage and being the Rolling Stones' book keeper
The qualities that made Bill Wyman ‘the boring one’ in the Rolling Stones have served him well in his other role – as the group’s archivist. But his new scrapbook is far from dull, finds Nigel Farndale.
Stones Photo Session with Peter Webb, July 1969
Stones Photo Session with Peter Webb, July 1969 Photo: Peter Webb
Nigel Farndale

By Nigel Farndale

6:30AM BST 08 Apr 2013

Comments9 Comments

It is midmorning and Bill Wyman’s Sticky Fingers burger restaurant in Kensington is empty. Almost. Then a tourist walks in and takes a photograph of a photograph that is hanging on the wall. It is of the Rolling Stones, circa 1968. The man hasn’t realised that one of the rock stars in the picture is sitting a few feet away, watching him. It’s a scene that can only be described as postmodern.

Apart from the black-rimmed glasses he is wearing today, Wyman doesn’t look that different from how he did back then. He was never a tall man (5ft 7in) and his hair is still collar length, if greying now. But he is older: 76.

Indeed, when he orders a vodka and tonic which seems quite rock and roll, given the time of day, he explains that it is, in fact, because he has backache.

The photograph is one of hundreds of items of memorabilia exhibited here in the restaurant, including gold discs, Brian Jones’s guitar and Wyman’s bass (the two instruments together are worth about half a million pounds).

“The stuff here is only a fraction of my collection,” Wyman says. “I’ve got trunks of it at home.” Indeed he is about to publish Scrapbook, a limited-edition volume presented in a clamshell box. It features tickets, posters, programmes, letters, photographs, and much more besides. There’s Wyman’s birth certificate, letters to – and from – fans, a list of expenses for the Stones’ accountant, and even his Japanese work visa application form. In another life he would have loved to have been a librarian, he says, what with all that indexing and cross-referencing. The next best thing was to become the band’s archivist.
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Did the other Stones think he was eccentric for collecting all the time?

“Oh yeah, they thought I was mad, they’d say, ‘Why are you bothering to – excuse my language – collect that crap?’ It was quite hard to collect anything because you had to leave a venue so quickly, what with the kids attacking you and jumping over police vans.”

Wyman's letter to a UK fan. 17th January 1965

He says the Stones always went out of their way to be nice to their fans – which must be difficult when, as regularly happened, they attack your car and force you to be helicoptered away under police escort. “There was always stacks of mail waiting for us at venues and we would sit down and start answering it,” says Wyman. “Me, Brian, Charlie and Keith took turns doing the autographs and we learnt to do each others’, because there were so many to do. When the autographs come up at Sotheby’s these days I can often tell they aren’t real.”

But it wasn’t just autographs the female fans were after, was it, Bill?

A grin. “Well, that was Brian and me mostly, the others weren’t that interested, really. But we are digressing.”

Are we? In a way, we are still on the subject of collecting. By Wyman’s own estimates he slept with around 1,000 women. Yes, he says, but it wasn’t how people think. “Before I joined the Stones, a workmate gave me a piece of advice. Always treat a woman like a lady, and I always did that, even when I broke up with one. There are some who I still write to, a friend in Australia who I used to go out with in ’63, ’64. She has grandchildren now. And I’m still in touch with a girl I used to go out with in ’64, ’65. I never treated them like s--- and threw their clothes out.”

Presumably he couldn’t remember all their names. “It was a bit of a blur at times. But I can remember a lot of them. I was married so I couldn’t write about them in my diaries. I had to remember when and where. They weren’t one-night stands, though, because I would see the same ones again. Whenever I went to New York there were two black girls I would see. Every tour.” Bill Wyman’s address book: it should be in a glass case in the British Museum. “Yes,” he agrees with a laugh. “But I had it stolen in Spain in 1999. It was in a suitcase they nicked. Never seen again.” What does he make of the current trend for celebrities such as Russell Brand to put their promiscuity down to “sex addiction” and book themselves into clinics for treatment? “Don’t know who that is,” he says.

Michael Douglas, then. “Oh yes, I know Michael. OK, I suppose I didn’t have a sex addiction in that case. I always thought of it as having company when I was lonely and bored on the road. Touring is not a romantic life. It’s exciting for two hours every other night when you’re on stage, the rest is a nightmare of packing and unpacking. So female company helped to pass the time. I didn’t go searching for women, they came to me and were very nice and sweet.

“I was always very careful who I went with. Didn’t go with groupies or anything. Never had any problems with sexually transmitted diseases, as a lot of people did in those days,” He trails off. Looks uncomfortable. “But come on, we shouldn’t be talking about girls all the time.”

Guests Gina Lollobrigida and Suzanne Accosta at the Sticky Fingers Cafe's 4th Birthday Party. 6th July 1993 Credit: Alan Davidson

It’s obvious why not. He says he usually stayed in touch with his old flames, but not with his second wife Mandy Smith, presumably? “Not after we broke up, no. Since the settlement I haven’t spoken to her.” I’m 48 and it is sobering to think that Wyman was my age when he first slept with her. That was in 1985, when she was 14. They married in 1989 when she was 18 and he was 52. With no irony whatsoever, Hello! magazine called it a “fairy-tale” wedding, a headline it would not get away with in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal. In the past year, indeed, Wyman’s name has been cited in several newspaper reports as an example of a celebrity who had sex with a minor.

Brave of him to include a snapshot of Mandy Smith in his Scrapbook, I note. “Yes, that was before we broke up. I have many wonderful pictures of her, but I didn’t want to dwell on it because it’s a sore point in my life. People have always treated it badly, when it wasn’t bad. I don’t want to talk about it because it upsets my [third] wife and my [three] daughters, who are the age she was.” He trails off again.

“We all have a skeleton in the cupboard, it’s just if you’re a taxi driver in Halifax no one ever hears about it. But if you are a celebrity everyone does. In my case it was publicised to the world and that wasn’t really fair, I don’t think. No, it’s a tough one. Thirty years ago.”

Does he still feel nervous about prosecution? “There was never a complaint so…” Again, the trailing off. Then he says, “I went to the police and I went to the public prosecutor and said, ‘Do you want to talk to me? Do you want to meet up with me, or anything like that?’ and I got a message back, ‘No’. I was totally open about it.”

His affair with Mandy Smith was “a heart thing”, not “a lust thing”. “It was very emotional and special at the time. It wasn’t how it was reported, and the only time it ever happened in my life. A lot of people understood, but a lot didn’t. The media certainly didn’t. They treated me like crap.”

The heart can make a fool of a middle-aged man, is that how he sees it? “That was why I married her, but it didn’t work out, by then she was changed, but we mustn’t talk about this any more because my wife will get upset.”

Stones final bow at the last re-scheduled Concert at Wembley Stadium, London, which was Wyman's last concert with the Stones before he left the band. 25th September 1990 Credit: Graham Wiltshire

OK, let’s talk about the Stones, then. I know he has said he has no regrets about leaving the band in 1993, but when he sees the kind of money they are still making from touring it must give him pause for thought. “When I said I wanted to leave they told me I was probably giving up £20 million for the next two years. But I had three great houses and some nice cars.” He felt he had enough? “Yes, and I got married again and worked on books, and started a band to subsidise my living expenses. And I don’t regret it because I’ve never been happier.” He looks over my shoulder at something.“I’m sure I’m happier than they are in their lives, I really do.”

Wyman seems a likeable man, about as far removed from a one-time rock legend as you can imagine. He was, after all, always characterised as “the boring one” in the Rolling Stones. Indeed, when he left the band Mick Jagger claimed not to have noticed. “How hard can it be to play bass?” he said. “I’ll do it myself.” Certainly Wyman didn’t do drugs; his main requirement on the road was Marmite and Branston pickle. In conversation he uses quaint expressions such as “hark at me”, and when he swears he apologises. His main passion these days is metal detecting.

And his comments can seem quite Eeyorish. It still rankles with him, for example, that his contributions to the Stones were unacknowledged with writing credits. “None of us got them, Brian, Mick Taylor. If you came up with a riff that turned an ordinary song into something special it was never acknowledged.” Would Mick and Keith acknowledge the riffs privately? “No, not really. The riff on Miss You was mine. And the one for Jumping Jack Flash. There was one interview where Keith acknowledged that ‘that was Bill’s song’. Then about 10 years later he denied he’d said it.”

He sighs. “I don’t push it. You have to swallow your pride and let it go, otherwise you get knotted up. I went away and had the biggest solo success of anyone in the band with (Si, si) Je Suis Un Rock Star. A world hit.” You get the feeling there is little love lost between him and Jagger: “He can start a sentence by saying Yes and by the end of it you realise he has said No.”

But they do have a passion for cricket in common, I say, trying to act as go-between. “Except I play it and he only watches it.”

He’s feeling distracted now, he says, because he keeps noticing that a picture of Jagger on the wall behind me is on a skew. “I’m a bit OCD,” he explains. “Have you noticed I’ve been straightening these serviettes and forks as we’ve been talking.” As I get up to straighten the picture for him, he asks the waiter if the music can to be turned down “because it’s a bit ’orrible”. His wife Suzanne arrives.

Time for one last question. He played bass on Satisfaction and Brown Sugar. He was on stage at the legendary Hyde Park concert in 1969. For some fans, the Stones without Bill Wyman are not really the Stones at all. Do people still think he is in the band? “Yes, taxi drivers still say after all these years, ‘When are you touring with the Stones again?'”

Actually, he did rejoin them briefly on stage at the O2 last November for their 50th anniversary. What was it like?

“Bit disappointing, really,” he deadpans. “They only let me do two songs.”

'Bill Wyman’s Scrapbook’ is published in a hand-sewn, signed, limited edition of 1962, priced £229. To order, visit concertlive.co.u

[www.telegraph.co.uk]

Met him a few years ago, true gent! Was happy to sign/ have photos with fans

I was also disappointed, that he was only for 2 songs with the Stones on stage. I hoped for a hour or so.

Damn it. We're missing maybe the last chances for them to reunite in a meaningful way. It's the studio where I'd like to see them use Wyman. The Stones sound on stage has become so cluttered that you can't hear him as well. Oh well, what are you going to do? It's Jagger's band totally now and he doesn't get on well with Bill. Teenage BS. You think they'd learned by now to just talk things out. Meet each other halfway. Say what the f you mean. Sigh.

Bill really sounds bitter. I wonder what Mick said to him specificly...

good read thanks for the posts.

<<"I feel lucky that while most men my age are grandfathers, I still get to be a dad to my girls. They keep me young," he admits. "I've just got to keep my eye on the boys. It's the boys who are the problem.>>

I don't get judgmental toward Bill regarding the Mandy Smith business, but that comment did give me a bit of a chuckle. Bill, it's not the boys that are the problem, because that's a normal part of growing up for your daughters--it's the predatory 49-year-old men going through a mid-life crisis that can be the problem.

The most stunning revelation in this interview is that Buddy Holly died because of the need for clean laundry.

"The most important thing? Getting your laundry done. It's perfectly true. If you're only staying in a hotel one day you cannot get your dirty washing done. Why do you think Buddy Holly died? By travelling ahead through a snow storm on a light plane to get his clothes washed for that evening.

It is gospel truth. They went ahead to wash their tuxedos for the show. That's why he died."

Proof that cleanliness is not in fact next to godliness, it's next to needlessness.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-04-09 00:42 by stonehearted.

Quote
stonehearted
The most stunning revelation in this interview is that Buddy Holly died because of the need for clean laundry.

"The most important thing? Getting your laundry done. It's perfectly true. If you're only staying in a hotel one day you cannot get your dirty washing done. Why do you think Buddy Holly died? By travelling ahead through a snow storm on a light plane to get his clothes washed for that evening.

It is gospel truth. They went ahead to wash their tuxedos for the show. That's why he died."

Proof that cleanliness is not in fact next to godliness, it's next to needlessness.

I don't know. I'm pretty sure it was the airplane hitting the ground at an accelerated speed that killed Buddy.

AFEW years ago Mick Jagger asked Bill for access: "I've got the letter, it said 'I'm doing this book so of course I'll need access to your archives'. And I went 'Not a chance'. So he had to give the money back because he couldn't remember anything," says Bill with a giggle.

"So he never wrote the book but he expected me to give him all the stuff and it wasn't on so I didn't do it of course."








(well I know why only 2 songs....)

Quote
DandelionPowderman
Bill really sounds bitter. I wonder what Mick said to him specificly...

Probably nothing, that's the problem, or something like "Good to see you Bill, see you 'round"!

Anyway, Bill is such a bore you can hardly blame him. A mean old man who's only happy to drum up publicity for his crap, sorry, scrap book...

<<"I feel lucky that while most men my age are grandfathers, I still get to be a dad to my girls. They keep me young," he admits. "I've just got to keep my eye on the boys. It's the boys who are the problem.>>

What a hypocrite!

Quote
Beast
<<"I feel lucky that while most men my age are grandfathers, I still get to be a dad to my girls. They keep me young," he admits. "I've just got to keep my eye on the boys. It's the boys who are the problem.>>

What a hypocrite!

Not really...now, he would be a hypocrite if he worried about middle aged or old aged male predators.

Quote
Rollin92
BILL: "The riff on Miss You was mine."

I read a Bill interview (forget where) where the interviewer praised Bill for concocting the bass line on Miss You. And Bill sheepishly admitted that Billy Preston came up with it when jamming with Mick. And then later it was suggested that Bill play it.

Quote
24FPS

Quote
stonehearted
The most stunning revelation in this interview is that Buddy Holly died because of the need for clean laundry.

"The most important thing? Getting your laundry done. It's perfectly true. If you're only staying in a hotel one day you cannot get your dirty washing done. Why do you think Buddy Holly died? By travelling ahead through a snow storm on a light plane to get his clothes washed for that evening.

It is gospel truth. They went ahead to wash their tuxedos for the show. That's why he died."

Proof that cleanliness is not in fact next to godliness, it's next to needlessness.

I don't know. I'm pretty sure it was the airplane hitting the ground at an accelerated speed that killed Buddy.

Well, I suppose you're right. And since airplanes are meant to fly, I blame the ground for getting in the way.

Quote
treaclefingers

Quote
Beast
<<"I feel lucky that while most men my age are grandfathers, I still get to be a dad to my girls. They keep me young," he admits. "I've just got to keep my eye on the boys. It's the boys who are the problem.>>

What a hypocrite!

Not really...now, he would be a hypocrite if he worried about middle aged or old aged male predators.

Nonsense - the worry about boys is for the same reason.

People who are happy don't have to repeat telling how happy they are.
Bill has become a bitter whining old man....

"Nah it was a bore," he says. "You can be bored every minute on tour, the only time you're not bored is when you're on the stage for two hours. It's all airports and limousines and hotel rooms. You're hang-hours. It's all airports and limousines and hotel rooms.

don't worry Bill, stay home. I don't want you to be bored with airports and hotel room. I won't miss you

Quote
Beast

Quote
treaclefingers

Quote
Beast
<<"I feel lucky that while most men my age are grandfathers, I still get to be a dad to my girls. They keep me young," he admits. "I've just got to keep my eye on the boys. It's the boys who are the problem.>>

What a hypocrite!

Not really...now, he would be a hypocrite if he worried about middle aged or old aged male predators.

Nonsense - the worry about boys is for the same reason.

I stand corrected, or something

Quote
leatherjacket
People who are happy don't have to repeat telling how happy they are.
Bill has become a bitter whining old man....

He's also become strangely attracted to cutting edge 1970s technology n the form of a metal detector...bassists are so unpredictable...thank goodness for Darryl

Rod Stewart in his recent autobiography said that when he told people his girlfriend couldn't join him in Los Angeles until her school vacation, he enjoyed their appalled reactions.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-04-09 19:13 by Title5Take1.