The Rolling Stones star Bill Wyman proved you are never too old to rock last year when he reunited with his bandmates on their hit album Hackney Diamonds.
But as the age-defying Stones prepare to launch their 19-date US tour this weekend in Texas, 87-year-old Bill has revealed his life is now a million miles away from rock ’n’ roll. Bill says he loves nothing better than enjoying his life at home, collecting archaeology books and playing with the idea of opening a Rupert Bear museum.
“I’ve an archive of the Stones too,” he adds. “I’ve got a library that I created of everything that has happened to me. I wanted to keep an archive of the Stones to show my son I was once in a band.” Bass player Bill has been out of the band since 1991, when he suddenly quit after more than 30 years on the road.
And as the Stones gear up to play football stadiums across the US once again, he says he wouldn’t swap places with them for the world. “I left in 1991 but they would not believe me,” laughs Bill, who ended a 30-year hiatus to play bass alongside late drummer Charlie Watts on the Hackney Diamonds album track Live By The Sword.
“They refused to accept I had left. It was not until 1993, when they were starting to get together to tour in 1994, when they said, ‘You have actually now left, haven’t you?’ And I said, ‘I left two years ago’. They finally accepted it, so they say I left in 1993.” Bill amassed a personal fortune of £60million with the band but admits he was fed up towards the end spending nights in hotel rooms in far-flung places.
“I just had enough. It was half my life and I thought, ‘I have got other things I want to do’. I wanted to do archaeology, write books, have photo exhibitions and play charity cricket. I used to read about ancient cultures while I was on the road and take photos as well. I just had this whole other life I wanted to live,” he says.
Bill went on to write books, hunt for treasure as a metal detectorist and build his collection of stamps, cigarette cards, music hall posters and Roman coins, as well as comics, children’s books and every Rupert Bear annual since 1936. He says he collects for his own joy after learning to value things as a child.
Bill explains: “Growing up in the war we did not have presents. But we had Rupert Bear annuals which we all shared. I used to read them to the younger ones. And then I started to collect them as I was crazy about them. It was something that stuck with me. I’ve got the whole series right to the present day and I have other stuff like Rupert scarves, badges, postage stamps. I could fill a museum with it. Maybe one day.
“I love collecting and don’t like throwing things away.” Bill opened up about his life and his years with the Stones during a talk at the National Army Museum in Chelsea, West London, the area where he lives with wife Suzanne Accosta. The event helped launch his latest book, Billy in the Wars, which charts his childhood in Penge, South East London, which he says was “scarred by poverty” having survived the Blitz, which killed some of his neighbours.
Two years of national service in the Royal Air Force followed from the age of 19, which led to him being posted to Germany, where he discovered the birth of rock ’n’ roll in dance halls. Years later, in 1962, he heard that an upcoming rhythm and blues band called The Rolling Stones were looking for a bassist. He auditioned in a pub in Chelsea... and the rest is musical history.
Today, the three remaining Stones – Sir Mick Jagger, 80, Keith Richards, also 80, and Ronnie Wood, 76 – are said to have a combined wealth of more than £990m. But Bill says money was tighter in 1960 when late Stone Brian Jones, who died by drowning in 1969 at the age of 27, founded the band. He remembers: “There was no money for a year or more. We used to play gigs for £5 or £2. We did whatever we could as we were a blues band and the blues was not popular.
“It was very difficult. Brian took whatever you earned to pay for food or guitar strings. Charlie was working and I was working. I had an eight-month-old son, so had responsibilities. Those lucrative years came much, much later.” While the Stones can look forward now to playing to crowds of 70,000, Bill says fans in America were not always rushing for tickets when they made their debut there. “We first went to America in June, 1964 and nobody had heard of us,” he says. “We had a night in New York once and the fans almost destroyed Carnegie Hall. They tried to stop us doing a second gig but we did it.
“We were the first band who went on stage in casual clothes as we did not have uniforms like The Beatles.” Despite being a member of one of the wildest rock bands, Bill was tame compared to Keith, Ronnie and Mick. Like late Stones drummer Charlie, Bill – who stood stock still on stage – was perceived as the “quiet member”, who ran away when drugs came out. But there was a storm of controversy in 1984 when he met model Mandy Smith – she was just 13 and he was 47.
The relationship only became public two-and-a-half years later, when she reached 16 – the age of consent in the UK. The couple tied the knot in 1989 when Mandy was 18 but she moved out weeks after they married. It ended in divorce after 23 months, with Mandy winning a large settlement.
To complicate things further, in 1993 Bill’s 30-year-old son from his first marriage, Stephen, married Mandy’s mother Patsy, who was 46. They split after two years. Today, Bill shares his life with his wife of 31 years, ex-model Suzanne. The couple have three daughters – Jessica, Matilda and Katherine – and have homes in Chelsea, 15th-century Gedding Hall in Suffolk, and a place in the South of France.
Tomorrow night, when thousands of fans gather at the NRG Stadium in Houston for the start of the Stones’ eagerly awaited US tour, Bill will be at one of those homes thinking of them
from afar. He laughs: “The weird thing is ever since I’ve left, up until the present day, I still dream I’m on tour, like we are in a dressing room or we are in a hotel.
“I still dream those dreams and I dream of other friends like David Bowie. They are all very nice but very confusing.”
- Bill Wyman’s book on his childhood days in London, Billy in the Wars, is out now.
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