| 21st November 2006 08:26 AM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Rolling into the Stone Age
Telegraph
Nov 21, 2006
At 70, Bill Wyman reveals his greatest regret – wasting his life as a sex god rock star when he could have been an archaeologist. Tom Leonard uncovers the secret passions of the former Stone
If you can remember Bill Wyman's 70th birthday party a few weeks ago, it doesn't mean you weren't there. It may just mean you were the host. The former Rolling Stones bass player remembers every detail of the bash, just as he does the Swinging Sixties.
Hunched over a mug of tea as he sits on a battered sofa at his recording studios in south-west London, Wyman reels off the guest list with his famously archivist attention to detail. "Roger Moore, Leslie Bricusse, Michael Winner, Robert Powell and his wife, Peter Blake, Andrew Neil. I had lots of cricketers – David Gower, Graham Hicks, Robin Smith, Jack Russell. Then there was Twiggy, Jerry Hall, Richard O'Brien, Donovan, Martin O'Neil [the Aston Villa manager] – lovely man, Martin."
And Mick, Keith and the, er, boys? The omission seems glaring and I half expect the former Stone to launch into a vitriol-flecked diatribe about his erstwhile bandmates and how he wouldn't embarrass Michael Winner by having them under the same roof.
In previous interviews, Wyman has flitted from moaning about how he was treated like a hired hand by the other Stones to enthusing about what great guys they are. Today, Birthday Boy is favourably inclined. They couldn't be there because they were on tour, he explains.
Was it a pity not having his old muckers at such a seminal moment? "No, not at all. I missed Charlie [Watts], he's my best mate, but not at all. We all celebrate our birthdays and Christmases. We always send presents to each other. We're still a family. After all, we were 30 years together. It's very social now, it's not business."
So who gave what? Sir Mick Jagger is notoriously careful with his money, I say. He laughs. "Well, there's a few in the music business like that." Usually, Jagger sends him plants – orchids or huge bouquets of lilies on his birthday. "This time, they sent me a video they'd made in New York wishing me happy birthday." Watts also donated a big cheque to Wyman's favourite charity, which is doing up a Norman church in Suffolk.
In the good old days, of course, Wyman birthdays were different. "We were usually on tour. They used to arrange all this mad stuff – the backstage area in Orlando, or wherever we were, would be full of parrots and dancing girls. They knew I liked parrots, so there were parrots everywhere. They had naked girls dancing under the stage because we had vents for the heat."
On another occasion they threw a big party on a paddle steamer down in New Orleans. "It was nice. We always did those things in the band and it still carries on – in a lesser way, obviously. But they never forget. That's very pleasant."
A lot of things in Wyman's life are "very nice" or "very pleasant". Always considered the most grounded Stone – he avoided the epic drink and drugs consumption, even if he made up for it on the groupie front – Wyman has adjusted to the post-rock star life with predictable ease. He's never been happier, he says. He has a young family and he has his hobbies, or – as he calls them – "projects".
Boy, does he have projects. If kicking off an interview with a former Rolling Stone and reported sex god by giving a breakdown of the band's present-giving arrangements seems a little pedestrian, quite frankly the alternative was discussing the archaeology scene in the Bury St Edmunds area. The latter topic took up a good chunk of our hour and a half together, after I showed more than a passing interest in the leaf-shaped flint arrowhead he had discovered last year.
Wyman is like the convent-educated schoolgirl who is let loose into the fleshpots of Soho, only in reverse. Liberated from the repressive hedonistic orthodoxy of the Stones, he is now indulging his passions and urges, such as pottering around his grounds with a metal detector and then poring over his finds with his chums down at the West Suffolk Archaeological Society. His biggest find to date, he relates proudly, came after he was asked to help investigate a possible Roman site near his home, a fortified manor in Suffolk (he has others in Chelsea and the south of France). Off he went with his metal detector, finding more than 50 artefacts, including coins, brooches and utensils.
OnHe's the odd Stone out in other ways. While the rest – with whom he parted company professionally 13 years ago – seem to look older and older the more they cling to their rock and roll image, Wyman looks a good deal younger. Granted, his hair is dyed a bizarre plum colour, but his face is far less lined.
He chain-smokes, clutching each cigarette with surprisingly (for a bassist) delicate and young-looking fingers. He's skinny and admits he often misses out on breakfast and lunch completely. But he had a complete health check-up last autumn and "everything's 100 per cent". Apart from having his appendix out, he's never been in hospital in his life, never been sick ever. "My doctor says I'm the healthiest person he's ever seen of my age. Which is very nice."
Once asked if he had any great regrets, a septuagenarian Sir John Betjeman said that he "hadn't had enough sex". Considering he once calculated he'd slept with 278 girls between 1963 and 1965, one presumes this wouldn't top Wyman's list. He laughs. "No, I've had enough." So what would his big regret be? "I wish I could spend more time doing archaeology. I love it."
If drugs, booze and outrageous behaviour are the orthodoxy, Wyman is the true rock rebel. His interests always have been very un-rock and roll, he says. It's just that nobody noticed.
Irked by his image as the "boring" Stone, he once complained that he had lots of interesting things to say but that, pushed into the shadows as Keith and Mick hogged the limelight, nobody ever asked him. I think I can see why. It wasn't because they were scared he might reveal that he had slept with more groupies (which he had, by a long way) or dispute the authorship of the riff for Jumpin' Jack Flash. Far more embarrassingly for the Stones and the whole credibility of the Swinging Sixties, he might have blurted out what he knew about Bronze Age cooking utensils.
Does he ever think, "God, I wish I hadn't wasted my life being a rock star when I could have been an archaeologist"?
"I have thought that sometimes," says Wyman, adding that he's always been a passionate photographer, too. Did he go on digs when he was in the Stones? "No, I never had time." He now spends a lot of time opening exhibitions at museums. When he was 11 or 12, his school never went to museums and Wyman used to go on his own.
Wyman's interests used to be constrained by the Stones: now they are curtailed by his family. After a failed first marriage that produced a son, Stephen, now in his forties, and his disastrous second marriage, to young Mandy Smith, Wyman has been married to Suzanne Accosta, a Californian, since 1993. They have three girls, aged eight, 10 and 12, with the reassuringly un-rock and roll names of Matilda, Jessica and Katherine.
Some men complain about the strains of fatherhood in their mid-forties, but Wyman says it has been "fantastic". He dotes on his children, he says, in what he admits is more of a grandfather than a father position. Men usually miss the "special moments" of their children growing up because they are wrapped up in their work.
"That happened to me with my son in the Sixties because I was always on tour all over the world. He was eight months old when I joined the Stones and I looked round one day and he was a teenager. And I thought, I've missed everything. So I vowed that if I had another family I would spend as much time as possible with them."
He still leaves his family to go on tour each year but life on the road with his band, Bill Wyman & the Rhythm Kings, hardly sounds like it keeps Mrs Wyman awake at night. The itinerary includes Cheltenham Town Hall, rather than the Hollywood Bowl, and the only female interest appears to be the long-running game of Chase the Lady that the lads play on the tour bus.
But Wyman is still haunted by one of his "demons" from the Stones days… laundry. "It's the worst thing about touring – how to get your laundry done every night, because hotels would never get it done in time before you were off to the next gig." He notices my reaction. "No, it's a serious issue. Do you know how Buddy Holly died? Flying ahead so he could get his laundry done in time."
Now that really is rock and roll.
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
| 21st November 2006 08:46 AM |
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| Taptrick |
There was a flagrant typo in the article. It said, "Wyman is like the convent-educated schoolgirl who is let loose into the fleshpots of Soho."
Surely they meant "Wyman LIKES the convent-educated schoolgirl who is let loose into the fleshpots of Soho."
Oh, he would have been such a naughty professor.
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| 21st November 2006 03:49 PM |
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| mrhipfl |
Bill's the man. |
| 21st November 2006 04:48 PM |
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| Soldatti |
We all miss you Bill. |
| 21st November 2006 05:13 PM |
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| sammy davis jr. |
Noshit. I don't care if he is a "square"- he's the bass player for the Rolling Stones. The fact that Charlie is his best mate explains why they had the groove they had. |
| 21st November 2006 05:32 PM |
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| Saint Sway |
I wish he made a guest spot at the Beacon. Satisfaction encore with Bill would of been a nice touch and great way to close out the documentary |
| 21st November 2006 07:52 PM |
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| Honky Tonk Man |
Great read. Thanks as usual TTM. Martin O’Neil was there? I don't know the connection between those two. Maybe he's an anorak type like Bill, but he's done great things sat Aston Villa this season. |
| 22nd November 2006 03:32 AM |
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| corgi37 |
I bet every time he gets a royalty cheque he doesnt bemoan being a "Rock God". |
| 22nd November 2006 01:13 PM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
quote:
Taptrick wrote:
Surely they meant "Wyman LIKES the convent-educated schoolgirl who is let loose into the fleshpots of Soho."
Thanks for catching that typo. I knew it didn't read right.
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