It’s a quiet life for the old Bill
STAR TO SKIP STONES’ WORLD TOUR
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 new 19-date US tour this weekend in Texas, Bill (87) has revealed his life is now a million miles away from rock ‘n’ roll. Bill says he loves nothing better than enjoy life at home in comfort, collecting archaeology books and playing with the idea of opening a Rupert Bear museum.
“I have an archive of the Stones too,” he adds. “I have 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.”
He has been absent from the band since 1991, when he suddenly quit after more than 30 years on the road.
His departure shocked founders Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and it took them two years to accept it, in 1993, after a call to join them on their Voodoo Lounge world tour fell on deaf ears.
“I in
ON A ROLL: Bill performing; (above) Rupert Album left 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 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 £60 million (€70m) with the band but admits he was fed up towards the end spending nights in hotel rooms in far flung places.
Cricket
“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... I wanted to play charity cricket. I just had this whole other life I wanted to live.”
Like late Stones drummer Charlie, Bill was often perceived as the “quiet member”, who ran away when drugs came out.
But there was a storm of controversy in 1984 when Bill met model Mandy Smith – she was just 13 and he was 47.
Mandy (53) met Bill when she attended the BPI awards with her older sister Nicola. The relationship only became public two-and-ahalf years later, when she reached the age of 16 – the age of consent in the UK.
The couple married in 1989 when she was 18, but Mandy moved out weeks after they married and it ended in divorce after 23 months, with Mandy winning a settlement, then worth a reported £700,000.
In 1993 Bill’s 30 year-old son from his first marriage, Stephen, married Smith’s mother, Patsy, who was 46. They split after two years.
Today, Bill shares his life with his wife of 11 years, model Suzanne Accosta whom he met in 1980.
Tomorrow, when thousands of fans gather at the NRG
Stadium in Houston, Texas for the start of the Rolling Stones’ Hackney Diamonds
US tour, Bill will be at one of those homes thinking of them from afar.
He laughs: “The weird thing is ever since I have left, up until the present day, I still dream I am on tour with them like we are in a dressing room or we are in a hotel.”
■ Wyman’s book on his childhood in London, Billy
In The Wars, is out now.