The biggest Lothario in the Rolling Stones was not the charismatic, big-lipped frontman Mick Jagger but their unassuming bassist, Bill Wyman.
When the band first toured the United States in 1965, the hotels where they stayed were awash with drugs and women eager to sleep with the rockers. Wyman would “entertain” women he picked up wherever the Stones performed.
“Bill was hands-down the band’s unrivaled p—y hound,” writes Bob Spitz in the upcoming “The Rolling Stones: The Biography,” noting that the guitarist was reportedly unable to get to sleep without “fresh female companionship…his appetite for casual sex was unquenchable.”
Spitz writes that Wyman would stand on stage, holding his bass in a certain way to prevent glare, so he could peruse women in the first few rows. Between songs, he’d send out an assistant to ask his choices if they’d like to meet Wyman after the show.
Wyman, 89, married his first wife, Diane Cory, in 1959. They welcomed their son, Stephen, in 1962, and divorced in 1969.
However, decades later, the musician became infatuated with a girl, who would become his second wife.
In 1985, Wyman, who had always chased young groupies, was enraptured by a female from Tottenham named Mandy Smith. The relationship raised eyebrows because he was forty-eight and she was thirteen, “a detail they tried to keep under wraps,” writes Spitz.
Wyman defended his controversial relationship by claiming that “she was a woman at thirteen,” and believed she was twenty when they first met.
The band read Wyman the “riot act,” and the relationship “revolted” Jagger, who had two daughters older than Smith.
The pair married in 1989, when Wyman was 52, and Smith was 18, and separated two years later. They finalized their divorce two years after that.
In a quirky aside, Wyman’s son, Stephen, 30, married Smith’s mother, Patsy, 46, in 1993, but the couple split two years later.
Wyman later married model Suzanne Accosta in 1993, whom he had known for years. The couple shares three daughters.
In 1993, he officially announced his departure from the Rolling Stones after 30 years with the band. In 2023, he reportedly reunited with the band for a song in tribute to their late drummer, Charlie Watts.
In 2016, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Read the full article here
