The Rolling Stones’ biggest Lothario was not the charismatic big-lipped frontman Mick Jagger, but the unassuming bassist Bill Wyman.
When the band toured the United States for the first time in 1965, the hotels they stayed in were filled with drugs and women looking to sleep with the rockers. Wyman “entertained” women he picked up at every Stones performance.
“Bill was undeniably the band’s unique hound,” Bob Spitz writes in his forthcoming book The Rolling Stones: A Biography, and the guitarist reportedly “couldn’t sleep without fresh female companionship…his desire for casual sex was irresistible.”
Spitz wrote that Wyman stood on stage holding his bass in a way to prevent glare so he could get a closer look at the first few rows of women. Between songs, he sent his assistant to ask Wyman if she wanted to meet him after the show.
Wyman, 89, married his first wife, Diane Corey, in 1959 and they welcomed a son, Stephen, in 1962, but they divorced in 1969.
However, several decades later, the musician fell in love with the woman who became his second wife.
In 1985, Wyman, always after young groupies, became obsessed with a woman from Tottenham named Mandy Smith. The relationship raised eyebrows because he was 48 and she was 13, but “they tried to keep the details secret,” Spitz writes.
Wyman defended his controversial relationship by claiming “she was a 13-year-old woman” and believed she was 20 when they first met.
The band called Wyman a “riot act” and Jagger, who has two daughters older than Smith, “rebelled” on the relationship.
The two married in 1989, when Wyman was 52 and Smith was 18, but separated two years later. They finalized their divorce two years later.
In a quirky aside, Wyman’s son Stephen, 30, married Smith’s mother Patsy, 46, in 1993, but the couple separated two years later.
Wyman then married model Suzanne Acosta, whom he had known for many years, in 1993. The couple have 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 to create a song in honor of late drummer Charlie Watts.
He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2016.
