Bill Wyman Can Be Bill Wyman

Jim Carruthers reported here last week that the music journalist Bill Wyman had received a cease and desist order from using the name “Bill Wyman” from the ex-Rolling Stone Bill Wyman.

Now Bill Wyman is authorized to be Bill Wyman again:

Former Bay Area music critic Bill Wyman is again free to continue identifying himself as Bill Wyman. Without a disclaimer.

….As journalist Bill Wyman pointed out in his column last week, the sad fact is that he’s been Bill Wyman longer than his doppelganger.

Journalist Bill Wyman has been Bill Wyman since his birth on Jan. 11, 1961. Musician Bill Wyman became Bill Wyman two years later. Before that, he was William George Perks, and not as prone to writing cease-and-desist letters.

Still, according to Siegel, the world isn’t big enough for two Bill Wymans. Not when one is a music critic, and the other used to be in the Stones.

In an e-mail Wednesday to The Chronicle, Siegel said, “No one should read an article on popular music, and on the Rolling Stones in particular, written by Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, Mick Jagger or Keith Richards, believing he is therefore receiving information emanating from the ‘inside,’ only to realize that the author is not whom the reader thought it was.”

….Still, all that may be forgotten. In his e-mail to The Chronicle, attorney Siegel wrote that even though the paper never responded to his request, “our request for a clarification has been largely accomplished, and with a reach and level of effectiveness well beyond that for which we might otherwise have hoped.”