Bill Wyman Stones Book Out Today

PW Daily on the lavish new Stones memoir:

Bill Wyman has been a great pack rat. In some 40 years touring with the Rolling Stones, he amassed a treasure trove of material, including rare photographs, tour posters and ticket stubs, letters and telegrams. These objects–combined with his surprisingly crystal-clear recollections (ahem)–form the basis of the encyclopedic Rolling With the Stones, written with Richard Havers
(DK, $50), whose official pub date is today.

This banquet of a book, which chronicles the group until Wyman’s “retirement” in 1993, includes newspaper and magazine stories and reviews, maps of tours, album and song information and bestseller charts. Its 500 pages, thousands of pictures, myriad boxes and sidebars full of facts are designed with typical DK finesse.

Just a few of the many treats and amusing moments in this tome:

* a picture in an airport of Mick Jagger wearing sunglasses and not needing to smile standing near a poster that reads “Patience please…a drug free America comes first!”
* matter-of-fact prose such as “As the tour finished, the Sun flirted with the facts.”
* Keith Richards on Jagger’s marriage to Bianca: “The devil certainly looks after his own.”
* a Bookseller magazine cover featuring Wyman’s first book, Stone Alone.

The book gives readers no shelter from the dark side of the group’s experience. Recurring themes, of course, are death, drug abuse, musical ups and downs, chaotic personal lives, bizarre media coverage and artistic and business battles.

PW thought readers would get just what they need from this book, saying it has “the visual treats of a coffee-table book” but with “rich text…Wyman appears to have ruined it for all Stones biographers past, present and future.”

UPDATE
More from the Wyman book:

Former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman reveals these things in his upcoming book, “Rolling With the Stones.”

Wyman, who left the supergroup in 1997 to become a solo artist, said Richards’ mother said Keith always clung to her.

“His mother always said he was a bit of a mama’s boy,” Wyman revealed. “He used to cry a lot and be frightened of being left at school and all. But that’s because he’s an only child.”

Wyman also said since Richards is an only child he definitely likes to have his way.

“Single kids do get spoiled a bit more than kids with brothers and sisters, so I supposed that’s why he likes his own way and …that’s why he can be a bit bullyish sometimes.”