Former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman has revealed the financial troubles he faced during his tenure in the band.
In an interview with Classic Rock, Wyman pointed to the rock group’s precarious situation in the early ‘70s. The Stones had reached international fame with a run of hugely popular albums — including Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers. Despite the success, they found themselves cash-strapped.
“We had no fucking money,” the bassist insisted. “[Former Stones manager, Allen] Klein had all the money, and when you wanted anything you begged him to send you some money. You’re in the red with your bank, so you weren’t partying all the time, you were worrying about how to pay your bills. It was a nightmare.”
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“And then [Prime Minister Harold] Wilson comes in, and puts tax up to ninety-three per cent, it was absurd,” Wyman continued, noting a period in which the Stones left the U.K. and became tax exiles. “We had to leave because we owed the Inland Revenue so much money that, with ninety-three per cent tax, we could never make enough to pay it back. So we had to leave, and then we were accused of being multimillionaires, leaving because we didn’t want to pay our way, but we weren’t.”
Bill Wyman Says He Should Have Left the Rolling Stones ‘A Lot Earlier’
The Rolling Stones’ financial troubles weren’t isolated to the ‘70s. In a separate part of the interview, Wyman – who left the band in 1993 – admitted he should have quit the group sooner.
“I should’ve done it a lot earlier… in the eighties,” he explained. “I hung on for a three-tour ending across ’89 and ’90 [three legs of the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle tour], after seven years of nothing, and I’d ended up with a bank overdraft of £200,000, because we weren’t earning anything.”
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Wyman went on to note that some members of the band were doing a lot better than others. According to the bassist, the Rolling Stones were split into the haves and have-nots.
“When Brian {Jones] died he was over thirty thousand pounds in debt,” Wyman noted. “When I bought that manor in Suffolk I had a thousand pounds in the bank, had to scrape together a mortgage and hope I could continue to make enough money to keep it.”
“Mick [Jagger] and Keith [Richards] were totally wealthy, so they weren’t bothered,” Wyman continued. “But me, Charlie [Watts] and Ronnie [Wood] were scraping by. Ronnie started to do art to feed his family. Anyway, I only started playing with them again in the hope it’d only be a couple of years, because I had all these other things I wanted to do.”
Wyman recently released Drive My Car, his first new solo album in nine years.
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Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
