Former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman has opened up about the financial difficulties he faced while with the band in a recent interview with Classic Rock.
Reflecting on the early 1970s, Wyman recalled a time when the Stones, despite their soaring popularity from hits like Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, and Sticky Fingers, found themselves in dire financial straits.
“We had no f***ing money,” Wyman asserted, revealing that the band’s former manager, Allen Klein, controlled their finances.
“When you wanted anything, you begged him to send you some money. You were 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.”
Wyman also discussed the impact of the UK’s steep tax rates, particularly during Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s tenure, which climbed to an astonishing ninety-three percent. This overwhelming tax burden forced the Stones to leave the UK, where they became known as tax exiles.
Wyman noted, “We had to leave because we owed the Inland Revenue so much money that, with ninety-three percent 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.”
The band’s financial struggles persisted beyond the ‘70s. Wyman admitted that he should have left the group much sooner, particularly in the 1980s.
“I hung on for a three-tour ending across ’89 and ’90,” he explained, referencing the three legs of the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle tour. “After seven years of nothing, I ended up with a bank overdraft of £200,000 because we weren’t earning anything.”
Wyman painted a stark picture of the band’s economic disparity. He mentioned that after the death of Brian Jones, he was still in debt, while Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had amassed considerable wealth.
“When Brian 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. I had to scrape together a mortgage and hope I could continue to make enough money to keep it.”
“Mick and Keith 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. I only started playing with them again in the hope it’d be just a couple of years because I had all these other things I wanted to do.”
Recently, Wyman released Drive My Car, his first solo album in nine years, marking a new chapter in his career after the tumultuous years with the Stones.
