‘The Quiet One’ Is Intimate Portrait Of Ex-Rolling Stones Bassist Bill Wyman

Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman is one of the great quitters in rock, his only near competition being Jason Newsted of Metallica. Before the Golden Age of reunions and nostalgia package tours, Wyman bailed on the so called “Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World” in the early ’90s, preferring to go out “on a big high,” rather than follow the band on endless jaunts into his eighties. Despite his slight frame and retiring nature, Wyman has an independent streak, which is on full display in The Quiet One, the 2019 bio-doc currently streaming on Hulu.

Stones lore has never been very kind to Bill Wyman. According to Stephen Davis’ book Old Gods Almost Dead: The 40-Year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones, he only got The Stones gig because he owed an amplifier and Keith Richards derisively referred to him “a real London Ernie.” Fans call him, “The luckiest man in the world.” 5 to 7 years older than his bandmates, Wyman did stand apart. In a band of peacocks, he looked dour, moving little on stage. “The great stone face,” as he describes himself in one of the archival interviews featured in the film.

Like Ringo Starr in The Beatles, Wyman’s musical abilities have often been questioned. For the record, it’s a load of hooey. On both counts. Both men understood it wasn’t how much you played but what you played, that made a difference. They played to the song, not their egos, leaving spaces for the vocals and other instruments, and their music would sound radically different and not as good with different musicians.

What sets The Quiet One apart from other rock docs is its reliance on Wyman’s vast personal archives. He tells us he picked up the collecting bug from his grandmother and throughout the film the camera slowly pans across his storage room, packed with shelving units full of tapes, instruments, papers, memorabilia and what appear to be every outfit he ever wore on stage. Add to that Wyman’s penchant for taking photographs and home movies, and you have enough material to make any Stones obsessive drool.

Born William Perks Jr. in 1936, Wyman grew up on “one of the worst streets” in tough working class South East London. His parents were severe and unloving. “I never really felt like I had a home,” he says. He recalls watching German fighter pilots strafe his block during World War II and hiding in bomb shelters during the Blitz.

Though he was admitted to a prestigious secondary school, his father pulled him out before he could graduate and put him to work in a betting parlor. He later joined the Royal Air Force, where he first heard American rock n’ roll and began playing music. He married in 1959 and became a father the same year he joined The Rolling Stones. The marriage wouldn’t survive the ’60s and he would later successfully sue for custody of his son. He legally changed his name in 1964, for which he says his father never forgave him.

Wyman speaks with detached admiration about his former band. Despite witnessing rock history as it was being made, his recollections are dry and pedestrian. He tosses out cliches like, “It was us against the world,” and calls Altamont, “the death of the ‘60s.” When he says that life in The Rolling Stones was boring besides the two hours on stage each night, it’s hard to argue.

While his bandmates struggled with drugs, Wyman alludes to being a sex addict. That’s putting it modestly. According to his 1990 autobiography Stone Alone, Wyman used his stardom to bed hundreds upon hundreds of women. There’s been some criticism of The Quiet One that it doesn’t address his womanizing or his marriage to teenager Mandy Smith when he was 52, though it seems unrealistic to expect a film so reliant on Wyman’s input to paint him in a negative light.

Having survived riots, ripoffs, arrests and addiction, The Rolling Stones teetered on the edge of oblivion for most of the 1980s. They reconvened at the end of the decade with a triumphant new album and 115-date world tour. While his bandmates saw it as a fresh start, Wyman thought it was “a grand finale.” After 31 years, he quit the band to, “sort out my personal life and my future.”

Up until the end of The Quiet One, we only see Wyman from behind, combing through his archives, hunched over at his desk like some medieval scrivener. When we finally see him head on, he appears far younger than his 83 years would suggest. In retirement, Wyman remarried, raised a family, took photographs and played music for his own pleasure. It would seem he made the right choice.

If The Quiet One feels routine at times, rehashing stories we’ve already heard, it also offers an intimate first person view from inside one of rock’s most legendary bands. Despite the fame and misfortune that came with it, Wyman seems still the humble “working class boy from South London” his father wanted him to be. “It’s a bizarre life I’ve had,” he says at the film’s end. Earlier this month Bill Wyman announced he will be selling off over 1000 items from his archives.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.

Where to stream The Quiet One