Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman is not keeping quiet about his life but is documenting his career as the bassist for one of the most famous bands in the world. His new documentary, “The Quiet One” hits theaters this Friday, June 21. Dubbed “The Quiet One,” Wyman chronicles the band’s history and has all of the band’s memorabilia that he stores as an archive.
Wyman kept a detailed diary of every single day throughout his career. He also shot hours of film footage, took thousands of photographs and collected a vast private archive of memorabilia.
Wyman watched the Stones as we did, as an outsider or a professional archiver who watched from the sidelines while Mick Jagger and Keith Richards lived the lives of rock stars.
In fact, Wyman recalls times when the band was on the brink of collapse, either from Mick and Keith’s highly publicized arrests to their and their unplanned hiatus during one of the power duo’s fight’s, he says he didn’t want any part of it. He never asks them about it and didn’t want any part of it.
Wyman left the band after 31 years to live his own life.
Says Wyman in the film, “After we finished that tour, I felt this would be a good time to leave The Rolling Stones on a big high. So I left. All those 311 years with the band, I loved what we did, loved what we achieved but I needed to sort out my personal life, my future.
Says Wyman’s wife Suzanne: “He just has this need to almost relive what he experienced and put in some sort of order and find out who he really was and what he’d gone through. So he started to dig outthe the old boxes, scanning things and really started to look at it as his life’s work ahead of him, that he had to cpmplete. I think when he works on the archive it inspires him. …He just wanted to have a normal life. He wanted to walk down the street, to be able to go to the movie theater. I think the reason he decided to get married, it was to have a family,” says wife. He wanted to be able to walk down the street, wanted to walk down the street.”
In the film, Wyman has the life that he wants but the viewer looking for more may be disappointed.
In theaters, June 21
109 mins. A Sundance Selects release. Not yet rated.
Directed by Oliver Murray
Produced by Jennifer Corcoran and Jamie Clark
