While Mick Jagger and Keith Richards usually get all of The Rolling Stones media headlines, former bassist Bill Wyman gets the spotlight in the new documentary ‘The Quiet One.’ In a New York Daily News review, Wyman is quoted as talking about his marriage to Mandy Smith, who he married in 1989 when she was only 18-years old. They divorced in 1991. Smith claimed she first slept with Wyman when she was 14 in divorce documents.
In the controversial documentary “The Quiet One,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival Thursday night, Wyman, now 82, says he was “stupid to ever think it could possibly work.”
The film, which makes use of the meticulously kept photos, film footage and memorabilia from the rocker’s personal archives, was pulled from England’s Sheffield Doc/Fest next month because of his scandalous relationship with Smith. The pair met when she was 13 and he was 47 in the mid-80s. And though Smith was of legal age when they married, following their divorce a few years later, she claimed they first had sex when she was just 14.
In “The Quiet One,” Wyman defends the relationship, saying, “It was from the heart. It wasn’t lust, which people were seeing it as.”
But he also admits, “I was really stupid to ever think it could possibly work. She was too young. I felt she had to go out and see life for a bit.”
In 2013, following other prominent sex scandals in England, Wyman said that he offered to be interviewed by authorities about his relationship with Smith. “I went to the police and I went to the public prosecutor and said, ‘Do you want to talk to me? Do you want to meet up with me, or anything like that?’ And I got a message back, ‘No.’”
The Wrap also addressed the relationship in a review.
Nothing about “The Quiet One” is particularly exciting or gives you any sense of fulfillment — definitely nothing at the level for which the Rolling Stones are known.
Not even when Wyman briefly discusses his short-lived marriage to “teenage bride” (as the tabloids called her) Mandy Smith, which he says he “knew wouldn’t work” or reflects on the tragic deaths of several audience members at the band’s infamous 1969 Altamont Free Concert. Of the latter, he said, “I don’t like to talk about that much.” These are both wildly provocative moments in his story that are reduced to footnotes.
