The Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman discussed attending late bandmate Brian Jones’ funeral, and he claimed that Charlie Watts was his only other bandmate to attend, as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were absent. He said he was angered by how the media swarmed around Jones’ coffin. Wyman recently described a drug ‘freak out’ at a bar.
“The press was so bad at the funeral. I mean, everybody’s around the grave, you know, and they’re putting the coffin in and all that and the preacher’s reading out and all his family and relatives are all like tranquilized and everything. Everybody’s crying, upset. There’s thousands of fans everywhere. There’s kids running up to you asking for autographs, and there’s press guys with cameras everywhere, like all leaning over you and getting snaps in the grave. … There was no respect at all.”
Wyman’s birth name was Bill Perks Jr., and he took the name of a friend he liked. His father was angered by this, and he had taken him out of school and made him work, and he would spend time living with his grandmother. “Once my grandmother died, being loved kind of vanished, really” is both a sad quote and a summation of his childhood.
Wyman was recently accused of pedophilia after details resurfaced about how he allegedly first slept with his future wife when she was 14-years old.