The Dirty Truth About the Rolling Stones’ Sexual Conquests

A new documentary has brought old stories about Mick, Keith and the band to light

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones. (BORIS HORVAT/AFP/Getty Images)
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones. (BORIS HORVAT/AFP/Getty Images)
AFP/Getty Images

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A new documentary about Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman has caused an old story about the band members comparing conquest numbers to come to light.

Direct by Oliver Murray, The Quiet One delves into the personal life of Wyman but has drawn criticism because it does not place enough coverage on his marriage to Mandy Smith in 1989. At the time of the marriage, Smith was 18 but Wyman had allegedly been sleeping with the young woman since she was a child.

In his 1991 autobiography, A Stone Alone, Wyman was forthcoming about the arrangement. “She was a woman at 13,” he wrote. “Everyone accepted her as an adult without question.”

In a Guardian review of the film, the publication laments the lack of attention spent on Wyman’s admission that he “probably had an addiction to sex,” something the bassist was boastful about in his book, comparing his number of sexual conquests to bandmates Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

“I fared much better than the others in the girl department,” Wyman wrote in the book. “In 1965, we sat down one evening in a hotel and worked that out. Since the band had started two years earlier, I’d had 278 girls, Brian (Jones) 130, Mick (Jagger) about thirty, Keith (Richards) six, and Charlie (Watts) none.”

So, according to Wyman, he slept with more women that the rest of the band put together by more than double.

The Quiet One, which was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival, will be released in the U.S. on June 21.

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