According to Bill Wyman, only Keith Richards and Mick Jagger made money from The Rolling Stones.
“Well, I should’ve done it a lot earlier… in the eighties,” the bassist told Classic Rock when asked if he left at the right time. “I hung on for a three-tour ending across ’89 and ’90 [three legs of the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle tour], after seven years of nothing, and I’d ended up with a bank overdraft of £200,000, because we weren’t earning anything.”
He continued, “Mick and Keith were totally wealthy, so they weren’t bothered, but me, Charlie and Ronnie were scraping by. Ronnie started to do art to feed his family. Anyway, I only started playing with them again in the hope it’d only be a couple of years, because I had all these other things I wanted to do.”
“When Brian died he was over thirty thousand pounds in debt. When I bought that manor in Suffolk I had a thousand pounds in the bank, had to scrape together a mortgage and hope I could continue to make enough money to keep it,” Wyman revealed.
The musician further talked about the situation in the band at the time, “That’s how bad it was. Mick and Keith were wealthier because they had songwriting and publishing royalties, but me, Brian [Jones], Charlie and, eventually, Ronnie had only about a tenth of what they were getting.”
Wyman left the band in 1993 for personal reasons and to pursue other interests, including archaeology. He explained in a separate interview earlier this year, “I just had enough. It was half my life and I thought, ‘I have got other things I want to do.’”
He added, “I wanted to do archaeology, write books, have photo exhibitions and play charity cricket. I used to read about ancient cultures while I was on the road and take photos as well. I just had this whole other life I wanted to live.”
After leaving the band, Wyman stayed busy by writing books, using his metal detector to find treasures, and growing his collection of stamps, cigarette cards, music posters, and Roman coins.