“This is Mick, captured looking into the late sunlight in the bus on the way to a show in Canada,” Bill Wyman recalls. The longtime Rolling Stones bassist delves into his personal photo archives in the new book ‘Stones From the Inside: Rare and Unseen Images.’
“This is Brian Jones being his usual mad self, in the dressing room backstage,” Wyman says.
Backstage at the Oshawa Civic Auditorium in Onstario. “Here is an unusually calm John Belushi, pen I hand, no doubt filling out his shopping list,” Wyman says.
“Yeah, that’s Brian Jones in RCA Studios in Hollywood,” the bassist says. “That’s just a shot of him walking across the studio, and I just captured it and I really like it. It’s one of my favorite pictures of him.”
“The Who in the studio, after my mate Keith Moon invited me to their recording session — and then he hid from the camera,” Wyman recalls.
“Charlie, his wife Shirley and I went pony trekking in the hills in Hawaii where I shot this photo of Charlie learning to lasso,” Wyman says.
“This is my shot of my great friend, Peter Frampton, in the studio before he was famous, having discovered him as a 14-year-old and using him to play on song demos,” recalls Wyman who captured the shot at the Pye Recording Studio in London where Wyman and Frampton’s group, Moon’s Train, were recording.
“This is my lifelong pal Eric Clapton having a laugh at the antics going on at the Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus shoot,” Wyman says.
“Here is a thoughtful Keith Richards on the ferry from Denmark to Sweden on tour in 1970,” the bassist offers.
“Here is a very interested Mark Ronson, nearly five years old, playing my pre-Stones, homemade bass at his home in London,” Wyman says.
“Here are Ronnie and Charlie in the studio,” Wyman says. “They see me with the camera and find time to stop for a very amusing photo.”
“That’s in a studio, that’s gotta be in Pathé in Paris,” Wyman says, referring to the Pathé-Marconi studio. “That’s the back of Keith there.”
“That’s at the Rock and Roll Circus, and there’s Brian right in the background,” Wyman says. “Mick’s just pulling his snakeskin boot off to help him. Keith was rather wanting to be barefooted.”
“That’s Charlie being Charlie really,” Wyman says. “It’s taken at SIR Studios in New York. Charlie’s just posing really for me and doing something a bit unusual with his arms which turned out to be quite photogenic.”
“Keith loved a chainsaw, didn’t he?” Wyman says. “That’s just outside of Mexico City where we shot the video, ‘Too Much Blood,’ and a few other things – and I captured him just picking that up with that naughty look on his face. If anyone was gonna use a chainsaw in the video it was gonna be Keith.”