By Chris Varias
Enquirer contributor

Bill Wyman was the anti-Mick Jagger onstage. While Mr. Jagger danced and pranced, Mr. Wyman, the oldest member of the Rolling Stones, was glued to one spot, maintaining a look on his face that suggested minimal brainwave activity. Even demure drummer Charlie Watts came off like a 24-hour party compared with his mate in the rhythm section.

Who knew wheels were spinning behind that stoic countenance as he calmly plucked his bass strings?

Seems that Mr. Wyman, who left the Stones in 1991, had book deals on the brain the whole time. In 1990 he released the memoir Stone Alone, which detailed the early years of the World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band and provided a quantitative measurement of the author's prowess behind bedroom doors.

Now comes Rolling with the Stones. The 512-page coffee-table book, released Monday, is packed with photographs and sidebars, and has Mr. Wyman's dry chronological narrative running throughout.

In keeping with Mr. Wyman's reserved stage persona and Stone Alone's almost clinical account of life as a rock star, Rolling with the Stones is fact-driven. This is in contrast to several myth-making books written about the Stones over the years. Many of them are excellent. Others are sloppily researched.

As coming from one who lived through these tales, Mr. Wyman's accounts take on credibility. To get the story straight, he's able to reference a journal and a large collection of memorabilia. He began both at the dawn of the Stones, Mr. Wyman writes in the foreword, "to show my little boy Stephen that his father had spent a couple years in a pop group."

After the foreword comes a story very similar to Stone Alone's:

Five English kids grow up on war rations and American blues music; this quintet eventually unites as the Rolling Stones, and in their manager Andrew Oldham's vision they're pitted against the relatively cuddly Beatles as pop's bad boys. The plan works.

Mr. Oldham, singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards wrestle control of the band from guitarist Brian Jones, the soul of the group; Mr. Oldham wants to turn the Stones from a blues cover band into rock artistes, led by the Jagger-Richards team penning hits with the regularity of the Beatles' John Lennon and Paul McCartney; again, the plan works.

Die-hard fans know this stuff inside and out, especially if they have read Stone Alone, which only dealt with the '60s. Nearly four-fifths of Rolling with the Stones covers that same era. In fact, there are only a few differences between the two books: Rolling with the Stones has more illustrations, it doesn't dwell as much on Mr. Wyman the Love Machine, and because of the book's monstrous girth it can hurt your legs if held on your lap for long stretches of time.

Still, fans will be delighted by the detailed concert itineraries; rare photographs; newspaper and magazine clippings; and information on every single and album the Stones released. Then there's the trivia. Did you know that on Nov. 27, 1965, the Stones played two shows - a matinee at Hara Arena in Dayton, followed by a performance at Cincinnati Gardens? But it is the artwork that makes the book worthwhile. The best comes from the '60s, ranging from the stark black-and-white photography to such arcane items as an alternate album-cover concept for Beggars Banquet of a big, sloppy hamburger perched on an Uncle Sam-style top hat.

Part of the Stones' story is their longevity. Some of their best albums were released in the '70s and '80s but the content of his book suggests otherwise. The period from January 1963 to June 1964 gets two chapters and more pages than the single chapter covering June 1979 to the present.

Rolling with the Stones is fun to flip through. Randomly reading any one item on any page will make a true Stones fan think of several other subjects to look up in the index immediately.

But there are better books (Stanley Booth's The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones and his Keith: Standing in the Shadows, to name two) about this great band.

E-mail cvarias@enquirer.com