The way Ronnie Wood tells it, the Rolling Stones is really a giant machine. The public only gets to see the surface decoration: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and himself, plus assorted backing musicians.
But behind the superficial glamour, a monster of a contraption grinds away, its assorted cogs and gears meshing perfectly: A ruthlessly efficient mobile rock ‘n’ roll factory, staffed by an army of sound, lighting and staging crews, promotions and merchandise people, minders, personal chefs, life coaches and physiotherapists.
Every few years, someone turns the key and the whole huge operation lumbers back into life and begins another slow circuit around the globe.
“The organisation behind this band is enormous,” says Wood by phone from his London home. “And you just have to slot in and play your part.
Once the big wheel starts turning, you just get on board and go with it, and next thing you know you’ve been touring for two years straight! Fortunately, we’re all pretty nomadic and very used to living out of suitcases. Everyone gets a bit fidgety when we’re not on the road.”
They came, they saw, they made a righteous racket. The last time the Rolling Stones played here was in 2006, on their A Bigger Bang tour.
With the haircuts of 17 year olds and the wrinkled faces of granddads, their skinny frames festooned with leather, lycra, silver jewellery and flowing silk scarves, they played Jumping Jack Flash, Start Me Up and Satisfaction to roars of nostalgic approval, then headed back out to the airport.
And when they finally left the South Pacific, they took away a New Zealander with them as a souvenir. Not just any New Zealander, mind. It was Auckland neurosurgeon Andrew Law, who joined the entourage to look after Richards’ battered bonce.
Richards fell from a coconut tree during a brief break in Fiji. He was, says Wood, “playing Tarzan”, then hit the beach, hard. “When he said ‘My teeth are bleeding!’, I knew something was badly wrong.”
The accident sounded like something of a joke at the time. Richards once exuded a genuine sense of dissolution and danger, now here he was, an accident-prone granddad in a Hawaiian shirt, tumbling off a teensy palm tree at a posh holiday resort.
But the fall could have killed him, says Wood. Richards was airlifted to Auckland, where Law performed an emergency operation, drilling into Richards’ skull to relieve pressure caused by the fall.
“When Keith was up to it, we carried on with the tour, and that New Zealand doctor came with us for a good while. Keith’s right as rain now, and can’t wait to get back down there again.”
The Stones are confirmed to play Auckland’s Mt Smart Stadium on Saturday April 5th. It will be their seventh visit to our shores, with the first, minus Wood, way back in 1965.
Now 66, Wood joined the band for their 1975 world tour, and has played with them ever since. His elegantly shambolic guitar interplay with Keith Richards is the stuff of legend.
On a good night, they bat solos back and forth with such an easy skill and grace, it’s like witnessing some sort of wasted Wimbledon of riff tennis.
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But besides as a sonic singles partner, Keith Richards serves another very useful role for Wood: That of media decoy. Received wisdom has it that the primary heroin-binging, cocaine-hoovering hedonist in this band is Richards. This is not the case. As the UK’s Guardian newspaper once observed, Wood is “a man so debauched, so obliterated by
drink and drugs, and such an all-round pain in the arse that Richards once put a gun to his head and threatened to kill him”.
“Well, actually, that bit is wrong” insists Wood.
“It was a knife. And that was years ago. Actually, that kind of thing was nothing unusual. We used to go at each other with knives, broken bottles, all kinds of things. That was just part and parcel of those drug-crazed days. Things would get a little deranged.”
An alcoholic who has been through rehab eight times, Wood was born in 1947, in the West London borough of Hillingdon.
He grew up in a tiny council house, the son of a long line of “water gypsies” who operated canal barges, and began drinking heavily from the age of 14, with his thirst increasing further still when he played in the Jeff Beck Group and the Faces during the late 60s and early 70s.
Typical day’s intake Eight pints of Guinness, a bottle of vodka, then on to Sambuca, brandy or whisky. He also snorted an entire snowfield of cocaine, causing so much nasal wear ‘n’ tear that he reportedly had a plastic septum inserted into his nose in 1975.
In May last year, ex-wife Jo Wood told Fox News that herself and Ronnie had been “pioneers of crack” during the 70s: “It was called freebasing, now it’s called crack. You made it yourself. That was half the addiction I think, making the bloody stuff up and then you sat there and smoked it like a looney. Ronnie always used to say, “I never did chemistry at school so I’m making up for things”.
Wood sighs when I mention it.
“Yeah, OK, but even in the depth of my using, I knew I’d never cross over a certain line. Even when I was right out there on the edge, my gypsy genes gave me a bit of immunity, I think. But then, suddenly, nothing worked anymore. The drink and the drugs started to backfire on me and I’d get in these really bad moods. I became a real pain in the arse. I was forever telling my best friends to f… off and so on. It wasn’t good. Something had to change, so I went back to rehab, and next year will be my fifth year of recovery. I’m really enjoying it, too.”
During an earlier spell of sobriety in 2003, Wood claimed he hadn’t played a single unintoxicated gig in 40 years.
Does he think his massive drug and alcohol intake was a way of managing his anxiety, helping take the edge off when playing in front of such enormous crowds
“Nah, mate. For me, the time off stage is far more terrifying. I can’t wait to get on stage, generally, for a bit of peace and quiet! Nah, drugs are more useful for cheering you up during all the boring stuff like travelling or waiting around, but over the years you learn by experience that you’re better off in your own skin than in a self-induced stupor. I play with much more clarity, now, and I keep surprising myself by what I can do when I’m clear and focussed. I love goin’ out there with Keith and practising our ancient form of weaving as we build up this thing together. It’s an intuitive sort of interchange, built around what we leave out as much as the notes we play. It’s magical, really. And it’s great to have [early Stones guitarist] Mick Taylor back in the picture as well. With him on board for this tour, the weaving gets even more intriguing, as the audience will see when we get down there.”
A highly unscientific survey conducted among friends who’ve bought tickets to the upcoming show revealed a common theme: Better see them now, ‘cos they may not be touring much longer.
With a combined age of 277 years, the four principal band members are not so much spring chickens as autumn boilers these days. The Strolling Bones, some call them.
But Wood seems mystified that anyone cares about their advancing years. The players he obsessed over as a teenager – Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Elmore James – kept right on playing until their hearts stopped beating. He hopes to do the same.
Wood was still in short pants when he made his musical debut, aged 9, in his brothers’ skiffle band. After a couple of short-lived mod bands, he joined the Jeff Beck Group in 1967, moving on a few years later to the Faces alongside close mate Rod Stewart. But he always kept one eye on the Stones.
“I always knew I was gonna end up in this band. They were already mates, of course. I remember waking around the periphery of Hyde Park in 69, and this big car pulls up through a whole sea of people and out steps Mick and Charlie. Mick comes up and says, ‘Ullo, Face’, which is what he called me then, ‘cos I was in the Faces. And we talk away for a while and then they say, ‘OK, we gotta go and play; we’ll see you soon’. And I said, ‘Yeah, sooner than you think’. I was always confident I would end up in this band, and a few years later I did. Mind you, I did a 17-year apprenticeship before they finally made me a full member! But I wasn’t looking at the pay packet; I was looking for an adventure, and I certainly got that.”
During this 17-year “apprenticeship”, Wood was only paid wages when the band toured. To earn a crust during down times, the former art student picked up his paint brushes again, and still exhibits regularly to this day. Most of the work’s pretty ropey, but that doesn’t stop people buying it: In 2005, his painting Beggars Banquet sold for
