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Topic: The do Ron Ron Return to archive
12-10-01 11:21 AM
Sue I'm not sure if this was posted before, if so, please delete

The do Ron Ron

There are two sides to Ronnie Wood. One is the dedicated musician and painter who has been happily married for 25 years. The other is the legendary Rolling Stone who's snorted, smoked and boozed his way through a thousand all-night parties. Mariella Frostrup blocks out 24 hours in her diary as she prepares to meet the two Ronnies

Sunday December 2, 2001
The Observer

It's Halloween and I'm en route to interview a man who has arguably been dressing for the occasion for 30-odd years. Fireworks explode across the sky as I approach his sprawling Kingston mansion, secure behind electric gates. The light beams golden and welcoming from the leaded windows. I step from the car and hear a woman's voice shriek, ' Ronn-eh!' Within seconds he's there, the crow-featured rascal of rock, the filling in the Mick and Keith sandwich. Arms outstretched, hair on end, legs so skinny you could tie knots in them. All that's missing is the broomstick.
'Maariella,' he says, his face beaming into an ordnance survey map. A voice like grated liquorice whispers in my ear in a mockney mid-Atlantic cocktail, 'We're going to have fun.' Trapped in the onslaught of Wood's enthusiastic decadence, a nun would be debased in a heartbeat. I've blocked out 24 hours in my diary for this encounter, to include recovery time. Between 4pm on Wednesday and late lunchtime on Thursday it simply says 'Ronnie Wood'.

I learnt my lesson the last time I visited. Arriving for a one-hour meeting in the late afternoon, I returned home at 2am leaving my car to be collected next day. The evening's other commitments tumbled like skittles. Ronnie Wood has a talent for turning time into a liquid substance that slips by unnoticed. On that occasion, he was to sketch me for a painting the Lloyd Webbers had commissioned. The drawing took about an hour, and for the next seven we celebrated its completion.

Thirty years of touring have left Ronnie Wood with Dracula's sleeping habits and a complexion to match. By his own admission, he is rarely in bed before 7am and seldom makes an appointment before 4pm. Today is no exception. Last night he partied until 8am in celebration of his son Jesse's 25th birthday. The children gradually sloped off to bed, but Ronnie and his wife made the dawn chorus and beyond.

Despite last night's festivities and his hard-living reputation, the house is no orgy of empty bottles and stale cigarette smoke. In fact, on entering this homeliest of rock star pads I'm struck again by the sheer warmth and comfort of it. Ronnie, his wife Jo, their four offspring plus assorted girlfriends and boyfriends have lived here for a mere five years, but it feels like they've occupied the space for centuries. The grandness of the stately proportioned rooms is completely offset by the bric-a-brac of family living, which spreads like fungus across the house. Opulent textiles in rich brocades are draped over every stick of furniture, old oak chests and a grand piano are dwarfed by walls adorned with photographs of the couple and their extended family. There's Leah, 23, Tyrone, 17, and two sons from the couple's previous marriages - Ronnie's 25-year-old Jesse and Jo's 22-year-old Jamie. All four offspring still steadfastly refuse to quit the nest. I'm tempted to move in myself.

Photographer Harry Borden and his assistant are propping up the fully equipped bar in the dining room. 'He's led us astray,' Harry pipes up, his face partly obscured by a tankard of Guinness. It's beyond my thespian capabilities to feign surprise. Next door, Jo is busy cleaning organic vegetables from the garden. Harry is anxious to leave, as he's taking his kids trick-or-treating. 'We could go too, Mariella,' offers Ronnie, 'I don't even need to change! We went about 10 years ago with Mick and Jerry and the kids.' The Jaggers are virtually next-door neighbours. 'Seven years,' Jo corrects him from the kitchen. 'The first house we got to, the woman opened the door, took one look at the lot of us and said, "Fuck off!"'

I'm here to interview Ronnie about his seventh solo album, Not for Beginners. The first - released in 1974 at a time when every major band member from Paul McCartney to Rod Stewart was releasing solo albums - was cheekily called I've Got My Own Album To Do. I'm excused for being unaware of the extent of his canon. As Ronnie says, 'You don't make solo albums to have hits. People are only just starting to appreciate the first one.'

With lines like: 'Wake up you beauty, time to put your knickers on,' I'm not about to start dissecting his lyrics - but then Ronnie admits the main purpose of his solo album is to showcase great musicians. This album is no exception, with guest appearances from Bob Dylan, Ian MacLagan of Faces fame, Kelly Jones of Stereophonics, Scotty Moore and DJ Fontana from Elvis Presley's band, and two of Ronnie's kids, daughter Leah on vocals and Jesse on rhythm guitar.

I while away a few moments in the guest toilet, which is plastered with press clippings and doubles as a functional scrapbook devoted to 30 years of living in the public eye. Meanwhile, Ronnie prepares for our interview: he uncorks a bottle of Chateau Talbot. Red wine and Guinness are his only tipples since his visit to a clinic last year on Jo and Mick's insistence. 'I can't go along with all that shit about having to give everything up. I'd always say to them in the clinic I'm still going to have a Guinness, I'm still going to have a glass of wine. They say you can smoke 400 cigs a day and drink 20 cups of coffee, but you can't have a line or a drink again.' He shakes his head and looks at me incredulously. I wonder if the Priory staff consider him a success story.

Loaded up with the Chateau Talbot, two glasses and two packs of American Spirit (additive-free cigarettes) we set off on a journey to his basement studio. It takes us through the high-ceilinged conservatory doubling as Ronnie's painting studio, a pastime he took up again in the early 80s after a stint at art college in his teens. Balanced on easels around the room are a series of works in progress. They include a collection of paintings inspired by the events of 11 September, which Ronnie plans to auction for the New York firemen.

As we descend the stairs, Ronnie proudly informs me that Lucian Freud is a big fan of landscapes. The recording studio we enter appears to double as a shrine devoted to the Rolling Stones. Pictures of Ronnie with Mick, Keith and Charlie litter the walls, along with obscure notes from Keith, which mean absolutely nothing to the innocent bystander. It's like the bedroom of a fan - which is exactly what Ronnie used to be.

Popular myth is that he happened to be in the right place at the right time for the Stones job offer and, in part, it's true. 'I was at this Robert Stigwood party, sitting in between Mick Jagger and [then Stones lead guitarist] Mick Taylor, and they're talking across me and Taylor says to Mick, "I've got something to tell you, I'm leaving the band." Mick touches my leg and says, "What am I gonna do? Would you join the band?" I say to him, "Mick, you know I'd be there in a New York minute but I can't let my boys down." [Ronnie was an integral part of the Faces, with buddy Rod Stewart, at the time.]

'"Can I ring you if I get desperate?" Mick asks and, sure enough, six months later I get the call and it coincides with the end of a Faces tour, so before you know it I'm auditioning with Jeff Beck, Steve Marriott, Harvey Mandel and Eric Clapton - all these great guitarists. I walk into the room and say, "I've got this song, you play it like this..." and Charlie says, "He's bossing us around already," and that was it. I was in!'

It was no accident. Joining the Rolling Stones was Ronnie's ambition from the very beginning. 'I've got an article upstairs where my mum says that I used to run home from school to watch the Stones on TV - Thank Your Lucky Stars, Ready, Steady, Go, or whatever. Right from when I was at college I wanted to be in that band.' Ronnie may appear to be a free-spirited good-time guy, but one glance at his CV tells another story. It's testament to a dogged determination that saw him working his way through the top bands of the 70s until he finally wound up with every rock guitarist's dream job. It's that same patient determination that has made him the only musician to muscle in on the Jagger/ Richards writing partnership and make the leap from waged guitarist to fully fledged shareholder in the Rolling Stones empire. Albeit after 17 years.

It was Jagger's second attempt to lure Ronnie into the Stones that proved successful. Five years earlier, Ronnie Lane had intercepted a call from Jagger for Wood. Unbeknown to Wood, Lane had informed Mick that Ronnie was happy where he was, thank you very much. 'I found out much later. But, mind you, I probably would have been an out-and-out junkie if I'd joined then. It was probably God's way of saying wait five years.' He's referring to the legendary period during which the Rolling Stones submerged themselves in a heroin frenzy. 'It was a really heavy dope period, like all the shooting up. I only caught the light side of it when I arrived.' It's a typical Wood understatement. The light side meant cocaine and freebasing on epic levels instead.

It's hard to equate the messed-up drug addict of those years with the genial, if slightly tipsy man who sits opposite me. Wood believes himself to be a survivor and, to date, history has proved him correct. 'In my family, they were all big boozers, but they all lived to ripe old ages. My dad lived till he was 78, my mum was in her eighties and I've got two uncles who are in their nineties now.' This he informs me proudly, as he refills our glasses and lights another cigarette with his hand-grenade lighter.

'Didn't you get scared when people started dying because of the drugs?' I ask. 'Well, that wasn't really until we got touring with the Stones and people were trying to keep up with Keith. He's like a human machine with a constitution of iron, and they all thought they could do the same. But Keith knew what he was doing - he didn't have to show off how much he put in his spoon and he never mainlined it. Keith used to skin-pop, you know, through his overcoat, his trousers, his shirt - whatever. Like a B12 injection. I never liked needles, so I'd just stick a bit in the end of me fag or something.'

Ronnie believes it was his enthusiasm for the Stones and his determined efforts to keep them going that saved him from what he considers excess. 'Having loved the Stones all the time I was growing up, I wasn't about to see them go and split up. It got very close to it in the 80s, when Mick thought that Keith hated him and vice versa. I knew underneath that they didn't. They'd grown up from the sandpit together and, like all long-lasting relationships, they're going to have terrible periods. So, one night, Mick calls me and says, "It's over, Keith won't even talk to me, I don't even know where he is." And I say, "I know where he is, I'll call him and get him to call you." Mick's going, "It's pointless," and I say, "Just give it one fucking shot." So Mick says, "All right."

'I call Keith and say, "Come on, man, what's going on here? He thinks you hate him," and Keith goes, "Well I do," but then he starts laughing - so I see a glimmer of hope. Eventually, Keith agrees to call Mick and they end up having a laugh and wind up on really good terms again.'

Listening to Ronnie, it's hard to imagine that he's talking about a group of middle-aged men. But then being in a band is renowned for keeping guys in emotional short pants. You wonder, with all the guidance he's put into Mick and Keith's volatile friendship, where he managed to find time for his own marriage. After all, it's one of the longest-surviving relationships in rock. As with everything else, Ronnie is refreshingly and amusingly naive. 'When I first saw Jo, I said boom, that was it, because I'm a one-woman man.' I can't resist pointing out that he was married at the time. He looks at me in confusion. 'We're great, Jo and me. We're pals and I guess sex has a lot to do with it, too. She's also brilliant at clearing a room. So protective, so devoted. I can't believe how much she loves me.'

I've had experience of Jo's protective side. After Ronnie and I first met, during a rare night out without Jo at a Rod Stewart concert, I would bump into them from time to time. Ronnie's open-armed welcome would invariably be cut short by Jo literally grabbing him and steering him away. Ronnie's devotion to the Stones and his secondary career as a painter may have played a part in his salvation, but his wife's role in keeping her husband on the straight and narrow can't be underestimated.

At 22, and newly dating, Jo was the first woman to break the Stones' no wives and girlfriends on tour rule. 'The rest of the band would go, oh no, not your wife again, but they were all really secretly admiring it. Before I knew it, she was on the payroll and helping Mick and Keith with their stuff, too. At first, Mick would be inviting her to his room at midnight, typical stuff, but soon she just became a part of the whole operation. The others would come to a gig or on tour for a week but Jo, being my personal security - oops, I mean wardrobe - just stayed the course.' He grins at me ruefully. 'I can't be left unsupervised.'

Jo placed Ronnie at the top of her list of priorities and it's probably why he's still around today. When the band was on tour, the kids would be left with a nanny during term time and come on the road during the holidays. The evidence suggests it did them little harm. They're charming, polite, lead virtually Mormon lifestyles in comparison to their parents and yet obviously adore them. 'Well, they've always had me as the perfect example of what not to do,' admits Ronnie, 'It's a form of aversion therapy.'

Not surprisingly, it's solitude these days that he craves most. 'It's like Paddington Station in this house. There's all the kids, their boyfriends and girlfriends, three cleaners, three gardeners, two builders who've been living with us on and off for seven years, Jenny our secretary. It's a madhouse. That's why I love to go to Ireland you know, just to relax.'

I imagine him in his Kildare home, paintbrush in hand, enjoying a brief moment of tranquillity. But I've forgotten its Ronnie I'm talking to. 'When I'm left on my own I'm my own worst enemy,' he says. 'I go off into Dublin and two days later I'm spotted walking by the Liffey with a whole bunch of new friends.'

'So you don't really enjoy being totally alone?' I ask. 'Oh yeah, I love that, too, because I'm a Gemini, so I have a great time with the other guy. I like 'em both myself, but other people don't like the other one. The stoned and drunk one.'

'What's he like?' 'I don't know, really. Stoned and washing away reality. Where Not For Beginners came from is Jo left me a few months ago for 10 days. Suddenly I get this note: "I'll come back when the real Ronnie comes back."'

I'm bolt upright on the sofa, prepared for a confessional outpouring of heartbreak and woe. 'So what did you do?'

'Well, I didn't cry about it, or anything. I just thought, oh I'm sitting here, better get on with some stuff. I think I wrote 25 songs and did five paintings while she was gone. When she came back, she said, "Well, have you missed me?" and I went, "Yer, of course." But really, I'd just been creating.'

'What would you have done if she hadn't come back for two months?'

'Well, I probably would have written 300 songs and done 500 paintings.' He's twisting and turning in his seat at this point, and can't even look me in the eye. I realise he's attempting an admission of emotion. 'The great thing is she did come back and I was very relieved.'

I'm still eagerly pursuing a definition of this 'other self'. It's an uphill struggle. His answers get increasingly monosyllabic and he squirms around like there's a colony of termites burrowing in his trousers. He tries one last time to describe his alter ego. 'It's like, oh, life can't be this great. I'd better wash it away a bit, have another drink. It can't be this good. In fact my real self is probably more creative and more frightening than any sort of drink or drug-induced state.' More frightening to Ronnie, perhaps, but not, I suspect, to his long-suffering family.

Early evening has drifted into late night and we wander upstairs to watch part of the Chris Evans documentary from the last Stones tour. It's like I'm sitting next to the teenage fan again. He pre-empts what his fellow band members are about to say with a squeeze of my arm or knee, or he starts jiggling about on the sofa. He must have watched the video 20 times and still he's glued to the screen. It could be me romanticising, but when Keith says that separately he and Ronnie are useless, but together they're as good as 10 guitarists, I swear there's a tear in his eye.

I ask him if the video makes him feel nostalgic. 'No, not nostalgic, just desperate to get out on the road again. Mick will kill me for saying this, but we had a cut-off point a week ago when anyone could say they didn't want to start up the band again. Prince Rupert [the Stones' manager] called me yesterday and said no one had called, which pretty much means we're on. The interesting thing was no one had said no and no one had specified which of the touring options they wanted to go for. You know - stadiums, clubs_ big, small, long, short. The truth is that all of us can't wait to get out there whatever way - even Charlie, who moans the most.'

We're joined by Jo, who's finished cooking dinner for the kids. Ronnie's eating habits are erratic to say the least and often involve huge fry-ups with Keith at 5am. 'What's this other Ronnie like, then?' I ask Jo, refusing to admit defeat. 'Oh, he's a monster. He has to have things his way. You know I still bring him his breakfast in bed every morning? Or like the other night, at the premiere of Mick's film Enigma, his car didn't turn up after the film. He was furious, hands everywhere, marching through Leicester Square saying he's never going to another premiere again.'

'Well I'm not,' mutters Ronnie, 'I hate premieres. All those arseholes bothering you.' 'He never wants to do anything like that,' adds Jo. 'Last time we went to the theatre, he fell asleep.'

'It was The Vagina Monologues, ' Ronnie says, by way of excuse, 'I felt like a cunt!'

I leave the pair of them cackling away on the sofa like teenagers. And, as I drive away, I can't help wondering if Ronnie's kids refuse to leave home not for the sake of creature comforts, but because their parents quite obviously need supervision. After all, as 54-year-old Ronnie says, he still can't be left unattended.

� Ronnie Wood Not for Beginners is out now and he appears at the Shepherd's Bush Empire on 11 December.

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