Title: Re: Ronnie / Ekaterina Thread
Post by LadyJane on Oct 4th, 2009 at 10:23am
Pretty interesting read. From Times online.
Ronnie Wood, his women and his Liberty designs
It's 3pm in David Bailey's studio. Leah Wood is in the hairdresser's chair holding her four-month-old baby, Maggie Dylan. There's Bailey wandering round, pretending to be cross. "You breast-feeding? Dis-gustin'." There's a rack of hand-painted T-shirts, dresses and scarves, Ronnie Wood's debut collection for Liberty of London. Everyone is cooing over Maggie, which, much to Leah's delight, fires up Bailey further. "I hate babies," he mutters as she propels Maggie towards him, "and anyway, they smell." Indeed, the only element missing from the tableau is Ronnie Wood himself. "Where is the little twerpie?" sighs Sherry Daly, who has run the Stones' office for 30 years, as she tap-tap-taps into her Blackberry for maybe the fourth time. "He said he was only two miles away. I mean, it's only Surrey."
Then his trusty minder appears at the top of the stairs, and Wood is right behind him. A study in aged rock'n'rolldom, with that raven rooster do and pin-thin body clad in head-to-toe black, he makes a beeline for his granddaughter, picks her up and swoops her into the air.
"Oh God, not you as well," grumbles Bailey. "But here you are! And still bloody alive, eh?"
"Yeah, I know, mate, I know," says Wood sheepishly. "Miracle, innit? It's all been a bit crazy these past few days."
Crazy is right. Only 72 hours before, Wood was supposed to have had a "reconciliatory" dinner with Leah and his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Jo, at the former marital home in Kingston. It was only 48 hours before that when Katya, as he calls his 21-year-old Russian girlfriend, Ekaterina Ivanova, supposedly threatened to commit suicide because of that dinner, and the police had to be called to the couple's rented Belsize Park flat to sort it all out. Indeed, we've hardly been able to read about anything else in the papers this morning - how Wood supposedly said, "F*** off home, you slut", and then, in a drunken rage, threw her clothes out of the window; how part of the reason Katya went mad is because he promised her that she would be modelling the collection for Style today, not Leah.
Poor Ronnie. No wonder he seems a tad broken. It's one thing having a complicated domestic life when you're middle-aged, quite another when you're 62 years old. Still, he's obviously a very proud grandad and thrilled to see Leah, telling her all about his new pad near Sandown Park racecourse, how it has 140 steps and an octagonal tower and a view all the way to Wembley Stadium. And how she and Maggie must come round and visit.
Katya, meanwhile? "Oh, the papers, you don't read those, do you?" he says, patting his pocket for his ciggies. "Naaah, listen. There were a few harsh words that night between me and Kat, but the point about Belsize is it's like an echo chamber - you raise your voice and the neighbours hear everything. Kat, she's coming with me to the country, and if we have another argument, well, this time we'll have it in the middle of a field, ha, ha!"
Let's scroll back a bit, though. I must declare an interest here, for I know Jo Wood a little and, having visited their former marital home, having witnessed the cocoon she lovingly built round her husband - the vegetable garden, the TV suppers, the delicious organic Sunday roasts - having seen up close her general yumminess, I have to say it's all a bit of a mystery. To leave this treasure of a rock chick, who put up with the drunken outbursts and all those stints in rehab, whose life-long motto was "never show jealousy, don't nag about alcohol and always have sex" - was he feeling right in the head? As Wood once put it himself: "It's always when everything is going well that I screw things up."
Then again, isn't he entitled, as any of us are, to make a life change? Shouldn't we maybe lay off him a bit? His kids have, after all. "What can I say? I'm a permanent teenager. The older I get, the younger I get," shrugs Wood. "Me and Kat, it's been this great adventure, right, and I'm having fun. It's a new life for me, I'm in a different place to where I was 30 years ago, and Jo and me, we just moved on. She's gone her way, I've gone mine, and the great thing is that my kids still love me - you saw that."
It's the following afternoon, and we are now sitting at his favourite table in Bibendum in Chelsea, where he has just had a big (sober) fish-and-chip lunch with "Auntie" Sherry. Dressed today in one of his own new T-shirts (one of my favourites, with a gold guitar on the front), a jacket by Lanvin - "I love the frilly bits on the shoulders, they look like girl's knickers" - he seems less like he has the weight of the world on those bony shoulders of his. He didn't sleep well last night, "worrying about the clothing line, the new album and everything", but at least he relaxed and got to watch one of his favourite films, the thriller Copycat - "Don't you just love that line when he's in prison and asks her for a pair of her 'squirrel covers'?" The dirty old rocker is clearly back on form.
So is it possible, everyone wants to know, for someone 41 years his junior to fancy him? Well, apart from being a little deaf, Wood is in remarkably good nick. Thanks, perhaps, to his gypsy heritage, he still has all his hair and says he has never dyed it. Despite all the booze (he was supposed to have drunk two bottles of vodka a day when he first holed up with Katya in his Co Kildare retreat 15 months ago), he is in stunningly good shape, too, wearing the same size 28 jeans he was wearing in the 1970s. "We're all the same, me, Mick, Charlie, Keith. It drives my girlfriend mad than I can fit into her jeans."
The tabloids may hint that the only reason he and Katya are back together is because he wants to avoid a grimy kiss-and-tell, but the way he talks about her suggests otherwise. How she has become such a good cook since they started going out ("I'm the king of breakfasts, Kat's really good with the fish"); how he took her to Rome for her 21st birthday; how she'd love to illustrate children's books for a living; how "strong" and "moral" she is as a person; how she has had to be strong to "get through all of this".
And, speaking of Katya, a text arrives on Wood's mobile. "Ah, look, this is brilliant, it's her horoscope for the day: Leo. 'You are going to want to dream the day away and think of the recent traumatics that have taken place in your life,'" he reads carefully. "'At least pretend to play the professional - people are watching you.' That's great! You'll meet her, she'll be here in a few minutes." Then up he leaps, patting his pockets and groaning a little. "Got that coffee tummy thing going, oooh, but go on, order me another double espresso while I go outside for a couple of puffs."
It was soon after Wood came out of rehab last year that the possibility of designing his own line presented itself. Wood, Katya and Charlie Watts were late-night shopping in Liberty. "Everything was 50% off, and there I was, going, 'I'll have this couch, I'll have that chair' - I didn't realise what it really meant was 50% on. I swear I came out £5,000 lighter."
The upshot of the shopping trip was that he got to meet Tamara Salman, the creative director of Liberty, who later came to his studio (equipped, when he came out of rehab, with brushes and paints by his loyal friend Damien Hirst) and saw a canvas of his entitled I Feel Like Painting. Then and there, she told him he wasn't allowed to sell it to anyone, it was going to be turned into a line of clothing and accessories.
Hopefully it will be a money-spinner. Having to shell out for his divorce settlement, and because he was an employee before he eventually became a shareholder of the Stones, he could always do with the money. "I'm a terrible businessman," he says, back from his ciggie break, "but I do try." He does try to keep on the straight and narrow on the booze front, too, but, as he admits, it is a daily, if not hourly struggle. "I tried to have a drink, but I can't find a balance. When I do, Mr Hyde comes out, and the older I get, the worse I get," he says. "I suppose once you accept the fact it's never going to go away, then it's easier to live with, but a lack of self-esteem, that's always been my biggest problem. Always putting myself down."
On this note, in walks Katya, looking even younger in the flesh than she does in print. Wearing a green raincoat, black tights and the little titania hairband that has become her trademark, she looks like any other gorgeous art-school type you see going through the rails in Topshop. Except, perhaps, for her unbelievably luminous skin and picture-perfect teeth.
Wood leaps out of his chair to greet her and they smile impishly at each other. In an accent that's hard to place - part estuary, part posh, part, what is it, Australian? - she announces that she has passed her "mocks" at make-up school. She is brilliant at her new craft, according to Wood; in fact they were just over at Jay Jopling's house and she was making people up and this one guy thought she was incredible.
"I'm not really so passionate about it," she shrugs. "I just did it to kick myself up the arse and start getting out of bed."
"Yeah," says Wood proudly. "She gets out of bed at 7am now."
At 7am? That's impressive for a couple of night owls. "Yeah, well, we live in Surrey now," she says, fixing me with those crystal-blue eyes. Asking Wood to order her "a coffee or something" and announcing that she wouldn't mind a cigarette at some point - "What is this with these restaurants that have little smoking cages? Why stand in a cage if you can smoke on the street?" - they have a giggle about her text and "the situation" (it was this morning's front-page news again). Then she has a mock go at him about the fur boots she is wearing. "You say you got them for me in Rome, but they're from Liberty."
Then he asks her, because he couldn't remember the name, what that film she wants him to see is called. It turns out to be the 3-D supernatural slasher The Final Destination. Horror flicks, along with eLove, the reality show about cyber-dating, and The Girls of the Playboy Mansion, are what the pair will be watching on their sofa in Surrey. Next week they are off to Paris, where the collection will debut at the boutique l'Eclaireur.
Who knows what lies in the future? Katya is by no means stupid, and I admire her poise, her droll sense of humour. Wood has told me his "adventure" does not involve babies. She has said she would like one, though not for another 10 years.
You get the feeling that Wood is desperate for his friends and music buddies to welcome her into the fold. When Bobby Keys, the Stones' Texan saxophonist, calls in the middle of lunch to say he is in town, the first thing Wood mentions is how he wants Bobby to meet his "girl" and how he shouldn't believe anything he reads because "she's so great, man, you're gonna love her".
As Wood says, Katya is very strong. If anyone can make it work, it will be her. I do hope she looks after him as well as Jo. One gets the feeling that this is a man who might fall to pieces if she does not.
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Enjoy.
LJ.
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