Ronnie on a roll: Life is far more fun without the drink and drugs,
says the legendary rocker even if it means not hanging out with Kate Moss anymore
By Rebecca Hardy
9th July 2011
The day we meet, Ronnie Wood is as wired as a child stuck in class on a hot summer’s afternoon. Only it’s pouring with rain outside and Ronnie is 64, so I begin to wonder what he sprinkled on his cornflakes at breakfast.
‘I’m just enjoying being sober,’ he says.
Sober? Ronnie? The rocker from Faces and The Rolling Stones who nearly died blowing £20 million on drink and drugs? Acid. Heroin. Uppers. Downers. Brandy. Port. You name it he’s drunk, smoked or ingested it. It’s a miracle he’s here at all, let alone sober.
‘Sixteen months now,’ he says proudly. ‘The war is over. I’m not fighting or struggling – not thinking, “Can I? Can’t I?” You’re just like this,’ he sighs, a deep contented sigh ‘I’m like, “This is lovely”. I don’t have that burden on my shoulders.’
Now, Ronnie has sworn he’s going to clean up his act countless times before. His ex-wife Jo told me once that living with Ronnie was like ‘having another child in the house’, and finally divorced him 18 months ago after he ran off with Russian cocktail waitress Ekaterina Ivanova, who was just 19.
Ronnie and Ekaterina have since separated and Ronnie lives by himself in west London. ‘I’m on my own really,’ he says.
‘Ana (Brazilian Ana Araujo, 29) is my girl who comes round, but we meet when I say. I’ve never been on my own since I was 14 so it’s a brand new experience. Before, I was always engulfed with relationships and never had a mind of my own. To finally break away from people controlling you is great. Really great.’
Ronnie has also broken away from some of his old friends. Kate Moss, for one, is a ‘mate’ he rarely sees.
‘My circle of friends has changed naturally,’ he says. ‘You find yourself falling in with winners. You’ve got no time for anybody who’s negative in that they’ll say, “Put aside what you’re doing. Let’s go and get ripped.” Kate’s a mate but I don’t see a lot of her these days. This is a fresh start for me and it began in this room.’
Faces: From left Ian McLagan, Ronnie and Rod Stewart on tour in the US in 1972
This room’ where it all changed for him (more on that later) is an office in London where I meet Ronnie with his bandmates in the reformed Faces – Kenney Jones and Ian ‘Mac’ McLagan – and his manager Sherry Daly to discuss their new book, Faces 1969-75, a signed, limited-edition tome packed with 200- plus photos and stories that recall the groupies, the drink, the drugs and the sheer madness of their six years together.
‘There were no rules’ says Ronnie. ‘I remember we collided with the Stones in the Beverly Hills Hotel. So the Stones party and the Faces party melded into one. Afterwards, they had to renew the carpet and the interiors of the rooms. The Faces were madder than the Stones. Everything out the window was a natural thing.’
In truth, they can’t remember much about those days. They were, says Mac, ‘just a bunch of silly boys on vacation in America’ going wild. They thought they were immortal, but now they’re in their 60s and just thank God they’ve survived. Kenney, 62, who played drums, is the owner of Hurtwood Park Polo Club in Ewhurst, Surrey, and has six children and a seven-year marriage to second wife Jayne Andrew. He hasn’t had a drop to drink for six months.
Fast-forward: Ronnie (center) pictured with the current members of Faces
Ian McLagan (left) and Kenney Jones (right)
Keyboard player Mac, 66, has a ten-acre estate in Austin, Texas where his wife Kim, who he was with for 33 years, died in a car accident five years ago. He gave up drugs three decades ago. ‘I was doing a lot of coke and my reputation suffered,’ he said. ‘Once I wanted to stop it was easy, but it takes a while to build up your respect again.’
Ronnie nods. ‘It does,’ he says. ‘I’ve just got myself a base in west London near my son Tyrone, and because I’m not drinking I’ve stepped up painting. During the days I was using I always worked, but my clarity has improved. Getting my life back from the mess it was in before is taking a while though.’
‘Mess’ is an understatement. Ronnie’s life was in utter chaos before he went into rehab for an eighth time. The collapse of his 24-year marriage could not have been more public: two days after his daughter Leah’s wedding he ran away to Ireland with Ekaterina.
His children – Leah, now 32, Jesse, 34, Tyrone, 27, and Jo’s son from a previous relationship, Jamie, 36 – were furious.
‘They hated me,’ he admits, and soon he hated himself, as his drinking spiralled out of control. In December 2009, he was arrested after witnesses alleged he had tried to throttle Ekaterina during a drunken row in the street. She didn’t press charges, but that was the end of the relationship.
A few weeks later came the fateful meeting in the office. Sherry, who’s worked for him for 30 years and cares for him like a lioness with her cub, sat down in the room with Ronnie and told him she couldn’t cope any more. Kenney, who was there too, agreed with her. Ronnie vowed to sort himself out.
‘Sherry was here and Kenney there,’ he says, nodding to the armchair in which I’m sitting. ‘I started looking at the consequences of my actions. I wasn’t happy with myself. Before, I’d just have had another drink and washed those thoughts away. But this time I just knew this was it. So I said, ‘‘I won’t participate in any of that from now on.’’ Everybody was like, “How can we trust you?” But I just said, ‘‘No, I know”. Sixteen months on now,’ he chuckles and Kenney and Mac applaud. Ronnie adds, ‘The more clearly I see things, the more there is to see and the more fun it is to see them.’
Hippy spirit: The band minus Mac - who took the photo - in 1970
Ronnie, you see, has an irrepressible sense of fun. A stick-thin man with the hips of a teenager, he smokes like a chimney and laughs like a donkey, is mischievous, guileless and funny. His face is a mish-mash of grooves and crags, and round his neck two shiny silver freedom feathers hang on a silver chain, from Eric Clapton and Leah.
Leah lives in Australia now but emails him daily with photos of his granddaughter Maggie. And Eric is a mate. All these rockers, at least the ones who’ve survived, are close, including Faces lead singer Rod Stewart, despite him ‘disappointing’ them when he refused to join the reunion tour. Instead, Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall, a longtime Faces fan, is on vocals in the concerts, which take them to Hurtwood Park Polo Club on 23 July.
‘Rod emailed me yesterday wanting to know how the rehearsals were going,’ says Ronnie.
‘He said, “Give my love to the boys.” We were all in the same bubble, you see. Keith Richards used to say that with all the madness of the real-life world, he couldn’t wait to get on stage for a bit of peace and quiet. It’s you and the band and that’s it. It’s the same today. It’s a high.’ Indeed, those early rock ’n’ roll years were addictive – and they still are. Ronnie says, ‘When I’m not travelling the globe, having a schedule to keep up with and a gig to go to, I’m unhappy. I feel like a fish out of water. It’s hard to live a normal life.’
Rock supreme: Ronnie in Detroit in 1972 and three years later in Canada
‘The emphasis in the old days was the drink. We’d drink a fish under the table. Rod and me used to have a port and brandy before we went on stage, which was a strong confidence booster. You’d think, “I can do anything” – or fall over.
‘Underneath I’m very shy. At school I thought I was inferior. There was always someone taller or more more powerful than me. I was just little Ronnie. I thought, “I’ll show them”. ’ This rare insight makes Ronnie feel awkward, so he starts to leaf through the Faces book of yesteryear. ‘Seeing some of these pictures is like watching someone else,’ he says. ‘You can’t remember it. Then some of the photos make you think, “Oh, I remember that girl. She got me through that night and I threw her out in the morning.”’
Mac chips in. ‘There’s a rule in music: never have breakfast with the girl you’ve spent the night with. I did once and when I sat down with her and the guys, I looked at her and thought, “S***, a glass eye.”’ Kenney recalls, ‘I’d say, “You’ll have to go, I’m having my room decorated.”’ He doesn’t know how many there were. Nobody was counting.
Mac adds, ‘We were young. It was a case of anything goes.’ And now? ‘It’s a strange feeling,’ Kenney answers. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever not been together. Even though we hadn’t worked together for years [the Faces split up in 1975] we’ve seen enough of each other. We’re the only ones who really understand what it was like, so we’re still there for each other.’
Indeed. They were there for Ronnie Lane, the Faces songwriter and bass guitarist, as he battled multiple sclerosis until his death 14 years ago and have dedicated the book to him. They were there too for Mac when his wife was killed. ‘When Kim died, these guys… God bless you both,’ he says, his voice thick with emotion. ‘Without my mates, God knows where I’d be. We’ve all had our ups and downs since then.’ He points to the book, ‘that’s what makes you real and shows you what and who is really important. So, yes, we’re all here for each other.’
Which of course they have been for Ronnie, who I’m sure pushed their friendship to the limits in recent years. Isn’t he a bit old to finally realise it’s time to grow up? ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I wish I’d done it a lot earlier but it probably wouldn’t have worked then.’ Myriad emotions pass over his lived-in face and, for a moment, I glimpse the regret. He shrugs. ‘You pays your money, you takes your chance,’ he says. And he is, as he knows, a very, very lucky man.
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