Ronnie Wood was given the honour of being the Desert Island Discs castaway this weekend just gone.
Though he’s best known as a guitarist, the 78-year-old Rolling Stone is competent on a number of instruments. Indeed, he told host Lauren Laverne that he started on the drums.
“My brother Ted used to play," Wood said, "and he had his kit underneath the stairs and when my parents were at work and I was at home either on sick leave or doing a dodge from school, I’d get the drums out, play all afternoon and then pack them away before anybody got back.
"Anyway, the neighbours said ‘there was this awful crashing and banging coming from the house all afternoon, Mrs Wood.’ (She’d say) ‘Was that you, Ronnie?’ (And I’d go) ‘No, I had nothing to do with it.’”
Ronnie is self-taught and, as he explained to Laverne, can read some music, up to a point. “I thought, I don’t want to know every note I’m playing. It takes the element of ad lib out of it and inventiveness.”
He’s even played drums on one Stones track, Sleep Tonight from the band’s 1986 album Dirty Work. “He (Charlie Watts) tried it when he came in and he said ‘I can’t do it as good as you, Ronnie. You get back on the drums.’
"So I played on that song. It’s pretty good drums, even if I say it myself.”
He should. Dirty Work is widely regarded as the nadir of the band’s career. Jagger and Richards weren’t talking, or collaborating much – Ronnie ended up with an unprecedented three co-credits on the album.
Even their doyen of dependability, Charlie Watts, had a heroin problem at the time. Wood’s contributions on that album - and during that whole period - were crucial in keeping the Stones’ show on the road at a time when they could easily have fallen apart.
Elsewhere during the interview, the guitarist confirmed that he had been working on some songs with Rod Stewart, which presumably will be for a putative Faces reunion album: We’ve got these songs that we’re working on from back in the day, but it’s hard to make our times tally,” he said. “When we do get a chance to get in the studio again, we will finish off these songs. We’ve got a good body of songs going.”
If you missed the Radio 4 show, it’s up on BBC Sounds now.
