Its release coincident to Ronnie Wood’s half-century as a Rolling Stone, this 38-track two-CD/vinyl chronicles an auspicious career that was already significantly storied prior to its subject becoming the ever-present, invariably good-natured Sooty to Keith Richards’ reliably mischievous Sweep.
From the garage swagger of The Birds’ You’re On My Mind (’64) and grinding hedonistic freakbeat of The Creation’s The Girls Are Naked (’68), through a game-changing, bass-toting stint with the Jeff Beck Group (its surface barely scraped by the solitary Rod Stewart-propelled, bottom-heavy Zep-precursor Plynth) to a run of tracks from what many consider his career’s zenith, as Stewart’s mirror image/foil (again), both with and without the Faces.
Flying captures the tight-but-loose, R&B/country blues-based barroom alchemy of the Faces, and while it’s rightly a trio from A Nod’s As Good As A Wink that epitomise the quintet’s magic here it’s former Faces bandmate Ronnie Lane’s Ooh La La that provides the backdrop to Wood’s finest vocal performance.
Since his integration into the Stones it’s easy to forget how totemic Wood and Stewart were in the early 70s; Rod solo album title tracks Gasoline Alley and Every Picture Tells A Story crackle with a chemistry that entranced the immediately pre-glam zeitgeist.
From 1974’s I’ve Got My Own Album To Do, there’s the heavily Jagger-ed I Can Feel The Fire, which cost Wood his credit on the Stones’ It’s Only Rock ’N’ Roll (a song deafeningly notable for its absence), George Harrison co-write/duet Far East Man, and drowsy, Stewart-benefitting ballad Mystifies Me.
Ron’s Stones account opens with Hey Negrita, an ace reggae-inspired riff he brought to Munich’s studio-based Stones auditions (that ended up on It’s Only Rock ’N’ Roll with a Jagger/Richards credit). Acknowledged co-writes finally follow: Dance (Pt 1), Everything’s Turning To Gold, both riff-inspired grooves of no fixed format; two from Tattoo You: Black Limousine’s urban blues and reflective ballad No Use In Crying; Undercover’s Pretty Beat Up is an often overlooked peach with David Sanborn on sax and Keith shining on bass.
Hereon in it’s all Ron, solo bon-bons, notable collaborations (with Billy Gibbons, Slash et al) and a final quartet of previously unreleased gems, including a priceless heavy-lidded Chrissie Hynde lead vocal on Allen Toussaint’s A Certain Girl. Some hit, some miss, but there’s an awful lot to like herein. And after all, what kind of a monster would you have to be not to like Ronnie Wood?
