What’s the secret to taking life less seriously? You always look so relaxed and happy onstage. Satisfying masses of people, seeing the look on their face, the pleasure that we bring when we do live gigs. Here, for Rolling Stone’s Last Word column, he reflects on lessons he’s learned throughout his life and explains the secrets to getting along with all his famous friends.
Beyond the blues, he’s recorded with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, and Aretha Franklin, and he’s also succeeded as a visual artist, regularly showing his paintings of his bandmates and Stones set lists.
He played bass in the Jeff Beck Group and later gigged with Bo Diddley and played sessions with B.B. He established himself as a blues aficionado in the Sixties, well before linking up with the Faces and the Stones. It’s a bit like reggae music to the novice since it’s like, ‘Well, all the songs sound like they have the same beat.’ They’re all in a similar structure, but all the songs are such different characters in their own way.” Wood wanted to pay homage to Reed, because he feels people tend to overlook the bluesman, who penned early-Sixties classics like “Baby, What You Want Me to Do,” “Big Boss Man,” and “Bright Lights, Big City.” “Everyone talks about Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and Buddy Guy,” he says. “It was one of the last things he did,” Wood says. The record captures a 2013 Wood concert that found him playing alongside guitarist Mick Taylor, whom he replaced in the Rolling Stones in the mid-Seventies, and with special guests that included Paul Weller, Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall, and Bobby Womack, who died the following year. Luck - A Tribute to Jimmy Reed: Live at the Royal Albert Hall, out September 17th. He also had some time to reflect on another musician’s timeless music as he prepped the release of his new solo album, Mr. Now is the time for these to come out again because they are timeless.’ “īlack Sabbath on the Making of 'Vol.
“It’s been such an adventure during lockdown to spend a month or so engaging again with songs that I’d completely forgotten about or ones that were placed on the back burner,” he says during a Zoom interview, about a month before the death of Stones drummer Charlie Watts. I really used this time to its best.”Īlthough he also spent some of the time overcoming a battle with small-cell cancer, the 74-year-old Wood also made space to paint and play guitar on recordings by the Rolling Stones, for their upcoming Tattoo You reissue, and his previous band, the Faces, for some as-yet-unannounced releases. And I did an incredible amount of artwork during that time. “I was out in the English countryside with my studio about a mile away,” says the Rolling Stones guitarist and painter. When asked how he’s kept busy during Covid lockdown, Ron Wood doesn’t sound too bothered by the unexpected downtime.