IORR - Ronnie Wood at Shepherds Bush Empire with The Charlatans

The Rolling Stones Fan Club of Europe
It's Only Rock'n Roll

Ronnie Wood with The Charlatans
Shepherds Bush Empire
December 8, 2004
Report by Linda Raeburn, London

The Charlatans took the stage at 9.55 pm, playing four of their songs - Love Is The Key, Can't Even Be Bothered, One To Another and Loving You Is Easy - before Ronnie joined 'his boys' for You're So Pretty.

Armed with a white Fender Stratocaster guitar and swapping pick for capo, Ronnie apologised that his signal seemed to cut out during North Country Boy.

Flying saw Ronnie in Faces' mode, and he switched to his favourite Stratocaster for Cindy Incidentally.

Then a Pedal Steel appeared and Ronnie removed his jacket, sat down and introduced a song called 'A Man Needs To Be Told'.

Afterwards he couldn't decide which guitar to use for the next song but eventually settled on the favoured Strat. Meanwhile, Tim Burgess from The Charlatans took the opportunity to meet fans at the front, signing a few autographs and greeting Ronnie's fans on the rail. He leapt back on stage in time for Ooh La La and Feel The Pressure.

One of the highlights of the evening followed with Dance Part 1, Ronnie enjoying the opportunity to showcase one of his Stones' songs and to reprise Mick's role with maracas and cymbal.

There were problems again, tuning the Zematis guitar during Stay With Me and because the evening was filmed the song was repeated during the encore, along with North Country Boy and Flying. Finally, and way after the 'strict deadline' of 11.00 pm, but with all the technical problems seemingly resolved, a resounding Sproston Green.

Ronnie urged us to "have faith in the future", so I'm looking forward to the next gig, sometime soon.

Thanks Ronnie.

Report by Thomas Burton, London

I just got back from the Hero 2 Hero concert at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in London, featuring The Charlatans and our very own Ronnie Wood. Great little venue - my first time there!

I'd like to report that the show was a great success tonight but it was hugely marred at first but technical problems (guitar signal failures) that meant for much of the first half of the show Ronnie's guitar was effectively not plugged in! Ronnie was going crazy (on this of all nights!) as you can imagine and was shouting and waving repeatedly at the techs to fix it. At one stage, he even abandoned his Strat on the floor on the middle of the stage and just sang along with The Charlatans' lead singer.

Still, they managed to fix the problems eventually and, since the show was being filmed, they came out again for the encore and played about half the show again which was great for the fans. From the Faces' back catalogue we got gems such as Cindy Incidentally, Ooh La La, Flying and Stay With Me whilst from the Stones' we got Woody's (excellent) track Dance. I was a bit surprised we didn't get IORR too but maybe that was too obvious a choice.

All in all, a good show but shame about the tech problems. Something like that would never happen at a Stones showl!

Thanks to Thomas Zott for photos!

Other Ronnie Wood reports on IORR: