Rolling Stones wife Jo Wood: I think I've got my mojo back after Ronnie
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 07/11/2008



Rolling Stones wife Jo Wood talks for the first time about life after being deserted by Ronnie - and how she's found happiness again


Jo Wood is now looking after herself and devoting more time to her beauty products business
This is Jo Wood's moment. It may not seem that way, what with her wayward husband running off with a Russian cocktail waitress 33 years her junior but, from where I am sitting (alongside her at a department store make-up counter), this marital crisis might just be the making of her.

Until the middle of this year, Jo Wood was known to the great British public only by dint of being the wife of mad Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, as the pretty little thing he had met at a party in 1977 when he was still married but also having an affair with model Pattie Boyd.

Jo was a model, briefly, too, but mostly she became Ronnie's wife, producing two children, Leah and Tyrone, and mothering her alcoholic husband just as much - if not more - until he repaid her unflinching patience and loyalty by setting up home this summer with 20-year-old Ekaterina Ivanova, whom he is said to have met in a Soho sex bar.

So far, so humiliating. It must have been heartbreaking for a woman who was so devoted to her husband that she would stand at the side of the stage when he was performing, clutching to her breast fresh T-shirts for him to change into. But Jo Wood has not rolled over, or dissolved in a flood of tears and bitterness. She has stepped out of the shadow cast by Ronnie's fame and addictions, and she has done so with a considerable degree of spunk.

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As Miss Ivanova was posing for the tabloids and telling them that Ronnie was "electric", Jo was strutting her tiny 5?ft 2?in frame down the catwalk at London Fashion Week in September as part of a Naomi Campbell fundraiser, wearing a tight gold dress and receiving the loudest cheers of the night.

People like what they have seen of Jo Wood, and they want more. She is here in central London to launch a range of organic perfumes she has created and droves of middle-aged women pass through to stop and chat and ask how she is. You can tell that Jo loves a chat, which may explain the presence of five PR girls, not to mention her assistant of 12 years, Emily, who hovers over us for the duration of the interview.

Jo, 53, is a tiny bird of a thing with a nest of messy peroxide-blonde hair bundled on top of her head. She wears huge, silver hoop earrings that match her endearingly open Essex accent - she has the air of a Carry On character about her, albeit one dressed in leather leggings, tux jacket and towering Yves Saint Laurent platforms. "They're dead easy to walk in," she insists. "Well, you know, for high heels..."

She also wears a ring on her wedding finger, which is surprising. Equally surprising, given the year she's had, is how well she looks. She happily tells me her weight has gone from 65 kilograms to 56 in the space of 10 months, the implication being that it was partly thanks to heartbreak.

"I looked at myself when I was 65 kilos and I was just so depressed and I thought, 'Oh come on Jo, you're just eating all the time, all this chocolate!' So I went to the Maya clinic in Switzerland and I just lived off tea. Tea and sheep's yogurt! For five whole days!"

Why were you depressed? "Oh, you know, just about my body. I mean probably all sorts of other things weren't helping. But anyway, I made up my mind to get back to my normal weight. And, of course, the last few pounds came off really easily over the summer! Hahahaha."

She first got into organics when she was misdiagnosed with Crohn's disease at the age of 36. It turned out that she had a perforated appendix but it took two years for doctors to realise their mistake, during which time she was on steroids.

"They were bloody awful. They take something out of you and you don't feel like yourself. So then I met a herbalist who completely changed my life. And everything became organic. I was like, obsessed. My brother gave me this book which tells you how to make organic face oil and so on, and I turned my bathroom into a lab and got all these little brown bottles and funnels and then gave them [the oils] to my girlfriends."

Her girlfriends, who include Jerry Hall and Kate Moss, suggested she go professional. "And I thought, nahhhh, I don't have the time for that [she was paid by the Rolling Stones to be Ronnie's wardrobe assistant]. But then it was like, 'Why don't I have time for that?' So we got the ball rolling and it took almost five years to get to the shelves. I thought it would be six months! It's taken longer than it does to have a baby!"

She happily admits that she doesn't source any of the organic products in her beauty range. "Nah, I'm a novice. This wonderful expert called Collette does that, and then we go to the lab and sit with the formulator and then it's made down in Devon." The salt scrub is a beauty editor's favourite.

"Oh you gotta try it, you just gotta try it," she says. "I use it every single day without fail. It's got a really good consistency with the salt and the oil. The salt's not too hard but it's not too lumpy either. The other day I was round Kate's [Moss] house and I was in her bathroom and I was like, 'oh gawwwwd, the salt scrub has nearly run out, better get her some more!'?"

It's funny to hear her being so evangelical about the virtues of organic living when she spent most of her twenties and thirties out of her immensely pretty head. Keith Richards chopped up lines of cocaine for her and Ronnie on the way to their wedding.

Her stamina was so impressive that she was the only girl to be admitted into the Stones' inner circle. She decided to give up drugs only when she realised that she woke up craving cigarettes laced with heroin. But she doesn't regret a thing.

"I still love to go out and have a drink. It just takes longer to get over. I had five vodkas the other day and it took two days before I felt right again. Two days! And I went out with Slash [former guitarist in the heavy metal band Guns N' Roses] the other night, and I drank champagne. Mind you, he's sober now so he stuck to water.

"A lot of my friends are very organic. I wish there was an organic bar out there. I have organic vodka, wine and whisky but, at the moment, I can only drink them at home."

I say she seems very happy. "Yeah, I think I am. I actually feel really good about myself. I think I've got my mojo back. Haha! I love that! Jo's got her mojo back!"

• Jo Wood Organics are available from House of Fraser (020 7003 4000)

And the story was?

thanks for posting that - she sounds like she's doing Ok. at least she's putting up a good front!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-11-07 11:08 by little queenie.

Perhaps she's been through Hell, but the point that seems to depress her is "her body". Everything in that article seems to do with out-look. So great that she has lost some weight, and her beauty business is doing fine, her friend Kate Moss is doing fine, the catwalk people applaud her, etc.

I somehow start to understand the actions of "mad Rolling Stone" Ron Wood. Perhaps he got enough, and decided to reach out from a certain world. Go Ronnie go! F..k 'em all! They didn't hire you to the Rolling Stones for nothing!

- Doxa



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-11-07 10:59 by Doxa.

A bit of irony: when she left school I believe she worked at Woolworths (UK store)as a shop assistant.
Still, if the divorce goes through without the usual acrimony, it will be quite something.
Actually Keith and Anita split also in a very private way (i.e no bleating to the tabloids) so amybe the Stones can get somethings right.
Why does she need 5 PR staff? The profits must be good.

No, the story was that she met Ronnie at a party and told him she worked there. He spent all day waiting outside for her, without success.

It will indeed be good if they manage a civilized divorce, it's not impossible, but so many start out with good intentions...

Quote
jlowe
A bit of irony: when she left school I believe she worked at Woolworths (UK store)as a shop assistant.
Still, if the divorce goes through without the usual acrimony, it will be quite .

>> the story was that she met Ronnie at a party and told him she worked there <<

at the "broken biscuits counter" to be exact, wasn't it?
(and right: that's not where she worked. it was a form of brush-off humour.)

I coulrn't remember whether it was pick'n'mix sweets or broken biscuits, so left that out. Thanks with sssoul for adding that

Slash drinking water instead of booze!!!
Now, THAT is the real news item here.

<Slash drinking water instead of booze!!!>

Old news. He's been on the wagon since 2006

good for jo .i wish her the BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jo is very deep.

It was just an advert for her dang organic slap. Boring.

"The wonder of Jimi Hendrix was that he could stand up at all he was so pumped full of drugs." Patsy, Patsy Stone



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-11-08 16:36 by The Menace of Mayfair.