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Ronnie Wood: "Nunca olvidaré nuestro primer concierto en el Calderón. ¿Vamos a tocar allí esta vez?"
Cuando haga sonar los acordes de Midnight Rambler en el escenario del Wanda Metropolitano, uno de los guitarristas más influyentes de la historia cumplirá 75 años. Él asegura que aún tiene 29. Así se muestra en exclusiva para Esquire España
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2022-05-24 20:23 by Christiaan.

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The film in it.

Ronnie Wood: "I will never forget our first concert at the Calderón. Are we going to play there this time?"

When he plays the chords of Midnight Rambler on the stage of the Wanda Metropolitano, one of the most influential guitarists in history will be 75 years old. He assures that he is still 29. This is shown exclusively for Esquire Spain

By George Mayor. Photos: Charlie Gray.
05/23/2022

What do you ask a Rolling Stone? The taxi service from Heathrow to Ronnie Wood's house, in the middle of the British countryside, 40 kilometers from London, hidden in a forest of chestnut trees, has been efficient enough to arrive half an hour in advance. And in that period of waiting all the doubts assail. We meet in the building adjacent to the mansion that Wood uses as a painting studio. That woman is his wife, Sally, and those girls are his soulmates, Alice and Gracie. And that man who clears the parterre, the gardener of the estate; and that other lady, who knows...? Ronnie opens the doors of her house and of his life like that, as if nothing had happened. He suddenly enters his flutter of dear and happy people in the middle of England. He hasn't arrived yet.

What do you ask a Rolling Stone? It smells of wood and paint. Especially painting. Tons of paint because Wood spends half his life (maybe more) painting. The house is a messy museum of amazing works. There is a version of Guernica in which the swords become guitars. Keith Richards stars in an overwhelming Davincian anatomical study... Ronnie studies ancient pieces and recreates them in his own way, a glorious cocktail of expressionism, classicism and pop-art with which he has broken the mold of criticism. Suddenly, an immense Mick Jagger (whom we also interviewed... 54 years ago!) appears between easels, reincarnated in El Greco's Immaculate Conception. He is escorted like heavenly angels by portraits of Keith Richards, Charlie Wattsand Ronnie himself. The Rolling Stones rise to the sky driven by a legion of stylized musicians just like the figures of the Cretan painter. It's called The Show and you can't stop watching it.

What do you ask a Rolling Stone? The porch is adorned with a twisted wooden lintel like the one you imagine at the entrance to a witch's house. On the fireplace, two pirate swords. Here and there, albums, covers, portraits. A copy of his Tribute to Chuck Berry presides over the room, the tribute album that Wood released with the Wild Five. You have to be careful not to step on a Billie Holiday charcoal, a guitar stand, a yellow tempera tube. Paint flecks on the floor, on the walls, on the furniture, on the lawn. On the paved path, magnolia petals delivered by winter and that when stepped on, acquire the shape of the tongue of the band's mythical logo. Someone has hooked their mobile to the sound system of the house and it sounds, of course, blues: Lightnin' Hopkins to greet Ron.

What do you ask a Rolling Stone? What the hell, whatever! When he walks in with that smile that he gives as if you were one of the family, you understand that one of the most influential musicians in history is willing to tell you everything.

We've taken you out of rehearsals for the new Stones tour of Europe that starts on June 1st.
It is an important day: I am exactly 75 years old.

And I imagine a major tour. The first time you play in Europe after the death of Charlie Watts.
Yes. We were lucky enough to have his blessing to start rehearsals without him, with Steve Jordan, and we did it with a very strange feeling. What was going to happen when Charlie was gone? But despite the uncertainty and sadness we keep going, with all the energy in the world. It is what he would have wanted, the Rolling do not stop. And oddly enough, even if it's almost magic, I can tell you that the band now has an extra boost. It's Charlie's energy... Charlie lives.

In a sense, the tour has become a tribute to him.
And what else is music but a constant tribute?

It begins in Spain on your birthday... 46 years after your first concert in Barcelona. Do you have any memories of that day?
Yes, how can I forget it! It was in a bullring, right? Yes, yes, I still have that image recorded: that orange dust floating. It was difficult to see the public. When the concert ended, I watched the people leave in the cloud of sand... unbelievable.

Somehow, when you play in Spain strange things happen... Like the immense storm that almost ruined your concert in Madrid in 1982. You almost risked your life playing in the middle of the hurricane.
That was in..., what is it called?, the Calderón! Are we also going to play at the Calderón now?

Well, more like his heir.
It is always very special to play in Spain.

60 years together! An anniversary tour of a group with six decades behind them is not very common.
Sometimes not even the Stones themselves believe that they have been fighting for 60 years. It's incredible that all this continues with such energy, and that the public continues to fill the stadiums, screaming and dancing and asking for more from this gang of almost octogenarians.



The almost octogenarian Wood has been reborn. An indescribable halo of happiness surrounds him. He twice overcame cancer. The first lung in 2017 and more recently a small cell tumor that he had to fight against during the pandemic. He before him had also been reborn by the hand of Sally Humphreys, the woman who helped him settle down, forget his addictions and become a father again. There is a new Wood on stage.

Do you feel reborn?
Without a doubt. I have a new private life, recovered health, new inspirations. You have already been able to see it with your own eyes: the energy that runs through this house is profoundly renewed. And now I need that energy more than anything. After all, we are facing the last tour!

'Ultima' is a polysemous word in Spanish. According to the RAE it is "that which in a succession occupies the place after all the other elements". Nothing serious. But it is impossible to decipher (and it is almost scary to do so) what Ron Wood meant by that “last one”.

last?
Well, all the tours are the last one. You never know what will happen next. All tours are a mystery. But there is no doubt that this one is especially so.

Where did you get the energy to face it?
From everywhere. From the clouds, from the music, it's in the air. From the friends of the band, from Mick, from Keith... each one contributing his part, his drive in rehearsals.

They say that you also recharge your batteries in the Mediterranean... (Ron and Sally have a spectacular apartment in Barcelona where they spend a good part of the year).
Yessss. Spain is very special to me. You have that incredible light and that weather... I don't care if it's winter or summer, I love it. And the people, and the artistic inspiration. You have Picasso and Miró. When I go to Barcelona it seems incredible to me to be walking on the same ground that they walked on. And, of course, the gypsy culture.

Wood is the son of a gypsy family who lived for decades on barges on the Thames. They say that he was the first to be born on dry land. That his father played the harmonica at night, that his brothers at first didn't let him pick up the guitars, that he himself goes around saying that that hard-to-peel black hair is the rest of his genes who knows yes Spanish.

Roma culture, Spain...? What mixture can be more coherent?
We are deeply connected. The Roma world, the origins of art and music in Spain... I love flamenco. I would have liked to dialogue with the guitars of people like Paco de Lucía. The gypsy way of life is imprinted in my blood. I still have a wagon at home, I don't forget my origins. There are many things about Spain that I admire. But being an artist I stay with the light. And with El Prado, especially with Goya.

Seeing your house, listening to you speak, it becomes difficult to decide if you are more of an artist or a musician.
I am both fifty percent. It's my older brothers' fault. They have influenced me a lot in life. Some were artists and graphic designers, others played instruments. And I saw them do. If one painted, I painted; if one played, I played... And look, here I am.



How would you define your art?
It is an eclectic proposal. I take different inspirations from here and there. It's like my music, a cocktail of sources of all kinds. I have been evolving over time. But the funny thing is that I started studying Rembrandt and the last thing I've done is an interpretation of Rembrandt. I have let myself be impacted by expressionism, by abstraction, by the Renaissance. I have looked at Da Vinci, I have studied horse painting since Michelangelo. I love to paint horses. And mount them.

And have you explored digital art?
The NFTs and all that? I'm going to try it. To be honest, I don't think anyone is quite sure yet how far we are going to go with this trend, but I want to experiment with it. There will be some future project.

Do you use art to escape music? Music to escape from art? Art and music to escape from something?
Maybe use both to get away from it all. They are my driving force. The truth is that I think I use music to escape from the world. Or better yet, to help someone escape from the world. This world sucks sometimes, with all this going on... I'd like to think that we started this tour to make people forget for a couple of hours about the problems that overwhelm us so much. But, intimately, I use painting as a personal therapy. It's good for my mind.

I think we haven't talked about music for a long time... With the guitar you're also as eclectic as with the brush.
Yes of course. And I also learn from the classics... One day, chatting with Chuck Berry, he looked at me and said: “You know? Everything that we are doing, everything that we play and that we will play... Mozart had already invented it”. We dedicate ourselves to making versions of what he already imagined.

Does it play differently over time? Are the chords, the sounds, dealt with in a different way? Some conductors tell you that Mozart or Brahms sound different to them as they get older. Does the same thing happen to an old rocker?
Totally. The music changes with you, it evolves. The years also pass by her. Not always for the worse. I've recently released a couple of tribute albums. One on Chuck Berry [Mad Ladd, Live Tribute] and one on Jimmy Reed live at the Royal Albert Hall. rock and roll and blues. And I've tried to recreate the feeling that they printed on their original albums. Which is impossible, of course. The feeling is magic, and it only happens once. But I like the idea of ??seeing how the sound has changed over time. What we had seen in those works when we were young and what we see in them today. And perhaps get new generations to experience things now similar to what we experience. It's a path to the past, a thread that unites Chuck and Jimmy with the musicians of today. Imagine if we managed to get a young man to find an original recording of Johnny B. Goode or Shame, shame, shame and say, "My goodness, this was good!" When I was growing up, Shame, shame, shameReed's was everything to me. Somehow you have to preserve that feeling and reincarnate it. I had to pay homage like this precisely because of what you say: because time also passes for music.

And it also happens for your own songs... What do you feel when you listen to Rolling Stones recordings from 30 or 40 years ago?
Awful. You put one of those takes and you say: “But how could we record something like that? Cut it, please." We are very critical of our own music. We're proud of her, of course... But it's been so long. The world is completely different now.



Do you often review your old recordings?
Maybe not too much. But from time to time I immerse myself in them. In recent times I have enjoyed a rarity that will soon come to light. Something I did in the 80's, with a small band, live in a studio in New York. It was a day playing Slide on this , my fifth solo album. We will now reissue it as Slide on live . From time to time going back to the music of the past is comforting.

And speaking of music and the past, the conversation enters a strange tunnel of time. Through the window looms an almost life-size plaster lion daubed as if the twins had decorated it. There is a certain genetic vocation for junk dealers in this giant musician determined to save memories. Who knows who may have played that plectrum, where the photo was taken with Mick looking at us from a corner, in which concert he wore that jacket. People come in and out of the house, like a big family at a circus or a fair or just a happy home. And memories of the past of one of the greatest guitarists in history well up.

RW : What a night that was with Muddy Waters. We were in Chicago and found out that Muddy was playing Buddy Guy's legendary Checkerboard Lounge. So we introduce ourselves there. We had to almost jump over the heads of the audience to reach an empty table. They passed out bourbon and we drank and smoked. Muddy was playing Baby please don't go. Suddenly we heard his booming voice: “Mik Yaaaagar!”, inviting us to come on stage. First Mick, then Keith, then he calls me. And we planted ourselves to play a foot from the public.

The time tunnel is capricious. Ron remembers in detail the night in 1981 with his idol Waters. What does it matter if it really was a spontaneous meeting or if there was a good job by the representatives to achieve one of the most mythical scenes in the recent history of blues and rock . What does it matter that there was a suspiciously empty table in front of the stage, in front of Muddy, with exact space for the Stones and that the guitars sound in tune as if they have been waiting for Wood and Richards for centuries. Spontaneous jam session or arranged appointment, the unique meeting between those monsters of music will remain engraved forever in the memory of fans and in that of Mr. Ron Wood.

RW : Muddy was the godfather of the blues... I won't forget him. I also won't forget meeting another giant, Bob Marley, in 1979. He invited me to play with him and the Wailers. Unforgettable!

The story is longer than Ronnie can remember. But that night at the Oakland Coliseum a young Stones guitarist jumped in to play with one of the biggest idols in global music whom he had just met. Wood had flown in from San Francisco to bring a guitar to his friend Al Anderson, guitarist for The Wailers, who had just had his supplies stolen. Al introduced him to Marley and invited him to play a song with them. Bob didn't say much (they say he didn't speak much), but after a few chords Ronnie noticed the grateful teacher's look: “You can play with me”. Ron Wood became the only one of the Stones to have played live with the king of reggae, probably to the envy of Keith Richards, the one who lived in Malibu, the one who loves the reggae guitar riff., the one who has covered Get up, stand up like nobody else . And traveling back in time Spain comes out again.
RW : Believe me if I tell you that among all the concerts I've given in my life, I consider that one at the Calderón in the middle of the storm to be a real blessing. Returning to Madrid after so many years is incredible. I think we are linked by a thread in time and we have to take advantage of this opportunity.



What do you expect from the Madrid public? He must have aged a bit...
Yes, of course. Those who saw us 40 years ago will be as old as we are, but I hope they come with their children and grandchildren and freak out with rock and roll and blues as much as their old people did. And I hope that what the Stones can offer flows. A solid, veteran bet, respectful of the roots of music that hopefully inspires new generations.

Could the Rolling Stones have been born in the 21st century?
We must admit that at the time we broke molds, eh? I don't know if today would be that easy with all those rules and regulations and so much political correctness... I think we had it easier than it is now for the new bands. We lived in a world full of musical references, of young people wanting to provoke and break the established. There was a healthy competition between thousands of bands. We had live music programs on the radio and on TV. Now a new group has it complicated. Either you get millions of followers on a platform or you don't have a place where someone sees you.

What is family for you?
It's everything. Life has given me the opportunity to raise girls again at this age. My older children have grown up, now two babies run around the house again. Alice and Gracie and her mother are a blessing. I like to always have them close. And they come with me everywhere. They are globetrotters... Remember that we are a gypsy family!



What does getting old mean to you?
We are really obsessed with age, with youth. But it is just a number. I really feel like I'm 29 years old.

Are you worried about having to leave a legacy?
Honestly, I don't think much about it. But to be honest, I think I've made my mark on the world, haven't I?

And, after the tour, what?
We'll see. I have a project to make more music. I'm working with Faces [one of his first bands, along with Rod Stewart], digging through the repertoire and rescuing recordings from the 60s and 70s that didn't see the light of day. Maybe we'll do something with them Rod and Kenny Jones. Who knows, maybe we'll see Rod Stewart and Ron Wood together again! That, and paint... always paint

What is your favorite Rolling Stones song?
[Thinks about it for a while.] Midnight rambler .

What is your favorite Beatles song ?
[Thinks about it some more.] I want to hold your hand .

What is your favorite song of all time?
[Thinks about it a lot, a lot more.] Smokestack lightning , by Howlin' Wolf.

The sun has faded, there are no girls in the house, no gardeners, no visiting friends, but the blues continues to play. Ron has to get ready to follow rehearsals for the "last" tour. Outside, the neat taxi is waiting for me to return to Heathrow, where it will be inevitable to doubt again: what the hell do you ask a Rolling Stone?

*This article appears in the June 2022 issue of Esquire magazine





Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 2022-05-25 02:57 by ProfessorWolf.

Posted also here - [iorr.org] , [iorr.org] .



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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2022-05-25 12:40 by Irix.

No mention of a new Stones album unfortunately, but this might be a decent consolation prize it ever really happens:

"I have a project to make more music. I'm working with Faces, digging through the repertoire and rescuing recordings from the
60s and 70s that didn't see the light of day... Who knows, maybe we'll see Rod Stewart and Ron Wood together again!"

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

Quote
Irix
Posted also here - [iorr.org] , [iorr.org] .

Okay, great. Didn’t see it. But why put it on the Madrid page? Except being printed in the Spanish Esquires, it has nothing to do with Madrid

Great photos. I like the black&white one best that reminds me of the photo session for the Voodoo Lounge Tour.

Quote
Christiaan

Okay, great. Didn’t see it. But why put it on the Madrid page? Except being printed in the Spanish Esquires, it has nothing to do with Madrid

Same here - didn’t see the separate thread. Must have been a kind of reflex to put it on the Madrid page due to the Spanish language ....

He mentions that he might publish recordings he did with a small band in the eighties in New York: This might be the sessions during which Ronnie Wood introduced Charlie Sexton to Bob Dylan. Sounds promising.

Lookin' good Ronnie ....

Take care and stay safe ....



ROCKMAN

Ronnie looking good in those pics, he's like an advert for living life to extreme excess and getting away with it, the body of a man 20 years younger.

The last tour for him by the sound of it, perhaps he knows something we don't.

Really enjoyed that! Great pics. Ronnie looks vibrantly healthy and happy - so nice to see after all he's been through. I especially love the pic below and the "YES" ring he's wearing in it - great look & positive message. I assume it's a custom piece, but if not, I'd be interested in buying one. If anyone has any info on this ring, please let me know.