I had heard the drummer boy story as well.

Hey the one about Tony Curtis givin' Ronnie,
Sugar-Kane's boots is a Killer....boots far too big....Ahhhh Yeah



ROCKMAN

>> reveals his affair with George Harrison's wife <<

Ronnie's noted - in The Works, i think? - that Cancel Everything, Mystifies Me and (if memory serves)
Breathe On Me are about Pattie Boyd. she sure has inspired a lot of great music.

I kinda wish I had not read the part about the "love doctors on tour".

I cannot get the image out of my head of Rod and Ronnie playing their own version of doctor with willing groupies----- yipes!

kinda wish bands as seminal, important and world shaking as jeff beck group and faces didn't like get more than one simple almost mundane simple sentence.

absolutely no impressions,detailed or not, or info or flavor...except some of the tabloid stuff that's always fun in it's sad way...he was gonna cut my throat but i pulled my gun yadda yadda...

there's nothing new here or even particularly informational.
It's fun to read because i love the stones and all that, but this guy has got like this amazing legacy with some of the most amazing artists in history, even before the amazing Rolling Stones, and we get tabloid kinda outlines of simple kinda blase kinda stuff...least that's how it seems to me from the excerpt.
i don't know if it's been edited; or if there are chapters dealing with all this or not...but from just this offering, (and ty for posting!) i don't see much here personally.

Interesting...'ghost written' or not, it's still the story from Ronnie's perspective. Clearly he doesn't have a tone of axes to grind like Bill Wyman did in "Stone Alone". I just hope it isn't one of these remorseful type memoirs written by recovering addicts where every other page it's like, "I did this because I was doing a lot of this and drinking a lot of this, blah blah blah..." everybody makes mistakes; we don't need to be beat over the head with somebody else's. Personally, I'd like to hear Woody talk about his guitar playing and musical stuff- not his freebasing habit.

After my row with Keith, I warned everyone to "clear the decks".

He returned with his Derringer, pointed it at me and yelled: "You f****** b******, Woody."

I calmly pulled out my .44 Magnum. And that was the last time Keith drew his gun on me ... until the next time.

Well how long is the book? It seems like excerpts from different eras. Ron Wood inb the past year or so has revisted the past to the extent that he included 4 Birds trax on "Anthology" and of course Wooden has issued the New Barbs CD & upcoming '74 concert release. I expect this will be less shallow than "The Works".... but wonder about anybody joining the RS having to sign not just pre nuptuals (sp?) but honor gag clauses in contracts...

Today's Sunday papers excerpt from the book quotes Ronnie as saying the band will be working again very soon.... a good sign!

tomcat2006 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Today's Sunday papers excerpt from the book quotes
> Ronnie as saying the band will be working again
> very soon.... a good sign!

Have you got a link? Would love to read it

So there - Keith the riffmaster, our drug-experienced buddy, our most admired stones member, who I always used to more than like, is threatening his colleague with guns and other weapons. Disgusting.
Quite interesting that this hasn't been discussed in this thread so far.

Bob05 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So there - Keith the riffmaster, our
> drug-experienced buddy, our most admired stones
> member, who I always used to more than like, is
> threatening his colleague with guns and other
> weapons. Disgusting.
> Quite interesting that this hasn't been discussed
> in this thread so far.


Well it was for a good cause....stopping Ronnie from doing crack.

Who holds the gun to Keith's healing head?

>> this hasn't been discussed in this thread so far <<

maybe because it isn't news to a lot of people?
i hope Ronnie explains about that Gibson that Keith shot (see the Guitar Section of his website) -
i've been curious about the details of that story for years

"He smashed a bottle and cut me with it... He pulled out his huge ratchet knife, put it to my throat and warned: "I'm going to kill you."

Uuuh Erik, how naive can one become. Good Old Keef, the modern incarnation of Mother Theresa of Rock. He should play in the salvation army.

And yes, sssoul, maybe it isn't news to a lot of people. If so it's more than shameful that many of those still admire him, his personality respectively. Apart from his merits as a musician I'm going off him now. I'm not idolizing someone any more who is threatening his buddy with weapons of any kind. It's just a disgrace.

I'm sure nobody around here is really proud of these kind of excesses the boys ever went through. Nobody will ever idolize one of the boys because of his drugs or booze addiction, excessive violence, lack of respect towards women and young girls et cetera.

These things have just not much to do with the joy the band brought us by playing and performing music. We love them because they make us happy.
We feel sorry for them because a life in the spotlight weighs so heavy that it is hard to live it without slipping into these excesses. To read these stories makes one shiffer. Still one can also feel proud our boys managed to overcome these difficulties and entertain us some more.

..........actually......I think Mick is smart not to write his autobiography..the luster is coming off real fast...these guys are starting to look like @#$%&.

In your opinion I hope....

Bob05 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Uuuh Erik, how naive can one become. Good Old
> Keef, the modern incarnation of Mother Theresa of
> Rock. He should play in the salvation army.

Eh - and Bob - I wasn't too serious there either

In part two of his autobiography, Ronnie Wood reveals his close encounters with gangsters and a manager called Mr Vulture, celebrates his transformation from Wrinkly Rocker to Ageless Stone and tells how it took him 40 years to go on stage sober...

Never go on holiday with a drug dealer or the mafia. One year in the late Seventies, my wife Jo and I went away with a Colombian drug-trafficker.


Victor was an acquaintance we used to bump into on the road. He was a very flash guy who dressed sharply, took the best suites in every hotel, had his own plane and was always telling us: "Whatever I have is yours."


When we told him we were at a loose end for Christmas and New Year, he invited us to the Bahamas. Or, more accurately, he decided we were going with him to Nassau, and I'm not sure we had much choice in the matter.



Rock 'n' roll years: Ronnie and Jo with best man Keith Richards after their wedding in 1985


Victor - we weren't even sure that was his real name - was a very domineering guy but he'd also invited Ringo Starr, so I guess that made it all right with us.

On the flight, Victor was out of his mind smoking little joints with doojee (heroin) in them. He had a load of these 'dirty cigarettes', which he intended to take into the Bahamas. Just before landing he handed Jo his stash and said: "You're taking this through."


She wasn't prepared to do that and nor was I, but this was a heavy dude and it took a lot of back-and-forth with him before he settled on a way. He took a carton of cigaretteswe'd bought in duty free and rebuilt it, packing the DCs in one box of cigarettes and slipping it into the back of the carton before resealing it.



When we got to customs, the inspector gestured at the carton of cigarettes and said: "Whose is this?"

Jo said: "It's his," and pointed to Victor, who said: "No it's his," and pointed at me. I pointed back at Victor: "It's his." Victor then pointed at Jo and said: "It must be hers."

The inspector wasn't amused and opened a packet of cigarettes. Fortunately it was the wrong one, and we strolled through.

Once we got to Victor's beautiful house and Ringo showed up, Victor ordered us into the recording studio he had there to play for him. We weren't going to argue.
We played and he recorded it. We were essentially held hostage by this guy, swapping lines for riffs and drug platters for drum patterns.

As soon as we could, we got away, but it wasn't the last time Jo and I took a holiday with substance entrepreneurs.

In 1981 we were staying in Miami with a guy called Ruze. One day a limousine pulled up outside the house and a bunch of older guys in well-cut suits got out. 'Tony', who was in charge, was in his 50s, Italian and bald. When Ruze came out of the house to greet him it was Goodfellas frightening.



After Ruze introduced us, Tony said to me: "What's the biggest amount of cocaine you've freebased in 24 hours?"

I had no idea but came up with: "An eighth?" That's three and a half grams.

He said: "What do you do, sleep all day?"




Oh baby: Family man Ronnie with children Leah and Tyrone in Jamaica in the Eighties






One of Tony's henchmen went into the kitchen, put a big jug on the stove and started cooking up coke by the pound. I'm talking about more coke at one time than most people have ever seen.

We sobered up fast when Tony pulled me aside one afternoon and said: "We want you to steal the master tapes and the album artwork of the Stones recording sessions and get them to us so we can bootleg them."


He wasn't asking me, he was telling me, and that really frightened me. Jo and I agreed it was time to get out of Miami. We thanked Ruze and his friends for their hospitality and announced: "We have to leave, now."

"You're not going anywhere until we settle our little business," said Tony.

I worried that they were going to hurt us but Jo said: "They're not going to do anything to us while we're here, because they need us." We agreed that the way out of there was to make them think we were giving in.

I went to Tony and said: "OK, I'll see I can do." And we bulls**** our way out, jumped on a plane and got back to reality with absolutely no intention of flogging our work.

Dope and drink were messing me up and clouding my judgment. I knew I was hanging out with too many weird people and doing too many dangerous things, but I couldn't stop.

Drugs and the money I spent on them drove me from one manager to another, until I eventually wound up with one of the dodgiest in the business, an English bloke living in Los Angeles called 'Mr Vulture'.

He was in his late 40s and he had great coke which he kept in a special stash room. The door was electronically controlled and hidden behind a wall. The room was filled floor to ceiling with cocaine. He'd shovel some into a bag for me - he actually used a small shovel - then he'd give me the bag and I'd go home and stay stoned for a week.



One day I said to him: "You'd make a great manager," or maybe he said to me: "I want to be your manager," and, because we were in the middle of getting high, he became my manager. He was a crook from day one. Among other things, he took one of my paintings, made some terrible prints of it and sold them without asking me.

Jo kept asking me: "Why would you let someone like that be your manager?

He's giving us thousands and thousands of dollars' worth of coke and has never asked us for money. Does that sound right?"

I eventually moved on to another manager and later found out Mr Vulture had been jailed after police raided his house and found around £125,000 worth of coke, 34 guns and two pipe bombs.


My bad business decisions were proving expensive. I've never been good at money: I have earned piles of it, but my problem comes with holding on to it.

For example, one year when the Stones weren't touring, I decided it would be fun to get some of my mates together and do some shows. So I booked the whole tour and we went on the road as the New Barbarians. I got us a Boeing 727, took care of everybody luxuriously, and wound up £200,000 in debt. I had wanted to take my mates around in style; Mr Generous.

When my great friend Bo Diddley said to me: "Are you kidding? I steal the f****** place mats out of the hotel," I started to think, did I really shell out for a jet? Bo kept saying: "Man, you gotta be crazy." And maybe I was.

In November 1994, the Stones became the first major rock 'n' roll band to broadcast a concert live on the internet, and by the end of the year we'd sold more than four million copies of the Voodoo Lounge album.

The North American leg of our tour was proclaimed the most successful rock tour in history. U2 even sent me a bouquet with the message: "Congratulations to the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world, outside of Ireland."

When the Voodoo Lounge tour ended, we had played in 26 countries and in front of more than 6.5million people. I had my slice of the pie and it was enough to make me believe I would never be broke again. Yet, as ever, I still managed to lose it. When a London private members' club venture failed, I ended up owing the banks millions. I had to mortgage both my houses.

But then I appointed our son Jamie as my manager. He stopped the flowers we were buying for £1,000 a week; he cut out the car companies we were using, which cost around £170,000 a year; he forced us to cut back on designer clothes. He saved us £2million a year.

My painting also helped pay off a lot of my debts, but my drinking was getting in the way again. In 2000 I spent a week at the Priory, Roehampton, which helped, but as soon as I got out I was convinced I could have a glass of wine without a problem. Unfortunately one glass became one bottle, then two. And from wine I slipped back on to vodka. I thought I was handling it but my family thought otherwise.

When the Stones were putting together the 2002/2003 Forty Licks tour, Mick was becoming more and more concerned about me. He came to me as my friend and said: "I love you. You need to get help."

I had to get clean again, so I went to the Cottonwood Clinic in Arizona for rehab. It was tough, maybe the most difficult thing I've ever had to do.

The next I knew I was in Toronto, rehearsing for Forty Licks. I was clean but frightened. For the first time ever as a Stone, I went on tour sober.

We warmed up in August 2002 with a surprise gig at the Palais Royal Ballroom in Toronto.

Normally we don't get nervous but we were that night. It might have been because we'd had a long time off but I think it was really because I'd just come out of rehab and had never done a gig straight.

I was nervous and Keith and Charlie were nervous for me. Mick kept telling me: "You have our support."

They were all rooting for me. And I made it. Jo was with me and we saw a lot of movies and got through it.

As the tour wore on I noticed the writeups: now, instead of calling us 'wrinkly rockers', the reviewers were referring to us as 'these ageless Stones'.

It was a huge boost to my confidence; a real eye-opener. I wasn't burying the butterflies in booze before each show. I was noticing things in the audience for a change, instead of just blindly playing away.

I got through Forty Licks and came out the other end only a million quid in debt, and still sober.

The Stones have undertaken another massive tour since then and, considering that the whole tour environment is soaked in booze, staying sober is a real challenge, but I'm doing well. I'm solid now and I want to hold on to that. I've messed things up before and landed in hot water. I hope these mistakes stay firmly in the past.

The band is going back on the road and I'm enjoying the music more than ever. Before, I was always too stoned to realise that what I was playing was any good, but now I understand and have the drive to keep playing and improving.

I love being with the band and feel we've got even more to offer, and I don't see us throwing in the towel while we're still performing wonderful shows. I can't say what the future holds for me, but I can tell you I'm not finished yet.


Sir Ron? I'd rather be EarlWood
Mick received his knighthood in 2003 and some people, Keith included, felt that by accepting it he was turning his back on the Stones' anti-establishment image.

But Charlie thought if Paul McCartney deserved a knighthood, then so did Mick. We also thought that if Mick got one, then Keith should be offered one too, although he'd never accept it.

"Being called Sir Keith is not a big enough honour. F*** knighthood, give me a peerage," he said. Earl Wood would suit me fine.


Elvis and a snooker table at every gig

All the Stones have dressing rooms set up the same way at every gig we play. Mine is called Recovery; next door is Keith's Camp X-Ray; Charlie calls his Cotton Club; Mick's is Work Out.

Recovery is about comfort and contains candles, a stereo and an espresso machine. It's where I tune my guitars, sketch and smoke. Keith's room has a life-size cardboard cut-out of Elvis.

He's drilled through Elvis's teeth and sticks a joint in there. At a show in Memphis, I asked Scotty Moore, Elvis's guitar player:

"What do you think, seeing Elvis like that?" He said: "I should have strangled him when I had the chance." The gig organiser is also obliged to set up a snooker table for Keith and me - it's a non-negotiable part of the contract.

We always have a game before a concert. Back at the hotel after a show, my room is no longer 'Party Central'. I'll turn on the telly and relax with Jo and the kids.

...well I rest my case.

I, for one, can't wait to read the whole thing!


Belgrade-Bucharest-Budapest-Brno

Starting to look like...? The Stones have always been the bad boys, that is their attraction for many, even if it's difficult to keep up the image in their sixties. Like Lorenz, I can't wait to read Ronnie's book; I just hope it's a bit better written than the Mail on Sunday extracts.

Can't help feeling that an autobigraphy by Mick would be pretty dull, he has always come across as being skilled at keeping his private life and thoughts private.

The one I really look forward to is Keith's book; I just hope he remembers enough about his life to fill the book - there's certainly enough stories about him to make it longer than War & Peace


Rip This Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ..........actually......I think Mick is smart not
> to write his autobiography..the luster is coming
> off real fast...these guys are starting to look
> like @#$%&.

>>For example, one year when the Stones weren't touring, I decided it would be fun to get some of my mates together and do some shows. So I booked the whole tour and we went on the road as the New Barbarians. I got us a Boeing 727, took care of everybody luxuriously, and wound up £200,000 in debt. I had wanted to take my mates around in style; Mr Generous.

When my great friend Bo Diddley said to me: "Are you kidding? I steal the f****** place mats out of the hotel," I started to think, did I really shell out for a jet? Bo kept saying: "Man, you gotta be crazy." And maybe I was.<<


That's funny, and exactly the way Ronnie is supposed to be!
So darn unresponsible, lol

Tut tut, I hope you're not advocating irresponsibile behaviour Erik...

......there is a huge difference between a "devil may care" attitude to life and just plain stupidity. For example, why would you ever draw/point a gun on anyone?????.............so far the excerpts are pretty salacious....I'd be interested in something a little more tangible from Ronnie...........maybe it's in the rest of the book.......

I wonder what everyone expected to be the book about?
To me it sounds like you are telling interesting stories of your life to your friend. It sounds exactly like I would expect it to be told from Ronnie. Entertaining and making him even more seem like a really lovable person. I'm not naive, of course he did many stupid things, Keith did many stupid things - but didn't we know that?


Belgrade-Bucharest-Budapest-Brno