Original subtitles

I smoked for England for 54 years, I think it was, yeah.

-When you quit smoking? -Couple of years ago.

And before that, how many cigarettes were you smoking?

Oh, 25, 30 a day, at least, yeah, for 50-odd years.

So, I got away with having it cut out of one lung, the cancer,

and luckily, it just stayed there.

And they said, ''Well, we got rid of that,

and while we were there, we got rid of the emphysema

on the top lobe of your lung.''

And I went, ''Oh great!''

And they said, ''Your lungs now, are like you never smoked.''

And I went, ''How is that for a get out of jail free card.''

Somebody up there likes me. Somebody down here likes me, too.

When you think back, you think, ''OK, yeah,

I've spent all that time very creatively.''

I wouldn't change anything.

Except I'd do it with my eyes open a bit more,

if I had to relive.

I never got beyond 29, in my head.

So, to be 70, is just so weird.

It's so...

It's like being in a Dali painting.

It's very surreal to be 70.

'Cause I didn't expect time to go so quickly.

I didn't expect it to be so...

You feel almost cheated, really, about time going by.

Oh dear, who have I caught asleep?

-Hello, Mother! -Hello!

How do you do, son?

Caught ya, didn't I?

Simon, that's a film.

My dad, we didn't ever know

which garden he was gonna wake up in.

'Cause drink was a heavy force in growing up.

Everybody drank, everybody smoked.

-Yeah, well, yeah. -Yeah, me too.

In our lives, growing up.

And so, my dad used to come home from the Nag's Head,

or the Red Cow, you know, local pubs.

And he would be merrily,

''I think I'll just fall asleep in this person's cabbages.''

We'd find him on the corner

of Whitethorn and Yew Avenue, in somebody's garden.

Wake up, make the amends the next day,

''Sorry, I slept in your runner beans.''

But, that kind of loose living

of ''never mind the consequences'',

'Que sera', that was his whole thing.

Was that OK? In the sense that...

It was a worry, really.

-It worried my mum. -Did it worry you?

It worried her sick.

And were you worried for her?

Yeah, but he was such a comedian.

Su, drink didn't...

You know, it's like the old ''vinu veritas'' thing:

he didn't get nasty or physically abusive

ur anything like that?

Not that we saw, he never hurt us, me or my brothers.

He never got violent.

But my mum, he used to treat her wrong, I think, you know?

He never manhandled her or anything,

but he would just be damaging by not being there,

a sort of, ''Where is he?'' ''Why did he go out so early?''

On the pretence of going round the paper shop or whatever,

and he'd be going to the pub, we knew it.

And he would bring home all kinds of walks of life.

They all played the accordion or the spoons...

This would be after 10:30pm?

Yeah, they were all over the living room in the morning,

my mum would be mad!

And there'd be Ben,

and there would be the rag-and-bone man,

there would be this gypsy and this man and that.

All characters draped over the furniture.

Did you ever look at that and gu, ''Am I repeating a pattern?''

Well, I looked at my brothers, who were also chronic alcohol abusers.

They were all allergic to drugs, nobody knew what drugs were.

My dad used to think if you took cocaine,

you cut a vein open and poured it in, you know, he had no idea.

''No son of mine does drugs,'' that's what he said to me.

I met him when I was 16, in a blues club in Dublin,

Bruxelles, down in the basement.

I was gigging, and then, one night Ronnie came down,

and he jumped up on stage,

and just started playing.

I think I remember it was 'Rollin' and Tumblin',

an old blues number, 'cause I was singing blues.

And he tore it apart, he was absolutely fabulous,

and I got such a thrill.

I didn't see him again 'til 20 years later or something,

and then I was at the Classic Rock Awards.

I was working with Jeff Beck.

I met Jeff at the awards that night and he said,

''Come and meet Ronnie!''

Ronnie said, ''It's lovely to meet,'' and I said,

''We've met before, I'm sure you won't remember,

it's a long time ago.''

And I said, ''It was in this little blues club in Dublin.''

And he immediately went, ''Oh, my God, that's you!''

And Ronnie tells everybody, ''I discovered Imelda May.''

And I laugh, saying, ''Yeah, but you never told anyone about me.''

-Really useful, yeah. -Yeah.

''Fatal imprudence''.

It's like, there are 36 situations

and the idea is that life or fiction will be a combination

of one or various of these things.

And here it says, ''Curiusity killed the cat.''

And you've only gut yuurself tu blame

and this can lead to disaster if nut rectified quickly.

Now, if this was a comment

on the film I'm gonna make of your entire life, your story,

would there be a chapter on fatal imprudence?

Well, I'm like Yogi Berra, who said,

''If you come to a fork in the road, take it.''

That is my life plan and it has been with my love life,

-I've just gone totally for risk. -So, yuu're impulsive?

I've gone, 'This is where I'm going, it's dangerous,

but that's where I'm going.''

And has it gut you into a lot uf trouble?

No. It got me into a lot of pleasure.

-Has it? -Yeah.

-That's a very positive response. -Yeah. Never any trouble.

Risk assessment, risk management, damage control,

these are elements I'd think that have been quite strong in your life.

You make amends with the people that you're offending,

or potentially offending.

-Is that important? -Yeah.

Like you want people to be happy?

Yeah. And you want the situation to resolve

-without any disastrous consequences. -Yeah.

Take another card.

Not doing very well: ''Disaster''.

When I was about 15, my first girlfriend, Stephanie,

came to see The Birds in one of our early gigs.

Her and three of her lovely girlfriends from school

got wiped out in a Mini coming, in Henley, Fairmile.

I had to go to see the tyre tracks.

My friends took me down the pub

and that was when I drowned my sorrows.

Was that your first experience of loss?

Of absolute disaster and death,

I was in love with this... She was my first love, Stephanie.

Yeah, it was wonderful.

And her dad came over...

They used to treat her horrible.

I used to listen in the garden.

If I got her home late,

one minute past 10:00 or whatever,

they would give her hell and I would feel for her.

I'd think, 'Oh, how can I help? I can't.

Her parents don't want me.''

They didn't want to know about a boyfriend.

Anyway, the first time I really met him,

he came and woke me up at my parents' council house,

and came up to the bedroom and woke me up in the box room.

And my dad, subtle as a flying mallet,

he woke me up, and he said, ''Ron, wake up.''

He said, There's a man downstairs,

something to do with Stephanie being killed.''

And he left the room.

And I thought, ''Hang on, I better brace myself.''

I'd go downstairs. Big lesson.

That's when I knew it was serious and that was the truth.

I thought, ''Wow.

Now is the time to 'You've gotta live with this' kinda thing.''

All right, we'll just have a little... have a go.

I started with the drums, I still love the drums.

I played the bass, through the Jeff Beck Group.

I dabbled in brass, tenor and alto sax.

But the guitar just runs through,

I think dit's the most practical tool for me to express.

It's like the paintbrush or the basic pencil of the whole thing.

What was your first serious guitar that was yours,

that was like, ''It's my guitar''?

Oh, it was a Rogers, my first electric.

I saved up for that for £25 from my local radio store.

And just learning, they used to put the dots on the strings,

the thick strings going to the thin

and put your finger number one, two, three, and four.

Put your finger number one there, two, three...

First chord to learn, this one was open E.

And then the second one in that chord sequence

was put your fingers to the A.

And then the B seventh was...

That was always the most difficult one.

We used to go...

And it used to be...

In the back room at number 8 Whitethorn, where I grew up,

all the art school students used to come back.

And we used to have a song where everyone would have an instrument:

Mama don't allow no music played in here

I don't care what Mama don't allow

I'm gonna play that music any old how

They'd go...

Then you'd have to go...

Your turn came and you'd have to do a solo,

and it was like you were on the spot.

It would go round in turns, whatever you were playing,

the drum or woodblock, kazoo, comb and paper.

Mum and Dad let us have the back room, which was great, freedom!

And a hatch... My uncle Fred drilled a hatch through from the kitchen.

They'd put the drinks, the cups of tea and coffee and whatever,

and then close the hatch.

The art school mob, which my brothers would bring back,

they all played different instruments.

And the girls were all far-out: Egyptian, and God knows...

When I was in short pants, these weird and wonderful women and guys

with their crepe soIes and skinny trousers,

teddy boy-beatnik crossover.

It was wonderful.

Have you known him a long time?

Yeah, I met him quite a few times out and about

when I was drinking in the 90s and stuff.

But I drank a lot, so I can't really remember a lot about it,

I remember bumping into him.

I'd see him at parties and events and he was always friendly and nice.

It took me six years to get clean,

but then I realized when I got clean

that you go to rehab for six weeks

and you do exactly what they tell you and it's a lot quicker.

So, even though I didn't go that route,

I realized that route was the best route.

You got me some like this, I liked using them.

Because, yeah.

-Why don't you... -You get all your proportions.

But then I've got these as well, look.

Little ones like that.

Mmhmm, nice.

-Take what you want. -All right.

Here, that's one, yeah, that's one, ain't it?

There you go, I've got the best of all worlds now.

Don't get paint on your clothes.

Not this oil, yeah. Ah, doesn't matter.

Did you ever go to art school?

-Ealing. -Ealing.

Do you ever get that conflicted, having the two things going on,

with the painting and the music?

-Which do you think's you? -To the point where it didn't work?

No, I don't know, just you sort of think,

''I'm doing this and I'm doing that, which should I do?''

'Cause you have to make decisions in your life, don't you?

''I want to be an artist, I want to be a painter.''

-''I want to be a musician.'' -Oh, yeah!

''I want to be in a band'', they're all career paths.

When you used to go to things like inteviews for art jobs,

it was like ridiculously closed-shop.

It was like, ''I'm not gonna get this job.''

It's like, really serious interviews, and Iike.

Did you think people don't take you seriously as a painter

because of being in the Rolling Stones, mate?

Oh, yeah, in a way, but then again I brought it on myself,

so dit was something that I couldn't really argue with.

I got a phone call from Ronnie O'Sullivan,

who called me up and said, ''Ronnie's in a real mess.''

I was like, ''Oh, my God, thinking he needs to go to rehab.''

So I arranged to pick him up with his son Jesse.

So, Jesse, me and my friend Ant went and got him.

Well, of course, he was drinking.

So, we went out and then we went to a local pub

on the way to the rehab place.

-On the way down? -Yeah.

He was signing autographs, chatting with everybody and drinking.

When we got him there, he didn't want to stay.

He was like, ''Get me out of here,'' but he stayed.

I think he did three or four weeks or something. Three weeks.

Then I went to see him.

I left him there in a real mess, it was like, horrible.

The most frightened I've ever seen him.

I was like, ''It didn't look like Ronnie at all.''

He didn't want to stay sharing a room with someone else.

He was like, ''No way.''

Then I went to see him after he'd been in there about a week.

It was on a Sunday

and they've got a garden in the place, it was really nice.

I went outside, and he was pals with everyone.

-Already? -Already, yeah.

Everyone loved him, he was hanging out with girls and guys,

everybody, all the younger people.

He got out and I thought, ''Oh, he's clean now.''

I got him a little studio, some paints and canvases as well.

But why did you do that?

Because he didn't really know what he was doing,

and I thought I'd help him.

Yuu knew he was a bit uf a pencil-squeezer, you know?

Oh yeah, he's a dab, and he can paint better than me.

Doing something like that, you bond.

I went to see him quite a few times when he was in rehab,

and then when he got out, then we hung out together.

You see him when he's really vulnerable as well.

Did he come to yuur studios and hang with you,

-more like a work situation? -No, he hasn't after that.

I've seen him out, we've had dinners, we go out for dinner a lot.

Then when he'd done the relapse,

it was the opening of the Islamic Museum in Qatar,

and so I called him up and said,

''Do you want to come to Dubai and Qatar?''

It was the opening of a thing in Dubai,

and the Islamic Museum in Qatar. I was going for the weekend.

I thought I'd just ask Ronnie, he's clean, I'll take him.

So, he went, ''Yeah, I'll come.''

I said, ''What do you mean, we're getting this private airplane,

we're going all that way to buy a guitar?''

Checked him in, then I went to bed.

I didn't realize he was drinking. He drank the mini-bar.

My PA called me the next day

and said, ''Oh, there's been a massive thing in the press about Ronnie.''

And there was a picture of him drunk at this party,

and with a drink in his hand.

So, I'd gone to bed, he'd got up, gone to the party,

and then come back, and got up in the morning

and not told me, I didn't even know.

So, it was a bit of a disaster when we got back.

Yeah, I'm just gonna practice a bit more if I may.

Jazz was the cool thing when we were young teenagers

'cause, Cliff Richard was very popular, and Elvis.

But we knew that if you're kind of middle class and a bit intellectual,

that that wasn't really cool to say you really Iiked, you know...

You could say you liked Elvis, that was all right.

But anything else, no.

I quite liked all kinds of pop music, and I loved all dumb pop music.

But we also had to sort of be,

if you were with a sort of 'collegy' crowd,

or pre-college crowd, you had to have some knowledge of jazz

to be able to sort of...

Well, why not? You wanted a musical frame of reference.

You can't just be Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper.

And there was this British jazz scene,

and we came right at the end of when this was popular.

And I must admit, I never really liked British trad jazz very much,

and I thought I was much cooler than that.

So, I liked the Modern Jazz Quartet,

though I'm not sure if I really liked the Modern Jazz Quartet,

but I thought it was really cool to like the Modern Jazz Quartet,

'cause they were much cooler than Ken Colyer.

-Better dressed. -They looked cooler.

They looked a lot cooler,

and there's something about fives playing and you're like,

''This is cooler than Ken Colyer or some tatty kind of clothes.''

But those bands, they were real, they were local,

they were ours, they were available.

You could go and see them.

Through people like Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong,

thanks to my brother Ted,

those influences, with Paul Whiteman, all from the early traditional jazz,

would be blended with Art, my eldest brother's

influence from soul, R&B and the blues.

So, you'd have, the first thing I heard, was

''I'm Walkin''', Fats Domino, with Howlin' Wolf...

...''Smokestack Lightning'', so he brought that home.

Do I wanna be like Acker Bilk, or do I wanna be like Billy Fury?

Or perhaps none of these people. Something different.

There was a vibe about them, and the music,

because I was listening to Howlin' Wolf and Jimmy Reed

and Muddy Waters, and I was thinking,

''There's this band that all these girls are around,

that looks like a good job,'' as John Lennon would say.

So, I went in this tent, which was swaying like an elephant,

in Richmond Athletic Grounds.

And I was the last one out of there.

I banged my leg on this tent peg, it was bleeding and everything,

and I didn't feel the pain.

I was just like, ''That's where I want to be, be in that band.

And I will be, I don't know how it's gonna happen

but one day I'll be there.''

Thank you, The Birds!

Stepping stones, I call them, that I use as far as I can go,

with my first band, The Birds, for instance,

and then I saw Jeff Beck within my sights,

and it just happened that he left The Yardbirds.

And I rang him up and said, ''What are you doing?''

and he said ''Come on, let's get together.''

It was such a band,

there was obviously Jeff Beck, Ronnie Wood,

Rod Stewart was the singer.

Jimmy Page was in for a while, Keith Moon was in,

it just moved to all around with the best players in the world.

At some point Ronnie was asked to play bass.

Turns out he's a bloody great bass player, too.

The first show we did was at the Fillmore East.

We were supporting Grateful Dead and we wiped the stage with them,

we really did.

The crowd had never seen anything like this.

Especially me and Woody coming in in our crushed velvet trousers,

big crosses, bouffant hair, and a little bit of makeup.

''What is all this?''

But once the band started playing, you know, ''I Ain't Superstitious'',

with Jeff pounding out the guitar, they loved us.

Grateful Dead couldn't follow us on.

And that was when The Jeff Beck Group took off.

You know the old thing about

the musician who always gets a job in a band has got a van, hasn't he?

And that's the one that gets the job.

I started, 'cause I had a minibus,

I was driving those early rock people around.

It was really from that,

and then getting known as a bit of a minder,

that Don gave me the job with Gene Vincent.

Vincent used to make me carry a gun.

-Here? -Oh, yeah.

Gene Vincent, being a rocker and all that, they'd never have any trouble.

But I remember being in bars, and the bouncers on the door said,

''There's gonna be trouble outside,

I said, ''What do you mean there's gonna be troubIe outside?''

There was a local team of tearaways who caused trouble there.

So, when I went out with Gene, we ran round to the car.

I used to have this old '57 Chevy.

And they were all there, you know.

And this confrontation came and all that.

And they said listen, ''You want to be careful.

I know you're a big fellow,'' and all that.

I said, ''I don't give a shit about you people.''

And they went, ''Oh, yeah, yeah, so what,'' and all that.

I said, ''Yeah, but I've got a little friend.''

And this guy said, the leader of this sort of team of about eight of them,

''Yeah, who's your Iittle friend?''

I said, ''There's my little friend.'' It was in the shoulder.

They fucking ran. It was great.

Gene Vincent told me, he said, ''I got Peter Grant.''

He said, ''He was just a doorman at The Astor when I met him.''

He said, ''I got him to lick my boots, at gunpoint.''

He said, ''I loved that.'' I said, ''Wow.''

And that kinda filled me in a bit about Peter.

-Who was he? Why was he su powerful? -Just brute force.

He was like, ''You will do this, or I'll kill you.''

He was one of those kinda guys.

You can get away with a lot with verbal violence.

It's that intimidation, you threaten them.

Mickie Most and Peter Grant, they moulded this.

Rod being the vocalist, he wasn't clued in.

But they were just kissing Jeff's arse.

It was like, Jeff was the talent.

He phoned me up a little while ago, Jeff,

to find out what the story was when Epic turned the record down,

the truth through.

I said, ''You've got to get rid of Stewart, he's a lousy singer.''

Peter Grant? Yeah. Fucking bastard. I hated him.

-Really? Tell me more. -Bully.

No, no, I can't.

He was just a bully.

We were all dispensable, including Rod.

But, he couldn't get rid of Rod because of his distincive voice.

He fired Woody for some unknown reason...

Ronnie remember these details better than I do, funnily enough.

Me and Micky Waller were fired from the original Jeff Beck Group

when they thought there was a slicker bass player,

'cause I was playing bass then.

But you didn't control any of that,

and you didn't want to be part of that whole Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart...

I did at the beginning,

making decisions without anybody else interfering.

How did yuu find out that yuu weren't going tu America?

Micky Waller told me. He said, ''We're not going.'' I said, ''Why?''

He said, ''We've been fired, Ronnie.'' And I went, ''What?''

One of Peter Grant's mad ideas, you know, ''Let's get rid of Woody,

let's get rid of Micky Waller, 'cause they're asking for too much money.

Always asking for a raise.''

He used to annoy the shit outta us, so we annoyed him as well.

Anyway so, it backfired on him.

They all went to America with this new band,

new rhythm section, which immediately collapsed.

They came running back, ''Oh, sorry, it didn't work,

would you come back in the band?''

And I said to Peter Grant, ''Yeah, of course I'll come,

but you know I want three grand a week now.''

And something like, apart from 500, or whatever it was.

You know what I mean, it was like, ''On my terms, I'm back.''

And I felt really good at that. So did Waller.

Are you saying that even at that fairly early stage

of the kind of UK rock and roll scene

management control was very puwerful?

Oh, yeah, all through the early...

when I was first on the scene, all the people, Joe Meek,

and Don Arden, Andrew Oldham, blah, blah, blah.

All of the 'Peter Grant', they were moulding these saleable products.

And one of them was offered to me

after I'd gone back to The Jeff Beck Group on my own terms.

Peter Grant said, ''Woody, I wanna talk to you.

Come here, I got this new proposition for ya.''

He said, ''I've got this new band called The New Yardbirds.

I want you to be part of it.''

Anyway, so that turned out to be Led Zeppelin.

And I turned that job down.

Ronnie and Jimmy have always been great mates, haven't they?

Yes¤ they've always been mates, but Ronnie was always

part of that whole entourage of the days of Ronnie King

and all those guys.

They always were notoriously suspicious for years to come,

about being with managers and agents.

-Have you seen him in recent years? -Ronnie, yes, many times.

How is he?

He's no different than what he ever was.

-He's exactly the same, really. -Is he?

Maybe a little quieter and more mellow, but nut much.

Same, ready there rock and roll.

He's not like Beck at all, completely different kind of cat.

Was management pretty gangsterish at that time?

Yeah.

Us, you know, Don Arden, and Ricky Gunnell and all those, yeah.

There was lots of petty criminals

that were running the music industry, yeah.

-It was quite violent? -Yeah.

And I stayed well away from it, I wanted to keep my hands intact...

...and my face.

What happened to that group, finally?

There's a lot of variating stories.

We were all together up until Woodstock.

We were all ready. That was the last gig we were gonna play,

then we were coming home.

And Jeff decided that he wanted to go home.

I think he thought someone was having it off with his girlfriend,

the gardener, or something.

So, he just left and left us there.

I don't know if that's true,

but only Jeff will know why he suddenly left us.

We didn't do Woodstock and then Woody and I were both out of work.

We met down at the Cromwellian and we talked.

He said, ''Small Faces have just broken up,

Steve Marriott left.''

Ronnie, I think he knew Ronnie Lane and Ian McLagan.

They were rehearsing without a singer.

They had good songs.

I think Woody said to Kenney Jones on drums,

''Well, my mate, Rod's out of work. Get him down here.''

So, I went down there and the Faces were born.

When Steve Marriott left the Faces and formed Humble Pie,

Rod Stewart and I went to Ronnie Lane,

Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones

and we said, ''Come on, you've got to stay together.''

I went over without Rod, first of all,

'cause Rod was too shy, 'cause it was his favourite band.

So, I went over and broke the ice

and we all played with our backs to each other.

And we had a feel that we were gonna do something.

And Ronnie Lane said, ''What are we gonna do about a vocalist?''

I said, ''Don't worry, we'll get to that later.''

We were doing all things like The Meters,

and Booker T. & the M.G.'s, instrumental type stuff.

Then later, Rod came on board and put a vocal over our funky sound,

what we thought was funky, anyway.

''Rivalry''?

Keith, bless him.

Now we've had a friendly rivalry all the time,

ever since I met Keith, yeah.

Marvellous really, but I think that gives you a reason to bounce.

It's fantastic.

Thing with Ronnie is that you're such good mates

that you can call each other any name under the sun and it doesn't matter.

It's like, ''Good one, pal.''

-Did you ever fall out? -No. We did have...

Once, many years ago, he was doing something he said he wouldn't.

And I found out he was and I went out and punched him,

and then he punched me.

We fell over the couch and started laughing.

That was about it.

I had a band which played stadiums,

we didn't have a record out or anyting.

But I did have Stanley Clarke in the band,

Keith Richards, and Bobby Keys,

Zigaboo Modeliste from The Meters.

It was like my ideal gathering, little Mac on the keyboards.

That band was quite an eyeopener for me,

to front and actually go out and play the stadiums,

with me as the front man.

That's how I first actually met Ronnie.

His old Iady was in a night club, she said,

''Ronnie's doing something, recording, come on down.''

Somehow in a drunken fuddle, I end up at Ronnie's house

and stayed six months.

That's where Ronnie and I started to work together.

So, we had a feel-thing going

and I was on both of his solo albums.

Down in the Bermondsey Stones' rehearsal room,

Ian Stewart used to let the Faces record down there for free,

because we had no money.

But at that time, the Stones had rung up the rehearsal room to say,

''Would Ronnie join?'' when Brian Jones died,

and Ronnie Lane said, ''No, he's quite happy where he is.''

I never found this out for five years.

I was in the hands of destiny all my life,

and being in the right place at the right time.

We were all well aware of Ronnie Wood.

I met them on the periphery of Hyde Park when Brian Jones passed away,

and they were breaking in Mick Taylor.

I was walking around the outside

and a car pulled up and out jumped Mick and Charlie.

And they came up and said hi,

and they said, ''We'll see you soon, we've got this gig.''

And I said, ''Yeah, you'll see me sooner than you think.''

And then, one day, out of the blue,

Mick Taylor decides to exit.

I never found out why.

I was at Robert Stdigwood's party,

there's Jagger here, and Mick Taylor here.

Mick Taylor leans across and says to Mick Jagger,

''I'm leaving the band.''

And Taylor gets up and walked out, that's it.

And Jagger said, ''What am I gonna do? ''Would you join?''

And I was going, ''Thought you'd never ask.''

We really wanted Ronnie,

but I think Ronnie was in another band basically.

I started with The Rolling Stones with Brian Jones,

and we developed a sound there.

Then came Mick Taylor, totally different kind of guitar player.

The solos became very important,

he added beautiful melodic Ilines.

We had to separate the rhythm from the lead.

You obviously change the personality

when you take one style of musician out,

and replace that with another style of musician.

The other ingredient,

and I mean this band works on two guitars,

and it's very important who they are.

We tried out different guitarists in studios.

We did play with Wayne Perkins, a lovely guitar player from the States,

and Harvey Mandel, also an American guitar player.

Both great, very different, very interesting.

Jimmy Page played, but he wasn't ever gonna join, I think.

Ronnie calls up and says, ''We've busted up, The Faces,

we've busted up.''

The Faces had split then, Rod had announced he was leaving.

It wasn't me that broke the band up.

He fitted in very quickly.

It was almost as if it was predestined in a way.

We all knew him, he wasn't like some stranger

that was from Georgia or somewhere.

So, these arena shows became slightly more humorous

because of his personality.

It became quite 'good-timey' in a way.

And Ronnie brought this sense of fun to it.

Mad clothes, and colourful, and everyone smiling, grinning,

and Ronnie's like mugging and singing backing parts.

It's a very different mood.

It's a very finely crafted kdind of... It ain't sloppy at all.

What's it like playing a huge stadium?

I mean, can you actually hear yourself

Yeah, I have to stand in front of my amp in order to.

If I drift too far off, especially in the old days,

when the monitors weren't too good at getting a true mix,

it was difficult to wander too far away from your station.

When we first started, I'd have Keith's amp here

and that was all I could hear.

And I'm watching Charlie's snare or his bass drum.

Yeah.

-They all say they follow you. -Oh dear.

But the sound, and the way that we create it,

it depends on those two guitars, and how they weave together.

The two of them have this fabulous dance.

It's like interchanging.

You've got to keep your concentration up when you're around Keith

because if you let your guard down,

and leave yourself open, he'll come straight in and expose you.

Ronnie'll now call it the ancient form of weaving.

Like, ''It doesn't need all that'', and you'll go, ''Actually, you're right.''

And of course, all of that is then to support the vocalist.

Because the crowd, they're loving it, that's the great thing.

And you're loving it.

So the sound, you force it to happen, you make it happen.

There is a sort of aim to make those enormous places,

in a way, feeI like they're smaller.

As you said, that sort of clubbish thing that goes on.

Really, we're a live band.

And we take that feeling to a stadium, or to a huge park,

with hundreds of thousands,

or the beach with millions, like we did in Rio.

But it's the same thing:

you have to have that close-knit feel

and energy within the band

and then it can project from that small core.

I think it's just half of it's just the nature of the band.

Thank you!

Thank you!

Ah, baby!

-He's had quite a life in terms of... -Yeah.

Sex, drugs, and things like that, drinking.

Things like that, yeah.

Is that what you're referring to, Mike?

I get the sense that you've been very brutherly tuwards him.

Well, that's nice, I mean...

We all went through our 'overdoing it' phase.

Mick never gave up on him.

He really wanted to be a sober person but it was very difficult to do.

And it is difficult to do if you've been doing it like all your life.

Ronnie's always a happy person.

I just feel that if you're talking to a sober person,

you've got the real person.

And I didn't find him...

an ugly drunk or anything like that,

I just prefer the true person.

He functions very well as both, but I think he's better sober.

I think he's more creative, he's more in tune, he's more in touch,

and just sharper.

So, I think he was brilliant, anyway,

but being sober has just pushed him somewhere else.

''I had to go through it to get to it,'' you know,

as Bobby Womack used to say.

Du you regret?

No, I had some really good spiritual awakenings

during my using years,

although I wouldn't recommend it.

A lot of it was the ritual

associated with the presentation of the different drugs.

The rolling of the joint, the filling of the pipe,

the chopping of the coke or whatever it was.

And the ingestion of the smack in whichever way you did it.

There's a lot of ritual involved, and then that would be set against

the ritual of the way the music was structured.

That gave you the feeling of invincibility,

that you could tackle anything.

I'm just speaking for me,

I think this is what gave me a lot of confidence.

Not to say that I wasn't born with a lot of front anyway,

I would have fronted my way like I've done all my life,

but the drugs increased my confidence.

Same as the alcohol did.

I mean, a port and brandy,

Rod and I used to have before we went on with The Faces,

and with The Jeff Beck Group.

The drink was very important, it very much got rid of the butterflies

and it gave you the power to go on

and handle anything, tackle anything.

I had a little mews flat

in Gloucester Place Mews, near Harley Street.

I passed it the other week

and I thought, ''It's stll there, this little mews.''

And I've seen it only on acid and it was like, ''Ah!''

It became this little toy town down there, and it is a toy town.

And I'll never forget.

I was in the height of this acid trip, and the phone rang

when it was like, whoo, going through the sea...

It was the Faces, they were all at rehearsal going,

''You're late for rehearsal, you're late for rehearsaI.

You've fucked up, you've fucked everything up.''

You know, it's been a long time since I was on the road with him.

As I remember him with the Faces, we were a party band.

So, we were always in a bloody good mood all the time,

sometimes too much of a good mood.

I remember in Detroit, we all took acid in the Faces,

and then we went back to David Ruffin, from The Temptations,

we went back to his house and we sang and played.

It felt like I was playing...

The guitar, just wouldn't keep still, it was bending,

but I managed to play it.

You must have gone very cluse tu various precipices, edges.

Yeah, and I've seen enough people go over the top,

especially in the early days with The Stones,

with my early days with them, with me and Keith.

I used to try and copy Keith and inject more than he did or take more.

We'd be forever walking around and some of them didn't make it.

And it's Iike really horrible to see.

And you learn a lesson, in a way, from that.

Yeah, it's amazing, that he kept it together so long, really.

He did do a lot of things to excess, but he never Iost it.

It was how you steered your way through it.

It was aIways there and it was like knowing where to...

''Hang on a minute, I better stop here because I've got to do this.''

''I can't get blitzed

because I want to do that and then I want to do that afterwards.''

''I'll go this far, and I'll go that far,

but I'm not going the rest of the way.''

Lots of people fall by the wayside.

The pills were terrible,

they'd take handfuls of them and then foam at the mouth,

and you'd go, ''Yeah, no wonder.''

You could take one, or half is fine.

Keith Moon used to take the whole bottle,

so it was no surprise when he died.

I was always telling him, ''Keith, you're meant to take one or two,

not the whole bottle!''

''Oh, it's fine, dear boy,'' let's go and conquer the worId.

Was there ever a time when the balance

between you, Ronnie, being in control, of your destiny,

went the wrong way?

-Oh yeah. -Did you ever feel that?

I felt that with the freebase.

It was controIIing me, I had no control over it.

It took me about three years to get off of it.

Oh, yeah. Incredibly powerful, it ruled everything.

Just getting high with that pipe was frighteing, I'd do anything for it.

And I can understand why people went out and killed for it.

You know what I mean? I thought,

''I can see why these people with no money, have got to get a next hit.''

And I'm thinking, ''That is frightening.''

And when they're mixing it with smack, that made it even more...

It was like, ''If I don't get the next hit,

I'm gonna die, so I'm gonna kill you to get...'' you know.

Oh God, it was like, ''How am I gonna get off this?''

So, I just enjoyed the shit out of it.

I just took it with me wherever I went.

-Could you continue tu work? -Continued to work.

I used to, quite innocently, think it was the best thing going.

I'd take it to parties and go, ''Everybody's got to try this!''

Yeah, a great big Bunsen burner out,

the pipe, the works, and freebase, and everything.

People would be going, ''You're fucking crazy, but I love it!''

You know, then they'd all be getting on it.

And he's as tough as nails.

Is he? Tell me about him.

Ronnie's just built like that, he's kind of like me,

I've broken every bone in my body.

He has a great immune system.

In fact, he's very like me.

With a great pain threshold.

I...

thought I'd better change,

change my way of thinking.

Nothing was working, so I decided to try again.

When you say 'nothing', you mean musically? Emotionally?

Oh.

Dope-wise, yeah.

The coke wasn't working, the drink wasn't working,

''Try one more,'' you know, just to see if I could cut through it.

And I'd turn into this sour person, kind of like, ''Fuck off!''

And I thought, ''This is not me.''

Took the brave move again, but this time for myself,

to abstain and try and clean up my act.

It's really hard to do, but he knew he wanted to do it,

which is obviously part of the thing.

If you don't want to do it, it's really impossible.

He wanted to do it but he found it really difficult to do.

And it's all part of being supportive of the fact that you want to do it,

but so then, how's that gonna work?

He tried all different angles coming at it and I was of some help...

If I was of some help, I'm glad.

You can't just think that it's not there,

it can creep up at any point.

So, that's a big deal for us.

We've done classes, or rehab, or ¤ meetings.

He has his meditation books.

Check in daily, ''How are you doing? How's this?''

It's not just drugs, it's smoking, it's drinking,

it's a lot that he has to put first.

So, we put the recovery first because everything else follows,

and that makes sense for us.

It's very difficult because you go through a period of dry,

and you go, ''I've done it, I've cleaned up.

So, now I can have just one.''

And that's the big mistake, because you can't have just one.

-You just can't. -No.

Some people can, they're lucky.

But the addict head can't.

Do you have an addictive personality

or did you just becume addicted?

Yeah, I wonder, which one of them it is.

I probably like things too much.

Which is harmless for some things like music,

but harmful in ways like dope and drink.

We want to be with Ronnie and he wants us to be there.

So, that is the best way it would work for us,

and I want to be with my husband.

That was a real cut version.