It's Only Rock 'n' Roll

by Jo Wood

  Of course, when we got to Customs they immediately zeroed in on me; I must have been giving off guilty vibes. As they went through my bag, I offered up a silent prayer of thanks that we hadn’t hidden the stash in there. Then the inspector held up the duty-free bag containing the carton of cigarettes. ‘Is this yours?’ he asked me.

  ‘No,’ I said, pointing at Victor. ‘They’re his!’ I was damned if I was going to risk life in prison for him.

  As Victor scowled at me, the inspector took out one packet and carefully checked inside, but to everyone’s immense relief it wasn’t the doctored one and we were finally waved through.

  The house in Nassau, which Victor had rented from a music-industry friend, was like something out of a Bond movie, with huge picture windows looking out over a white-sand beach and a dazzling turquoise strip of sea. It was surrounded by a handful of guest villas, a huge pool, and boasted its own recording-studio complex. As Victor gave us the guided tour, I finally began to relax after the stresses of the journey and felt ready for some fun – and it looked like the party had already started in the living room, where a group of people were scattered around, drinking and chatting. In my jet-lagged haze, I thought one of the guys looked vaguely familiar. I looked a bit closer. It couldn’t be . . . Oh, shit – it was. My old friend, Flavio, whom I hadn’t seen since I’d stolen thousands of pounds’ worth of his cocaine, then ruined the rest with self-raising Homepride. Great, so that was two pissed-off drug dealers I was now sharing a holiday home with . . .

  Thankfully, however, Flavio was happy to forgive and forget the flour incident and, despite the bumpy start, it turned out to be a wild couple of weeks. We’d get out of bed as the sun went down and the boys would play music. I don’t recall Victor’s album ever getting made – I think he just wanted the kudos of getting a Rolling Stone and a Beatle into the studio together – and soon after our holiday he was packed off to jail for many, many years, busted by his own dad who had never approved of his son’s career path.

  On one of our last days in Nassau, Ronnie and I were sunbathing on the beach (it must have been one of the very rare occasions we were awake before sunset) when I glanced at him and saw the sun shining through his nose. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a huge hole in his septum. He could have put a finger up each nostril and touched them together.

  Ronnie, bless him, got all worried about it. The drugs had eaten through the cartilage, he explained. ‘Do you still love me now you know?’

  I showered him with kisses. ‘Of course I do, silly!’

  Truth be told, I loved him more and more each day. I had fallen hard – we both had. So, when our holiday came to an end and Ronnie had to head back to Paris to finish work on Some Girls, there was no question that I would go with him – and I arranged for Mum and Jamie to come to stay with us days after we got there.

  We moved into an apartment in a handsome grey-stone building near the river that we nicknamed Complaining Mansions: the people downstairs were always grumbling about our noise. (I guess we were keeping pretty antisocial hours.) Now that we were staying in a proper apartment, rather than a hotel, I could throw myself into creating a home. Ronnie loved games, so we went out and got an elaborate model racing circuit, on which he, Keith and assorted other visitors would spend hours when they weren’t making music. And although food still featured low on the list of everyone’s priorities, I loved cooking huge, homely meals for whoever dropped by. Soon after we moved into Complaining Mansions, I whipped up a big Old Vicarage-style roast for 16, including Keith, Jane Rose, Mick and Jerry, Charlie and Chuch. Another night George Benson turned up; I remember being proud that he had seconds of my spaghetti Bolognese.

  I spent many happy hours wandering around the local food markets, although the language barrier occasionally proved problematic. I had assumed my French would pick up during this time in Paris, but whenever I was out with Ronnie and Keith everyone just spoke English to them. It was my first taste of the crazy attention the Stones attracted wherever we went in the world. Everyone just loved those boys. It was only when I was out on my own that the locals suddenly didn’t know a single word of English. Anyway, on one of my early solo outings, I found a stall selling a stunning selection of wild mushrooms. With a smile, I pointed to the ones I wanted.

  ‘Combien, mademoiselle?’ asked the stallholder.

  I had no idea about weights, but the prices seemed to be in kilos, so I just said, ‘Un kilo.’ The guy started shovelling them into a huge bag, more and more, while I stood there desperately trying to work out how to tell him to stop. Have you any idea how many wild mushrooms it takes to make a kilo? A hell of a lot, as it turned out. When he eventually handed over the bulging sack, I was too embarrassed to do anything but pay up. For the next week we ate mushroom soup, stuffed mushrooms, mushroom omelette and mushroom fricassee.

  Settled in Paris with my man I was deliriously happy, but one thing would have made my life complete: Jamie. Keith had been joined in Paris by Marlon, his eight-year-old son with Anita Pallenberg. Marlon was a great kid, full of fun and cheekiness, and I love him. While the Stones were in the studio I’d take him roller-skating in the park, then bring him back to Complaining Mansions for bangers and mash. But hanging out with Marlon made me miss my own boy even more. I was in the midst of legal wrangles with Peter over custody, and until those were resolved, I couldn’t take Jamie out of the UK full-time. An entry in my diary from this time reads: ‘30 January 1978. Slept all day, woke at 8 p.m. Called Mum and talked to my little fella. Jamie said he “wished I’d come out of the telephone”! Missing him LOTS.’

  In early February I went back to the Old Vicarage and returned to Paris with Jamie, Mum and my now teenage sister, Lize. Jamie had never been on a plane before, and as we climbed he turned to me, eyes wide, and said, ‘Mummy, why have the clouds fallen down?’

  By now I had taken Ronnie to the Old Vicarage, and while he had been his usual charming self, I knew my parents were very concerned that their daughter was shacked up with one of the very same ‘disgusting lads’ that Dad had banned from our TV all those years earlier. But Ronnie was on his best behaviour and we had a wonderful week. It felt as if my life was coming together. It also made me think that once the album was finished – and the custody issues with my ex had been resolved – I could start planning for a future in which I could make a real home with the two people who mattered to me most: Jamie, my little baby; and Ronnie, whom I had dubbed, only half jokingly, in my diary, ‘my big baby’.

  We had been back in Paris just a month when I first started to feel ill. Until recently I’d had no problem keeping up with the boys and happily indulging in whatever was on offer. Now, even getting out of bed was a struggle. At first I thought that all the partying must have caught up with me, but when I started experiencing the familiar waves of queasiness I realized it wasn’t a hangover: it was morning sickness.

  I don’t know why it came as such a surprise to me, really. Ronnie and I hadn’t been at all careful – quite the opposite. It just hadn’t occurred to me that I might fall pregnant: I was too drunk, too high, having too much fun even to think about it. But now here I was – and my feelings about it were strongly mixed. On the one hand the thought of having a child with Ronnie, whom I was so madly in love with, seemed wonderfully romantic, but how on earth would a baby fit into our lives? We were about as far from a conventional domestic set-up as you could get.

  I was scheduled to go back to the UK for the weekend to see Jamie, so I decided I would break the news to Ronnie just before I left. I was terrified. We’d only been together for a few months and, besides, he was a rock ’n’ roller! I’d probably be abandoned with a squealing kid and leaky boobs while he went off with a younger model. The thought sent my already volatile emotions into overdrive.

  We were sitting on the sofa having a final cuddle before my cab to the airport arrived when I finally plucked up the courage to tell him.

  Just as I feared, he didn’t look too
happy. ‘You’re what?’

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ I said. ‘I don’t want this to upset our relationship.’

  But Ronnie just sat staring into space, looking like – well, like he’d just been told his relatively new girlfriend was up the duff.

  ‘It’s okay, you don’t have to say anything now,’ I went on, helplessly. ‘Take the weekend to think about it. We’ll talk when I get back.’

  After a few moments, Ronnie looked at me. ‘I don’t have to think about it, Jo.’

  I tried desperately to read his expression. ‘You don’t?’

  He pulled me into his arms, a huge smile across his face. ‘We’re having our baby.’

  On our final night in Paris, we had a huge party at Complaining Mansions to celebrate my 23rd birthday. It was a punk-themed party and I wore shiny plastic trousers and an artfully ripped T-shirt. I had designed the invitations: ‘You are invited to bang your head on the wall, pass out and throw up!’ Luckily no one seemed to notice that any throwing up I did was not related to over-indulgence . . .

  The next day we were booked on a flight to London, then straight on to Los Angeles, where Ronnie was setting up a base in preparation for the boys’ tour of the States later in the year. As usual with Ronnie, there hadn’t been much discussion about our plans, no heartfelt declaration along the lines of ‘Come and live with me in America, my darling!’ It was just sort of assumed that I would be going with him.

  As we boarded the plane I felt a shiver of delight at turning left into the first-class cabin – something I would never take for granted over subsequent years. I had come from quite a modest background so I never lost my appreciation of all the lovely things money brought with it. We had flown first class to Nassau a few months before, when I had loved the luxury and the feeling of being someone quite important, but this time it was different. This wasn’t just the start of a holiday: I was on the way to America to build a home and a family with Ronnie. As I settled into the plush leather seat and sensed the first flutterings of our baby inside me, it felt like the beginning of the rest of our lives.

  10

  Our first home in LA was on Forest Knoll Drive, a minute from Sunset Boulevard in the car. The house was pure Hollywood. You walked through the front door to be met by the sight of a huge swimming-pool and a huge open-plan space. All the rooms were on one level, with a vast living area complete with an enormous central fireplace around which the bedrooms were arranged. It was a party house, through and through – in fact, before we moved in it had been used primarily for shooting porn films – so our little rock ’n’ roll family fitted right in. Keith adopted one of the spare bedrooms as his own, closely followed by Ronnie’s old Faces keyboard player, Ian ‘Mac’ McLagan, in another, and we were off!

  Even though I was pregnant I still tried to keep the same hours as the boys, but obviously was not matching their levels of consumption. I hope it goes without saying that I never did drugs when I was pregnant. My diary entry for 11 April 1978 reads: ‘Got up at 6 p.m. and cooked roast dinner for breakfast.’ There were some wild nights. Dealers would be coming and going at all hours, including one girl, Cathy Smith, who virtually moved in for a time. I remember her and Keith having a massive row that only ended when Keith pulled out his gun, put it to her head and said, ‘I’ll give you forty-five reasons to get out of this house now.’ She left – and if I had known then what she would end up doing later I would never, ever have let her in my house in the first place.

  I’d have a sip of a drink just to feel like I was still part of the gang, but being straight while everyone else was drunk or high wasn’t easy. Throw my raging hormones into the mix and it’s no surprise that Ronnie and I had our first proper argument at Forest Knoll. I can’t remember what it was about, but I remember being so upset that I decided to get back at Ronnie by making him think I’d run away. It was the early hours of the morning when I got my passport, climbed out of our bedroom window and scrambled up onto the roof to hide. I’ll show him, I thought, furiously. I was quite comfortable at first, but as the sun came up on another glorious LA morning, my little rooftop hideout got hotter and hotter. The heat was soon unbearable, but the thought of Ronnie rushing around downstairs, frantic with worry, desperately phoning everyone we knew trying to find out where I had gone, made me stick with it. Then suddenly Ronnie’s head popped up by the edge of the roof. ‘You might need this,’ he said, holding out a glass of water.

  He had known I was up there the whole bloody time.

  I was more deeply in love with Ronnie than ever, but was full of hormone-fuelled insecurities about our relationship. I poured out my feelings in my diary and in poems. Ronnie actually used one of my poems as inspiration for his song ‘Lost And Lonely’ on his 1979 solo album Gimme Some Neck.

  Lost and Lonely

  I’m lost and I’m lonely

  And looking for you

  Out of my mind

  Coz it’s you I can’t find

  Pouring rain

  Hearts in pain

  Never again.

  Humble and helpless

  Looking hard for your love

  If there could be a next time

  I promise I’ll stand by you

  Wastin’ away

  Nothin’ to say

  Forgive me for today.

  Next to you

  Helping you through

  I’m still hanging in there

  I’m a true fine woman

  You’re a certain one of a kind

  If you left me now

  I’d only go crazy.

  Only the blind can tell

  I’m looking for you

  Can anyone else see I’ve been waiting

  Only from heartache can we live to learn

  We should be together again.

  Ronnie wanted to keep the pregnancy secret as he was in the middle of divorce negotiations with Krissy and didn’t need to muddy the waters, so I hid my blossoming bump in dungarees and baggy jumpers (fortunately the height of fashion at the time) and I don’t think anyone guessed. Mick clearly didn’t. In those early days, he would try it on with me as soon as Ronnie had left the room.

  ‘Come on, Jo,’ he’d say.

  ‘You should be so fucking lucky, Mick,’ I said. ‘In your wildest dreams.’

  I never fancied Mick and, besides, I only had eyes for my Ronnie; there was nobody else in the world for me. I can honestly say I didn’t fancy anyone else for 30 years.

  In late May, when I was about five months pregnant, we took off for Woodstock, in upstate New York, and the countryside studio where the Stones were rehearsing for the summer tour. Keith had decided to come off heroin ahead of the tour and a scheduled court appearance in Toronto following a drugs bust there the year before. By then Ronnie had told the boys I was pregnant. The three of us shared a little house near the rehearsal-room complex and Jane Rose cared for Keith as he went cold turkey, which seemed to be like the worst flu you could ever imagine. She saw him through it, staying in his room as he went through the DTs with the help of a little black box that gave a painless zap of electricity to get the endorphins flowing. Keith still carried on with the coke and hash, but heroin’s different. It’s a physical addiction, rather than a mental one, like coke. It takes a matter of minutes to get hooked and then your body starts to crave it – and Keith had been on smack for 10 years, so you can imagine how hard those weeks were for him.

  I stayed well away from heroin and am so relieved I never got into it, but I did try it once by accident. In the eighties, Ronnie and I were so skint for a time that a dealer used to give us all the empty plastic bags the coke had come in so that he could scrape them for a line. One day he got a new batch and Ronnie gave me the first line. I snorted it, then immediately gagged.

  ‘Christ, what is that stuff?’ It had tasted revolting.

  Ronnie tested it to find out what it was (you just burn a little and smell it) and pulled a face. ‘Oops, sorry, baby,’ he said. ‘I’ve just given you a
line of smack.’

  That night, I remember trying to write a message in the front of a book I was sending as a birthday gift to my friend, Wendy Worth: ‘Dear Wendy, Happy Birthday. Lots of love, Jo.’ But I was so out of it that it took me all night long to do it. I tore out page after page of the book, trying to write just those few words. Then, at seven in the morning, I started to be violently ill. I threw up and threw up and threw up. It was a horrible experience. Not just the sickness, but the total loss of control. Never again . . .

  After a week or so in Woodstock, Keith started to come round and then he just blossomed, becoming even funnier and more entertaining than ever. With his appetite returning, he got stuck into his favourite meals: shepherd’s pie, roast lamb, sausages and mash – any combination of meat and potatoes. The next thing he wanted was some female attention. Things with Anita Pallenberg had really run their course, so I called my agency to see if anyone was around and it turned out that this fabulous Swedish model called Lil Wenglas Green was in New York. Lil was great – very blonde, very beautiful and a real laugh. Keith arranged a helicopter for me (my first helicopter ride!) and I went to New York to pick her up. And, just like that, she and Keith got on like a house on fire and were together for a couple of years.

  It was a nice little set-up in Woodstock. I was beginning to need lots of sleep because I was getting bigger so I’d go off for naps. The weeks flew by and suddenly it was June, and we were off to Florida for the first night of the Some Girls tour.

  11

  It was the sound of the crowd that really got me. That unbelievable primal roar, so loud you can feel it vibrating through you. And the fans at the front, their faces twisted into what looked like screams of agony, almost as if they were in pain or pleading for their lives, climbing over one another in a desperate attempt to get an inch closer to their idols. To have tens of thousands of people screaming, crying, desperate for you–it’s really not in the least surprising that rock stars have big egos. The whole experience was utterly overwhelming. As I stood at the back of the stage in Florida, watching the Stones perform live for the first time, I felt totally in awe of the boys for inspiring such a mind-blowing reaction. Even experiencing it from where I had positioned myself, half-hidden behind an amp, the adrenalin rush was better than the hit of any drug I’d ever tried.