It's Only Rock 'n' Roll

by Jo Wood

  Though Ronnie hadn’t been with the Stones for long, and this was his second tour with them, I’d never been on tour with anyone; it was an incredible first taste of something that would eventually become a major part of my life. In later years the tours would become slick, professional operations, involving an organizational cast of thousands and years on the road. Things were on a far smaller scale when I first joined the team, although the key players were the same – and for me the main man was always Chuch. Ronnie was too preoccupied with his performance to worry about what I was up to, so Chuch showed me where to stand so I could be discreet and not get in anyone’s way. As ever, he was my saving grace. I was devastated when he passed away in 2002.

  Then there was Johnny Starbuck, another of the key roadies who remains a close friend to this day. His real name was Gary Howard, but he changed it because he’d always loved the name Johnny; one day he noticed a sign for ‘Starbuck Street’ and it all fell into place. As roadies had such a physical job they weren’t usually that fussed about their appearance, but Johnny looked as cool as his name suggests. He was a handsome guy and was always sharp in a spotless T-shirt and a pair of tight jeans. We used to flirt like crazy.

  While the boys got ready to go on stage I’d try to make myself useful; I watched Chuch string the guitars, ran errands and made the drinks. The last thing I wanted was to feel I was in the way: I wanted to be a cog in this incredible machine, however minor. But, really, what could I do? I couldn’t sing, I didn’t know how to play a musical instrument (Ronnie often tried to teach me ‘Maggie May’ on the guitar but I’d have forgotten it all the next morning) and I wasn’t strong enough to lug boxes.

  What I did know, however, was clothes. At this time the styling for the tours was a bit haphazard. The boys, with the exception of Mick, just used to pull out stuff from their closets – and Ronnie had some pretty dodgy stuff lurking in his. (Remember those tapestry-trimmed gabardine flares he was wearing when we first met? Well, turned out he had six or seven pairs.) Gradually I started to take more of an interest in his styling. Ronnie and Keith were into wearing women’s clothes at the time, so one day I put Ronnie into my pink velvet Fiorucci jeans with a Victorian white blouse and a waistcoat. He loved the outfit so much he wore it for the Miss You video. It would be another 10 years before I was officially on the Stones’ payroll, but in those early days it was my way of making a contribution.

  Keith has described the Stones on tour as a ‘pirate nation’ and he’s spot-on. In the early days especially, you’d get this bunch of crazy characters, a mix of oddballs, outlaws and scoundrels, who would join the band on the road. One of the most infamous of these reprobates was Freddie Sessler, whom I met for the first time on the Some Girls tour.

  Ronnie and I were settling into our hotel room in Florida when he told me we were going visiting. He led the way down the corridor, my little bump and I trotting behind, and banged on a neighbouring door. A moment later it swung open to reveal a dumpy little dude. He had straggly grey hair combed over an expanse of bald patch, a huge nose and a tiny willy. He was standing there buck-naked.

  ‘Hi there, I’m Jo!’ I said brightly, deliberately looking beyond him to avoid the sight of his willy and coming face to face with a naked girl lying on the bed. ‘Oh . . . hi to you, too!’

  He handed Ronnie a big bag of powder. ‘Here’s da coke,’ he said. ‘I’ll catch you later,’ and he slammed the door. A moment later I heard a burst of girlish giggles from inside.

  And that was my introduction to the legendary Freddie Sessler.

  Freddie was a Holocaust survivor from Poland and had been around the Stones for years. He was one of Keith’s closest friends: his Man Friday and go-to guy for drugs. And on later tours, when I wasn’t pregnant, I was to fully indulge in all of Freddie’s wares. Freddie would always have jars and jars of the pharmaceutical cocaine known as Merck. It was totally different from the coke that came out of Colombia, so beautifully smooth you could stay up for days on it without feeling wired. It makes me feel stoned just thinking about it. He had pills, too, endless rainbow-coloured handfuls of little red barbiturates called Seconal; half-red, half-turquoise pills called Turanol; and yellow Percodan, an opiate like morphine. I was never that into pills, but Freddie would always want you to take them. He would shove them into my mouth, and though I’d try to hide them under my tongue to spit out when he wasn’t looking (a trick I learnt from Ronnie), if I wasn’t quick enough they’d start to dissolve. The taste was so nasty, unimaginably bitter. And then there was this spray-can of stuff that Freddie used to waft around – you’d inhale the fumes and go into orbit. WHEEEEEE! It was the maddest stuff. At one point I started to worry about what it was doing to my brain. I stayed up many, many nights on a cocktail of Seconal, Turanol and vodka – it’s a wonder I’m still alive, really.

  Keith adored Freddie like a second dad, but Mick couldn’t stand him and was always slagging him off, which made it difficult to know how you should feel about him. I was always a bit scared of him, as he was such a dark character. And he could be obnoxious. ‘This is my son Larry,’ he would say. ‘He’s the victim of a burst rubber.’ Charming, eh? And Keith would tell a story about how one of Freddie’s wives (he’d somehow had many) had once caught him with another woman. Despite being mid-shag he point-blank denied it. ‘Well, who are you gonna believe?’ he said to her. ‘Me or your own eyes?’

  Yet, as old and ugly as he was, Freddie would always get these gorgeous girls. He’d sit backstage and say, ‘I vant a groupie, I vant a vodka and I vant a line!’ I gather the levels of debauchery on the Some Girls tour were pretty tame compared to earlier ones, but for a tour virgin like myself it all seemed pretty wild – and Freddie was usually mixed up in the middle of it, surrounded by half-naked girls.

  One day on tour, as Freddie slobbered over yet another pretty teenager, I asked Keith what these girls saw in him.

  ‘Well, what do you think, Jo?’

  ‘It must be the coke.’

  Keith shook his head.

  ‘Well, perhaps they’re trying to get in with you through him.’

  ‘Don’t you get it, Jo?’

  ‘No, I really don’t.’ Freddie’s charms were totally lost on me.

  Keith grinned and started waggling his tongue.

  ‘Oh, no!’ I gasped. ‘No, not that. You have got to be kidding!’

  But Keith just laughed. ‘What can I say? Apparently he gives the best head.’

  Freddie died a few years ago but near the end of his life, when he was well into his seventies, he came over to our house for dinner with the family. That night I saw a very different side of him. Maybe it was because he knew he was dying, but for the first time ever he seemed to show a genuine affection for me. Who knows? Perhaps the silly old sod had been quietly keeping an eye out for me for years. At the end of the night he took my hands and said, ‘Jo, you’ve been the best thing for Ronnie. You’re such a good woman.’ I was stunned, as he’d never said anything like that to me before.

  In fact, in the early days, it had seemed like Freddie had done everything he could to screw up my relationship with Ronnie. On that first tour we were hanging out in the hotel after a gig when Freddie appeared with this perky blonde girl, a waitress, who zeroed straight in on Ronnie. It was clear that they already knew each other – in fact, I quickly worked out that he had shagged her the last time the band was in the States. So there I was, heavily pregnant and seething with jealousy, as this girl drooled all over my man. He was clearly enjoying the attention – and Freddie was loving the fact that I was getting so upset about it. Fucking Freddie, I seethed silently. I bet you set this up deliberately. I tried taking Ronnie aside to tell him how upset I was getting, but he refused to understand.

  ‘She’s just my mate!’ he said. ‘I used to go out with her and I don’t any more. What’s the problem?’

  In the end I stormed back to our room, hoping Ronnie would follow, but the minutes ticked past and I realized he wasn�
�t going to come. As I sobbed into my pillow, it occurred to me that I had two options: I could lie there feeling sorry for myself while Miss Texas wiggled her boobies at my bloke, or I could redo my makeup, slip into something a bit more sexy (well, as sexy as a maternity smock could be) and go back down there with a big smile on my face to remind Ronnie of what he’d got. In the end I took the second option. I strode back into the room, plonked myself down next to the waitress and started chatting to her. With us two girls getting along like old friends, Freddie got bored, wandered off, and soon Ronnie muttered to me, ‘Get rid of her, will you?’ My man and I went up to bed alone.

  I learnt a very important lesson that night. Groupies were one of the inevitable downsides of life as a rock-star’s girlfriend, like hangovers and jetlag. No matter how much fuss I made or how upset I got, those girls weren’t going to go away. From then on, my way of dealing with them was always to make friends with them. ‘Hi, I’m Jo, Ronnie’s girlfriend, what’s your name?’ It always seemed to defuse the situation. And if that failed, I’d make them really strong drinks until they were so pissed, they’d do something stupid and Ronnie would tell them to leave. I’m not saying I wasn’t jealous – far from it. It turned my guts to see other women all over my man. Another night on that tour, I was watching Ronnie from the side of the stage and during his solo I saw him cross the stage to where two pretty girls were screaming and I thought, I bet I see you two in our hotel room later. Sure enough, when we got back there they were, giggling away.

  But, thankfully, it was Mick whom most of the girls were after. He’d see one he liked in the audience, give security a nod and they’d take her back to the hotel. It became a bit of a game to me, scanning the front rows and trying to pinpoint the girl who’d take Mick’s fancy that night.

  I used to turn a blind eye to these goings-on, because I adored being on tour and I knew if I made a fuss I wouldn’t be allowed on the next one. The other wives and girlfriends would put in occasional appearances: Jerry would come and go, Shirley Watts was more into her dressage horses than life on the road, and Bill Wyman’s wife, Astrid, would come to the bigger shows until they split up, after which Bill just had woman after woman after woman. But me? I was there all the time.

  We toured America from early June till the end of July. What really blew me away were the stadium concerts: places like John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, Soldier Field in Chicago and, most impressive of all, the Superdome in New Orleans, which at the time broke records as the biggest indoor concert ever. We’re talking tens of thousands of people–80 thousand in New Orleans and an incredible 90 thousand crammed into the stadium in Philly.

  The last dates of the tour were back in California. By now I was seven months pregnant and I remember everyone joking that I was going to have the baby at the side of the stage. When the tour reached Los Angeles, Dad came out to visit and brought Jamie, then four, with him. I was a bit worried as to how Dad’d take to the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle but on the night of the show I spotted him in the front row, arms in the air, dancing along with Mick, wearing a huge smile. I hadn’t even known my dad could move like that! And I was so proud to show Jamie his new stepdad playing in front of thousands. He just loved it.

  Dad got on with Keith especially well: Keith was fascinated by Dad’s Lambretta collection and model-making and in return Dad was intrigued by Keith’s intellect. Meanwhile, I was struggling with the late nights and would often fall asleep while the party raged on around me. One night Ronnie was drunk and started having a go at me over something. He was just being a bit obnoxious and dismissive, but I was so exhausted and hormonal that I flew into a rage and tried to hit him.

  ‘Okay, Jo, I think it’s time for you to go home,’ he said – and the next morning I was put on a flight back to LA.

  In all honesty I was pretty relieved to get home. The boys only had a couple of dates left of the tour – and, besides, my nesting instinct had seriously kicked in. But I wasn’t content with going to buy a crib or painting the nursery. Oh, no. I might have been just weeks away from giving birth, but from the moment I got back to Forest Knoll Drive I threw myself into looking for a whole new home.

  12

  22 August. Went to see house in Mandeville Canyon today. It’s really nice. Think we might get it.

  Within a month, amazingly, we had moved into the home of my dreams. If the place on Forest Knoll Drive had been built for partying, this was most definitely somewhere for raising a family. Situated in Mandeville Canyon in Brentwood, it was like a house from a child’s picture book, with an apple-green wooden exterior, white window-frames and a veranda that ran all the way round. In the garden there was a guest cottage and a swimming-pool, which (as the house once belonged to the famous swimmer and movie starlet, Esther Williams) must have seen some wild pool parties over the years.

  There was another really great thing about the Mandeville Canyon house. When Ronnie and I went to look round we got chatting to the housekeeper, a tall, elegant woman called Jaye, who agreed to stay on when we moved in. She would work for us for many years – and then for Mick and Keith’s families, too – and within just a few months felt like one of the family.

  We moved into Mandeville Canyon at the start of September and I got straight down to work, painting and wallpapering, not just the new baby’s nursery but a racing-car-themed bedroom for Jamie, too. I was still battling Peter’s efforts to keep me from bringing him out to live with us in LA, but I wanted to be sure there was a bedroom for him when we did. I’m sure even Peter recognized that our son needed to be with his mother, but that didn’t stop him doing everything he could to block it happening. Thankfully, Jamie was safely cocooned at the Old Vicarage throughout, but it meant that until everything was resolved, he could come to the States only for brief visits. ‘Thank you, Peter, for being so fucking difficult,’ I wrote in my diary, following a particularly tense conversation with the lawyers after he had announced he wanted Ronnie to pay for six flights a year so that he could visit his son. ‘Your true colours shine through!’ I added: ‘Ronnie makes up for everything, though.’

  If I’d hoped for a few weeks of quiet nesting to prepare for the baby’s arrival, however, I was to be disappointed. Ronnie had started work on his solo album, Gimme Some Neck, so no sooner was he back from tour than the house was crammed with musicians and roadies again. Keith moved into our guest cottage while Mac and Chuch took the guest rooms. I’d cook huge meals for them and the guys would stay up all night, smoking, drinking and making music. It was pointless me going to bed early (even more so asking them to keep the noise down), so most of the time I just stayed up with them.

  I’d always loved listening to music, but since I’d been with Ronnie I’d become immersed in it like never before. If there weren’t people sitting around jamming, there would be music on the stereo. I was exposed to all sorts of genres I’d never heard before; I fell in love with reggae, in particular. But where you or I might enjoy a song, then move happily on to the next, the boys would become fixated on a particular track and play it endlessly. Ronnie – and even more so, Keith – would listen intently to the same song over and over and over again. While I found it fascinating that they could listen to it so many times, it sometimes became a little tedious on the 18th airing. One time Keith played a country song called ‘Apartment Number Nine’ constantly for weeks, maybe months, so he could perfect every note. Every word of that song embedded itself in my brain. And there was no way you could just get up and change the music. So many times we’d be sitting in a hotel room on tour, or even at home, and some loony who hadn’t been hanging out with us before would get up to put a different song on and Keith would go mental: ‘Don’t touch the fucking music!’ It was non-negotiable: this was their music and that was all there was to it. In the end, I found ways to get the boys to change the music without asking them. I might say, ‘Ooh, Keith, I just love that song by Gregory Isaacs – you haven’t got it, have you?’<
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  And he’d go: ‘Oh, yeah, I’ll find it for you, darling.’

  On the rare occasions that I’d put headphones on to listen to other music, theirs was so loud I couldn’t actually hear it – and there was no point in asking them if they could turn it down a bit. The volume level was another non-negotiable. It’s a wonder I can still hear, really.

  As well as rehearsing at home, Ronnie also rented a house down the road on Mulholland Drive to use as a recording studio, a fabulously tacky place that was built to look like a medieval castle. Like Forest Knoll, this place was once used as a set for porn films. (Either there were a lot of blue movies made in LA at the time or we were using particularly dodgy estate agents.) I spent a lot of time there hanging out with the boys and one night was so tired that I went to a bedroom they were using as the bass amp room and fell asleep. I woke with a jolt about eight hours later to the deafening thump of bass coming from the amps. I stormed downstairs in a haze.

  ‘I can’t believe you started playing bass!’ I said to Ronnie. ‘You knew I was asleep in there!’

  ‘Jo, we’ve been playing bass for the last eight hours.’ He smiled.

  I must have been so exhausted I’d just slept right through it.

  One night my frayed nerves suddenly snapped. I’d cooked another mammoth meat-and-potato-fest for the boys and had gone upstairs to try and sleep, a pillow clamped over my head to block out the noise, when I became aware of the stench of burning fat. I’d got off lightly with morning sickness during the pregnancy, but the one thing I couldn’t cope with was the smell of burning fat. I went downstairs to find Keith cooking a huge pan of bacon and eggs. What the hell? I’d spent hours making dinner and cleaning up – and now the kitchen was covered with grease and dirty dishes again! I don’t lose my temper very often, but this was too much. I grabbed a bottle of perfume and started spraying it round the kitchen and all over Keith’s food like a woman possessed.