It's Only Rock 'n' Roll

by Jo Wood

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he said, calmly.

  ‘What the fuck am I doing?’ I said, my voice a squeak of rage. ‘I’m about to give birth and you’re frying fucking bacon and the smell is making me retch and I can’t stand it!’

  And with that I stormed upstairs in tears. Ronnie came up to find out what was wrong. My little outburst was so out of character, I think everyone was a bit stunned.

  I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I remember is looking at the clock in the darkness. It was 3 a.m. I lay there, just listening. Something’s not right . . . And then it dawned on me: the house was totally, blissfully silent. I crept downstairs and there wasn’t a soul there. The kitchen was spotless. And on the side, there was a note from Keith. Beneath a little doodle of some fried eggs, my lovely Keith had written: ‘I’m sorry about tonight, darling. I won’t come back until after you’ve done your birthing.’

  Another doodle of fried eggs by Keith, similar to the one he left me.

  Shortly before my due date, my friend Wendy Stark threw me a baby shower, with champagne, tea and cakes, and invited a whole bunch of girls, including Jerry Hall, who was living in LA with Mick; Rod Stewart’s wife, Alana; and Wendy Worth, who was dating a guy called Peter Asher from the duo Peter and Gordon, whom she later married. I wore a pair of lilac silk dungarees that just fitted over my little fat tummy and got a heap of wonderful gifts. But the best present of all arrived a few days later: my darling Jamie, along with Mum and Lize, who had all come for a month’s stay. On their first night I cooked a big roast dinner for family and friends, feeling overjoyed to have my loved ones together. My only concern was Keith. Now, Keith consumed drugs like everyone else had cake. Just before I served the roast, I took him to one side and said, ‘Keith, my mum’s never seen cocaine before. Can you please not do it in front of her?’

  ‘Don’t worry, darling,’ he said, with a wolfish grin. ‘I’ll break her in gently . . .’

  Feeling far from reassured I started to dish out the roast lamb, but by the time everyone had finished their plates (and had had seconds) I’d started to relax. The boys were behaving impeccably and Mum was clearly charmed. I had got up from the table to tidy the dirty dishes away, thrilled at how well the evening was going, when suddenly Keith declared, ‘And now for dessert!’ With that, he pulled out a big bag of coke and slammed it on the table.

  Without waiting to see Mum’s reaction, I just picked up a pile of plates and walked straight into the kitchen. Moments later, she followed me in. ‘Josephine, do you realize what Keith is doing in there?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Mum, but he’s been doing it for years.’ I sighed. ‘I can’t stop him. It’s just his way of life.’

  Mum’s face was a picture of total disapproval. ‘Does Ronnie do cocaine as well?’

  At that moment a little white lie – well, actually, an enormous white lie – seemed like a good idea.

  ‘No, of course he doesn’t!’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely,’ I said, and hoped that Ronnie would be a bit more discreet than Keith.

  But, three days later, after Keith and Ronnie had been up for 72 hours and counting, Mum cornered me again.

  ‘I know Ronnie takes cocaine,’ she said to me.

  ‘Really? How?’

  ‘Because he’s been walking around with a straw behind his ear since we got here.’

  The next few weeks were, as Keith put it, a real ‘breaking-in’ for Mum, who until this point had had little experience of drugs beyond Silk Cut and a small sherry at Christmas. A few days later she was sunbathing by the pool when Keith sauntered over, smoking a great big joint. Mum started laying into him about how bad it was and why he shouldn’t be touching ‘that stuff’.

  ‘Come on, darling,’ he said, ‘just have a puff. You might like it.’

  Keith handed the joint to Mum, who took it between her thumb and forefinger and flung it into the pool. I’m sure Keith had decked people for less but, to his credit, he just sat back and proceeded to roll two more joints.

  ‘Here you go, Rachel,’ he said. ‘Here’s one for me to smoke and one for you to throw in the pool.’

  Like most nights, on 21 September an informal party was in full swing downstairs and I was dozing in bed when, at around 9 p.m., the contractions started to kick in. With a few drinks inside him, Ronnie was fussing around like an old woman, asking if he should time how far apart the contractions were, and I remember getting quite annoyed with him. ‘For God’s sake, just go away,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you if they speed up.’

  I must have fallen asleep as the next thing I remember was waking up with a doctor standing over me. He had a very nice face. ‘Come on, Jo, it’s time to go to hospital,’ he said, with a smile.

  That’s the really scary moment, isn’t it? When you know it’s started, that there’s no way back, and the next few hours are going to involve a hell of a lot of blood, sweat and tears. But so exciting as well, because at the end of it, if all goes well, you’re going to meet this wonderful little person.

  Ronnie, Mum and the very nice doctor helped me downstairs and Ronnie drove me and him in his green Mercedes up Sunset Boulevard to the big Cedars Sinai medical complex. In the end it was an easy birth – well, as easy as these things get. Ronnie was with me in the delivery room and took pictures of the whole thing. It was certainly worth documenting: at 1.55 a.m. on 22 September our beautiful little girl entered the world, all 7 pounds 3 ounces, and 21 inches of her. We named her Leah after Ronnie’s mum, Mercy Leah, and Michelle after Michael, my dad. As I cradled my daughter, I was wheeled into the recovery room where not only Ronnie was waiting but Keith too, the pair of them having dodged hospital regulations by dressing up in full doctor’s scrubs and telling the head nurse they were both the father. My dear friend, Chuch, was there too, and from the Jack Daniel’s fumes on their breath it was obvious that they had all been celebrating.

  Later that day we went home. There’s a picture of Johnny Starbuck pushing me out of hospital in a wheelchair – how cool is that? Getting a Stones roadie to shift you to the car. My tummy looks so flat in that photo I don’t even look like I’d had a baby, which – as you can imagine – I was pretty pleased about.

  Ronnie was overcome with emotion and pride when he phoned his mum and dad and proclaimed the arrival of ‘the first girl in whole generations of Woods’! He seemed just as smitten as I was as he cradled Leah in his arms or sketched her while she slept in her crib, her little fat fists clenching in her sleep. I’d come to realize that, although he wasn’t great with words, when Ronnie picked up his sketchbook and pencil that was his way of showing love.

  Unfortunately, he had to take off for New York when Leah was just 10 days old because the Stones had been booked to appear on Saturday Night Live. The timing wasn’t great, as I was laid up with a fever after getting the most awful bout of mastitis while breastfeeding. I remember watching the boys on TV and feeling really sorry for myself: there was I, stuck in bed with a raging temperature and burning boobs, while they got to hang out with John Belushi! I was so jealous – although John and I would later become very special friends.

  Of course, I was already a mother when Ronnie had met me, but now that we had a baby in the house – and hopefully Jamie moving in before long as well – I was far more focused on that side of things, and my life became even more of a balancing act. On one hand there was family, on the other rock ’n’ roll – and for the next 30 years, I would constantly juggle the demands of both. Yet despite my best efforts, the two frequently collided, like when Keith and Mum almost came to blows over the blow.

  Shortly after Leah’s birth a famous French actress, who lived nearby with her musician boyfriend, came to meet the new arrival. Let’s call them Brigitte and Steve. I was breastfeeding Leah as we chatted away (I was probably moaning to her about the mastitis) when Brigitte suddenly changed the subject.

  ‘’Ey, Jo,’ she said. ‘You know me and Stevie are �
��aving an affair with that Oriental girl, China?’

  ‘Yes, Brigitte.’

  ‘Weeeeeell . . .’ she said, as Leah chugged away contentedly at my boob, ‘China is so tiny I ’ave to bend over double to lick her pussy. Me and Stevie were thinking it would be better to get somebody more your size.’

  To be honest, I was never into girls anyway, but at that particular moment, still achy from giving birth, with swollen boobs and a sore back, I really couldn’t have been less up for it. ‘Um, thanks for asking, Brigitte, but that’s not my thing.’ I shrugged. ‘I’m just into the old knobber.’

  And with that we went back to talking about fashion or the weather, as if all she had asked was whether I fancied joining her and her bloke for a cup of tea.

  Eventually Mum, Lize and Jamie went back to the UK. Saying goodbye to Jamie was the hardest it had ever been and I was absolutely determined that this time would be the last. Peter was still fighting over the divorce and even Ronnie’s lawyer said that we should agree just to get things moving. If I had actually believed Peter’s argument – that he needed money so he could come out to LA several times each year to see Jamie – I would have done. But I knew he wasn’t short of a bob or two and, more importantly, I was pretty sure he had no intention of staying connected with his son. I dug in my heels and said we’d see him in court back in the UK, where I intended to fight for full custody of Jamie.

  At the same time Keith was preparing for his own day in court in Toronto. He and the rest of the band had convinced themselves that he was going to get a jail sentence, so we were thrilled when we got the phone call saying he had got off. The only condition was that the Stones do a free concert in Toronto to benefit the blind.

  That day, as Ronnie and I were cuddling in bed, with Leah’s crib alongside, we got our first taste of another staple of LA life: the brushfire. As the flames started tearing down Mandeville Canyon and the alarm was raised along the road, I raced around the house, convinced it was going to burn down, trying to work out what we should take with us. In the end we bundled into the jeep with Leah and her things, a couple of changes of clothes, a few of my favourite photos and Ronnie’s sketches, and fled the scene to a luxurious hotel called L’Ermitage, in Beverly Hills. The house was fine, but we had a few days’ second honeymoon before returning home.

  We headed to London in the middle of December for the court showdown with Peter. I was nervous, but set on doing whatever was necessary to get Jamie back with me and had this whole little speech prepared. I needn’t have worried, though. Peter – true to form – didn’t even show up on the day, and the judge awarded me full custody of our son.

  That Christmas we stayed in festive luxury at the Ritz in London, a blissfully happy ending to the most incredible year of my life. It had been barely twelve months since I’d got together with Ronnie, but we already had our beautiful daughter and now, finally, Jamie would be able to live with us as well.

  I had my private worries, though. As much as I adored Ronnie – and I did, more than ever – I struggled with jealousy over the way girls threw themselves at him, and with the frustration I so often felt over how closed he could be. On the night before we left LA for London, I poured out my fears in a raw, rambling note in my diary.

  Thursday, 14 December 1978

  It’s only been a year and a third and it’s hard for me to believe when I look around our house – it still doesn’t seem that I should say our house, our bed, I always feel I should say his. I feel a great unsureness that he’ll leave me, yet deep down I know that we belong together, it’s like it’s so perfect it’s quite unreal, but I just take it all and without a thought of what it’s like looking from the outside. Why? I know I am totally body and mind in love with Ronnie. But he’s really a stranger – yet it’s so right, like we’ve never been without each other. One thing I fear though: me, the way my heart races when I realize all the other women that want him, rich, beauty, fame, evil, but I’ve got to share that with him, cos I know he’s proud of himself for going where he’s gone and did it on his own . . . Why has this happened to me?

  Ronnie obviously read it, because on the opposite page he wrote a response:

  Here’s why, my beautiful Joey . . . If you let it (and we do)–time fits certain things together and, if something is natural, unashamed, rock steady and POWERFUL, then time and fate will lock these elements together – FOREVER. Knowing that it has bonded a perfect relationship, capable of withstanding the hardest forces of evil – out to try to destroy this bond that you and I, and our children have . . . then it can move on to try to end problems that really need solving in one way or another, that are only too real in this hard world where nobody and nothing really gives a shit! We have a precious BOND – one which I would never, NEVER let come to an end – cos I LOVE YA and everything about you – and never underestimate yourself, just because I have achieved things that may be evident in material things – people trying to build your ego and saying, ‘You’re really great, man!’ and ‘yes, yes yes’–well let me tell you that none of those gangs of people even exist! AS LONG AS THERE’S JUST ONE OF YOU AROUND! MY BABY XXXX

  I could have wept with happiness when I read that note. Ronnie was right: our relationship was perfect. And I felt that even more strongly as we gathered at the Ritz, both sides of our extended family together, on Christmas Day. Later that evening, drunk and happy, Ronnie did a little sketch in my diary: him, me, Jamie, Leah in her cot, a Christmas tree and a turkey. It was his way of telling me that we were a rock-solid little team.

  That night I slept wrapped in his arms, totally content, blissfully loved-up and so excited about what the new year would bring. We had already planned to spend the first weeks of 1979 in Nassau and I couldn’t wait to hit the beach with my babies. My future seemed as cloudless as a brilliant blue Bahamas sky.

  I didn’t have the slightest clue that in a few months’ time, dark clouds would have blotted out the sun and our lives would have spiralled dangerously out of control . . .

  13

  The year 1979 started out really well. With the kids in tow, Ronnie and I flew back to Nassau where the Stones had rented a big house by the sea. While the boys were in the studio working on the album that would become Emotional Rescue, I’d play with the kids on the beach: Jamie, now a headstrong four-year-old, Keith’s son Marlon and, of course, chubby little Leah, who napped happily in a sun-shaded stroller. I was still breastfeeding and taking care of the kids so I didn’t see much of Ronnie, but I’d leave him little love notes to find when he got back from the studio in the early hours. It was such a great holiday for me and the kids.

  Although I had the responsibility of kids, in my early years with Ronnie we seemed to spend a lot of time just goofing around. One evening, the guys were all having a big meeting in the living room – all the boys were there, as well as Jane Rose, Alan Dunn and Prince Rupert Löwenstein, who ran the Stones’ financial affairs. I walked past the door and, instead of the usual music chat, heard them talking about aliens, debating whether UFOs actually existed. It sounded like things were getting pretty intense, too. I went into the kitchen where Marlon and Jamie were having a pre-bedtime snack and asked, ‘How do you fancy getting dressed up, boys?’

  Trying to keep them quiet, I wrapped silver foil around our arms and legs, made antennae out of wire coat-hangers and covered our bodies in bin bags. The final touch was drinking-chocolate powder rubbed over our teeth to make them black. Then the three of us walked jerkily into the living room, me at the front, followed by Marlon and then Jamie. ‘Coooome aloooong, chiiiiildren,’ I said, in my best alien voice. As we paraded across the room, everyone in there fell totally silent and just stared, open-mouthed. I’m not sure what had been smoked that night, but for a moment they looked almost scared. I hadn’t been prepared for that sort of reaction, and when we got back to the kitchen, I turned to the kids and said, ‘Oh, God, what have we done?’

  Moments later Jane burst in, doubled over with laughter. ‘You
gave us all such a fright!’ she said, whipping out her camera to prove once and for all that aliens really did exist.

  I’ve always been something of a fancy-dress connoisseur. I would have made an excellent Blue Peter presenter. On tour there would be nights when everyone would be sitting round, listening to music and getting stoned, and I’d end up creating these bizarre costumes out of whatever I could find in the hotel room. One night I transformed myself into Ronnie’s then manager, a big guy called Jason Cooper, by slicing an empty body-lotion bottle in half to make a huge nose, then cutting the bristles off a hairbrush and sticking them onto gaffer tape for a beard. A hat to cover my hair and a pillow up my top and–‘Hi, I’m Jason Cooper.’ Another time, Keith told me he’d give me a hundred dollars or a gram of coke if I could go back to my room and return dressed as a schoolgirl in 20 minutes. When I came back in full costume, he said, ‘All right, do you want the money or the coke?’

  ‘I’ll take fifty dollars and half a gram, please!’

  When we returned to LA from Nassau, I made the decision to stop breastfeeding. My relationship with Ronnie had its roots in partying – drinking, smoking joints, doing coke – and I was desperate to be back rocking with him. I’d had the odd drink while Leah was tiny, but I felt terribly guilty because whenever I did the poor little mite always got a runny tummy so usually I stayed on the wagon. But now she was four months old and we were about to go off on tour again – not with the Stones this time, but with the New Barbarians, a band Ronnie had formed with his best music buddies, including Keith, Mac and the Stones’ sax player, Bobby Keys. As they rehearsed at our place, playing the material from Ronnie’s new solo album, I felt very much part of it from the start. I even designed the official tour T-shirt.