Exactly how Ronnie Wood has reached the age of 79, after decades of rock’n’roll debauchery with the Faces and the Rolling Stones and surviving cancer twice, passeth all understanding. He even seems to have managed to hang on to a full head of hair, though advanced tonsorial technology may have had a part to play here. Anyway, here he is back on stage with the band he calls AMMO, and kicking off a tour which will take him all around Europe before he nips over to South America for some more dates.
This curtain-raiser in Kentish Town revealed a few loose ends and rough edges, with missed cues and momentary lapses of reason, but a Wood performance is never going to be a well-oiled machine like the Eagles or Taylor Swift. Raised on the blues and old-time rock’n’roll, Woody knows that a dash of chaos keeps band and audience on their toes, and that’s the way he likes it (pictured below, Wood with Imelda May. Pic: Rob Blackham).
Wood has evident shortcomings as a vocalist (he kind of growls and whines) and his guitar soloing is of the seat-of-the-pants variety, but he has taken the wise precaution of surrounding himself with some of the most battle-hardened veterans in the business. For a rhythm section he’s enlisted Willie Weeks on bass and Andy Newmark on drums, who between them have played with the likes of Bowie, Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton and Aretha Franklin, while keyboards whizz Andy Wallace has been right-hand man to Robbie Williams, Roger Waters and Whitney Houston. Guitarist Johnny Lee Schell has played with Bonnie Raitt, John Fogerty and at least two ex-Beatles. Even if Wood were to fall off the stage or be abducted by aliens, this lot would keep the musical gumbo bubbling without missing a beat.
He’s made smart choices in the vocal department too. Proceedings are lit up by Dublin’s own Imelda May and Chanel Haynes, the latter a former teenage protegée of Quincy Jones who sang backup on the Stones' Hackney Diamonds tour. She also won the title role in the London production of Tina: The Musical. That would be Tina Turner, prompting the inclusion in Wood’s show of an exhilaratingly thunderous "River Deep, Mountain High", which paired up nicely with a version of the Aretha Franklin classic, "Chain of Fools".
Wood has designed the show as a survey of his career, his roots and his musical enthusiasms. We got a dose of Rolling Stones, with a dirty, lowdown version of "It’s Only Rock’n’Roll" as the opener and later on a run through the funk-reggae thump of "Hey Negrita", from the Black and Blue album (apparently Wood supplied the basic riff for the latter song, but strangely the writing credits read Jagger and Richards). A pleasant surprise was a Ron-ified version of "Country Honk", complete with Appalachian-style fiddle. Wood also had a go at "Can You Hear Me Knocking", from Sticky Fingers, though he cut short the bit where Mick Taylor’s mellifluous guitar solo used to be (pictured below, Ron's band on the run. Pic: Paul Dixon).
There were some revealing selections from the Faces back catalogue, which is perhaps unfairly neglected these days. The moody, bluesy "Flying" was taken from their debut album First Step (1970), decorated with Wood’s slide guitar, and he delivered a delicate and touching version of "Ooh La La" (“I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger”), dedicating it to its late co-writer Ronnie Lane.
For the climax of the show, he’d saved up the raunchy, rollicking "Stay With Me", the Faces’ biggest hit and bristling with cunning tempo changes and several false endings. May and Haynes stepped up to the microphone and gave it full blast, pumping up the volume as they stormed towards the finishing tape.
This was rock’n’roll the old-fashioned way, and nobody was demanding their money back. The only thing missing was a guest appearance by Wood’s old sparring partner Keith Richards, which would have been the cherry on top.
