The song that got Ronnie Wood into The Rolling Stones: “Some of our best work”
In truth, Ronnie Wood was always the first choice. How could he not be? He was there the moment that Mick Taylor resigned. He was at Robert Stigwood’s party sitting between the two Micks of The Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger and Mick Taylor. Whether or not Taylor had his eye on fate remains to be seen, but for whatever reason, he chose this moment to announce his exit.
“Mick [Taylor], leaned across me, right the right, he leaned over to Mick [Jagger], and he said, ‘Mick, I’m leaving the band’,” Wood recalled on his radio show. Jagger was flummoxed, and Wood himself was suddenly sent leaning away from the awkwardness, physically arching his back to try to avoid the unfurling ugliness. “You’re joking?” Jagger pleaded.
He wasn’t, and this came as a huge blow. Taylor had been part of the band’s golden period. Though the argument of The Beatles vs The Stones might now be age-old, throughout the 1960s, there had been only one winner. The Beatles started writing their own stuff first and then quickly established themselves as the biggest and most celebrated artists on the planet. Of course, The Rolling Stones had their successes and a legion of fans, but they were also beset by a fair few tragic hardships.
Taylor’s steady strumming seemed to sequester all this, and with a golden run of records, they looked to make the 1970s their own. “I think some of our best work was probably with Mick Taylor,” Keith Richards told Rolling Stone. He augmented a zenith in their writing when experimentation had been put to one side, with “line after beautiful line”, and the constitution of the band seemed to be perfect. But it isn’t easy being in the Stones, even when things are rolling with ease.
So, that night, after a brief exchange with Jagger, Taylor simply rose to his feet and awkwardly slinked away. “What am I going to do,” Jagger turned to an aghast Wood. “Do you think he was serious?” That much was self-evident, so Wood’s answer was barely necessary. “What am I going to do? Would you join?” Jagger asked. “Yeah, I would, but I don’t want to split The Faces up,” Wood replied. “Nor do I,” Jagger agreed.
But then came Wood’s olive branch. “I tell you what,” he said, “Ring me up if you get desperate.” A year later, Wood was lying in bed, ill, when he was rudely awoken by a telephone call. It was Jagger, and he was desperate. A year of auditioning guitarists hadn’t turned up anyone who seasoned the stew quite like Taylor. Fearing the end for the Stones who had been flying, Wood was their first hope, and now he was potentially their last.
“I walked in with ‘Hey Negrita‘, and I said, ‘Come on, we’re going to play this’, and then Charlie [Watts] said, ‘Look, we’ve hardly ever met him, and he’s bossing us about already’,” Wood recalls. “When Ronnie walked in the room and just played by number, it was obvious,” Richards would later comment. From that moment on, all further auditions were cancelled, they had found their man. ‘Hey Negrita’ had sealed the deal.
It was gutsy, rootsy and even a fair bit problematic. While the lyrics laid on top might now be regrettable, the instant groove in its sound represented a new chapter for the band—one that proved so seamless Wood has remained with them ever since.
