‘Smokestack Lightning’: The one song Ronnie Wood couldn’t live without
You can’t understate the role blues had in creating some of Britain’s biggest ever bands.
Of course, The Beatles were no strangers to the genre, and Paul McCartney was keen to regularly cite Muddy Waters as one of his all-time biggest musical influences. But there was a time when they took the formula and turned it into something completely goddamn new altogether.
But during the 1960s, while The Beatles were doing their own thing, a whole host of bands were adopting the blues model and using it to great effect. Particularly in the streets of London, bars were rife with burgeoning bands who had a guitar clutched under one arm, and a BB King record tucked under the other.
Then in the 1970s, it took on a life of its own. Britain was bursting with world-conquering bands who had studied the blues model, crafted in America, and then turned into something grander and opulent. Led Zeppelin, for instance, were the pioneers of stadium blues rock, with Jimmy Page building the band’s discography off of the genre’s humble beginnings.
But there was arguably no band who dedicated themselves to the genre of their forefathers more faithfully than The Rolling Stones. Every facet of The Stones’ style was adopted from blues swagger. From Keith Richards’ guitar playing to Mick Jagger’s drawl, it was all clearly inspired by the blues icons of yesteryear.
Which is why Ronnie Wood’s introduction to the band in 1976 was completely seamless. He too was a student of blues rock, building his taste on it through the records of Muddy Waters, BB King and the supporting members of that vibrant scene.
“If I go right back to my first influences… you’ll hear all the influences from when I was a kid and the things that turned me on to where I am today,” Wood once explained. “The first guitar player I ever heard that took me back in my seat, like ‘Wow, I want to play like that!’, was this guy called Big Bill Broonzy.”
But it was another, more iconic blues record that lives long in his memory. While featuring on BBC’s Desert Island Discs, Wood rattled off a list of blues hits that he would take to his hypothetical desert island, before naming one truly iconic song from the genre, which was Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Smokestack Lightning’.
After telling stories about how his brother played a show with him, and fuelled him with endless whisky, Wood conceded that were he to salvage one record from the unforgiving shores, it would be ‘Smokestack Lightning’. Because it is a track that has been at the cornerstone of so much modern rock, or as Robert Plant described, a song that “was the basis of so much beautiful and extravagant music.”
Everything from the iconic guitar riff to Howlin’ Wolf’s grizzly vocal take is as compelling as it is simple, which in essence is what makes a great blues track. It’s a song that is impossible to dislike, especially if you’re a Rolling Stones fan, because the two are so inextricably linked.
