THE TEETOTAL TOUR
Their combined age is 294 but (medical miracle!) the Stones have all just been passed fit to hit the road again. How? By swapping booze and drug binges for wheatgrass smoothies, jogging and even ballet dancing
WITH a combined age of 294 and a reputation, forged over decades, for sexual and narcotic excess, it seems to be one of life’s miracles that the Rolling Stones are still rolling. Indeed, they are due to play eight UK shows in the coming weeks. This follows a tour of the Americas during which insatiably libidinous frontman Sir Mick Jagger conceived a baby, his eighth child, by a ballerina. It seems that nothing can stop the Stones. As Keith Richards says: ‘So far, no one is tottering and falling over. everyone is in remarkable shape.’
Drummer Charlie Watts is 76; Jagger and Richards are both 74. The ‘baby’ of the band is Ronnie Wood, 70, who has recovered after the removal of a cancerous lesion on his lung.
Wood said a few weeks ago that he was surprised they had all passed the medicals required by the tour insurers. ‘None of us can really believe we get a clean sheet,’ he said. ‘OK, we’ve got a ticket to ride now. We can go out on the road. My doctor, without bribery, says I’m fit!’
How do they do it? Well, it’s largely down to serious health regimens. It is fair to say that their years of hedonism are over.
These days the Stones are largely teetotal, eschew drugs (except Keith, who apparently remains fond of starting his day ‘the Californian way’, with a joint) and take part in physical activities that include kick-boxing, yoga and even ballet.
They are competitive about whose regimen is the best. Keith, who plays tennis, visits the gym and potters about in his huge garden, says he rather worries about Jagger’s hips because of all the jogging.
Their diets are macrobiotic, lowcarb and clean — again, with the heroic exception of Keith, who is a great devotee of meat. So who is the cleanest-living rock dinosaur?
COCOA AND STRAIGHT TO BED FOR MICK
THE son of a Pe teacher who had him doing star jumps in the back garden as a lad, Sir Mick has always been by far the most healthconscious of the Stones.
He first hired a personal trainer 24 years ago and still sees the same one — Norwegian Torje eike — several times a week.
As well as jogging up to eight miles a day, Mick also does yoga and takes ballet classes ( for posture) to help cope with two hour-plus concerts, in which he is estimated to run up to 12 miles.
He takes a physio and his personal masseuse — Dr Dot — on tour with him.
Mick gave up drugs after meeting Jerry Hall in the Seventies — she hated his habit of smoking heroin cigarettes, and the cocaine he had enjoyed in the early Seventies.
He’s barely touched alcohol in 25 years. ‘It’s debilitating to drink a lot,’ he told an interviewer.
Interested in Buddhism and took a spiritual trip to Laos in 2010.
Diet-wise, has watched his weight for many years. At 5ft 10in, he weighs only 10st and wriggles into trousers with a 28in waist.
Credits having been a war baby for his lithe frame, saying: ‘That diet was meant to be the best: hardly any fat, hardly any sweets. That stands you in good stead.’
Mick likes superjuice smoothies — heavy- duty green ones with wheatgrass — for breakfast and takes vitamins daily. Meals tend to be based around small portions of protein, but when touring he will have a plate of plain pasta to give him energy before a gig.
No longer parties after gigs, saying in 2015 that he gets straight into a chauffeured car and heads for bed. That said, he was spotted dallying with American film producer Noor Alfallah, then 22, after a concert last October. Keith has his own theory, which is that Mick draws his on-stage energy from the rest of them.
He said: ‘Well, I lend him some and I think Ronnie lends him some. He’s in damn good shape, man, and he always has been.’
He added: ‘I worry about his joints from all that jogging, man. But he gets along all right.’
COKE? SURE, WITH ICE AND A SLICE
ONCE Keith’s principal partner in drugs and booze, with a fondness for free-basing cocaine, Ronnie Wood is now impeccably clean-living.
He kicked smoking in 2016 after 50 years, and said last year: ‘I took Champix [a nicotine inhibitor] for three weeks. That stuff is heavyduty. Makes me sick even to think of it now. I just stopped wanting the ciggies.’
Last year, in a five-hour operation, he had a cancerous lesion removed from his lung. He declined chemotherapy.
As for booze, he is now sober, though he has fallen off the wagon at least eight times and ended up in rehab, particularly around the time that his second marriage, to wife Jo, broke down in 2008.
He observed: ‘I get bored, and find it hard to say no.’
Formerly an epic drug-taker and drinker — at one time he was spending £12,000 a week on cocaine and downed two bottles of wine and two of vodka in a single sitting — he now says he hasn’t taken drugs in seven years and that, rather than alcohol, he drinks Red Bull energy drink and full- sugar Coca-Cola.
When he and third wife Sally Humphreys were married in 2012, she was only 32, and they have since had twin girls and moved to a country house in Hertfordshire.
Their lifestyle is low-key and involves watching TV and taking care of their young family.
He has several years of yoga behind him and does mindfulness meditations.
To stay fit, he takes long walks with Sally and their beagle, Dolly.
‘He has been known to use a gym and he plays football,’ says a friend. Ronnie is naturally hyperactive. He is always doing something, whether it’s going out with the twins, building stuff in the garden, making his sculptures or doing his big artworks, which he maintains is a form of exercise.’
Likes curries but is not very inter--
ested in food and ‘forgets’ to eat. Which explains why he, too, still has a 28in waist.
ROCK ’N’ ROLL AND A COUNTRY STROLL
WHEN he’s drumming, Charlie Watts barely breaks sweat, he seems so laid- back. Keith Richards said: ‘Charlie is a mystery to me. How can he sit there and play as hard as he does with apparent ease?’
But then, he doesn’t drink, smoke or take drugs and lives quietly on a stud farm in Devon with his wife of 54 years, Shirley, and more than 250 Arab horses. Asked about his fitness, he said: ‘I do mild exercises . . . just to keep my hands going.’ A source said: ‘Charlie helps Shirley with the horses, although he doesn’t ride. He also goes for walks with their rescue greyhounds.’
He credits his habit of early rising for his continued health and fitness, and sticks to coffee and small meals.
A jazz drummer who trained as a graphic artist, he had a period of boozing and taking drugs, including heroin, in the Eighties.
He said: ‘I went mad really. But I stopped it all.’ After breaking his ankle going down to his cellar to fetch some wine, he gave up drink, heroin and cigarettes all at once. He said: ‘We are getting to that elderly period, so it’s a good thing not to. ‘When you’re 40 and you’ve got a hangover you get up, have another drink and you’re off again. I don’t think we could do it nowadays.’ After years of smoking, however, he had throat cancer diagnosed in 2004 and had two operations and radiotherapy.
PRETTY STRAIGHT — FOR KEITH...
KEITH surprised many last month when he said he hadn’t had a drink since Christmas — but the ‘human riff’ is possibly the best possible advertisement for never embarking on a serious health kick.
Famed for decades of being elegantly wasted, he still smokes cigarettes and no one thinks he will remain teetotal for long (his signature tipple is a ‘ Nuclear Waste’ — a concoction of vodka, Orange Fanta and cranberry juice).
Quit heroin in 1978 after his fifth drugs-related arrest and following terrifying escapades including a crash in his Bentley on the M1 when he ‘nodded out’ and hit the central reservation. Finally stopped using cocaine after he fell out of a tree in 2006 and was left requiring brain surgery and a metal plate in his skull. In his memoir, Life, he wrote: ‘It’s not only the high quality of drugs I had that I attribute my survival to. I was very meticulous about how much I took. I’d never put more in to get a little higher.’ Arthritis has gnarled his fingers but he claims to suffer no pain from it.
He told an interviewer in 2015 that he starts each day with a joint. ‘I smoke regularly, an early morning joint. Strictly Californian. Other than that, I’m pretty straight.’ He takes exercise, too, explaining: ‘If I thought there was a formula or any hints, I’d pass them on. Perhaps it’s just being yourself and hoping for the best. I don’t plan things too much. I don’t like routines. If I find I’ve got one, I deliberately fall out of it.’
Not keen on the gym, saying: ‘I pick up those dumbbells and go: “God, that’s too heavy”, then put them down.’
But he’s a good tennis player. Legend has it that once, cigarette in mouth, he beat Jagger 6-1, much to his fellow Stone’s disgust. Has a court at his home in Connecticut.
Does stretches to warm up before he goes on stage, and goes sailing when he’s at his holiday home in the tropical Turks and Caicos Islands. ‘I might get the hose out, do a bit of watering,’ he said this year. ‘God, I just do what any other old bloke does. I’m blessed with being sort of physically robust.’
At Glastonbury in 2013, when Jagger went on vocal rest and trained until his physical fitness was impeccable, Richards simply asked for someone to make sure all his cigarette lighters were filled.