My book is a thank-you for the were fun times, amazing times, but not dark, I’m very lucky to
JO WOOD doesn’t do things by halves. Not only has the former Mrs Ronnie Wood just released a book full of hitherto unseen snaps of the Rolling Stones, but she’s also upping sticks and leaving her London life behind to go “off-grid” in the Cotswolds.
Jo’s in the garden of her north London home as her belongings are boxed up. She’s still buzzing from the “jampacked” launch of Stoned, a photographic record of her 30 years as part of the band’s family, the night before.
“It’s typical me, trying to do everything at once,” she laughs.
Although the thought of Jo living in a country cottage with “a bore hole for water and solar panels for electricity” might seem at odds with her image as a party-loving former rock wife, she insists the move is all part of her ongoing “love of adventure”.
“I need to do something different,” she says. “When I saw the house I thought, ‘That’s my dream, and if I don’t do this now I’ll never do it.’
“I’m exactly the same person I’ve always been, into doing exciting things, and now I want to do my bit for the environment.”
It was this spirit that saw her drop everything in 1978 and travel to Paris to meet Ronnie after having known him three weeks. Jo was a model and the pair hit it off at a party. The relationship nearly didn’t get off the ground, as Jo told Ronnie she worked on a Woolworth’s broken biscuit counter. Then, in Paris, Ronnie was nowhere to be seen.
“When he didn’t turn up – he was on the way back from New York with Keith Richards and I didn’t know Concorde had blown an engine – I thought, ‘You idiot, Jo. You’ve made a terrible mistake’.
“Then he arrived and after that we didn’t think of anything else, we were up and running. He made me laugh from the very beginning.”
Jo started taking photos, first using a Polaroid and then a camera Ronnie gave her. “He wanted me to do something,” she says. “I started taking loads and I didn’t want to develop them on tour because I knew I’d give them out. I’d walk into the developers at home and say, ‘150 rolls, and can you make doubles of them?’ It cost me a fortune.”
The images are a candid insight into the Stones. There’s rock star excess (Mick Jagger on a private jet surrounded by champagne) but they also reveal a more down to earth side.
“You know when you go on holiday, that’s what it was like. Family snaps. We’re ordinary people really. I was married to a talented man but they’re normal. It’s the way it was.”
Soon after meeting Ronnie, Jo found she was pregnant with their daughter Leah and they moved to Los Angeles, with Keith in tow, of course.
“It was always me and Keith and Ronnie, rather than Mick, Charlie [Watts] and Bill [Wyman]. And then Patti Hansen came along in 1981, and then it was the four of us.”
Patti was Keith’s girlfriend and they married in 1983.
SAYS JO, 64: “We’d stay up all night and drink Jack Daniels – which I can’t even smell now, it’s so disgusting. We’d leave the studio at 7am, get in the car, and we’d go back and they’d play music, we’d fall asleep on the couch.
“I was always laughing.we’d go out and I’d dress up as a nun. Ringo and Bob Dylan would be there. I can’t remember much – it all rolls into one. That’s why I’ve got pictures.”
It was a time of excess but the couple grew tired of LA and followed Keith to New York with Leah and Jamie, Jo’s son from her first marriage.
“We all went a bit crazy on the New Barbarians tour in