Ronnie Wood: ‘I refused chemotherapy to save my hair’
RONNIE WOOD has had part of his lung removed after being diagnosed with cancer. The Rolling Stones guitarist said doctors had found a cancerous lesion three months ago during a routine check-up ahead of a tour.
The musician, 70, said he thought “it was time to say goodbye” to his family after being told it would require a lengthy operation and chemotherapy.
Wood said he was worried about the side-effects of chemotherapy. “I wasn’t going to lose my hair. This hair wasn’t going anywhere. I said, ‘No way’.”
Ahead of the launch of his new book Ronnie Wood: Artist, he told the Mail on Sunday’s Event Magazine: “Did I think I’d ever make it to see this?
“Hell, no.”
Speaking about the moment the doctor told him he had cancer, he said: “To be totally honest, I wasn’t surprised … he asked me what I wanted to do and my answer was simple: ‘Just get it out of me’. I was bloody lucky but then I’ve always had a very strong guardian angel looking out for me. By rights I shouldn’t be here.” Wood, married to actress and producer Sally, who is 31 years his junior, became a father to twin daughters last year.
He has four more children from two previous marriages.
His new book charts his career with images of the Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Rod Stewart, as well as actors including Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro.
Wood also described how the artist Damien Hirst persuaded him to give up drink and drugs and return to art, a subject Wood formally studied at Ealing college in the Sixties.
“Damien got me on a flight to London and took me to Life Works in Woking,” he said.
“When I came out, he took me to this house that he’d stacked full of canvases, paints, brushes, easels, crayons – enough to furnish a whole art school – and he just said, ‘Go on then. Now start paying the rent’.”