Ronnie Wood's Smile

When people ask me what I do for a hobby, I say (when I’m feeling honest) I follow the Rolling Stones.  Some people golf, others play bridge, some scuba-dive—me, I’m a hard-core Stones fan--an unusual hobby for a woman who used to want to be an opera singer, to say the least--and the reaction I get when I admit to it  is either puzzlement or amazement--or  very occasionally disgust. Usually I end up having to explain why being a fan of a rock band can actually be a hobby, which is why I don’t always admit to it.   Some days it’s more like a full-time job than a hobby.  I spend my free moments emailing other fans, reading reviews of the current tour (when there is one), collecting obscure recordings (often unlistenable), tracking down decent photographs, and working on my Ronnie Wood website into the wee hours of the night.   One any given day, I’ve put in between one and four hours.

The website takes the most time.   I manage the original and, if I do say so myself,  perhaps the best site on the World Wide Web dedicated to guitarist Ronnie Wood, the least famous member of the Rolling Stones.    My site gets a couple of hundred hits a week.  People write me out of the blue with strange little questions about Ronnie. . .what ever happened to his first wife?  What guitar does he play on “Street Fighting Man”?   What are his kids’ names?  What’s his wedding anniversary? And the question I’ve gotten the most: ‘Can you tell me the chords to “Breathe On Me”?’  What surprises me more than anything about this potpourri of questions is that more than half the time I know the answers.  People actually believe I’m some kind of Ronnie Wood expert.  Just recently I even gave a lecture on Ronnie and the Stones for a music appreciation class at Seattle Pacific University.   I’m starting to believe in my expertise myself.

Being an internationally consulted expert on Ronnie Wood is a valid, if eccentric, identity.  I’m working up to using it in introductions with the various people I run into in daily life—doctors, stock-brokers, fellow dinner-party guests—the kind of people who are always asking what one does.  Usually when faced with the inevitable question “How is it that you live, and what is it you do?”  I dissemble.   Since I gave up teaching English a few years back, there is no easy answer to this ubiquitous query.   Perhaps though, next time I’m asked, I shall smile, wring their hand, clap them on the back, and declare, “I’m the world’s foremost authority on Ronnie Wood!”  Perhaps they’ll mistake him for some Dead Figure of Consequence.  It would be amusing to see how long these strangers would pretend to know who I’m talking about.  Let’s face it: Keith Richards is a household name, but Ronnie Wood isn’t.   If I let slip that I have a PhD in literature, people would probably assume he’s some obscure poet.    (He is.)  After all, in our world, it’s a respected profession to be an expert on an artist. . .  Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Monet, Brahms:  Universities give out jobs and assign Chairs on this basis. But the subject of such study is usually dead and, with the possible exception of Elvis, never in the genre of rock’n’roll.  In this case, of course, my subject is still alive, could care less if anyone is ever expert on him, and could perfectly well answer all these questions by himself if he cared to bother. 

Or maybe not.

Last December, for instance, he was rehearsing with a band for a handful of “solo” concerts he gave in Dublin and London (solo meaning with-musicians-other-than-the-Rolling-Stones not all-alone-on-stage.)    Ronnie has been performing with bands since the ‘60s and has written songs with all of them and so has quite a body of work to choose from when he goes to perform.  In this case, he decided to play a certain song, but, being a guitarist and probably not the most organized guy in the world, he didn’t remember the words to it.   One can’t really imagine a rock-star having a nice file full of manila folders neatly arranged alphabetically in a cabinet somewhere.  At least not Ronnie Wood anyway.  He had to ask the keyboardist who was working with him, a very nice guy named Tramper Price, to go to the Internet and find the words to the song.

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