- Ronnie Wood's ex-wife Jo lifts the lid on their relationship in new biography
- Rock n' roll pair met 35 years ago, married in 1985 and divorced in 2009
- Secrets revealed about their year 'freebasing cocaine', Ronnie's alcoholism and how the rocker once blew their children's school fees on a Rolex
By Jo Wood
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Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood spent so much money on drugs he once had to borrow from the rest of his band to pay his children’s school fees, then blew the lot on a Rolex, his ex-wife Jo has revealed.
Jo Wood lays bare the secrets of their tempestuous 26-year marriage in her explosive autobiography, Hey Jo, exclusively serialised here from today.
She also tells how a ‘drunk as a skunk’ Ronnie threatened to throw acid in her face - because there was no vodka left in the house - and how she spent a ‘crazy’ year and a half ‘freebasing’ cocaine with Ronnie and A-list celebrities in LA.
Here the woman dubbed the ultimate rock ’n’ roll chick, now 57, speak of the time she rescued her husband’s then girlfriend Ekaterina Ivanova when the drunken 19-year-old accidentally set her own hair on fire in Jo’s home...
Love lost: Jo, pictured with Ronnie in 1985, reveals the astonishing story behind one of the most legendary marriages of rock n' roll
The pair of them fell out of the taxi on to our drive in a drunken heap. The girl â€" who couldn’t have been more than 18 or 19 â€" seemed wrecked. I thought: ‘Surely my husband’s not sleeping with this... child?’
I led them into the kitchen, where our children Ty and Leah and Leah’s boyfriend Jack were waiting around the table.
‘This is Katia,’ said Ronnie, beaming at us. The girl [Ekaterina Ivanova] slumped at the table and started fumbling with a packet of cigarettes.
‘What are you doing hanging out with our dad?’ said Ty. ‘He’s old enough to be your grandfather.’
‘Age makes no difference to me,’ she slurred, sticking a cigarette into her mouth, then going to the stove and lighting the hob.
‘Oh, go right ahead!’ I thought. ‘You’ve taken my husband â€" why not help yourself to my gas?’
All over now: The tumultuous marriage saw Ronnie surround himself with several, sometimes much younger, women, which Jo handled by befriending them all
She bent down to light her cigarette and the front of her hair went up in flames. Quickly (perhaps a little too quickly, with hindsight) I grabbed a dishcloth and damped it out. I’m not sure she’d noticed she’d caught fire.
This was turning into the most surreal encounter of my life. As we walked to the living room she tripped and fell, then staggered to her feet and plonked herself on my couch.
‘Ain’t she funny, Jo?’ Ronnie was looking at her fondly. ‘She reminds me of you when you were young.’
‘She does?’ Oh, God?.?.?.
And then she passed out, swiftly followed by Ronnie.
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Ronnie was my world, my love, my everything, and had been since the moment we first saw each other in September 1977.
After nearly two crazy years working as a model, a single girl about town, I felt I’d met pretty much everyone in London.
So, when I arrived at yet another big party, my expectations were low. I grabbed a vodka and tonic. Reflected in the mirrored tiles above the sink, I saw a spiky-haired skinny guy standing directly behind me, pretending â€" and there’s no polite way of putting this â€" to hump me.
There he was, clearly thinking he was hysterical. But then he saw me watching him and shot me this cheeky smile and I couldn’t help but return it.
I knew who he was, of course, but I’d mixed with enough actors and musicians to be unimpressed.
When they met: Jo Wood modelling in the Seventies
So I picked up my drink and slipped past him. A little while later, though, he came and found me again.
‘Hi, I’m Ronnie Wood.’
‘I’m Jo Howard,’ I said. ‘Nice to meet you.’
He reached behind him and produced a copy of the Stones album Black And Blue. ‘This is me,’ said Ronnie, pointing himself out in the photo.
‘Oh, God, that’s terrible,’ I thought. ‘He must think the world of himself.’
‘So what do you do for a living, then?’ he asked.
‘I work in Woolworths,’ I said. ‘The main branch on Oxford Street. I’m on the broken-biscuits counter.’
It was the first thing that sprang to mind. Ronnie fell for every word of it, the twit.
Not long after, I saw him at a party thrown by my landlord. This time Ronnie brought his wife. I knew about Krissy, but he insisted his marriage was a ll but over.
Later, when I was lying in bed, Ronnie appeared at my door. He closed it behind him and put a chair against it, a cheeky smile on his face.
‘What are you doing that for?’ I said.
‘I don’t want anyone else coming in.’
‘Behave yourself,’ I said, firmly. And he did â€" for a little while .?.?.
For the next few days, Ronnie took me everywhere. There was a party at Eric Clapton’s house, one at Jimmy Page’s â€" he even invited me to a gathering at his huge Richmond home, The Wick.
It was at this party that Krissy summoned me to her bedroom. I went in to find her sitting up in bed.
‘Oh, hi,’ she said, vaguely. ‘I just want you to know I’m not in love with Ronnie. I’m actually in love with Jimmy Page. And I’ve lived for a year with him wearing just a sheet.’
‘Um, OK. Thank you fo r telling me.’
We headed to Los Angeles, where Ronnie was setting up a base in preparation for the boys’ tour of the States later in the year. It was assumed that I would be going with him. This wasn’t just the start of a holiday: I was on the way to America to build a home and a family with Ronnie.
Even though I was pregnant I still tried to keep the same hours as the boys, but obviously was not matching their levels of drug and alcohol consumption. (I never did drugs when I was pregnant.)
My diary entry for April 11, 1978 reads: ‘Got up at 6pm and cooked roast dinner for breakfast.’ There were some wild nights.
Ronnie wanted to keep the pregnancy secret as he was in the middle of divorce negotiations, so I hid my bump under baggy jumpers. Mick clearly didn’t guess. In those early days, he would try it on with me.
‘Come on, Jo,’ he’d say.
‘You should be so f****** lucky, Mick,’ I said. ‘In your wildest dreams.’
I only had eyes for my Ronnie. I didn’t fancy anyone else for 30 years.
On that first tour we were hanging out in the hotel when a perky blonde girl, a waitress, zeroed straight in on Ronnie. So there I was, heavily pregnant and seething with jealousy, as this girl drooled all over my man.
I stormed back to our room, hoping Ronnie would follow, but he didn’t. As I sobbed into my pillow, it occurred to me that I had two options: I could lie there feeling sorry for myself while Miss Texas wiggled her boobies at my bloke, or I could slip into something a bit more sexy (well, as sexy as a maternity smock could be) and go back down there.
I took the second option. I strode back into the room, plonked myself down next to the waitress and started chatting to her. With us two girls getting along like old friends, Ronnie muttered to me: ‘Get rid of her, will you?’ My man and I went up to bed alone.
No strings: Jo describes Robbie as her 'guitar hero' and her 'everything' for over three decades
Groupies were one of the inevitable downsides of life as a rock star’s girlfriend. My way of dealing with them was to make friends with them. And if that failed, I’d make them strong drinks until they were so p*****, they did something stupid.
At Christmas we stayed in festive luxury at The Ritz in London, a blissfully happy ending to the most incredible year with Ronnie. We already had our beautiful daughter Leah, and soon Jamie, my son from my first marriage, would be living with us as well.
I had my private worries, though. On the night before we left LA for London, I poured out my fears in a raw, rambling note in my diary. Thursday, December 14, 1978: ‘I feel a great unsureness that he’ll leave me, yet deep down I know that we belong together. I know I am totally body and mind in love with Ronnie. One thing I fear though: me, the way my heart races when I realise all the other women that want him, rich, beauty, fame, evil.?.?.?. ’
Ronnie obviously read it, because on the opposite page he wrote a response: ‘Here’s why, my beautiful Joey .?.?. We have a precious BOND â€" one which I would never, NEVER let come to an end â€" cos I LOVE YA and everything about you.’
I could have wept with happiness when I read that note.
Freebase is prepared by mixing cocaine with baking soda and heating it in water until it solidifies into little rocks. You then flake a bit off, put it in a water pipe and inhale the fumes.
Always up for trying something new, I sucked on the pipe and â€" whoooooosh! The feeling was an insane, intense euphoria. But in moments it had gone. I wanted to do it again â€" and again and again.
We learnt how to prepare it ourselves and it turned out that I wasn’t just good at roast lamb, I was good at cooking freebase, too! So began the transformation of our Mandeville Canyon home into Freebase Central for much of celebrity LA.
AWOL FOR TEN DAYS WITH A MODEL
It was March 15, 1982, my 27th birthday, and Ronnie and I were in New York on a break between the American and Europe an legs of the tour.
We had gone to a club with friends and one of the guys brought along the model Kelly LeBrock.
Kelly seemed terribly sweet â€" Ronnie clearly thought so anyway. I felt insecure. I could cope with groupies, but this was a supermodel. Happy bloody birthday, Jo ?.?.?.
Over the next few weeks Ronnie started to disappear for days at a time. A brief phone call to tell me he was OK was all I heard from him for more than a week.
I tracked down a studio where I knew he was due to be working with Jimmy Cliff, and called them. ‘Oh, hi, this is Ronnie Wood’s secretary. Could I please speak to him?’
‘He’s in the studio,’ said the receptionist. ‘But his girlfriend is with him â€" would you like to give the message to her?’
Then I heard a woman’s vo ice say ‘hello’ and my worst fears were realised. I slammed the phone down.
I’d recognised the voice instantly; deep down I suppose I knew who it was going to be before she had even spoken. It was Kelly LeBrock. I fled to Keith and Patti’s apartment and was holed up there when the phone rang.
To my surprise, it was Ronnie. ‘Hey, Jo,’ he said. ‘What are you up to?’
The guy was acting as if everything was fine, as if he hadn’t just gone AWOL for ten days with a supermodel!
Ronnie later swore blind that he’d never touched her.
At first it seemed to be a dream of a drug. There were no physical side effects (apart from a loss of appetite) and sex on freebase was mind-blowing. We set up our own home lab, complete with flasks, test tubes, glass plates and rubber tubing.
Ronnie had never studied chemistry at school, so he used to joke that this was his way of catching up on his education. Freebase was an early form of crack. Nowadays, crack couldn’t have a worse image, but back then no one had heard of it.Â
As the months went on, our freebasing expanded to include our neighbours: Sly Stone, David Crosby of Crosby, Stills and Nash, John Belushi â€" in fact the whole of LA’s A-list seemed to be doing it.
Even Tony Curtis came round. I was very excited to meet him because he’d had sex with Marilyn Monroe â€" and now he was in our bathroom!
But it doesn’t take long for freebase to turn you into a loony. During one session I cut my finger on the glass tubing, but instead of going to hospital, I just bandaged the cut with gaffer tape and carried on.
And then there was the paranoia. You’re always keeping an eye out in case you’ve dropped a precious crumb of the stuff on the floor. Ronnie banned meringues from the house after he’d tried to freebase sugar for the umpteenth time.
Even Keith Richards, who must have sampled more narcotics than most, wouldn’t touch the stuff.
My diary for 1980 (my freebase year) is almost empty. But I continued to be a fully functioning mother alongside the freebasing. It was a crazy time, but I know I was always a good mum. We never di d drugs in front of the kids, but sometimes we’d still be high when they woke up, and I would try to sneak off to bed so they didn’t see me.
The beginning of the end came with a knock at the door in early 1981. It was my friend Wendy Worth. A few weeks earlier I’d had a seizure while freebasing. When I opened the door and Wendy saw me for the first time in ages, she looked shocked. The seizure, combined with the expression on Wendy’s face, was the wake-up call I needed.
‘Jo, look at you! You’re so thin!’ she gasped. ‘When was the last time you went out shopping for some new clothes, or got your hair cut?’
To my horror, I realised I hadn’t done anything apart from that stupid drug. So I stopped.
I don’t regret doing freebase. But I do regret wasting 18 months in the bathroom when I should have been spending more time with my kids. A few months after I gave up, I was in New Yor k with Ronnie, and Bobby Womack came over to freebase with him. They were badgering me to join them. I gave in.
Some 12 hours later I was scrabbling around the floor looking for stray crumbs. And at that moment I decided: ‘I will never, ever do freebase again.’ And I never did.
One chilly January morning in 1983 I winced as the cold sent pain shooting through my nipples. A visit to the doctor confirmed it: I was pregnant!
I went to find Ronnie to tell him the wonderful news. I stuck my head around the bathroom door.
‘Honey, I’m pregnant!’
‘Fantastic!’ He beamed. Then went back to sucking the pipe.
Hells wedding bells: Jo and Ronnie on their wedding day in 1985, pictured with Keith Richards and Charlie Watts
Ronnie was almost totally absent for those nine months, which was ironic as he was always at home. The more he withdrew from me, the needier I became.
Ronnie would often spend time drawing with the kids, but I never felt able to leave him alone with them. He had a very short fuse, especially when he’d been drinking, and would go ballistic if one of the kids touched his cassettes; but when it came to the important stuff, such as discipline, he would ignore it.
Ronnie was drinking so much, too. He hated the fact that I wasn’t out there rocking with him. Ronnie had fallen for wild, crazy, dancing-on-tables Jo; not sober, sensible, having-a-nap Jo.
The second day in hospital after Ty’s birth, I was sitting up feeding him when Ronnie rocked up.
‘Hey, baby,’ he said, ‘I’ve bought you something.’
Oh, my honey, I thought. Could it be flowers? Jewellery? Instea d Ronnie handed me a packet of white powder. ‘A little something to help you get back on track.’ It was cocaine.
‘Are you out of your mind, Ronnie? I don’t want that! And you can’t leave it here,’ I added, as he went to squirrel it away in the cabinet.
After two weeks in rehab, Ronnie quit freebasing and never touched it again.
But the cost of the drugs â€" not to mention some questionable decisions by our then manager â€" had left us skint.
Ronnie had no concept of money. Bill Wyman recently told me about the time Ronnie went to the guys in the band to ask for a loan, as we couldn’t pay the children’s school fees. After pocketing the cash he went straight out and bought himself a Rolex.
Height of fame: Jo, Ronnie and a sleeping Keith Richards on a private jet during a Rolling Stones tour in 1992
Moves like Jagger: Jo and Ronnie with Mick Jagger celebrating his 39th birthday
‘Ronnie, what the Hell is wrong with you?’
We’d been at Keith and his wife Patti’s house in Ochos Rios in Jamaica for three blissful weeks, but Ronnie had been acting weirdly.
We were having an anniversary dinner. Our candlelit table was next to a waterfall â€" all pretty idyllic, except that Ronnie had barely spoken to me since we’d sat down and was now staring at the menu as if it was written in Chinese.
And then, just as I was giving up any hope of a romantic evening, he blurted out: ‘Jo, will you marry me?’
It wasn’t the first time Ronnie had proposed. And because I’d turned him down so many times, I’d assumed he had given up. But now, as I looked at his gorgeous little face peeking over the top of the menu, all hopeful and worried, I just thought: ‘Well, why the Hell not?’
‘Oh, all right, then,’ I finally said. ‘Now, are you going t o have the fish or the chicken?’
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Sex and rock ’n’ roll go together like Jack Daniel’s and coke. On the road with the Stones there were always girls willing to do anything for Ronnie.
In the early days of mobiles, soon after Ronnie got his first phone and when texts were still a novelty, I sent him a message as a bit of a joke: ‘Hi, Ronnie, this is Mandy. I got your number from a friend. I’m such a huge fan, it would mean the world to me if you’d text me back!!!’
I assumed Ronnie would know that I’d sent it; after all, I was the only person who had his mobile number. But moments later ‘Mandy’ got a long, saucy text in reply and I realised he hadn’t a clue who it was.
A NOD AND MICK GOT HIS GIRL
Thankfully, it was Mick whom most of the girls were after. He’d see one he liked in the audience, give security a nod and they’d take her back to the hotel.
It became a bit of a game to me, trying to pinpoint the girl who would take Mick’s fancy that night.
I used to turn a blind eye to these goings-on, because I adored being on tour and I knew if I made a fuss I wouldn’t be allowed on the next one.
The other wives and girlfriends would put in occasional appearances: Jerry Hall would come and go, Shirley Watts was more into her dressage horses than life on the road, and Bill Wyman’s wife, Astrid, would come to the bigger shows until they split up, after which Bill just had woman after woman.
But me? I was there all the time.
I wrote back an even flirtier message and he responded, suggesting we meet up. I sent him a one-line response: ‘It’s your wife, you f****** idiot.’
By the early Nineties we had moved out of our Wimbledon home and into a beautiful townhouse in Richmond. I had come to terms years ago with the fact that groupies were a fact of life on tour, but it was around this time that Ronnie’s infatuation with younger women had started to creep into our everyday lives.
I remember lying in bed wondering where my husband was. When I finally got hold of him he’d usually tell me he’d been out clubbing.
I’d blame the booze for the worst of Ronnie’s behaviour. There was a time when he went to LA to do some recording with the Stones and after two weeks â€" during which I’d heard worryingly little from him â€" Keith rang me.
‘Jo, get your f****** a*** over here now,’ he said. ‘Your husband is out of control. You need to get out here and sort him out.’
I flew to LA the next day and when I finally found Ronnie, he was in a terrible state. He had spent the past week downing whisky and hanging out with a hooker.
‘She’s just my mate,’ he said defensively, when I caught up with them in their hotel room. ‘We’ve been drinking together and went to this crazy party up in the Hills .?.?. ’
I managed to get Ronnie back on track by making sure he ate and slept and took his vitamins, but he wanted his ‘drinking buddy’ to stick around. I had to be nice as pie to that weird bird, all the while hoping and praying she hadn’t been s******* my husband. She most probably had.
Happy family: The Woods at their daughter Leah's first birthday party in 1979
It was 2003 and Ronnie and I were in Udaipur, our latest stop on a magical holiday around India with Keith, Patti and Keith’s manager Jane Rose. Ronnie was Mr Charisma with other people, but the booze could make him nasty to me.
When Ronnie signalled to the waiter for more vodka I decided to risk a quiet word. As he turned to me I knew I should have stayed quiet.
‘You f****** c***,’ he said. ‘Don’t you f****** tell me what to do.’ I flushed with embarrassment. ‘Ronnie, I don’t .?.?.’
‘Didn’t you f****** hear what I said? Shut the f*** up!’
I was mortified. The last years of our relationship were ruled by Ronnie’s alcoholism. One night I was asleep when Ronnie burst into our bedroom, drunk as a skunk.
‘There’s no f****** vodka in the house!’ he yelled.
‘Ronnie, please,’ I said, pulling the covers over my head. ‘I’m asleep!’
On that occasion he really lost it. The poison started pouring out of his mouth.
‘I’ll throw acid in your face .?.?. You’d better watch out because I know people .?.?. ’
It was as if he was possessed (which, in a way, he was).
When he woke up the next day I asked him if he remembered the night before.
‘No,’ he said, sleepily. ‘Was it a good night? Coffee would be lovely.’
'My baby': Jo Was distraught when she heard Ronnie refer to 'drinking buddy' Ekaterina Ivanova as his 'baby', the woman who later became the reason for their split
I became so caught up in Ronnie’s illness that at times I felt like I was drowning in his alcoholism. It had reduced me to an insecure wreck.
But the instant he got up on stage all was forgiven. It still gave me goose bumps. He was my guitar hero. Sometimes I’d stand in front of the stage, look up at him and think: ‘I’m married to a creative genius, there’s no doubt about it.’
In those moments I was so proud to be his wife that it seemed worth putting up with a bit of swearing.
In early 2008, Ronnie flew to join us on holiday in Kenya along with Jamie, who was working as his manager and had proved himself the best of the lot. In a few years he’d turned Ronnie into the biggest-selling print artist in the US.
When the pair of them got off the speedboat at the resort, my first thought was that Ronnie looked awful. His skin had a grey tinge and he had an infection in one eye. I settled him into a hammock near our hut on the beach where he fell asleep, then started his unpacking. Jamie appeared at the door. ‘Mum,’ he said, quietly. ‘Do yourself a favour and break the SIM card in Dad’s phone.’
I did as I was told. Ronnie appeared at the lunch table the following day, absolutely furious.
‘What the f*** is wrong with this phone?’ He held it out to me, his face like thunder. Eventually he calmed down and we had a lovely-ish holiday, but I couldn’t get Jamie’s request out of my mind.
Tempest: The pair, pictured together in 1990, survived drugs, alcoholism and Ronnie's numerous affairs before they finally split in 2009 when Jo filed for divorce
It was just a week or so later, back in London, when at 4am I was woken by the beep of Ronnie’s phone. He was snoring away, so I looked at the screen.
It was a text: ‘Hi Ronnie. Not been working. Keeping myself to myself. Please send money. E.’
What the Hell is that about? And who is ‘E’? I took down the number.
Later I overheard him asking our housekeeper to get him some cash. The twitchiness in my stomach got worse.
As the days went by, Ronnie’s behaviour grew even shiftier than usual. Then, when I was in the middle of a promotional event, a close friend rang.
‘Jo, can you talk? There’s something I think you should know.’
She told me she had seen Ronnie with another woman at a gig in Hammersmith.
‘I promise you, Jo, everyone in London knows what’s going on,’ she said.
Moving on: Jo Wood pictured during London Fashion Week 2013
When I got home I dug out the number I’d copied down from the text message and rang it.
‘Hello?’ A girl’s voice.
But in the background I heard a man say: ‘Who’s that, then? Another of your boyfriends?’ It was Ronnie.
‘Put him on the phone,’ I said, as calmly as I could. ‘I know Ronnie’s with you.’
She hung up. I called Ronnie back on his mobile.
‘Listen, she’s just my drinking buddy,’ he said. ‘She’s a really sweet girl â€" you’d like her.’
‘Well, if she’s a really sweet girl, why don’t you bring her home? ’
And, an hour later, that was what he did, still insisting she was just a ‘drinking buddy’.
Ronnie was clearly just going to lie about Katia, so I had to confront the situation. I found them in a bar in the West End of London.
‘Hey, Jo, have a drink!’ He was acting normally, as if the situation wasn’t remotely weird.
I tried asking Katia about what she did for a living, but she wouldn’t tell me.
I later found out that Ronnie had told Jamie he’d met a girl who worked in a ‘lap-dancing’ club and that they were having sex. Can you imagine telling that to your wife’s son?
We’d had a few drinks and it was well past midnight.
‘Ronnie, I’m tired,’ I said. ‘Shall we go home?’
He took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘Nah. I want to be with my baby,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave it up to you to work out who that is.’
I felt like the air had been punched out of me. I had always been his baby!
But it wasn’t until I saw him put his arm around her that something in me snapped.
‘You know what?’ I said. ‘Enjoy your life, Ronnie. I’m going home.’
As I got ready to drive away, my phone rang. It was Ronnie.
‘Jo,’ he said. ‘Come back. Please. I’m at the front of the hotel.’
My heart leapt. I started to think about how we could rebuild our marriage. Maybe we could go for counselling. I pulled up and Ronnie motioned for me to put the window down. Then he leant in and said: ‘You’ve been drinking â€" you should get a taxi.’ So that was it.
‘F*** you, Ronnie,’ I said and slammed my foot down.
Ronnie’s never apologised for what happened either to me or the kids â€" I don’t think he feels he has anything to apologise for â€" although he came close last year.
I was at his house, dropping off some of his belongings, and he was talking about a new girl who was flying in to see him.
‘I still haven’t found the one, Jo,’ he said, wearily.
‘You won’t, Ronnie,’ I said. ‘You had her and you lost her a few years ago. It was me.’
He took a drag on his cigarette. ‘You live and learn,’ he said, eventually.
© Jo Wood 2013. Hey Jo by Jo Wood is published by Harper Collins, priced £16.99. To order your copy at £14.99 with free p&p, please call the Mail Book Shop on 0844 472 4157 or visit mailbookshop.co.uk
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