When the British blues scene bloomed in the 1960s, with the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers at the forefront, Ronnie Wood often found himself at the heart of it all. He enjoyed enduring friendships with Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, played with Jeff Beck, and later lived with Jimi Hendrix. He watched it unfold and played a key part.
At the start of his career, he was simply a budding guitarist with lofty ambitions, holding the work of Yardbirds – at the point with Eric Clapton – in high regard. Then, one night, he found himself pulled out of the crowd to perform with them. It’s here, he says, that his friendship with Clapton began.
“I used to gauge my music by seeing the Yardbirds at the Crawdaddy,” Wood said at a Q&A to promote his autobiography in 2015. “They were a big influence on me.”
The Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, Surrey, was one of the Yardbirds’ usual haunts throughout their various eras, with their tri-fecta of guitar greats: Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck. It was one of the shows with the latter that saw Wood plant the seeds for him playing in Beck’s solo project after the Yardbirds broke up, first as a guitarist, then relegated to bass. But he’d found himself part of Yardbirds folklore long before that.
“One night, Keith Relf, the singer and harmonica player, was ill, and Chris Dreja [guitar], Jim McCarty [drums], Paul Samwell-Smith [bass], and Eric Clapton said, ‘Does anybody in the audience play harmonica?’ and all my friends pushed me up, and he said, ‘He does!’ Suddenly I’m on stage with the Yardbirds; I did ‘I’m a Man’ and a few [other] songs.”
It would have been a night to savor for this moment alone. But there was more to come.
“They sent for me afterward,” he remembers. “They said, ‘Get that guy backstage who looks like Cleopatra.’ Eric and I stayed close after that.”
Wood would, in fact, steal a bass to play with Jeff Beck several years later, and at the Q&A, he was asked to break down why the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s band proved to be, in his own words, a “breeding ground” for incredible guitar players.
“There was a lot of ambition within guitar players to spread the word,” he believes. “They were sort of like, ‘Have you heard this lick?’ Jeff Beck is still like that to this day. He’s like a kid in a toy shop with his guitar and his riffs; ‘Can you do this?’ ‘No, but I’ll give it a damn good try.’ There was a camaraderie.”
Elsewhere, Wood’s story intertwines with that of Pete Townshend, with the loudness wars that would redefine the future of amplifiers, and an argument over a particular innovation at the core of their relationship.
He’s just released his latest album with the Rolling Stones, which Mick Jagger says was created with a “bulldozer approach.”
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