Ronnie Wood is a good guy to have in the Rolodex. He is a good guy, period. When the phone rang on a November’s afternoon in 1979, Al Anderson from the Wailers was on the other end of the line, and he was in a jam.
Bob Marley and the Wailers had a gig in Oakland, California, and someone had stolen his guitar. He asked Wood if he could help and sure enough he could. That the Rolling Stones guitarist was in a different city entirely didn’t matter. Consider it done. He didn’t need to think about it twice.
“Al Anderson called me up when I lived in LA, and Bob was playing in Oakland,” recalled Wood, on Sky Arts’ The Ronnie Wood Show. “Someone had stolen Al’s guitar. And he said, ‘Ronnie, what can I do!?’ I said, I’ll bring you one out. So I flew up to San Fran. He said, ‘I’ll introduce you to Bob’ – because I had never met him.”
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Bob Marley was not a big talker. There was not much conversation. “He didn’t say much at all,” said Wood.
Writing in his new book, the superlative Fearless: The Anthology, Wood takes us backstage at the Civic Auditorium, in Oakland, the latest stop on the reggae icon’s Survival Tour of the US.
As with many of the stories in Fearless, a stolen guitar is the inciting incident that sends our protagonist on an adventure. Sometimes he’d end up with a new guitar.
On November 30 1979, he got smoke in his eyes and the offer of a lifetime.
“I jumped on a plane, got up there, went into the dressing room,” writes Wood. “And I was asked if I’d like to play with Bob. I said, ‘Are you kidding? Of course I would!’”
Marley was as yet unaware that the night’s show would have a special guest, and Rolling Stone or not, all things considered Marley was a little circumspect.
“His people took me in to meet him,” continues Wood. “The room was full of smoke, drifting out through the door, and Bob was just moving around, not really acknowledging anyone.”
We all know what Ronnie Wood is like. He’s got an infectious enthusiasm. He’s good with people. He took it upon himself to break the ice.
“I said, ‘Bob, my name’s Ronnie…’ and he just looked through me,” recalls Wood. “I told him, ‘You’re the only member of the band who doesn’t know I’m playing with you tonight.’ He said, ‘You know – you’d better be good then.’”
This was the Some Girls era. The previous year, you would have seen Wood onstage been playing a sunburst Firebird VII – three mini-humbuckers, vibrola, reverse headstock, gold ‘top hat’ knobs with silver inserts… Classic.
He and Keith Richards had also adopted the Mesa/Boogie in the late ‘70s, playing through Randall Smith’s MkI 100-watt tube amp combos with cherry wood cabinets and wicker grilles.
These are what we hear at the legendary EL Mocambo 1977 recording, when the Stones turned up at the Toronto nightclub billed as the Cockroaches and brought the house down for an audience of 300 people.
Onstage he gave me the nod, as if to say ‘You passed. Don’t worry. You’re all right’
We can’t say for sure what Wood played through on the night with Bob Marley and the Wailers but bootleg footage has him with a Fender Stratocaster. Also, when they said he would be playing with Marley, they really meant it.
“Bob said I could come on for the encore so I waited,” writes Wood. “Then onstage he gave me the nod, as if to say ‘You passed. Don’t worry. You’re all right.’ It was great, and the encore lasted about an hour and a half!”
Wood is only exaggerating a little; there were six songs in the encore. After closing out the set with Exodus, Marley returned onstage to play Is This Love. Cue Ronnie Wood. Then there was Jamming, Ride Natty Ride… Roots Rock Reggae was up next then Natty Dread.
The songs kept coming. If Wood had bought a Bob Marley tablature book in 1978 it would have been money well spent. But Wood could sit in with anyone. They closed the night out with a storming rendition of Get Up, Stand Up.
Marley was a good judge of a player after all. Wood did not let him down, not before the show, and certainly not during the show.
Fearless: The Anthology is out now via Genesis Publications. The print run was limited to just 1,000 copies.
The Deluxe box set has sold out but the Collector box sets are available to pre-order now for £325, regular price £355, with each hand-signed by Ronnie Wood and numbered 351 to 1,000.
See Genesis Publications for more.
