In my family, they were all big boozers.
It’s taken folk a while to come around, hasn’t it? Even the boys in the band weren’t too sure about the whole art thing. They just wanted me to concentrate on the music. But they respect it now.
Jo left me a few months ago for 10 days. I get this note: I’ll come back when the real Ronnie comes back.
I’ve got an article where my mum says that I used to run home from school to watch the Stones on TV. Right from when I was at college I wanted to be in that band.
Mick has expressed an interest in coming to the gallery tonight because he’s seen me behaving myself lately. He is being much more supportive, which is nice.
I always want to rock.
Mick says, Would you join the band? I say to him, Mick, you know I’d be there in a New York minute.
My dad lived till he was 78, my mum was in her 80s, and I’ve got two uncles who are in their 90s now.
My real self is probably more creative and more frightening than any sort of drink or drug-induced state.
Let’s face it: I paint well. I know it, you know it. There’s no arguing really, is there?
I’m terrible with money, absolutely awful. I’m always losing it.
I’m a Gemini, so I have a great time with the other guy.
I just think my body can’t handle it any more. I did try a little drink a while back, and I was actually physically ill. I went into an immediate depression, and felt awful, just dreadful. So that’s it. I’m over it now.
Having loved the Stones all the time I was growing up, I wasn’t about to see them go and split up. It got very close to it in the 80s, when Mick thought that Keith hated him and vice versa.
All of us can’t wait to get out there whatever way.
I like it when journalists are nice to me, and it’s happening more and more.
I can’t be left unsupervised.
People often get the wrong impression of Mick. The clever businessman is just one side of Mick. The other side is the same as the rest of us, a true rocker!
I go off into Dublin and two days later I’m spotted walking by the Liffey with a whole bunch of new friends.
I heard this massive thud. I spun around, and there Keith was, on the ground. He’d cut his gums up on impact, he was very bloody, and clutching his head. I think it was a kind of wake-up call for him.
I love to go to Ireland just to relax.
With every gig we have to prove ourselves better than the night before.
The last show we played, I was straight as a die. It did feel weird not to be hiding behind alcohol or dope, but being focused was… good.
You don’t make solo albums to have hits.
When I’m left on my own I’m my own worst enemy.
When I first started all this, it was mostly music fans that came along, Stones fans. But now, I’m being taken seriously. I’ve got highfalutin’ art collectors and everything!
When I first saw Jo, I said boom, that was it, because I’m a one-woman man.
What can I say, I’m an alcoholic. It’s what I do.
We’re great, Jo and me. We’re pals, and I guess sex has a lot to do with it. She’s also brilliant at clearing a room. So protective, so devoted. I can’t believe how much she loves me.
We got touring with the Stones, and people were trying to keep up with Keith. He’s like a human machine with a constitution of iron, and they all thought they could do the same.
They say you can smoke 400 cigs a day and drink 20 cups of coffee, but you can’t have a line or a drink again.
There’s a basic rule which runs through all kinds of music, kind of an unwritten rule. I don’t know what it is. But I’ve got it.
Of course, the wind sort of swept up and the music was flying around in mid air and they were trying to play off it. You had to be there. It was quite funny.
I’ve always been that way. I’m not very good at reading music but I’m pretty quick at picking things up.
When we did a lot of that Motown stuff there were four of us on the front line. When we started the evening we’d start from one end of the band and just go along. The lead singer would change all the time. That’s the first time that I actually managed to put it into a record.
Well, obviously I wanted it to sound as original as possible. I suppose the influences that we had were probably from the actual power point of view we wanted to be like the Who. Vocally we wanted to be like the Beach Boys, whatever was good at the time.
We should have gone over years before that. I always wanted to and I think most of the band did.
We happened to be in the studio next door and I think Noel Redding came around and said, ‘Do you fancy having a sing on this?’ We just went and did it and it was great.
Unfortunately, most of the songs that I write I don’t write them with guitar in mind. I just write it as a song and that was probably one of the ones that left an opening for it. The song’s all right, I wouldn’t choose to sing it now.
To me, ‘Blackberry Way’ stands up as a song that could be sung in any era, really. We do it with the new doing all sort of fanfare things in it and it works really well. It goes down great with audiences.
The best thing I ever heard was in the ’60s. I heard Jimi Hendrix play ‘I Can Hear The Grass Grow’ after a rehearsal, and it was brilliant.
When we were first started we were doing a lot of Motown stuff, but actually playing it more in a rock way. Everybody in the band sang and we did a lot of harmonies.
I think it was probably down to the fact that we weren’t together personally as a band. We weren’t pulling in the same direction. I always feel if you’re having a good time in the studio it actually comes across on the tape and that was a bit of a miserable album for us.
I’ve always been a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde. I always feel that you should keep singles as commercial as possible so that the people can walk down the road and whistle a song. But on the other hand on albums I think you can afford to show people what you can do.
I think we were probably playing live for about 12 months before we got a recording deal.
I named it that because more or less each person from the band used to play in other bands and when we left respective bands other members from those bands all sort of changed round. It was a big sort of move thing. I got it from that, I suppose.
Even though we didn’t actually record it as the Move I had already written a song called ‘Dear Elaine,’ which I subsequently put on the Boulders album. I thought at the time that was probably the best song I’d written.