{"id":378811,"date":"2026-01-19T18:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T18:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/378811\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T18:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T18:24:08","slug":"the-1960s-band-ronnie-wood-remembers-seeing-at-incredible-gigs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/378811\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1960s band Ronnie Wood remembers seeing at “incredible” gigs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ronnie<\/p>\n

(Credits: Raph Pour-Hashemi)<\/p>\n

Mon 19 January 2026 15:00, UK <\/p>\n

Performing on Jools Holland\u2019s New Year\u2019s Eve \u2018Hootenanny\u2019 isn\u2019t the hippest gig in the world these days, but if you happened to have the TV on during the final bleary-eyed minutes of 2025, that was indeed Ronnie Wood<\/a> up there on stage, still doing what he\u2019s been doing for the past 60 years.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, Wood, now 78, was the young buck of the London rock scene; in 1964, at just 17 years old, he was singing and playing guitar in a popular band called the Birds, and while that outfit had no direct connection to any other similarly named, avian-themed bands, Wood certainly wasn\u2019t oblivious to the blues-inspired group generating a lot of attention around town: The Yardbirds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Yardbirds was one [band] that I used to follow a lot,\u201d Wood recalled in a recent social media post, \u201cand I used to go and see them in the Richmond Athletic Grounds in the Crawdaddy Club. Very important. And people were swinging from the rafters in there, and sweat dripping from the ceiling, and it was so incredible, the atmosphere, with the crescendos they used to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Yardbirds<\/a> are probably best remembered less for their own music these days and more for their role as a sort of guitar god academy in the mid-1960s, boasting Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page, the top three guitarists of all time in many people\u2019s minds, as Yardbird graduates.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, for the people who were actually there at the Crawdaddy Club watching the band\u2019s ascent, the direct impact of The Yardbirds as a live band is still vivid, and no one was thinking of them as a stepping stool or a footnote in their own time. \u201cThey used to do a Muddy Waters song called \u2018I\u2019m A Man\u2019,\u201d Wood remembered, \u201cThey did a fast version. Everybody would go crazy. Those were the days. It was fantastic\u201d.<\/p>\n

Wood was well aware of The Yardbirds during the Clapton era (1963 to 1965), but he got to know the band members more personally during Jeff Beck\u2019s time as the lead guitarist in \u201865 and \u201866. Mutual interest soon emerged in a collaboration between the two guitar players, but Wood would never join the supergroup, and Beck didn\u2019t leap to the Birds. Instead, when Wood caught wind that Beck was thinking of going solo, he offered to work with him on a future project.<\/p>\n

It might have been wishful thinking on Ronnie\u2019s part, who still hadn\u2019t celebrated his 20th birthday, but, true to his word, Beck did give him a call, and in 1967, Wood reported to duty as the second guitarist in the Jeff Beck Group, later converting to the bass.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we went to America, Jimi Hendrix used to come and jam with us,\u201d Wood said in his social media video, \u201cHe used to say to Jeff, \u2018Hey Jeff, let the bass player have a solo!\u2019 He loved my bass playing, so that was a feather in my cap. And I ended up sharing a flat with him in Holland Park for a couple of weeks when we were early gigging\u2026 It was great fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not necessarily surprising that Ron Wood was at the centre of everything, playing with Jeff Beck and splitting rent (and getting evicted<\/a>) with Jimi Hendrix, but considering his most famous jobs were still ahead of him\u2014playing guitar for the Faces and the Rolling Stones\u2014those early days were clearly special in a unique way. It\u2019s clear when Wood describes his memories, with a boyish enthusiasm, that nothing quite beats the \u201cdiscovery\u201d period.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Raph Pour-Hashemi) Mon 19 January 2026 15:00, UK Performing on Jools Holland\u2019s New Year\u2019s Eve \u2018Hootenanny\u2019 isn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,30322,128,80988,63561,56,54,55,144005],"class_list":{"0":"post-378811","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-jeff-beck","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-ronnie-wood","12":"tag-the-yardbirds","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom","16":"tag-yardbirds"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}