Ronnie Wood: The Rolling Stone who doesn't have to grow up

When Ronnie Wood left his wife, how appropriate it was that the other woman should be a cocktail waitress.

The Rolling Stone has enjoyed a long relationship with alcohol during a life packed full of excess. The drink, the drugs, the trashed hotel rooms‚ he has almost every imaginable rock star badge of honour. In fact, before he walked out, the apparent success of his 23-year marriage was just about his only concession to growing up.

His wife Jo was regarded as a calming influence who persuaded him to do the things that most of us take for granted, such as eating regular meals. It was Jo who encouraged her husband to check into rehab at times when his legendary drinking threatened to spiral out of control.

So, with her out of his life, it should come as no surprise to learn that Wood, 62, has been having a fl ing with another beauty who is less than half his age. Following an acrimonious break-up with Ekaterina Ivanova, the 21-year-old Russian waitress who cost the star his marriage, Wood has been dating Hannah Kamelmacher. At 26 she is a few years older than Ivanova, who is appearing in Channel 4’s Celebrity Big Brother solely on the strength of her 18-month affair with Wood.

Kamelmacher, who works in public relations, is also said to have Russian roots and admitted this week that she found the Rolling Stone “engaging” after they met over drinks. They were spotted canoodling at the Masters snooker tournament at Wembley and are reported to have spent the night together at Wood’s £4,000-a-week miniature castle in Surrey. Friends of Kamelmacher revealed that she was “star struck” by Wood, while he made no attempts to keep the fling quiet.

“He’s still living the rock star dream and many of us secretly envy him,” says Keith Badham, a writer who collaborated on Wood’s biography Rock On Wood. “You can’t imagine Ronnie Wood sitting at home in a pair of slippers. Some men his age are thinking about their bus pass but he’s thinking about another tour with one of the world’s greatest bands. The Rolling Stones were rock’s bad boys and that brought money and a lifestyle that Ronnie still enjoys."

"He thinks he’s indestructible and he has never really grown up. Why should he? Jo was a stabilising infl uence and he no doubt thought he had some catching up to do after they broke up. Being a Stone helps. There’s still an allure. I don’t think there would be the same attraction for women if he was in an ordinary nine-to-fi ve job. You can’t blame him for taking advantage of that. Ronnie has a real zest for life.”

Wood is the first in a long line of his family to be born on dry land; his ancestors were Romany gypsies who, from the 1700s, lived on barges. He started his music career in 1964 with R&B band The Birds. After a stint with the Jeff Beck Group as a bassist in the late Sixties he began working with the Small Faces, along with Rod Stewart, becoming a full-time mem- ber in 1969 when the band’s name was changed to The Faces.

For a while they were the biggest UK band after the Stones, enjoying hits such as Stay With Me and Cindy Incidentally, on a tour to the US they reputedly became the first act to  perform with a bar on stage. Even then Wood’s alcohol consumption was excessive. An average day would start with eight pints of Guinness, then on to vodka and a bottle of Sambuca to round off the evening.

Wood was a pal of Jimi Hendrix, at one point sharing a fl at with him, and got to know Mick Jagger because they met so often at rock parties. The pair collaborated on Jagger’s 1973 hit It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll. When Mick Taylor shocked the Stones by announcing his departure in 1974, Wood was his natural successor not just for his talents as a guitarist but for his ability to match the other Stones drink for drink.

Down the years he made attempts to wean himself off alcohol and  at one stage it seemed he had a season ticket at the Priory clinic.

The first time he emerged from rehab fellow Stone Keith Richards sent him a fax bearing the scrawled message: “Rehab is for quitters.” Wood said at the time that he had been told he was only six months from death. Eventually, however, there was the tacit admission that he enjoyed the booze and socialising too much to give them up, despite the loss over the years of his drinking buddies Hendrix, comedian Peter Cook and actor John Belushi.

Wood has said  he was born to be a drinker. He grew up on an estate near Heathrow and watched his father drinking, partying and playing the piano at the Nag’s Head pub every night. He would sit on the windowsill with a packet of crisps and a Coca -Cola and watch dad pound the keys.

At closing time there would be a shout of “All back to No 8” (the Woods’ home) and  everyone took as much booze as they could carry. After the Woods moved out the new owners found 1,700 empty Guinness bottles in the back garden. A friend of Wood once said: “For him drinking goes hand in hand with having fun and he’d rather be dead than be boring. I remember him saying  when he went into rehab, ‘The thing is, I don’t want to end up being a boring so and so like Clapton.’”

Later drugs became a factor in his life. In 1980, Ronnie and Jo were arrested on the Caribbean island of St Maarten, charged with possession of 200g of cocaine and jailed for five days. When Ronnie and Jo separated in 2008 she got to keep their £10million home in Richmond, Surrey, while he went off the rails again. At the time Wood’s publicist took the unusual step of speaking out about Ivanova, claiming she was a “drinking partner”.

The spokesman said: “He met her in a dodgy escort bar at four in the morning when he was boozed out of his mind. He’s fallen off the wagon big time. He’s spiralling out of control and every time he returns to his drinking it’s worse than before. He’s not even clear-headed enough to check himself into rehab. He’s in a very bad way. He’s not even waking up until late afternoon. He’s very much spiralling. He’s on two bottles of vodka a day and he has a size 28 waist.”

Given the abuse of his body over time, Wood really can be considered rock’s great survivor. Even his jet-black hair, which he attributes to his gypsy ancestors, is that of a much younger man. In addition to the rented castle, complete with gargoyles, which he shared with Ivanova, Wood has an estate in County Kildare, Ireland, where he breeds racehorses. In Ireland he won the Small Breeder of the Year award in 1998 and is proud of the success of his horse Sandy-mount Earl, named after his estate.

Inside the house there’s a recording studio and bar, done out like a traditional Irish pub, where he can serve himself Guinness. Wood is also a keen fisherman, indicating that there’s more to the Rolling Stone than just partying. Another talent is for painting; before becoming a rock star he went to Ealing Art College in the Sixties and has dabbled ever since.

It was only when he was strapped for cash following a disastrous investment in a London club in the Eighties that he became serious about his art and his works can now fetch hundreds of thousands of pounds. Soon after the split with Jo his personal wealth was put at £20million.

Keith Badham says: “Ronnie has hidden depths. In addition to being an accomplished guitarist he is a mighty fine painter. Some of his work is very clever and he should not just be regarded as a drunken rock star. People forget that he’s just as happy when he’s in his studio painting quietly.”

Terry Rawlings, who wrote the Rock On Wood biography, endorses the view that there’s more to Wood than meets the eye. He believes that he was deeply affected by the death of his first wife Krissy, a former model who died in 2005, aged 57, when she accidentally overdosed on Valium which she was taking to combat her depression. Wood has three children: Jesse, from his marriage to Krissy, and his daughter Leah and son Tyrone from his marriage to Jo.

The split left relations with his children strained. Rawlings says: “In the space of about four years Ronnie lost his mother, ex-wife, and two brothers, Ted and Art. He was particularly close to Art, who taught him to play the guitar. Those losses pushedhim off the rails and left him vulnerable.” Nonetheless Rawlings accepts that Wood, who was cautioned for common assault after a bust-up with Ivanova in December, has never really grown up.

He says: “Ronnie Wood is like all rock stars. They’re eternal children aren’t they?”