Could the Rolling Stones carry on without Ronnie Wood?

If you have listened to “Rough and twisted”, the single that marked the surprise return of Rolling Stonespublished under the pseudonym The Cockroaches and printed in a few copies of a limited edition vinyl, you will have once again realized something. The piece is built on a very essential setup: a dirty, almost primitive blues that revolves around Keith Richards’ riffvery marked and aggressive. But in the background there is a second guitar: it is, of course, Ronnie Wood’s. That as usual does what he does best in the Rolling Stones: it doesn’t drive the piece, but holds it together. Wood, compared to Richards, works by contrast and completion: he fills spaces, adds movement. What he’s been doing all his life, in the Rolling Stones. His has always been a less obvious, but decisive role. That of a shadow man. Of a invisible but indispensable gear. Which now, in the midst of the new wave of activity that is bringing the band back to the center of the spotlight, between the single and the first rumors about the new album “Foreign tongues” expected for July 10th, moves as it always has: sideways, but staying in one way or another at the center of everything. Yes, because while the Stones machine roars again, Wood relaunches himself with his first solo tour after sixteen years: the July 17th will be a Lucca for a date – the only Italian one: tickets here – which promises to be much more than a concert. A living and authentic photograph of his musical history.

The answer to the title question

To answer the title question, meanwhile: no, the Rolling Stones couldn’t go on without Ronnie Wood. Not only because after the passing of Charlie Watts the band has already lost one of its historical cornerstones. But because Wood, even though he joined “with the train moving” in 1975, taking on the responsibility of replacing Mick Taylor, was never an added member: it immediately became an internal function of the system. In the Stones’ imagination, however, everything seems to revolve around two poles: Mick Jagger at the front, Keith Richards at the center of guitar mythology. But between these two poles it has existed for fifty years a space without which the two poles would probably collapse. Wood is not the soloist, he is not the leader, he is not the supporting character: he is the connection between the parts. The matter that holds everything together. And this logic does not only concern “Rough and twisted”, the single just released: it’s the very grammar of the Rolling Stones for the last fifty years.

The solo tour

Speaking of space: what Ronnie Wood has decided to give himself while waiting to understand if the Stones will ever return to perform live, after the cancellation of the tour plans scheduled for this summer due to the arthritis that Keith Richards suffers from, is a space of his own. The tour was born around “Fearless: Anthology 1965–2025“, a project that does not look at the past with nostalgia, but puts it back into circulation. Inside there are all of Wood’s musical lives: from his beginnings to the Stones, passing through the Faces and the collaborations that have marked entire seasons of rock. And above all there are four unreleased recordings, the first solo material for over a decade, which give the sense of an artist still in movement: a version of the 60s classic “A certain girl” written by Allen Toussaint under the pseudonym of Naomi Neville that Wood he recorded a duet with Chrissie Hynde, a cover of The Falcons’ “You’re so fine” (1959) sung with Imelda May, a revisitation of the rocksteady standard “Take it easy” by Jamaican Hopeton Lewis and a new Wood composition entitled “Mother of pearl” co-produced by his son Jesse together with Sean Genockey.

The new Stones album

Little curiosity: if the release date of “Foreign Tongues” were confirmed, Wood would arrive in Lucca just seven days after the release of the Stones’ new album. AND who knows, maybe he decides to surprisingly include some hints of the new songs in the set list, alongside the classics. Another good reason not to miss the appointment.