Ron Wood: Mystifies Me
I've Got My Own Album To Do (Warner Bros., 1974)
The legend loves “Mick and Keith” but inside the walls it’s always been more “Keith and Ron.” They are the best friends in the band, with a chemistry that comes from being bros before bandmates. Like siblings they share jet black scarecrow haircuts and keening background voices; even their wives look the same. Though Mick Taylor will always be the best choice for the Stones musically, without Wood the group might have become permanently humorless. Wood makes Keith grin, and as Keith smiles so do all around him.
For his solo debut, Wood got his dream band: Richards on his right, The Faces’ Ian McLagan on keyboards, and a rhythm section consisting of Willie Weeks (bass on Donny Hathaway’s Live) and Andy Newmark (drummer on Sly Stone’s Fresh and Small Talk). It is still hard to believe that within the ego pageant of Seventies rock there was a sideman with sense of humor enough to call his solo shot I’ve Got My Own Album To Do. Wood could have easily pushed the album on the basis of its myriad cameos—who else could bring Rod Stewart, George Harrison, and Jagger/Richards together under one roof?—but instead he let the stew speak for itself, and appeared alone on the album cover, smirking and sporting a ludicrous Hawaiian print shirt. Of course, he was just setting us up. With the Faces, Wood perfected the trick of fooling the audience by feigning recklessness, then disarming them with sudden sincerity (it’s the blueprint that built Paul Westerberg’s career). So goes I’ve Got My Own Album to Do, which starts with the fallow Jagger duet “I Can Feel the Fire” and ends with a twitchy instrumental called “Crotch Music,” but in between contains “Mystifies Me.”
Richards and Jagger were great architects, but Richards and Wood were great alchemists. Given some chords and a band with a good feel they could take something that sounds scant on paper and make it move like an Otis Redding ballad. In any other song that opening line would be "Stay a while and work it out with me”—there is commitment there—but with Wood it's “Stay a while and work it out of me." It's a small twist that sums up the sweet hopelessness these men see in themselves when it comes to fixing things. While Ron and Keith could wear their playing as loose as their scarves, they always—always—sung from the heart when it mattered.
You look so fine, true
I would not lie to you
