Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / The Life & Career Of Ronnie Lane (Small Faces, Faces) with Author Caroline Stafford [Episode 161]

Transcript

The Life & Career Of Ronnie Lane (Small Faces, Faces) with Author Caroline Stafford [Episode 161] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Money was never his big motivator. It came, it went. There's a
• 0:05
  great story of him being in an open top car and opening his wallet and
• 0:10
  all the money just flying out of the wallet and he just didn't take any
• 0:14
  notice. He just went through out the window, and that was a sort
• 0:18
  of metaphor for his life. Rock and Roll, I mean, I'll leave
• 0:24
  you. You're reading, Little Hands says it's time to rock and roll,
• 0:28
  roll out, I totally booked. Welcome to Booked on Rock, the podcast
• 0:38
  for those about to read and rock online at booked on rock dot com,
• 0:42
  where you can find every episode, along with links to listening platforms, exclusive
• 0:46
  videos, blogs, and the latest rock book releases. Caroline Stafford is this
• 0:51
  episode's guest. Caroline and David Stafford are authors of the brand new book Anymore
• 0:57
  for Anymore The Ronnie Lane Story. This is the biography of British singer songwriter
• 1:00
  Ronnie Lane. In the sixties, he co founded Small Faces, who recorded
• 1:06
  several hit singles including itchyko Park, Lazy, Sunday, All or Nothing,
• 1:10
  and Tin Soldier. Before long, singer Steve Marriott left the band to form
• 1:15
  Humble Pie, and the band would morph into Faces with Rod Stewart now on
• 1:19
  lead vocals. That lineup would record future classics including Stay with Me, I
• 1:23
  Know I'm Losing You, and ooh La La Anymore. For any More charts
• 1:26
  the fortunes of Lane throughout that period, his later work with his band Slim
• 1:30
  Chance, and his unfortunate early death. Caroline is here to share her experience
• 1:34
  in writing the book and to talk about the career of the late great Ronnie
• 1:38
  Lane. A playlist of Ronnie Lane's music on the show notes page. Hi
• 1:46
  Caroline, Welcome to the book Down Rock Podcast. Hello Eric, Nice to
• 1:49
  be here. The promo for this book it states that this is the only
• 1:53
  full length book regarding Ronnie Lane, which is somewhat surprising because he's certainly a
• 1:57
  well known figure in classic rock history. But was that what inspired you to
• 2:00
  write this book with David, or at least part of what inspired it.
• 2:04
  Well, our publisher was a big, big Ronnie Lane fan and followed all
• 2:09
  his career from when he was very young, and he really wanted us to
• 2:14
  dig deep into it. Let's go back to his childhood because many times we
• 2:17
  hear stories of children who have that close bond with their mother, but it's
• 2:22
  their father. You know, they maybe distant, not in the picture,
• 2:24
  or not the best father, but with Ronnie, he was the opposite.
• 2:27
  Talk about where he was born and where he grew up and what his childhood
• 2:30
  days were like. Oh well, Ronnie was a proper Eastender. He was
• 2:35
  born in Plaster just after the war finished, and he was a little rumped.
• 2:42
  He was, you know, he's got the bad teeth. Very small.
• 2:47
  It was only like five't five and that's a conservative for estimate.
• 2:53
  He was picked on a bit at school, but he was always the cheeky
• 2:58
  chappie, you know, he bounced back. There was just him and his
• 3:02
  brother Stan and his mother and his father. But his mother was a very
• 3:08
  distant woman. We found out later that she had MS, which is what
• 3:15
  did for Ronnie in the end. So she wasn't very present in his childhood
• 3:21
  and was quite could be quite snappy, and you know where she was ill.
• 3:25
  But he adored his father, and his father thought the son shone out
• 3:31
  of Ronnie's backside, you know, yes, and he encouraged him all the
• 3:38
  way. He bought him a little ukulele when he was about six, and
• 3:43
  Ronnie blessed his heart. He would dress up in his cowboy outfit because he
• 3:47
  was mad on cowboys, anything to do with cowboys, and he would go
• 3:52
  and serenade the people waiting at the bus stop at the end of his house,
• 3:55
  at the end of his road on Rompid Road would give him money.
• 4:00
  So he was busting at six with the ukulet. So yeah, music was
• 4:06
  in his life very early. Absolutely. Yeah. The story of the Small
• 4:11
  Faces that begins with Ronnie meeting of then fourteen year old Kenny Jones and the
• 4:15
  story in the book I Love He's He's snuck into the bar where Ronnie's older
• 4:18
  brother Stan worked and that was funny. And as for Steve Marriott, he
• 4:23
  didn't live far from Ronnie, so all these guys were living close together.
• 4:26
  Steve made quite an impression Ronnie and Kenny Jones. Eventually we get the formation
• 4:30
  of Small Faces. The name small Faces I didn't know as a connection to
• 4:35
  mods. The term face was a top mod, a face about town,
• 4:39
  a respected chap. I think Steve Marriott said that. And the small part
• 4:43
  of the name had to do with Ronnie and Kenny's height. Yeah, they
• 4:46
  were all tiny, you know. They were those post wall babies that were
• 4:51
  tiny. It's really interesting because bands used to be four young men and their
• 4:59
  amplifiers. You know, they were friends and they just got together to play.
• 5:04
  I think it's very very different these days, isn't it. Bands aren't
• 5:08
  much of a thing anyway, it's all solo acts, the small faces.
• 5:14
  It was about friendship. It was about laddishness and that sort of young fun
• 5:19
  thing and a sort of fusion of creative juices and friendship that seems to be
• 5:27
  absent from a lot of acts these days. Darn Arden, Now he's an
• 5:30
  interesting figure. He is. He's the father of Sharon Osbourne. Correct,
• 5:33
  yes, absolutely. Now they didn't have the best experience working with him as
• 5:39
  their manager, right, Wow, he was a piece of work. Yeah.
• 5:43
  I don't think they were very blessed by their managers. You know,
• 5:46
  they were ripped off royally. But Don was a fantastic character. I mean
• 5:56
  when the band complained that, you know, even though they were having top
• 6:00
  ten hits, they weren't getting any money and their parents were getting worried because
• 6:05
  they were only young lads. There were eighteen sixteen Queen Kenny's Place, the
• 6:12
  Drummer. They didn't have any money. They're broth Basically, they had accounts
• 6:16
  at all of the smart shops in Carnaby Street so they could buy lots of
• 6:21
  clothes, but they didn't have any money themselves, and so the parents the
• 6:29
  parents got together and organized a meeting with Don and Don they said, where's
• 6:34
  the money? These boys have got big hit records, They're touring all over
• 6:41
  the country, you know, back and forth every night. Why aren't they
• 6:46
  making any money? And Don said, Oh, it's they're drugs. They're
• 6:50
  all drug addicts. That's where they spend all the money, which actually wasn't
• 6:56
  true at all. I mean, they liked their pills, but they weren't
• 7:00
  into hard drugs. But it actually put the parents off the scent for a
• 7:05
  while and completely stop them looking any further into it. Robert Stigwood, he
• 7:12
  at the time, was up and coming. He would later manage Cream in
• 7:15
  the Begees, but he tried taking the band away from Dan Arden. What's
• 7:18
  supposedly happened on that day supposedly happened well, Don and a couple of heavies
• 7:26
  went around to visit Robert Stigwood in his offices which I think we're on the
• 7:30
  second floor, and they said, this isn't on. You can't poch my
• 7:38
  guys. They belonged to me, And apparently they actually dangled poor Robert Stigwood
• 7:46
  out of the window getting to stop having any meetings with the small faces.
• 7:55
  Whether this happened or not, I don't know, but it's a great story.
• 7:59
  It makes a great story. So, yeah, the hit singles are
• 8:01
  coming in, and so are the fans. Now some funny stories from the
• 8:05
  chapter The Riggers of the Road. Fans would get out of control to the
• 8:09
  point where one of them sent Rannie a real alligator. Well this is a
• 8:15
  moot point because it could have been just a stunt that had arranged, we
• 8:20
  don't know, for a photo opportunity. But there is a great picture of
• 8:26
  the band with these pet alligators on little leads. It's a great photo.
• 8:31
  But whether it was a genuine fan of sending them, it's you know,
• 8:35
  mood point. And these are the days before bodyguards and security, so they
• 8:41
  had fans that were right on top of them as soon as they would walk
• 8:43
  out of their gig. Absolutely, yes, they got the shirts ripped off
• 8:48
  their backs and they were doing punishing schedules. I mean they were going from
• 8:54
  one end of the country to the other. I don't know who ever planned
• 8:58
  these tours, but they were mad, you know. They would just go
• 9:01
  to one place, turn up one place, play and then travel for another
• 9:07
  sort of seven eight hours to a different end of the country in play somewhere
• 9:13
  else. It was crazy, and they were all quite short programs as well,
• 9:18
  because they'd only get like half an hour because there would be other people
• 9:22
  on the bill with them when he did a big tour with Roy Orbison.
• 9:26
  But the songs that they were writing weren't necessarily the songs they wanted to write
• 9:31
  either. That was the other issue they had. They were getting frustrated with
• 9:33
  that they hit singles. I think the first two right there were not songs
• 9:35
  they wanted to record, not particularly, although they I mean they had to
• 9:41
  admit that they were the right things at the time. Don did let them
• 9:45
  record one of their own tracks I think it was Hay Girl for their second
• 9:50
  single, but it bombed, so he said, right, you go back
• 9:52
  to doing what I say, and so they recorded Sha La La La la,
• 9:58
  yeah, which it wasn't that hard blue eyed soul that Steve and Ronnie
• 10:05
  were really looking forward. One thing I didn't know that Steve Marriott wanted his
• 10:09
  future Humble Pie bandmate Peter Frampton to join the Small Faces. Now that was
• 10:15
  just one problem Runnie and the guy's had with Steve. But when do things
• 10:18
  start to go bad with see Maria and what ultimately leads to his departure.
• 10:22
  In nineteen sixty seven, they moved from Donarden to Andrew Logo Olden's Immedia Records,
• 10:31
  which was a very cool record label to be with. He worked with
• 10:35
  The Stones a lot, and it was a completely different vibe. Psychedelia was
• 10:43
  coming in and this is when they wrote itch k Park, which I think
• 10:48
  was a reasonable hit in America, was it? Yes? It was,
• 10:52
  yeah. I mean it was about the only thing that really worked in America
• 10:56
  because of course they never came to Americas All places number seventy seven, so
• 11:01
  yeah, it made the top one hundred, the cash backs one hundred,
• 11:05
  Yeah, which for them was quite good. And it was a very different
• 11:09
  era, you know. And after Ichiku Park, they made my favorite Small
• 11:16
  Faces record, Tin Soldier in December. The title track was a hit single,
• 11:20
  absolutely, it was a fantastic, fantastic track. But then they went
• 11:26
  on a disastrous tour of Australia with The Who and just nothing went right and
• 11:33
  I think the Prime Minister actually actually said, you know, these lauts that
• 11:41
  come over to our country, they're just making a mockery val youth. It
• 11:46
  really didn't go down well. The press really hated them, and the group
• 11:50
  was starting to argue about musical directions and things like that. With Steve Murray
• 11:58
  a fantastic singer, an amazing voice. Yeah, but what a handful,
• 12:05
  I mean a real handful ego size of God a planet, and he saw
• 12:11
  the Small Places as his band, whereas in fact it you know, Ronnie
• 12:18
  had started the band and nothing, really the fun had gone out of it.
• 12:22
  They weren't those four young men messing around, you know, doing pub
• 12:28
  gigs anymore, enjoying themselves. And probably the drugs have had a lot of
• 12:33
  lot to do with it, but they were really falling out in a big
• 12:37
  way. They did manage a concept album often's nut played. Often a concept
• 12:43
  album can be the knell of death for any group. Call it. A
• 12:48
  lot of fans absolutely love it and see it as the pinnacle. But things
• 12:54
  that are going badly in the group, and Steve decides that he wants a
• 12:58
  super grow and he goes off and falls humble Pie, leaving the other three
• 13:05
  not really knowing what they're going to do. Because of their management problems,
• 13:11
  they're not exactly rolling in it. They're living in rented flats. I don't
• 13:16
  think any of them own their own houses. Even. That's what's amazing too.
• 13:20
  When you think of these bands with all these hit singles, the thought
• 13:24
  is that they're living in mansions and they got the expensive cars. That doesn't
• 13:26
  that doesn't come in until much later, if at all. With the Small
• 13:30
  Faces never happened. No, Ronnie, I don't think anybody could say he
• 13:35
  was good with money, But money was never his big motivator. It came,
• 13:41
  it went. There's a great story of him being in an open top
• 13:45
  car and opening his wallet and all the money just flying out of the wallet
• 13:50
  and he just didn't take any notice. It just went throughout the window.
• 13:54
  And that has a sort of metaphor for his life. It just went out
• 13:58
  of the window. But anyway, I mean, he'd still got Kenny,
• 14:03
  and he'd still got Mac and they were still very friendly, and they started
• 14:09
  playing and actually in the Rolling Stones Vermonsee studio. They loaned them the studio
• 14:16
  and they got together with Ronnie Wood, who I'm sure you know now is
• 14:20
  in the Rolling Stones. Yes, he is yeah, yeah, And this
• 14:24
  is a great story too because they were at what Pete Townshend studio, Ronnie,
• 14:28
  Kenny and Ian just recording music there Stones Studio in Bermondsey, and Ronnie
• 14:33
  turned up and Ronnie Wood could have been in the Rolling Stones much much earlier.
• 14:39
  I love this story. Yes, please tell this one. And they
• 14:41
  were all playing together, and so Mick phoned the studio or got somebody to
• 14:48
  phone the studio and said, can I speak to Ronnie because Brian Jones was
• 14:54
  dead and they were looking for a replacement for him, and they put him
• 15:00
  onto the ron Ronnie. So he got to get to speak to Ronnie Lane.
• 15:05
  And the person who was speaking on mixed behalf said the Rolling Stones want
• 15:11
  Ronnie Wood to join them, and Ronnie bless him to He said, no,
• 15:18
  Ronnie's quite happy playing with us. He doesn't want to have anything to
• 15:20
  do with the Rolling Stone. And he turned down the chance for Ronnie Wood
• 15:26
  to be in the Rolling Stones. I wonder how long before Ronnie Wood found
• 15:31
  out the call came in. Apparently it was years years later because he said
• 15:37
  he would have gone like a shot instead. From this came the faces.
• 15:46
  I mean, Ronnie Wood is the one that introduced Rod Stewarty. Now Rod
• 15:50
  Stuart another huge ego like Steve, a fantastic voice. Oh god, you
• 15:58
  know he had two amazing singers, Steve Mary Att and then Rod Stewart.
• 16:03
  Yeah. Absolutely, but Rob I didn't know. Rod really loved playing with
• 16:11
  The Faces, and they did take off quite quickly, and they went to
• 16:15
  America, and I think that's where they really found their feet touring America,
• 16:21
  because the American audiences really loved their kind of sloppy rock and roll good time.
• 16:29
  It was just right up their street, and they grew from the appreciation
• 16:36
  I think of the American audiences. Stay with Me was a huge hit single
• 16:40
  too. It was Yeah, I mean they did. They did three or
• 16:44
  four albums. But at the same time Rod had this solo career as well
• 16:51
  that was going in tandem, and that was taking off and to a certain
• 16:55
  extent, a lot of his better work, he said, for his solo
• 17:00
  albums. So The Faces were a great band live. I mean, anybody
• 17:07
  who saw them live and I saw them at the Oval, and they just
• 17:14
  if you were going to go to one gig at the end of your life,
• 17:18
  you know, if you were going to be executed, the next day
• 17:22
  you would go to a Faces gig. They had great chemistry off stage two.
• 17:27
  Yeah, there's a quote book musically, socially and alcoholically, a meeting
• 17:32
  of souls and livers that other pants could not but envy. Yeah. Absolutely.
• 17:37
  You went there for a good time and they gave you a good time.
• 17:41
  But things go bad. Yeah, Ronnie was changing. He didn't get
• 17:48
  as many of his compositions on the albums as he would like, and I
• 17:52
  don't think he got the respect within the group that he should have had.
• 17:57
  Rod actually bad mouth the last album they did, Ula La, which had
• 18:03
  a great I mean the title track of that is a very very Ronnie track,
• 18:08
  Ula Lah. I don't know whether they were you watching Daisy and the
• 18:14
  Six Daisy Oh Yes, based on the book Yeah yeah, which which,
• 18:18
  by the way, that book is a huge seller. I mean it's millions
• 18:22
  of copies based on I think the Fleetwood Mac story. I loved it.
• 18:26
  I loved it. On the television version, they featured very heavily Ula Lah.
• 18:32
  Rod would eventually record his own version years later, Yeah, years later,
• 18:37
  because he didn't want to do it at the time and it wasn't right
• 18:41
  for Ronnie felt it wasn't right for him, So I think Ronnie Wood sang
• 18:47
  it on the album version Yeah, which I always thought was Ronnie. For
• 18:51
  the longest time, I thought it was Ronnie Lane singing. I didn't know
• 18:53
  was Ronnie would That's sang that song? No, But later when Ronnie was
• 18:59
  on his own, he would often feature that on the shows. Debris is
• 19:03
  one that Ronni Lane sings, of course about his father, about his beloved
• 19:07
  father. Yeah, that's a really touching, heartwarming track. I would love
• 19:12
  that one. I think that's on the B side and stay with Me,
• 19:17
  isn't it? I believe so? Yeah, beautiful song. Absolutely, Flying
• 19:22
  was a great Flying was the song that they released as just an initial single
• 19:26
  to introduce the band, which I wasn't aware. I never thought it was
• 19:29
  very representative of their work though more it's more Jeff Beck, like, more
• 19:33
  Jeff Beck era or something that maybe riding Jeff Beck would do. Jeff Beck,
• 19:37
  who we lost quite recently. But by the end of nineteen seventy three,
• 19:45
  Ronnie had met his future wife, Kate, and they decided that the
• 19:52
  life of the Faces on the Road was not the life conducive to family life,
• 19:57
  you know. And I think Ronnie just had had enough. So he
• 20:03
  and Kate they were expecting a baby, and they bought a farm and he
• 20:07
  left the Faces. It just said enough is enough. The Faces didn't last
• 20:12
  very long after when he left. I think they limped on for another year,
• 20:18
  but that was it. Really. Everybody said the engine had gone out
• 20:22
  of it when Ronnie left. Yeah, well, they were concerned for Ronnie
• 20:26
  too, because I think at this time now he's getting heavy into the drugs
• 20:30
  and alcohol. I think it was always more drink with Ronnie drinking. He
• 20:34
  was old school. He was more old school. They moved to a farm,
• 20:40
  as I say, and he started working on songs that were more him.
• 20:48
  You know, things in nineteen seventy three were changing. I mean,
• 20:52
  David Bowie wasn't ziggy, sardgust anymore, and there was a big pub rock
• 20:59
  revival, more country, more rootsy sort of feel to music at the time,
• 21:04
  and Ronnie was really plugging into this. All the psychedelia, all the
• 21:11
  glam rock stuff was falling away, and he started working on songs that were
• 21:18
  very very British in a way, but in a country style. I mean,
• 21:23
  his first the first release he did on his own was how Come do
• 21:29
  you know that one? Yes, this is with Slim Chance. Yeah,
• 21:32
  what would become Slim Chance? Yeah, That's what I found fascinating because I
• 21:36
  did not listen to any of that period of Ronnie and I. As you
• 21:38
  mentioned folk country. It's a rootsy sound, absolutely yeah. And I was
• 21:44
  going to ask you if that's was that more of what he wanted to do
• 21:47
  all along? I think definitely. Well, in the last few years of
• 21:52
  being with The Faces, the Faces took off in one direction and Ronnie was
• 21:57
  being pulled in a different direction. Think his englishness was coming to the floor.
• 22:03
  If you listen to how Come and the second single that he produced,
• 22:08
  which was called The Poacher. Yeah, a lovely song, and that one.
• 22:14
  You know, the bad luck of Ronnie Lane is really to the four
• 22:18
  and that one because it was released during a technician strike on the BBC,
• 22:25
  so it didn't get any television play and it really needed it, you know,
• 22:32
  it really could have. That could have broken that Slim Chance in a
• 22:37
  big way. But it just sang, you know, quietly away. How
• 22:41
  about Don't You Cry for Me? That's another one. A lot of the
• 22:45
  songs that Ronnie was doing at the time were recorded in his mobile studio.
• 22:49
  He got one of those beautiful mobile studios. It's the only financially acute thing
• 22:57
  that Ronnie ever did. Really bought the studio and a lot of stuff was
• 23:02
  recorded there anymore for any more. The title track recorded on the hillside overlooking
• 23:07
  Ronnie's farm in Wales, and if you listen closely you can hear the cattle
• 23:11
  and the light wind. It's picked up from the mics. Absolutely. Yeah.
• 23:15
  And Ronnie had this mad, mad idea that he could take a rock
• 23:19
  and roll circus on the ah. This is the tour. I wanted to
• 23:23
  ask you about this one too. Oh it's crazy. I mean Ronnie Lane's
• 23:30
  passing show. Absolutely, Ronnie would get ripped off royally by so many people
• 23:38
  during this period. I mean he he decided, right, I want to
• 23:44
  bring my music to people. I want to bring it as a show.
• 23:48
  I want comics, I want fire eaters, I want clowns. I want
• 23:53
  this to travel around the country in a big top. It's going to be
• 23:59
  great. I'm going to be in one of those gypsy carriages. My wife's
• 24:03
  going to take the tickets, and the children are going to come with us,
• 24:07
  and it's going to be great. And he got a whole load of
• 24:14
  fantastic musicians, I mean Steve Simpson, Colin Davy, so many talented people.
• 24:22
  They all traveled around the country in these old nineteen fifties caravans which kept
• 24:30
  breaking down all of the time, and put on shows in a big top,
• 24:37
  which sounds fine, sounds like a great idea, except for that summer
• 24:44
  it rained all of the time. The fire eaters were bad tempered, the
• 24:49
  clowns were trifically unfunny, and things just kept going all the wrong all the
• 24:57
  time. The generators wouldn't work, so they would have to plug into pub
• 25:03
  car parks, you know, to try and get power from any source they
• 25:08
  can get it, or the equipment was pretty pony, even though they paid
• 25:14
  over the odds for it. It didn't work. So sometimes the microphones didn't
• 25:18
  work, so you were in a tent and you couldn't hear a thing.
• 25:22
  But the big thing, the big thing is that it had no publicity.
• 25:29
  So they would turn up at towns and hadn't sold any tickets practically in advance,
• 25:37
  and just try and put on the show there. You know. Sometimes
• 25:40
  they were playing to twenty people, and this was a big show with a
• 25:45
  lot of musicians, the fire eaters, the clowns, all of this,
• 25:49
  and nobody came. He didn't have a publicist, he didn't have What he
• 25:56
  would do was he he would give leaflets to the clowns and send them to
• 26:03
  the next town that they were going to visit to hand out these leaflets to
• 26:10
  give publicity. That was their publicity. There were, you know, hoping
• 26:18
  would bring the crowds in, and it didn't work. So all of the
• 26:22
  money he'd made with the faces, and this was a lot of money,
• 26:26
  big American bucks, you know, it was gone by the end of the
• 26:30
  by end of the tour, and they limped up to Scotland and bless him,
• 26:37
  Jimmy Jewel I think it was, who was playing sax. His wife
• 26:41
  was supposed to do the takings and they just got soaped up because Ronie'd run
• 26:45
  out of money to pay the musicians at that time, so he ran off
• 26:51
  with the takings and just left a note on the door saying, goodbye,
• 26:56
  cruel circus, I've often to join the world. They never saw him again,
• 27:02
  and then they came back, licked their wounds and came back to the
• 27:06
  farmhouse in Shropshire, and that was it. The book Done Rock Podcasts will
• 27:11
  be back after this. Caroline Stafford is this episode's guest. Caroline and David
• 27:18
  Stafford are the authors of the brand new book Anymore For any More the Ronnie
• 27:22
  Lane story. You did talk about the financial struggles that Ronnie found himself in.
• 27:26
  Was that the reason why he decided to give that Small Faces reunion a
• 27:30
  shot? I mean that didn't last long. Things did not go well with
• 27:33
  that. He and Steve Marriott could not get along for that. But was
• 27:37
  it finances that was the main reason why he decided to give it a shot.
• 27:41
  I think so. He didn't really want to do it, but you
• 27:44
  know, he had the farm. He was trying to be a farmer.
• 27:47
  He had sheep. Eric Clapton, one of his friends, had brought him,
• 27:52
  brought him around to see through his sheep. He was. They were
• 27:57
  living hunt and Mouth. Atlantic Records was ready to get behind this. It
• 28:02
  could have been it could have been something that would have worked well for him
• 28:04
  financially. But yeah, things got ugly at their rehearsals. Oh, absolutely
• 28:10
  well. Steve Marriott, I think when he was young he was a magic
• 28:15
  person, a really charismatic guy. But so many things, probably mostly drugs
• 28:22
  had turned him into a different person. Even though with the best will of
• 28:27
  the world, you know, they could have had some fun, they could
• 28:30
  have done something. It just wasn't going to work. They were just at
• 28:34
  loggerheads. It ended up with fisty cuffs and everybody drinking too much and Ronnie
• 28:41
  basically getting booted out. Then their friendship for a long while. Yeah,
• 28:47
  they replaced him with Rick Wills. Yeah, like you can I know,
• 28:52
  right, Yeah, I mean that must have been the frustration for Ronnie all
• 28:55
  along. He's such a brilliant songwriter and a huge contribution to these songs and
• 29:00
  it's others that are getting credit for it, taking credit for it, and
• 29:03
  I think that was probably a frustration all along. Yeah, absolutely, but
• 29:08
  you know it was still it was about the music for Ronnie. I mean,
• 29:12
  he did say about the reunion, it's nice to go and visit your
• 29:18
  school, but you don't want to be back at school, And that's how
• 29:21
  he felt about it. It was just never going to happen. They were
• 29:23
  just too far apart back and then he did some lovely albums, fantastic albums,
• 29:30
  and he did an album with Pete Townsend. I wanted to ask you
• 29:36
  about that. Yeah, there's a clip on YouTube of their interview that they
• 29:38
  did together on television. Oh it's so sad, isn't it. Right.
• 29:42
  He's Gray Whistle quiet, pretty reserved because I think that was the week where
• 29:49
  he'd had his diagnosis, and I think he was completely in shock. I
• 29:56
  feel it's a very very strange interview, isn't it, with Pete Tonsend running
• 30:03
  his mouth off AE hundred miles an hour. He's an incredible character, and
• 30:08
  I wish I'd got to meet him, but I didn't. I had a
• 30:11
  lot of emails with him. He loved Ronnie. He really loved Ronnie.
• 30:15
  I'm a really inspiring person. But they thought, as well, well that's
• 30:21
  the other thing. So around this time his MS he's diagnosed. So with
• 30:25
  that, like you said, around that week of that interview, he records
• 30:29
  that album rough Mix that's from nineteen seventy seven. But it just seems like
• 30:33
  all these things he had, these there was a little bit of a flame
• 30:36
  there and then something would come along just to dim it out, and just
• 30:40
  something always went wrong. Yeah, he had the worst luck in the world,
• 30:47
  I think. I mean, things would just get in the way of
• 30:52
  his success and his happiness in many ways. I mean he could hardly hold
• 31:00
  guitar pick anymore. I mean with MS, I don't know an awful lot
• 31:03
  about it, but it is something that you go through bad stages then you
• 31:10
  can get a little bit better and you think, oh, no, I
• 31:12
  can find this, I can do this. And all this time he was
• 31:18
  trying to find something that would help with his condition. He never gave up
• 31:25
  to find some probably not cure. Probably he knew from his mother's experience,
• 31:30
  so there was no cure, but he could have periods where he was productive,
• 31:36
  where his life would go well again, and then it would dip down
• 31:42
  again. He started looking for help for his MS. He went to America
• 31:48
  for snake venom treatment, so it was a thing, and he did a
• 31:56
  lot of that, and he would try and change she's diet to see whether
• 32:00
  that would help. That helped for a while. He had all the metal
• 32:06
  taken out of his fillings in his teeth to see whether that would help.
• 32:09
  And nothing really gave him very much respite for any period of time until he
• 32:19
  found a treatment called hyperbaric oxygen chambers. And you go into these chambers and
• 32:27
  it's pure oxygen nearly and that will give you amount of time with no symptoms,
• 32:36
  but it was very expensive. So all one of his friends and Ronnie
• 32:40
  had a lot of friends Ronnie. Everybody who met Ronnie loved him. Ronnie
• 32:47
  managers. Of course Eric Clapton is another one there. Yeah, he did
• 32:52
  some work with Clapton. Eric loved him, Yeah, absolutely, And so
• 32:58
  they got together and they did these fantastic concerts and the first one, I
• 33:04
  think was in the Royal Albert Hall, and he had every big star,
• 33:09
  including Jimmy Page who hadn't done anything since John Barham's death. Absolutely, and
• 33:15
  I think that helped him very much, you know, because it was the
• 33:19
  first, as you say, the first outing he'd had on stage and brought
• 33:22
  him back into the world. This is early eighties, yeah, yeah,
• 33:27
  And they started to make a lot of money for MS, and Ronnie said
• 33:34
  he wanted to put that money into research to see what you could do,
• 33:38
  because up to this moment they hadn't really been and you were just sort of
• 33:43
  put into a wheelchair and told to keep quiet and keep feeding you. There
• 33:47
  wasn't very much in the way of treatment. So he was really keen to
• 33:52
  looking into ways to help other people with the disease, and they went over
• 33:58
  to America and did a lot of the did Madison Gardens, and unfortunately,
• 34:02
  also you read about in the book in the UK, he was kind of
• 34:07
  frustrated because this chamber, this oxygen chamber, just got phased out, right,
• 34:12
  Yeah, well it was. There were a few private ones, but
• 34:15
  you know, there was no treatment. So he wanted to fund that as
• 34:19
  well. But because most of the money from the concerts were made in the
• 34:23
  US, he wanted to start a foundation, you know, some kind of
• 34:30
  charity that would look after the money and put the money in the right pace
• 34:35
  for the right people, you know, and not waste all this money and
• 34:38
  goodwill that he built up. So he moved over to America and set up
• 34:45
  a company called Arms to help with the Multipus Cross, and he appointed well
• 34:52
  he didn't it wasn't just him, but on the board appointed a woman called
• 34:58
  may Nikekel's to look after the money and to fund it into research. And
• 35:06
  unfortunately she took most of the money for herself and the whole thing fell apart
• 35:15
  after about three years and she was I don't think she went to prison,
• 35:20
  but you know, it was looked into by the authorities. This was a
• 35:24
  big blow for Ronnie. Again with the bad luck. Yeah, again with
• 35:30
  the bad luck. His friends felt bad too. I think Townshend was one
• 35:32
  of the guys because they thought he was drunk when he'd be in rehearsals and
• 35:37
  he was a little wobbly, or he couldn't play the bass, or and
• 35:40
  they thought it was just because he was drinking too much. In retrospect,
• 35:44
  they'd looked back and said, oh, my god, you know it was
• 35:45
  the multiple sclerosis that was causing that. And also, like you mentioned,
• 35:50
  you could go like a month where he felt fine and people saw him and
• 35:54
  thought, hey, he's good. So it was it was difficult for those
• 35:59
  around him, I'm sure, to try to figure out what was going on.
• 36:01
  It's not something that can be diagnosed right away, I would assume.
• 36:05
  Oh, and his marriage broke up, so he moved over to America to
• 36:09
  work with the Arms organization. But as I say, that went the way
• 36:16
  that many things through in Ronni's life, and he was on his own in
• 36:22
  America ill without much hope. And I think at this point he moved to
• 36:29
  Austin, Texas, which I've never been to Austin, but it sounds like
• 36:34
  an amazing place, and I think there he found his tribe again because the
• 36:39
  music scene in Austin was so vibrant and so welcoming to him. He started
• 36:46
  doing small gigs around Austin and found many, many friends who helped him,
• 36:53
  and he was recording and performing on stage, any stage, because Ronnie didn't
• 37:00
  care where he played. He just wanted to play for many years and he
• 37:04
  was really happy in Austin. That's great to hear because and I was going
• 37:07
  to ask you that specific question because he had told News of the World quote,
• 37:12
  I look at my life, and do you know what I see?
• 37:14
  An illusion, that's all. It was a bloody illusion. He added that
• 37:16
  the money didn't make him happy, and then he finished with quote, I'm
• 37:20
  happier now than I was when I was number one, And then he added
• 37:24
  you can believe it or not, but you believe it. He did find
• 37:28
  some peace in those later years, absolutely, yeah. And he married his
• 37:32
  third wife, Susan one his health was really bad. They went to live
• 37:38
  in Colorado and he sort of bendis his days there. Yeah. He passed
• 37:45
  June fourth, nineteen ninety seven. And there's another great quote you included the
• 37:47
  book, Wayne Peru from Mojo magazine shortly after running passed said quote he was
• 37:52
  a musician who could no longer play, a singer who could no longer sing,
• 37:55
  an exquisitely gifted songwriter who doubtless had melodies through his head, but no
• 38:00
  longer possessed the means of bestowing on the world. Thankfully, though, we
• 38:05
  have quite a bit of those melodies that were put down on tape for the
• 38:07
  world to hear. Looking back on your experience writing this book with David,
• 38:13
  what stood out to you most about Ronnie's life and career Maybe something that you
• 38:16
  didn't didn't know about him. I think it was just his spirit, which
• 38:21
  was incredible, you know, it was the spirit of music. Really,
• 38:27
  it was just the music with him. Do you have a favorite period of
• 38:30
  his career for me? Personally? Its Faces with Rod Stewart. I love
• 38:34
  that raw sound to it, like you're in the room with them and there's
• 38:37
  such a great chemistry there. I think I have to agree with you,
• 38:40
  although you know, intellectually not because that's when I was most involved with him.
• 38:50
  You know. The Faces for me were just fantastic good time music.
• 38:54
  If you had to pick a favorite song, what would it be for me.
• 38:57
  It's debris, is it? I think so? Yeah? Yeah,
• 39:00
  Stay with Me is so great, But something like Debris is just so personal
• 39:05
  in that it's him, that's his voice, it's his song. That would
• 39:08
  be mine Debris or a debris. Absolutely, I'm very fond of Tin Soldier.
• 39:17
  Yeah, of that period, it was the standout track for me.
• 39:22
  And also I remember hearing on the radio and when the song comes back to
• 39:29
  you from the radio. It's kind of special, isn't it. Yeah,
• 39:34
  with Debris, you said it was about his father. Wasn't that something?
• 39:36
  It was someplace that his father took him when he was a kid. Am
• 39:38
  I right? It's a bit like a big yard sale I suppose you'd have
• 39:43
  in America. I mean, we have car boot sales here and it was
• 39:47
  a bit like that. It was just people putting their belongings they wanted to
• 39:52
  sell out on a blanket on the ground in a park or wherever they were
• 39:58
  often bomb site, selected from the wall and he would just pick through people's
• 40:04
  old belongings and buy old kettles, whatever, and he would take Runnie with
• 40:09
  him. It was like a bonding experience for him. Absolutely. Yeah.
• 40:14
  And Ichiku Park. The story behind that too. There is an actual park
• 40:17
  that inspired that. There is. Yes, there's a bit of a controversy
• 40:22
  about which one it is, but it was there were a lot of stinging
• 40:27
  metals there and that's why it was called a chick park. Anymore, for
• 40:32
  any more of the Runny Lane story, it's out now through Omnibus Press,
• 40:36
  and you can find it wherever books are sold in Caroline, Where can people
• 40:38
  find you? And David online? Social media? Any websites through Omnibus were
• 40:44
  there and also if they're looking on YouTube. We made a set of cartoons,
• 40:51
  sort of animated cartoons to go with the book. I find it fun.
• 40:55
  Yeah, okay, where can we find this on YouTube? Yeah?
• 41:00
  On e Lane anymore? But anymore, Okay, in there and you're you
• 41:04
  the animations should come up. There are three of them, just fun little
• 41:07
  animations of Ronnie's career. Caroline Stafford, thank you so much for doing this.
• 41:14
  Thanks a lot, Eric, It's been fun. That's it. It's
• 41:25
  in the books.