Profile: Ronnie Wood

TO CALL Ronnie Wood the everyman of the Rolling Stones is a bit like describing Lembit Opik as the least boring politician in the House of Commons; everything, after all, is relative.

But Wood is inevitably viewed in comparison with his bandmates: less sexy than Mick Jagger; not as musically creative as Keith Richards; more interesting than Charlie Watts – but a less snazzy dresser. Wood doesn't even do scandal as well as Jagger, let alone ex-Stone Bill Wyman.

When Wyman hit the front pages over his dangerous liaison in 1983, after all, it was with Mandy Smith, who was then just 13. No one seems quite sure how old Ekaterina Ivanova is, though the youngest age claimed for her is 18. She may, in fact, be 20 – though she looks much younger in her Facebook pose, wearing a short cropped Tinkerbell T-shirt and sucking her thumb provocatively.

When news broke last week that alcoholic Wood had fallen off the wagon and run off to Ireland with the Russian cocktail waitress, the consensus was that, at 61, he should be chasing babushkas, not babe-ushkas.

His wife, Jo, was reported to be ready to divorce him after 23 years of marriage, and a son was dispatched to bring daddy back to the bosom of his family – and the Priory Clinic. It is said to be his seventh time in rehab during an epic rock'n'roll life.

Ronald David Wood was born in London on June 1, 1947, to a family of itinerant canal barge operators. He and older brothers Art and Ted were the first generation to be born on dry land, and grew up on a council estate near Heathrow. The young Wood played guitar but saw his future as an artist, especially after, aged nine, he won a competition run by the popular TV show Sketch Club.

He followed his brothers to Ealing Art College, where music began to take over his life – a process that started when he saw a youthful Rolling Stones play the Richmond Jazz and Blues festival in 1964. "I thought, that looks like a good job," he later said. "One day I'm going to be in that band." That would take another 12 years in a musical odyssey that began with the Birds.

Not to be confused with the more successful US band the Byrds, the English group was initially formed as the Thunderbirds with Kim Gardner, a teenage pal of Wood's, and other college mates. Signed to Decca, they released a handful of singles before Wood and Gardner quit to join mods the Creation. Wood had to swap his guitar for a bass for his next step up, with the Jeff Beck Group in 1967, but his big break came with a return to his instrument of choice for the Small Faces.

With Rod Stewart also joining the band in 1969, success – and excess – followed. When the renamed Faces hit the road in the US they were the first band to have a bar onstage. "We could drink our way through the set without ever having to go offstage," Wood later (somehow) recalled. At the time his average day would start with eight pints of Guinness "then onto the vodka, a couple of bottles of that. Then go on to the sambuca, a bottle of that."

Despite the booze, Wood was remarkably prolific, co-writing 'Stay With Me' and other hits as well as churning out the first of seven solo albums (12 if you include live recordings), I've Got My Own Album To Do, in 1974. In between, he found time to marry model Krissy Findlay in 1971 and produce son Jesse.

During this period he also linked up with his former inspirations for the first time. He co-wrote 'It's Only Rock'n'Roll (But I Like It)' with Jagger in 1973 and, while still a member of the Faces, filled in when Mick Taylor left the Stones in 1975. The move became permanent in February 1976 after the Faces broke up, but curiously Wood remained on a salary with the Stones for 14 years, only being made a full financial partner in 1990.

Not that Wood, now worth an estimated £70m, seems to have lacked funds. By the mid-1970s he had put so much cocaine up his nose that he had a plastic septum fitted. The impact this had on his private life can only be imagined, and he and Krissy divorced in 1978. A year later he started 'freebase' smoking cocaine and continued doing so for five years.

In his autobiography, Ronnie, Wood often plays down his fame. He claims that when he met Jo at a party she did not recognise him or his name, even though she was a Stones fan. He had to track her down to the Woolworths she worked in the next day to persuade her to go out with him. They married in 1985 and would eventually add Leah and Tyrone to the family, as well as Jamie, Jo's son from an earlier relationship.

Wood's second marriage became regarded as one of the most secure in show business, but it did not stop the partying. Wood remained a notorious boozer, even as his prolific output continued, from working with David Bowie and Eric Clapton, to joining Bob Dylan, with Keith Richards, on his Live Aid set in Philadelphia in 1985.

The Ronnie Wood Band also toured in 2001 and 2002, with Guns N' Roses axeman Slash and Andrea Corr in the line up, and Wooden Records was launched in 2005 to release material from his old touring band the New Barbarians. But by now the Stones were also engaged in a series of lucrative comeback gigs.

After one tour in 2003 Wood was rumoured to have given up booze – and yet he was back in rehab in June 2006. "I just don't think my body can handle it any more," he said. "I did try a little drink a while back and I was actually physically ill. So that's it. I'm over it. I am." The same year, Jo said the cleaned-up Ronnie had become a fan of her organic cooking – and even her body lotion range. Could it be true? Had this Rolling Stone gathered some moss-extract anti-wrinkle cream?

Wood also spoke of spending his down time in his hotel room after gigs engaging in his first great passion, painting. Art had always remained a key part of his life: he co-owns Scream Gallery in London with his sons, and his work hangs in various galleries and, thanks to an Andrew Lloyd Webber commission, in Drury Lane Theatre, London.

But art also played a part in Wood's downfall last week. Ivanova – whose father Sergei is also an artist (though about 10 years younger than Wood) and who lives on the Orkney island of Papa Westray – is said to be the subject of Photography Nude 11. This painting, by Wood, was found on sale for £8,000 in Gallery Number One in Dublin – just 20 miles from the County Kildare bolthole the unlikely couple fled to.

It is also the Wood family's second home, and this may have been the insult that finally made Jo lose sympathy for her devil of a husband. At least he seems to have known the right answer when she gave him her ultimatum: it's the Priory or the by-way.

You've been Googled

• Wood once house-shared with Jimi Hendrix, who he described as a "great, relaxed" flatmate.

• Wood Appeared in The Last Waltz in 1976 with the Band and others. He also had a cameo as a gatecrasher in the 1984 teen comedy The Wild Life and played an art gallery visitor in the steamy 9 Weeks.

• He created an old-style pub in an outbuilding at his £3m County Kildare home in memory of his father. He called it Yer Father's Yacht, and said it "became my creative hub".

• In October 2007 Wood appeared on BBC's Top Gear, achieving a lap time of one minute, 49.5 seconds in the traditional celebrity challenge.

• "If Ronnie didn't have such a good diet he wouldn't be in such good health. He might not even be here because he has abused his body a lot... really, a lot." – Jo Wood.

• "You never think you are going to lose your gorgeous girlfriend to a wrinkly old man – but that's exactly what happened." Ekaterina Ivanova's boyfriend Chris Kiely, 26, last week.