Ronnie Wood turned down the chance to join Led Zeppelin.
The Rolling Stones guitarist was once managed by Peter Grant who helped turn the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ band into one of the world’s biggest music acts but Ronnie admits he was unimpressed when he first heard them and was asked to join them.
Speaking on his Absolute Radio show, Ronnie said: ”Peter Grant, used to manage myself and Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart and Mickey Waller and Nicky Hopkins back in the good old days. He was behind a band that was going to be called The New Yard Birds, which I had an offer to join, and I said ‘I can’t join that bunch of farmers’. Anyway, they eventually changed their name and turned out to be Led Zeppelin, and he managed them as well.”
Ronnie also revealed that although he and Sir Mick Jagger wrote many of The Rolling Stones’ hits together, they often decided to split up the rights to the songs.
He explained: ”’I Can Feel the Fire’ is a song I swapped with Mick for ‘It’s Only Rock and Roll’, because we kind of wrote these songs together. He said ‘You keep ‘I Can Feel the Fire’ and I’ll keep ‘It’s Only Rock and Roll’, and I said ‘Oh alright then, Mick’.”
While Ronnie, drummer Charlie Watts and guitarist Keith Richards have all said they are keen to mark the 50th anniversary of The Rolling Stones this year, no official announcement has yet been made.