It's Only Rock 'n' Roll

by Jo Wood

  Soon we were going to Seth’s house virtually every other day. Apart from all the free drugs, I never felt very comfortable there. His wife was a curvy blonde called Trixie, who was obsessed with sex. Bizarrely, all the tins of food in her kitchen had been relabelled with weird sexual names, such as Canned Balls and Clit Chowder. On one of our first visits, Trixie had a friend visiting who sashayed downstairs soon after we arrived wearing nothing but stockings and suspenders. She was a chunky girl, as well.

  ‘Hello there!’ I said. ‘I wish I’d known, I wouldn’t have worn so many clothes!’

  On Seth’s birthday, Trixie sneaked me off to the kitchen to show me the ice-cream cake she’d had made for him. She fetched this huge box out of the freezer, opened the lid and there was this massive pink creation in the unmistakable shape of an open pussy. ‘I had it modelled on me,’ she said proudly. ‘Vanilla and strawberry.’

  ‘Oh, isn’t that nice!’ I said. ‘I must get one done for Ronnie’s next birthday.’

  So the months passed, and Seth kept on inviting us round and then one day, as he was doling out the coke with this large silver shovel that he always used, he turned to Ronnie and said, ‘I want to be your manager.’

  And Ronnie went, ‘All right, then.’

  Just like that, he put his entire career into the hands of a man who turned out to be even dodgier than I could have imagined in my worst nightmares.

  For a remarkably long time, I continued to be a fully functioning mother alongside the freebasing. It was a crazy time, but I know I was always a good mum. We never did drugs in front of the kids, but sometimes we’d still be high when they woke up, and I would try to sneak off to bed so they didn’t see me. God forbid that they should see their mother like that. I was just so grateful that we had Jaye. I didn’t see much of my family back in the UK during this time, but I know how worried my parents were. You just had to look at me to know I was in trouble. Mum never asked if I took drugs, but she’s said to me since that she was convinced I was going to die.

  The beginning of the end came with another knock at the door in early 1981. This time it was my friend Wendy Worth, who had come to find me after I’d cancelled our last few get-togethers. A few weeks earlier I’d had a seizure while freebasing, which had left me weak and frightened. So when I opened the door and Wendy laid eyes on me for the first time in ages, she looked shocked. The seizure, combined with the expression on Wendy’s face, was the wake-up call I finally needed.

  ‘Jo, look at you! You’re so thin!’ she gasped. ‘When was the last time you went out shopping for some new clothes, or got your hair cut?’

  I tried to laugh off Wendy’s concerns, but inside I thought, Oh, God, she’s right. I haven’t been shopping in over a year. To my horror, I realized I hadn’t done anything apart from that stupid fucking drug. So I stopped. To mark a new beginning, I went to the hairdresser and said, ‘Cut it all off.’ Gradually, I rediscovered life outside the bathroom.

  I don’t regret doing freebase. It was part of rock ’n’ roll at that time, and my motto in life has always been, ‘Bring it on!’ But I certainly do regret wasting 18 months in the bathroom when I should have been spending more time with my kids. I’m just so glad that I managed to quit when I did.

  A few months after I gave up, I was in New York with Ronnie, and Bobby came over to freebase with him. They’d been at it for hours and were badgering me to join them: ‘Come on, Jo, you’ve been so good. Just have one little hit, you deserve it.’

  In the end I gave in. ‘Okay, just one little hit . . .’

  Some 12 hours later we’d run out of coke and I was scrabbling around the floor for stray crumbs. That was what the drug did to you – there was no way you could ever do just one little hit. It got hold of you and you wanted more and more and more. And at that moment I decided: ‘I will never, ever do freebase again.’ And I never did.

  15

  We were in desperate need of a family holiday. Just us, the kids, and definitely no drugs. Ronnie, Jamie, Leah and I boarded a plane with Jaye to St Maarten, a little jewel of a Caribbean island divided into French and Dutch territories that I felt sure would be far enough from the madness of LA to guarantee that the only powder we got near during our stay would be the white-sand beaches.

  For the first few days we enjoyed some wonderful family time, playing with the kids in the warm water and building sandcastles, and when the sun went down the strongest thing Ronnie and I touched was the local rum cocktail. Then one evening he suggested a stroll down to the casino after dinner. We hadn’t been there long when these two 20-something guys came over, clearly thrilled to spot Ronnie. ‘Hey, Rolling Stone!’ they cried, greeting us like old friends.

  It’s rare that Ronnie goes out without people coming up to him – one of the consequences of being in the world’s biggest rock ’n’ roll band. But while Keith hates being recognized – on tour the only time he would venture outside the hotel was at 5 a.m. when the streets were deserted – Ronnie quite likes it. He claims not to, but I know he enjoys the attention. When we were driving in the car he’d often open the window at traffic-lights so people could see him. A few years ago, we went to Ilha Bela, a tiny little island off the coast of Brazil, where not one soul cast an eye over him and he really missed the attention. I caught him staring at people in the street, trying to get them to look at him. Fame is a weird thing.

  Anyway, that night in the casino Ronnie was his usual charming self and we got chatting to these two fans – Franco and Mustafa, they were called – who offered to get us some grass. We had a smoke with them (I didn’t really count puff as a drug) and I assumed that would be the last we saw of them. But a few days later we were settling in for a quiet evening when they turned up on our doorstep with a couple of giggling girls. ‘Hi, guys,’ they said. ‘We’ve come to party!’

  My heart sank. I really didn’t want a houseful of people – this was exactly what we’d come on holiday to escape from. And Franco and Mustafa were clearly dodgy. We’ve got some Polaroids from that night and underneath Mustafa’s photo Ronnie has scrawled, ‘Would you buy a used car from this man?’

  But then Franco reached into his pocket and drew out a golfball-sized lump of cocaine. ‘This is for you, Jo.’ He smiled. ‘A gift.’

  I wanted to be good, I really did. But at that moment, in the face of 12 grams of coke, all my intentions about staying away from drugs just vanished.

  ‘Well, what are you standing there for? Come in!’ Ronnie said. I slipped the rock safely into my skirt pocket.

  We partied all night, smoking joints, doing lines and getting through bottles of rum, while Ronnie played the guitar. In the early hours Franco and Mustafa asked if they could borrow our rental car to drive the girls home and we happily handed over the keys. They reappeared a little while later, we partied for a couple more hours, and then they left. Ronnie and I were still up when Jaye and the kids woke. Jaye was such a cool New Jersey chick, as tough as anything, that nothing ever shocked her. Honest to God, I owe her so much for everything she did for us.

  It must have been late morning and I was sorting out our wardrobe, trying to get myself straight, when I heard a banging at the door and glanced out of the window to see the place was crawling with men. What the hell? Having had no sleep – and still being drunk and high – it took me a few moments to realize that it was the police.

  I heard Ronnie downstairs talking to them. ‘Hey, man, is this about the music? Sorry, we’ll keep the noise down.’

  ‘We have a warrant to search the premises,’ came a voice. ‘You have to come with us to the police station.’

  As they started to turn the house upside-down I remembered with horror that Mustafa’s rock was still in my skirt pocket in the wardrobe. I didn’t know what the police had on us, but if they found 12 grams of cocaine in our possession they would throw away the key.

  ‘I can’t go to the police station like this,’ I said, gesturing to my skimpy playsuit as one of the officers tried
to lead me out of the door. ‘I need to get changed.’

  ‘Okay, but be quick about it,’ he said – and followed me into the dressing room.

  ‘You can’t expect me to get undressed in front of you!’

  He stared at me suspiciously. ‘Okay, you’ve got one minute.’ And, to my relief, he left me alone.

  I changed into the incriminating skirt and followed the policeman downstairs, desperately trying to think of a way to dispose of the rock. My chance came when we were in the living room. I sat on the floor to put my sandals on and slipped the rock into one of Jamie’s water-wings. It was a pretty smooth move, if I do say so myself.

  As we were escorted out of the door, I shouted to Jaye: ‘You’ve got to get rid of those water-wings, Jaye. There’s a hole in one and I don’t want Jamie wearing them.’

  I could tell from her face that she knew what I meant and yet again muttered a silent prayer of thanks that we had her to help us.

  When we got to the police station, they bundled Ronnie into one room and me into another. I felt surprisingly calm: now that the rock had been disposed of I couldn’t imagine we’d be in that much trouble because, apart from perhaps a few traces of coke on the tables, they wouldn’t have found any other drugs in the house. The hours ticked past and still nobody came to talk to me. At one point I heard Leah crying and realized that Jaye must have come to find out what was going on. The sound of my baby’s cries tore me up, as you can imagine. Leah was just two. But I kept telling myself, It’s okay. This is a simple mix-up. Any minute now they’ll let us go.

  The sun was beginning to set when, to my relief, a policeman finally came to get me, but instead of setting me free or taking me to see a lawyer, he escorted me across a dingy courtyard and into a tiny square stonewalled cell. It was empty but for a bucket and a raised concrete bench. The walls were covered with stains and the stench of sewage was overwhelming. By now, the drugs and booze had worn off and I was seriously worried. Nobody would tell me why we were being held and I had no idea what had happened to Ronnie. I just sat there thinking about him and my babies, and wondering how poor Jaye was coping with this whole terrible mess.

  Thankfully, as I’d been up partying the whole of the previous night, I eventually managed to fall asleep on the bare concrete bench and woke early the next morning when a guard stuck a salami roll through the bars, with an official-looking document. It was mostly written in Dutch so I couldn’t understand much of it, but the few words I could left me numb with terror: ‘Trafficking in opium’.

  They thought we were drug traffickers. I was going to be in jail for the rest of my life! And then another, even more horrific, thought hit me: did they have the death penalty in St Maarten? I flew to the bars and started yelling at the top of my voice.

  ‘I want to see the boss! I want to see the boss!’

  ‘You – shut up,’ snapped the guard.

  ‘I want to see the boss! I want to see the boss! I want to see the boss!’

  It took a while, but I stuck with it and was eventually taken to see the police chief.

  ‘I’ll tell you everything I know,’ I said, as soon as I sat down. ‘But will you please give me another cell because that bed last night was really hard?’

  ‘Fine,’ said the chief. ‘Now talk.’

  I explained how we’d met Franco and Mustafa in the casino and that they’d turned up at our house uninvited and brought all this cocaine with them.

  ‘I can assure you we don’t usually do drugs, sir,’ I added, meekly.

  From the chief’s questioning, it was clear that they weren’t just holding us because they’d found a bit of coke residue in the house, but by the end of our meeting I was still none the wiser about why they thought Ronnie and I were drug traffickers – and they were showing no sign of letting us go any time soon.

  At least I got my wish for different lodgings. When the guard returned he took me to a different part of the prison. To my horror, he led me to an open yard the size of a basketball court that was crammed with men. It was like something out of a prison movie: dozens of guys exercising, sitting at tables playing cards, just hanging out. When the heavy gate clanged shut behind me, every pair of eyes flicked in my direction. I was the only female in there.

  I turned to the guard, horrified. ‘You can’t leave me in here!’

  ‘You’ll be locked up the whole time,’ he said.

  But I felt far from reassured as he led me through the crowds to a little open-barred cell in the corner of the yard, containing a canvas bed and a toilet. As he slid the heavy lock across and padlocked it in place, I sat down on the bed and tried very hard not to cry.

  It didn’t take long for my first visitor to arrive. A huge guy sauntered over to my little cell, followed by another, then a few more, until I could barely see out of the bars for the throng of bodies pressed in front of them.

  ‘Hey – lady.’ The ringleader knocked tap-tap-tap on the bars. ‘Hey, you hear me?’

  I nodded mutely, terrified at what was coming next.

  ‘You know Keith Richards, lady?’

  Well, that I hadn’t expected. ‘Yes, I know Keith,’ I said, cautiously.

  The guy broke into a huge smile. ‘I was with Keith on the Stones’ ’seventy-five tour!’ He offered his hand through the bars for me to shake. ‘The name’s Malcolm, great to meet you.’

  Malcolm and I became instant friends. He had ended up in prison for credit-card fraud, but was now clearly running the joint as, later that day, he managed to bring me a book, a loo roll and a bar of soap. On his next visit it was cheese, biscuits and a bar of chocolate, which I was hugely grateful for as the food was hardly gourmet. ‘Lunch was a pile of rice mixed with chips and what looked like meat lying on top of it,’ I wrote in the diary I kept during my time in prison. Just before bedtime Malcolm came back again, this time with a pillow and a towel. I slept far easier that night – and not just because I actually had a bed.

  The next morning Malcolm slipped me a pen and scrap of paper. ‘I’ll get a note to Ronnie,’ he promised. I wrote down what I’d told the police about Franco and Mustafa, so we could get our stories straight, told him how much I loved him and finished up with: ‘Destroy this after reading.’ I had clearly been watching too many thrillers.

  Malcolm got the note to Ronnie by tying it to the end of a broomstick then standing on a dustbin to poke it through his cell window. A little while later, I was thrilled to get a reply. He signed off with: ‘I love you Jo x ps. don’t eat the meat.’

  Malcolm became our go-between and sole source of information about what was going on with our case. He told me that because we were on the Dutch side of the island, we were considered guilty until proven innocent and had no option for bail. He explained that we would have to wait until we had a Dutch attorney before the legal process could start – and it sounded as if it might be a long wait. My fears worsened as I talked to the other guys. One of them had been imprisoned for eight months for having two joints on him; another had been there for almost a year after he was arrested with just half an ounce of grass. And Malcolm had been inside for two years and still hadn’t gone to court.

  ‘Jo, there’s only one way you’re going to get out of here,’ Malcolm said to me, one day.

  ‘How’s that, Malcolm?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re going to have to escape – and I’ve got a plan.’

  ‘You’re nuts – they’ve got guns! Someone will come and get us soon, I know they will.’

  But lying in my little bed at night, listening to the heartrending sobs of grown men in the neighbouring cells, I began to think that perhaps we were stuck there for the long haul.

  Little did I know that while we were languishing in what I christened the St Maarten’s holiday camp, everyone in the outside world was going mad trying to get us out. Jaye had got hold of Ronnie’s manager and lawyer in America, but then the police had cut off the phones in the house. As this was in the days before mobiles, it caused yet more delays as th
ey tried to find alternative means of communication. When my family heard we were being held in jail my brother Paul was frantic with worry and rang Keith for reassurance. ‘You can’t do anything about it, Paul,’ he said, calmly. ‘She’s most probably been gang-raped by now.’ Cheers for that, Keith!

  But, of course, I knew nothing of this. Sitting in my little cell, the hours dragged past like days. Thank God for Malcolm and the other guys, who used to gather round the bars every afternoon and ask me to tell them tales about my life. ‘What’s it like when you go on tour?’ ‘What does your house look like?’ In return, they’d bring me cigarettes, snacks and magazines; I remember flicking through an issue of People and it was full of pictures of my friends. A bloke called Doris, who was as feminine as his name suggests, lent me shampoo and conditioner. Even the guards were quite sweet, bringing me clean clothes and an apple each day. Occasionally I’d catch a brief glimpse of Ronnie being marched past to the showers and he’d blow me kisses and mouth, ‘Are you all right?’ I missed him and the kids horribly. ‘I just keep imagining what it’s going to be like on the day we get out,’ I wrote in my diary. ‘I’m gonna run up to Ronnie and hold him SO close.’

  Finally, on day four – progress. The lawyers arrived and I found out, at last, why we were being held. What had happened was this: when Franco and Mustafa had borrowed our car, they had stopped at a tree near our house and stashed a huge 22-kilo bag of coke in the branches for safekeeping. A security guard reported them to the police, who came and discovered the drugs. As Ronnie’s signature was on the car-rental document, he was held responsible for crimes committed in the vehicle.

  The following day the chief called me back to his office and I walked in to find none other than Franco and Mustafa standing there. They had apparently fled to a neighbouring island when they’d heard of our arrest, which was where the police had finally caught up with them.

  ‘Do you know these men?’ the chief asked me.