Monday, October 3, 2011

Ronnie Wood's busy weekend: nightclub parties, George Harrison film premiere

Ronnie Wood's busy weekend: nightclub parties, George Harrison film premiere

Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood had a busy weekend in London from September 30 to October 2, 2011.

On September 30, he attended and performed at the second night of parties to launch Mark Ronson's Club Nouveau at Mayfair's The Arts Club. Ronson, Paloma Faith (who also performed at the event) and actress Gemma Arterton ("Clash of the Titans," "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time") were among the celebrites at the party.

On October 1, Wood performed with The Knights Before during the third night of parties to launch Mark Ronson's Club Nouveau at Mayfair's The Arts Club.

On October 2, Wood accompanied Pattie Boyd to the U.K. premiere of the documentary film "George Harrison: Living in the Material World," directed by Oscar winner Martin Scorsese, who is one of the film's producers. Boyd was Harrison's first wife. She also used to be married to Eric Clapton.

(Ana Araujo, who has been Wood's girlfriend and constant companion since 2010, was not with Wood at any of these events.)

In Boyd's 2007 memoir, "Wonderful Tonight," Boyd said that she and Wood became close in 1973, around the same time that she says that Harrison was having an affair with Wood's first wife, Krissy. In turn, Wood and Boyd had their own fling with each other. Wood talked about it in his 2007 memoir, "Ronnie."

These affairs are not mentioned in "George Harrison: Living in the Material World," but multiple people in the film say in a tactful way that Harrison was a chronic womanizer (regardless if he was married or not), and that it was not unusual for him to engage in wife swapping.

And on a related Rolling Stones note about "George Harrison: Living in the Material World," there is a scene in the movie that briefly shows Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger in a late 1960s interview on a news program, with a British talking head saying that the Beatlemania phenomenon came about because of the need for girls to worship love. Jagger, smoking a cigarette, has an expression on his face that barely disguises his contempt for the man's pretentious intellectualizing of fan worship.