He is not entirely without ego, though: the book is littered with black-and-white prints of the dreaded paintings, and at least twice he tells us that hotshot jazz bassist Stanley Clarke was inspired to pick up the instrument on hearing Ron’s basswork for the Jeff Beck Group. Both times he misspells Clarke’s name. In fact this is a pretty shambolic book. Maybe his publishers thought that all his readers would be as out of it as Ronnie used to be. He is clean now, of course: his drug hell and rehab chapters are mercifully shorter than Clapton’s, but that only gives him more room to tell you about all the amazing parties: ‘all our kids, all the Stones’ kids, my best mate Jimmy White ...Cilla Black, Tracey Emin, Ronnie O’Sullivan, Tom Stoppard ...Michael Owen and Kate Moss, to name just a few’. You almost wish you’d been there.
Eric Clapton mentions Ronnie Wood twice in passing. Ronnie mentions Eric many, many times. Neither mentions Jools Holland, but Jools mentions absolutely everyone and is photographed having a laugh with nearly all of them. Conceived after a Humphrey Lyttelton gig — many years later, when he met the venerable trumpeter, he shook his hand and thanked him heartily — the former Squeeze keyboardist grew up in south-east London without a television, ‘so I was quickly exposed to other, more interesting activities’. A dozen years younger than Eric and Ronnie, he is in some ways a more old-fashioned figure than either. (He likes a good roast well cooked. ‘Still now, when I see things like pasta or rice, I’m rather suspicious of them.’) He is also incredibly cheerful. Barefaced Lies and Boogie-Woogie Boasts shows the awesome power of pure optimism: it could easily function as self-help book as well as showbiz autobiography. However you approach it, though, it’s wonderfully readable. Although he hasn’t written it alone — Harriet Vyner is co-credited — Holland appears to have the soul of a proper writer. A distinctive deadpan wit seeps through the narrative, and there’s an almost Wodehousian relish for language. His book is so much the best of the three that I’m only relieved I read the other two first. He has enjoyed his life, and you might too.
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