• Chutes, Polaroids, and Vandalized Rooms: What You Never Seen From the Rolling Stones Party

"There are a lot of rock stars who seem like a walking cliche. When you meet them they are much less interesting than you might suppose, because they live in that bubble and they do not do much more than satisfy their own egos. But

Ronnie Wood

seemed different, among other things for being someone who, in addition to making music, painted ".

This is how the British filmmaker

Mike Figgis

summarizes by phone

what led him to shoot a documentary like

Somebody Up There Likes Me

, dedicated to the most jovial of the Rolling Stones, a guy hooked on music and painting since his adolescence, but also

everyone the excesses imaginable

and to be imagined.

The film, which in just 73 minutes condenses a way of being and being in the world, is part of the

InEdit Festival 2020 program

, which for the first time is being held entirely online and offers 50 examples of examples on its website until November 8. the variety and quality of a genre on the rise, that of musical documentaries.

Figgis, who knows a lot about portraying excesses, as he did in

Leaving Las Vegas

with the cogorzas that led

Nicolas Cage to win an Oscar

, approaches

Ronnie Wood's

mischievous smile and

bon vivant

spirit

with the pretense of offering a direct, sincere and honest tour of his life and work.

And he succeeds, starting with his childhood in a family with gypsy roots in a London suburb, where parties where the harmonica and accordion were played, sung and

drank until daylight took place.

"You never knew which garden in the neighborhood my father was going to wake up in," Wood says with his perpetual sneer.

A moment from the documentary 'Somebody Up There Likes Me'.

What follows is a review that runs away from the chronological story and is punctuated by live performances, both archival and privately recorded by Figgis's camera.

About

his beginnings with The Birds

, his signing to play bass in The Jeff Beck Group, the creation of Faces from the ashes of Small Faces or his intermittent solo career, not only he speaks, but friends and colleagues such as

Rod Stewart, Imelda May , the artist Damien Hirst,

his current wife and, of course, their satanic majesties.

"When Ronnie came to the Stones in 1975,"

Figgis sums up, "he helped them perfect that signature Chicago blues sound, and I think they welcomed him with open arms because he wasn't going to compete with

Keith Richards,

like he did. Mick Taylor, for example. Ronnie was not a virtuoso and he felt very comfortable playing with Keith, because their musical and friendship relationship came from afar. Ronnie even looked like them physically, they

looked like brothers. "

His enormous influence on the Stones, who at that time seemed to have opted for a more psychedelic and dark image, was especially noticeable on stage, where he imposed his

"mind-blowing energy"

and his sense of humor.

In the version of

When the Whip Goes Down

that Figgis uses during the footage we see him in action, with a cigar in hand as he goes from one side of the stage to the other without stopping playing, he threatens to kick Mick's ass Jagger and puts into practice what he and Richards call

"the ancient art of weaving,"

swapping

riffs

and solos like a locomotive about to derail.

Between guitars and brushes, there is also room for confessions.

"At first his people told me: 'try not to get into the topic of drugs and excesses,' but while we were talking, the issue came up organically," explains Figgis.

And there Ronnie Wood appears, speaking openly about how all kinds of drugs "gave him the feeling of invincibility" and "were part of a ritual" from which,

after countless rehab runs

, he claims to stay safe.

Keith Richards explains it in his own way:

"Ronnie is tough as hell

. Like me. He has a great immune system and a high pain threshold."

Despite the cracks on his face, Ronnie Wood's pact with the devil seems to still stand.

And that a few years ago

they operated on him for lung cancer

and they removed emphysema.

"It's like having a letter that says 'get out of jail'. Someone up there loves me. Someone down there, too," says who has taken a few walks through heaven and hell.

"In my head I never aged beyond 29,

so being 70 (now 73) is surreal, like being in a Dalí painting. I feel fooled by time somehow."

Rolling Stone word.

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