Its release coincident to Ronnie Wood’s half-century as a Rolling Stone, this 38-track two-CD/vinyl chronicles an auspicious career that was already significantly storied prior to its subject becoming the ever-present, invariably good-natured Sooty to Keith Richards’ reliably mischievous Sweep.
From the garage swagger of The Birds’ You’re On My Mind (’64) and grinding hedonistic freakbeat of The Creation’s The Girls Are Naked (’68), through a game-changing, bass-toting stint with the Jeff Beck Group (its surface barely scraped by the solitary Rod Stewart-propelled, bottom-heavy Zep-precursor Plynth) to a run of tracks from what many consider his career’s zenith, as Stewart’s mirror image/foil (again), both with and without the Faces.
