The story of Rory Gallagher's Rolling Stones audition: "All of the music papers were full of speculation. It's a bit like when the Pope dies and you get pictures of all these people who might succeed him"

Rory Gallagher performs on stage at Reading Festival, United Kingdom, 16th March 1975.

Ronnie Wood was sitting on a sofa between Mick Jagger and Mick Taylor when the latter leant over and informed the former that he was leaving The Rolling Stones. It was December 1974, at a party Robert Stigwood was throwing for Eric Clapton, and Jagger was dumbfounded.

“Mick said ‘You’re joking?’,” recalled Wood on The Ronnie Wood Show on Absolute Radio in 2013. “And Mick [Taylor]  said, ‘No I really am’. And he got up and left and Mick turned to me and said, ’What am I going to do? Do you think he was serious?’. I said ‘I think he was, Mick’. Mick said, ‘Would you join?’. I said ‘Well yeah, but I don’t want to split The Faces up’. And he said, ‘No, nor do I’. And I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, ring me up if you get desperate’.”