I had a quick shower and got dressed (black top, black miniskirt, black tights and black Dior biker boots – colour is banned when you’re working backstage) – then did my hair and put on loads of black kohl and mascara, the makeup essentials I’ve been wearing since my teens and could probably apply in my sleep. There was no time to make much of an effort with my appearance: I had to make sure everyone was ready to leave the house at 2 p.m. and get Ronnie to the venue in good time for the sound check two hours later.
By now the kids were stirring. Leah chatted to me in the kitchen while I made Ronnie’s breakfast – a cup of tea, poached eggs and toast – then took it upstairs to him on a tray. He liked simple food, but never ate much. It would drive me crazy when I’d spent hours making an amazing meal and he ended up pushing it round the plate. Recently, Kate Moss joked to me that he was anorexic …
‘Honey, time to wake up,’ I said gently. ‘I’ve brought up your breakfast.’
I got a sleepy grunt in return.
I heard the crunch of car wheels on gravel and looked out of the bedroom window to see a black Mercedes and a minivan pulling up outside the house. I waved to Gardie, Ronnie’s Australian security guy, as he got out of the Merc. Show days in London were always madness because everyone, including friends, family and acquaintances, wanted to come to the gig. Today there would be Leah and Jack, Ty, Jamie and Jody, Jesse and Tilly and all the grandkids – hence the need for the van.
As Ronnie showered and dressed, I packed his gig bag: a spare T-shirt for after the show, a towelling robe, extra backstage passes for any unexpected guests – all the essentials. For the past 20 years I’d worked as Ronnie’s PA on all the Stones tours, so the only thing he had to worry about was getting up on stage and playing the guitar. The tours had got so huge, so spectacular, that they had to be run with military discipline. It was a far cry from when I had first hit the road with the Stones in the late seventies. The 1981 Tattoo You tour of the States had been particularly insane. Fuelled by coke and a virtual pharmacy of pills, we’d stayed up for days at a time, drinking and joking and having such a laugh. My motto was: ‘If it isn’t fun, it isn’t worth doing.’ I don’t remember much of that tour, but we’d been so out of control that, when the time came for the boys to hit the road again (not until 1989: Mick and Keith fell out over Mick releasing his solo album), Mick had decided that we had to start being more professional.
‘Ronnie needs a PA,’ he’d said. ‘You’re with him on tour the whole time, Jo. You’ve got the job.’
‘You mean I get paid for going on tour? Oh, yeah!’
‘Yes, but you have to do your job properly,’ said Mick, pointedly. ‘No being late with the packing.’
I squirmed. During the Tattoo You tour we had fallen asleep following a three-day party. Security had burst into our hotel room just moments before we were due to leave for a gig to find the place trashed, with Ronnie and me passed out in the middle of it. That night the boys were three hours late and the audience were going wild by the time they finally made it on stage.
‘Don’t worry, Mick,’ I said. ‘You can trust me.’
From then on I was on the payroll – and was never late with the packing again.
I checked my watch: 1.55 p.m. Time to round up the troops. ‘Come on, everyone, let’s go – let’s go! Have you all got your backstage passes?’
The kids and grandkids piled into the van, Ronnie and I climbed into the Merc with Gardie – and we were off. From our house in Kingston to the O2 arena it was far quicker to go by water rather than by road, so the cars dropped us at the pier in Putney where a boat was waiting.
It was a beautiful ride along the Thames and Ronnie was in a great mood. We chatted about the guests who were coming that night and the plans for the end-of-show party. As Ronnie had been touring for 30 years this was just another normal day’s work for him, but he loved his job as much as ever. Getting up on that stage, doing what he did best, while night after night thousands of people screamed in adoration. Girls still threw themselves at him so blatantly that I sometimes felt I was in the way – especially now I was older. But in a few weeks’ time we would be celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of our first date. We’d had our ups and downs, but we were still strong, and as we were coming to the end of a two-year slog we would finally have some time to ourselves to enjoy the rewards of all that hard work.
As we sped down the river, though, the sun sparkling on the water, I felt a twinge of sadness at the thought of it all coming to an end. I loved being on tour and would miss everyone hugely: not just the boys in the band, their wives and kids, but the backing musicians, roadies, security guys, office and tour staff, too. We had worked together for so long, we were like one big, crazy family.
The boat docked right next to the O2, where we jumped into waiting cars for the two-second drive inside the stadium. Being part of the Rolling Stones family is to live in a magical kingdom, where everything is taken care of and nothing is too much trouble. You’re given the best tables in restaurants, you fly first class, you get the best limos to the best hotels – God forbid you should actually have to walk a few metres!
I went straight to Ronnie’s dressing room, known as ‘Recovery’ on this tour, to drop off the gig bag, organize myself for the evening, and check that everything on his tour rider (an artist’s list of backstage demands) was in the room. In the old days this would have meant loads of booze, but now that Ronnie tried to stay sober on tour it was bottles of Vitaminwater, a coffee machine and sometimes a plain chicken sandwich. I liked to make the room feel homely, so there would also be lilies, incense and scented candles.
While Ronnie hung out in Keith’s dressing room (known as ‘Camp X-ray’), I went off to talk to Isabol in Wardrobe and pick out Ronnie’s clothes for the show. First, though, I stopped off to see Lisa Portman, who looked after Mick, to find out what colour he’d be wearing that night. If he was wearing red or blue, the rest of the boys couldn’t wear red or blue. The only person who didn’t comply with this was Keith. He would just pull stuff out at random and wear whatever he pleased.
Ronnie always wore the same shoes and skinny black jeans for shows, but I selected a couple of jackets and three tops for him to pick from that night, so he’d feel like he’d chosen his outfit. On the way back to the dressing room Caroline, the makeup artist, stuck her head out of the door.
‘I need him at five fifteen today, Jo,’ she said. ‘Oh, and if you see Bobby Keys, will you send him over to me?’
‘No problem.’
This was always my favourite time of the day on tour, when the excitement and energy were growing in the build-up to that night’s show. I passed Mick in the corridor and said hi, then headed to the lounge. This was the hospitality room where all the guests and backing musicians would hang out in the run-up to the show. At the O2 the lounge took up a whole floor, as everyone had family and friends coming. Dinner was always set out during the sound check so it was ready to eat as soon as the doors opened at 6 p.m. Like a hotel buffet, there would always be loads of choice: salad, cheese, fish and chips, some sort of meat dish, a vegetarian option – and almost always an organic meal, too. I had first asked for this in the early nineties and the caterers had been brilliant at sourcing organic food wherever we had been in the world; in fact, there had been only a couple of places where they hadn’t managed it. Sometimes I brought along organic produce from my own vegetable patch, too: on one tour I smuggled a whole suitcase of new potatoes to Paris, and backstage there was a huge bowl of them, dripping in butter, labelled, ‘Jo’s Organic Potatoes’. Every single one was eaten.
It was after the potato-smuggling incident that Keith said to me, ‘The trouble with you, Josephine, is that you’re addicted to organic food.’
I had to laugh. ‘Addicted? That’s a bit rich coming from you, Keith!’
At eight thirty, with moments to go before show time, I headed down to the stage and positioned myself