Ronnie Wood has recalled the advice he shared with Amy Winehouse when she opened up to him about her battle with alcohol addiction.
In a new interview for The Sunday Times, the Rolling Stones guitarist described how he convinced the late singer, who died of accidental alcohol poisoning, to focus on music.
“(Amy) would go, ‘Oh Ronnie, what am I going to do?’ I said, ‘Look, everyone knows you’ve got vodka in the water bottle. Get it together and get on stage.’ But if you could get her up there and she stayed there, it’d be great,” he recalled of his conversation.
Amy, who struggled with substance abuse and mental illness, was found dead at the age of 27 at her home in London in July 2011.
The Rolling Stones performed with Amy at the Isle of Wight Festival in England back in June 2007 and accordingly, Ronnie noted that he wishes that he had more time with the artist.
“I’m sad because she didn’t do her full span,” the 79-year-old expressed. “It was like saying goodbye to Billie Holiday again.”
As for the Rolling Stones’s new album, Foreign Tongues, the rockers perform an interpretation of Amy’s song You Know I’m No Good, from her 2006 album, Back to Black.
And Keith Richards expressed regret for not getting to know Amy better too.
“I was always sort of, ‘Well, I’m bound to meet her down the road.’ You expect things to happen, and unfortunately no,” he added. “But that’s what records are for.”
The Rolling Stones are set to drop Foreign Tongues, their twenty-fifth studio album, on Friday.
