Ronnie Wood: 'The day I played air guitar for a billion people'

Charlie Watts had said: "You have to listen to this guy before he becomes famous."

And when Charlie says that, the rest of us take notice. He was the one who introduced us to Oasis and Christina Aguilera, among others.

On Charlie's say-so, we gave this little rocker his first break. When he stepped out on to the stage we were a bit surprised because he was wearing a raincoat and stockings.

Scroll down for more...

The crowd was startled too, and started lobbing fruit and vegetables at the guy. "That's the trouble with conferring a title on yourself before you've earned it," said Keith Richards.

That's how Prince became a star.

Five years later, I guested for him at Wembley Arena. Backstage, I found a little girl who looked lost and asked her if she was all right. She said she was. I said: "Do you need help finding your parents?" She said she was fine. Turns out it was Kylie Minogue.

Scroll down for more...

In New York, towards the middle of 1985, Bob Dylan rang to ask if I wanted to do a charity gig with him. "Sure," I said.

Not long after that he showed up at my house on West 78th Street to talk about what songs we might do.

I knew all of his songs but had never played any on stage. Bob was showing me chords when I suggested getting Keith involved. Dylan agreed, so I rang Keith and said: "Dylan's invited me to play some charity gig and I'm inviting you along too."

Scroll down for more...

But Keith was in one of his moods, and when he is it helps if you're living in a different country.

I said to Bob: "I'm not so sure that Keith can make it, so if you're happy to do it with just me..."

Two hours later the doorbell rang, and there was Keith saying: "So what do you want?"

I said: "Bob is downstairs, be nice to him." He followed me in and threw open his arms: "Bob...So great to see you!"

The three of us started rehearsing and got through pretty much the whole Dylan catalogue. On the day of the gig, a limo came to pick up Keith and me. Before we got in, a truck pulled up with Dylan on board – the driver was his daughter.

"You coming?" Bob asked. "We're on in Philadelphia, man."

"Philadelphia?" That was 90 miles away, but Bob just said: "Follow us."

Keith and I weren't too sure what this was all about, but we got into the limo and told the driver: "Follow that truck."

Keith looked at me and said: "This better be f****** good."

It was better than good, it was Live Aid.

Scroll down for more...

There were 72,000 people at Wembley Stadium in London, and 92,000 when we played at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, plus 1.5billion people watching on TV in a hundred countries, all to help raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia.

The show closed with Dylan, backed by Keith and me.

On the stairs up to the stage, Bob said: "Let's do Blowin' In The Wind." I said: "What?" But by then it was too late to argue. I couldn't believe it: that was the only song of his we hadn't rehearsed.

Right in the middle of it, one of Bob's guitar strings broke. I thought fast and handed my guitar to him, leaving me there in front of all those people, playing air guitar.

I was eventually handed another guitar, and when we finished our last song we turned around to find the entire cast on stage behind us.

A few years ago the Stones agreed there were places in the world we still needed to see. One was China. We had been due to perform there in 2003, but had to cancel due to the SARS outbreak. So we were determined to make it this time. Keith said it made him feel like Marco Polo.

We were criticised for performing in an 8,000-seat theatre instead of a stadium, but we played the smaller venue because we were breaking new ground in China and didn't know what to expect. Anyway, we televised it so the whole country could make up their minds about rock 'n' roll.

Mick decided we should have a special guest to duet on Wild Horses with him, so he invited Cui Jian, the godfather of Chinese rock, to join us. This is a guy who's had his songs censored by the government all his life.

In our case, the Chinese censors originally banned four of our songs: Honky Tonk Women, Let's Spend The Night Together, Brown Sugar and Beast Of Burden.

I'm pretty sure everyone got into this strange foreign foursome, though, as even the armed soldiers were tapping their feet.

During the same tour we played Rio; a free concert on the beach at Copacabana. Between 50,000 and 100,000 people could see us on stage, while another one to two million were stretched along the beach for a mile and a half. Or they were in boats. Or they were simply in the water.

No one had ever done anything this big. Rod Stewart holds the record for a concert crowd on Copacabana Beach, but he played there on a New Year's Eve when it's traditional for everybody to go to the beach.

From the minute we arrived in Rio there was pandemonium. We were locked in the hotel for three days before the show while Press helicopters hovered above. Fans would spot us when we came out on the high balcony and a roar would engulf us.

On the night of the gig, there were a million or more people screaming, shouting and singing at the four of us. It felt as if everybody in South America had turned up to watch.

The hotel was just across the street from the beach and they built a bridge over the road, straight to the stage. If we had tried to cross the street that night, we wouldn't have got there until the following Wednesday. I realised, walking across the bridge, that this was a pure exhilaration that no drug could match.

We stormed on to the stage and then, as Keith would say, 'the cage was opened'.

Ronnie, by Ronnie Wood, is published by Macmillan, priced £20. To order your copy at the special price of £18 with free p&p, call The Review Bookstore on 0845 606 4213.