Watch Ronnie Wood’s Video For Nostalgic New Song ‘How Can It Be?’
In 1965, Ronnie Wood was a largely unknown teenage guitarist gigging around London with his blues-rock band the Birds. The whole time, the future Rolling Stones member kept a diary and scrapbook highlighting his encounters with acts like the Who and the Yardbirds, though he put it away and didn’t dig it up until just a couple of years ago. He fleshed it out with some new memories and illustrations for the new book How Can It Be?, available right now in a limited edition of 1,965 copies, with a non-limited version coming soon. “It’s the diary of a 17-year-old rock & roller,” Wood told Rolling Stone of the original volume. “It was leather-bound, with gold edging to the pages, and I used to keep it quite diligently. I’d forgotten all the details!”
But his scrapbook wasn’t the only thing that Wood discovered in his archives. There were also traces of one of the first songs he ever wrote, “How Can It Be?” Below, check out an exclusive video of Wood playing a new song of the same name. “To revisit that song again, I didn’t refer to the original because I couldn’t find a copy of it,” says Wood. “But I still had a vague memory of it in my head, and I thought, ‘Well, instead of trying to revamp that, I’ll just bear what I have in mind of the original and write a new song, basically.”
Wood recently teamed up with his former Faces bandmates Rod Stewart and Kenny Jones for their first public performance in more than two decades. He also played a series of American stadium gigs with the Rolling Stones this summer. The group’s future plans are unclear, though they’re widely reported to be planning a South American gig for early 2016.