Ronnie Wood: Fearless: The Anthology 1965-2025

If the Ronnie Wood anthology Fearless proves anything, it is that the predominant virtues of the peripatetic British musician are largely intangible. Not that the guitarist, songwriter and singer is not talented in those various roles, but that his most salient attributes, at least as depicted here, as those of a convivial individual who invariably contributes to a nurturing atmosphere in a musical setting.

Above all, the man known as 'Woody' serves the songs as well as his co-musicians. In doing so he refuses to take himself too seriously and that attitude becomes infectious. Clocking in at roughly two and a half hours, that extended playing time effectively spans a half-century of the man's work to provide an exhibition of those virtues in a wide range of stylistic settings. Much of it is rough-hewn to say the least, but none is over-produced for the sake of commercialism.

On the contrary, The Anthology 1965-2025 constitutes an earthy—and occasionally homely—blend of rock, R&B and blues with touches of country and reggae, which supplies an accurate sampling of Wood's musical taste. The scope of entries is more expansive than the list of credits, dating all the way back his earliest ensembles (The Birds' Yardbirds-derivative "You're On My Mind," and The Creation's quasi-psychedelic Merseybeat "The Girls Are Naked") through co-starring roles in famous ensembles (Faces, The Rolling Stones) plus seven (!) albums under his own name.

As a reliable foundational figure in these various alliances (including one-offs like Eric Clapton's Rainbow Concert (RSO Records, 1973), Wood instinctively knows his place. For instance, he abandoned his main axe to that point, namely electric guitar for the bass, when he joined Jeff Beck's original group (alongside Rod Stewart, as lead singer, and session man extraordinaire Nicky Hopkins on piano). Even as the sole cull of its kind, "Plynth" is an exhibition of that band's rightful stature as one of the landmark hard/heavy rock units of its day.

Wood assumed his original instrument gain when he and 'Rod The Mod' joined the remnants of the Small Faces, forging a sound often termed as 'faux Rolling Stones' with numbers like "Had Me A Real Good Time." After that, as a third generation member of the aforementioned rock and roll icons, Wood followed in the fretboard footsteps of the late Brian Jones and the erstwhile Mick Taylor (who had played with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers just prior to his stint with 'the greatest rock and roll band in the world.'

In accepting that hefty responsibility, Wood not only honed his skills on acoustic and electric guitars, but furthered his versatility to include lap and pedal steel alongside his previously-demonstrated affinity for the slide/bottleneck technique. Ever so crucially too, 'little Keith' (as was often described) nurtured the solidity of the iconic British band at a time when, circa Black And Blue (Rolling Stones Records, 1976), there were some definite fissures in their bond.

The dance-oriented likes of that longplayer's "Hey Negrita" illustrate the precarious balance of styles in the latter-day efforts of the Mick Jagger/Keith Richards-governed ensemble, especially as it contrasts a recognition of the Stones' roots in the blues—with which Wood is legitimately familiarity—presented by "Black Limousine" from Tattoo You (Rolling Stones Records, 1981).

Wood blossomed as a songwriter working with Faces and collaborating on Stewart's solo albums. Consequently, there is as much certifiable evidence of craft in the self-effacing likes of "Ooh La La" as in the picaresque "Every Picture Tells A Story" and those efforts—especially RW's lead vocal on the former—doubtlessly fortified his confidence in bringing those talents to bear on solo projects like I've Got My Own Album To Do (Warner Bros., 1974), specifically in the form of "I Can Feel the Fire" (with Jagger singing along) and "Mystifies Me."

When taken en toto, in fact, the array of names peppering the 38 tracks of The Anthology 1965-2025 threatens to overshadow Wood's own. Nevertheless, two partnerships with Stones' vocalist Bernard Fowler, "I Gotta See" and "Somebody Else Might," are ample evidence of the reciprocal creative charity 'Woody' engenders. As is his duet with The Pretenders' leader Chrissie Hynde on "A Certain Girl," itself a product of an Allen Toussaint songwriting pseudonym that is one of four previously unreleased tracks populating the second disc.

Oddly enough, there are no culls on here from the ad hoc ensemble known as the New Barbarians (assembled around the time of Richards' late-'70s Toronto trial). Yet in the end, that is a minor omission because this cross-section of Wood's work otherwise functions akin to a time capsule sourced from one of contemporary rock's most fertile periods.

In contrast, he graphic design of this slimline package is oddly generic, particularly inside the double-fold, markedly missing any of the original paintings Wood has come to pride himself on of late. As a result, the absence of such material begs some question of how involved the artist himself was in curating this compendium, while, at the same time, the lack of detailed annotation of personnel and/or a specific assignation for the audio remastering at Abbey Road Studios, leaves this collection short of definitive.

In writing his extensive liner notes, music journalist and author Paul Sexton's laudatory prose vacillates in tone between the hyperbolic and casual. Ultimately, though, that is very fitting: the alternating brilliance and nonchalance of the music he is describing mirrors Wood's often ineffable charms as a participant therein.

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