Life's Pleasures Quote by Ron Wood

Ron Wood flips the usual rock-and-roll mythology on its head: the idea that chemical chaos is the gateway to genius. Instead, he positions sobriety (or at least unassisted consciousness) as the more volatile terrain. It’s a sly act of self-reclamation. If the “real self” is the truly “frightening” part, then the drugs and drink weren’t the engine of creativity; they were the governor, the muffler, the safety rail.

The intent feels twofold. Publicly, it’s a corrective to a long cultural script that treats addiction as a badge of artistic authenticity. Coming from a Rolling Stones guitarist - a brand practically built on danger - it reads like a refusal to let the tabloids author his inner life. Privately, it’s a confession that’s not asking for pity. “Frightening” isn’t melodrama; it’s an admission that imagination can be unsettling when it isn’t being numbed, that the mind produces its own hallucinatory weather.

The subtext also nods to survival. Wood’s generation of musicians watched friends die and legends calcify into cautionary tales. By claiming his “real self” is more intense than intoxication, he’s reframing recovery (and aging) as not a diminishment but an upgrade: the risk hasn’t disappeared, it’s moved inward. There’s something bracing in the implication that the scariest substance is identity itself, undiluted - and that the most rock-and-roll thing he can do now is take responsibility for the source.