Ronnie Wood emerged from his Irish bolthole for crisis talks with his son
Jessie at the exclusive K Club last night.
It is the first time the 61-year-old guitarist has been seen since he 'battened
down the hatches' at his £3million country mansion in County Kildare.
He is living there with 19-year-old Kazakhstan waitress Ekaterina Ivanova and,
say friends, is struggling to control his alcoholism.
In a series of emotional phone calls, Jo Wood, 53, has asked the Rolling Stone
to return home but he has so far defied her pleas.
His family are desperate for him to return to London and check in to rehab but
believe it will be hard to persuade him to leave.
He has his own private pub in the sprawling grounds of the home, meaning he has
a huge quantity of beer, wine and spirits available
A friend of the family said: 'Ronnie battened down the hatches at his home in
Ireland. His wife refused to talk about their marriage until he comes home and
gets himself sober. He is drinking heavily.
Jo has managed to have brief conversations by phone but until he stops drinking
nothing will get sorted.
'Nobody knows when he is likely to come back to London. The family are all very
upset.
'Ronnie is an alcoholic and it is a progressive illness. Every time an
alcoholic falls off the wagon it is worse than the previous lapse. This is a
new low for him.'
While the guitarist's children Tyrone, 24, Leah, 29 and Jamie, 30, are still in
London, his wife has escaped to a seaside house to try to come to terms with
the situation.
Wood is said to be downing two bottles of vodka a day with Miss Ivanova. His
drinking binge has now lasted ten days.
Miss Ivanova has been posing for Wood, who is a well- established artist, in
his private studio.
The pair met in London at an escort bar in Soho in April.
Their liaison is said to have left his wife devastated, prompting her to make a
series of increasingly angry phone calls to her husband over the past few days.
In his autobiography Ronnie, published last year, the Rolling Stone details his
battle with the bottle and tells how he designed his pub in memory of his
heavy-drinking father, Archie.
Wood senior was regularly found asleep in gardens and when the family left
their former home the new owners discovered 1,700 empty Guinness bottles.
Wood junior wrote: ' When I bought my house in Ireland, I redesigned one of the
outbuildings to make it just like an old-fashioned pub.
'The sign that hangs above the door is a painting of Archie (dad) wearing a
naval uniform with the name of the pub in big bold letters, Yer Father's Yacht.
'My brother-in-law Paul very kindly painted it while I was busy breaking in the
bar. On the other side it reads "Purveyors of fine wines, beers and spirits for
absolutely nothing".
'Yer Father's Yacht became my creative hub. David Bowie gave me a book entitled
Living Sober, which I immediately put on display behind my bar.'
He added: 'I'll always battle the demons, but right now I seem to be winning.
'I don't feel my age - thank God. Instead I feel alive, free and at times like
the naughty boy I was growing up.'
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