Because Rod and I had already toured the States and the others hadn't been there yet, we knew the kind of fun we could have there, so we went off on tour to America as soon as we could. In all, there were eleven US Faces tours.

On one of our first trips to the States we discovered that Mac didn't know there was a difference between US and UK electricity, and when he plugged in his Hammond it played in a different key from the rest of us. We laughed our way through that, became the first band ever to have a bar onstage, complete with waiters in tuxedos so that we could drink our way through the set without ever having to go offstage, and built a reputation as a solid, but fun-loving group.

For a while, The Faces were the second most successful British group in rock, after the Stones. We also built a solid reputation for raising hell, because most of the time we were so fucking homesick, and when we weren't homesick, we were sitting around a hotel room in some strange city really bored. We would be eccentrically creative in filling our time. Days off would be spent picking on each other, terrorizing anyone who had the guts to come into our room, and ornamental nude displays of women were commonplace. The 'doctor's surgery' was open and hilariously thriving. Pharmaceutical cocaine abounded. Local grog and spliffs were daily bread The air of mischief was ever present. So was the continual striving for our kind of musical perfection. Attained only by hours of dedicated attention to tempo, style authenticity and maximum impact. Genuine respect was our goal when attempting any cover songs as a tribute to the respective artists, like Booker T and the MGs, the Meters, with Al Jackson, Otis and the blues, through the backbeats of Francis Clay, Fred Below crackin' under the bass ground of Willie Dixon and the cry of Muddy Waters. From rehearsals to stage we tried to carry this musical message through.

I wanna tell you a little about what it was like between tours. I was settling into the London scene and it was nice to be home. I shared a house with Jimi Hendrix in Holland Park, on and off, for about six months when he first came to England. Actually, it was in PP Arnold's house. She rented the basement to Jimi and the ground floor to me while she was in the big flat upstairs. He was on the charts with hits like 'Purple Haze' and 'Hey Joe', and she had a hit with 'The First Cut Is The Deepest'. These were the days when she was going out with Jim Morrison and he was always bringing her diamonds. Ironically, he died a year after Jimi and at the same age. Two more guys for Keith's now infamous list of those who weren't meant to reach thirty.

Jimi loved London and seemed to fit in so well. Jimi also loved his hat, which he never took off. It was pretty sedated at our flat. He was pretty strung out most of the time, definitely more strung out than me. I was too happy buzzing on life, didn't want to fall out too much, and would have a Lude once in a while for a laugh. But Jimi was permanently on a plain that was very stoned. We were also both real busy at the time, doing gigs, interviews, coming in and out of the country, so wouldn't see each other for weeks at a time, but on those occasions we were together, Jimi was a great, relaxed flatmate.

One night, he and I were lying around in our flat in a pillow-strewn room with incense and candles burning and we talked guitars. He showed me how he could play with both hands (years later Ronnie O'Sullivan would show me the same trick, but this time with a snooker cue) and I was blown away, this was cool as cool and he mesmerized me. But the thing that struck me about him was how he had so little self-confidence. I couldn't believe it. He confessed to me that night that he hated his own voice, that he couldn't stand singing and that he wished he could just stand onstage and play. That's what he really wanted to do. Just play. I told him to stop being ridiculous and think of his voice like another instrument.

One night, late in 1974, I found myself at one of Stigwood's infamous parties, sitting in between the two Micks, Jagger and Taylor, when MT leant over and told MJ, 'I'm leaving the group.'

That's always been a sort of a cliché among musicians, because we are always saying it to each other, so when Taylor said it to Jagger I just laughed. But Taylor looked at me and said, 'I'm serious,' and just like that, he got up and left the party.

Mick Taylor was one of those musicians who stood still onstage, much like Bill Wyman. He was a fabulous guitarist with great technique, but he wasn't encouraged to write songs because the 'Jagger and Richards Monopoly' wasn't going to let him in. I know that he found the Stones too restricting and thought that if he wasn't progressing in the band then he must be regressing. He worried that he wasn't fully appreciated, never thought he was any good and never realized how great he actually is.

So Jagger looked at me and said, 'I think he is serious.'

I replied, 'Sounds like it.'

Mick thought about that for a few moments and mumbled, 'What am I going to do? Will you join?'

I answered, 'Of course I would, except I'm with the Faces and I can't let them down. I don't want to split them up.'

He said, 'I don't want to split up the Faces either, but if I get desperate can I ring you?'

I said, sure, and we left it like that. We even shook hands on it.

Several months later, when he finally got desperate, I was sick in bed in Los Angeles. The smog in those days was really awful and used to make me feel rotten. Mick rang to say, 'I'm really desperate, can you help us out?' and I said okay, not only because this was a chance to play with the Stones, but also because it would get me out of LA. He asked me to meet him in Munich, so I flew out a few days later. I was feeling closer and closer to Mick, Keith and Charlie so there were no nerves about performing well enough for them. I just wanted to see my pals. Mick and Keith were already beginning to treat me like the younger brother that I would become. I guess my whole life, right from Number 8 Whitethorn, through Rod and up to Mick and Keith I have always been playing with the older guys. From Switzerland, the Stones and I moved to Munich where I found myself in the middle of a crowd of guitar players at the Musicland Studios, including Marriott, Beck and Clapton.

Mick was multitasking. He was auditioning replacements for Mick Taylor, but doing it in his own inimitable style. What none of us realized at the time was that we had come to Germany on the pretext of auditioning but in the meantime, as long as we were there, Mick was getting us to play for free on the Stones album that would become Black and Blue.

Despite my friendship with Keith and Mick, it didn't really bother me that the Stones were looking at other people. Life goes on, I was out on the road with the Faces and they needed to find someone quickly. Steve Marriott would have been fine as a Stone, exactly the type of guy who might have got along with them, but Steve wasn't a guitar virtuoso of any kind. He was just a strummer and they needed a lead and rhythm guitar player. On the other hand, Jeff Beck was a great guitar player, but he never turns up so he wouldn't have worked out. Clapton said to me in Munich, 'I'm a much better guitarist than you.'

I responded, 'I know that, but you've gotta live with these guys as well as play with them. There's no way you can do that.' Which is true. He could never have survived life with the Stones. Some of the guys hoping to join were American, like Wayne Perkins. Keith told me they loved Wayne's style, but they had doubts about his ability to fit in. They weren't sure he could live with them, or understand their sense of humour. After all, the Stones are a seriously English band and in order to get along with them, you've got to relate to them.

Even for the English guys, they weren't easy. Keith would play with some of these great musicians, then say, 'You're an asshole, fuck off.' Or, 'I can work with you, stay.' But he didn't say it until after these guys recorded and Mick got the take he wanted.

Then it was my turn.

I walked into the studio, took one look at Mick, Keith, Bill and Charlie and announced, 'I've got a song. I wrote it and you know it. We're going to do 'Hey Negrita.'

And Charlie said, 'He's only just walked in and he's bossing us around already.'

The Stones 1975 tour was forty-six shows in twenty-seven cities across America, and opened at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge on 1 June. It was my twenty-eighth birthday and it was my debut. The Stones were from a whole different planet, a planet of themes, dreams and schemes. Their shows and posters were raunchy and suggestive.

With the Stones they had two of everything, including stages. When one stage was getting set up, the second stage was on the way to the next gig. It was all so much more professional and planned, and every Stones show was a major production. With the Faces, Rod and I and the rest of the guys would just walk up onstage and play. The only non-musical addition to the set was the onstage bar. Interviews with people like Dave Marsh from Creem would be snatched moments, taking place backstage as we were getting changed (or drunk) surrounded by the obligatory mayhem. With the Stones everything was an extravaganza, and over the years, every extravaganza got bigger and better.

When the Stones tour ended, I still had that second Faces tour to do. It was the eleventh time the group played the States and I knew all of us knew, it was going to be the last. We rehearsed in Miami, where we rented the house at 461 Ocean Boulevard. I was coming to this tour with a lot more confidence and was full of life. However, right from the start it was clear that there was too much dissension in the group for us to survive for much longer. Ronnie Lane was gone, so the chemistry was very different. The Faces had simply reached its natural conclusion and we all had different agendas. Why not a real Faces reunion? I don't know. Maybe someday we'll put it together because we'll all be feeling hopelessly nostalgic. I hope the time will be right one day. But it's lovely to know that the music we played and the hell we raised all those years ago, and that the group Rod once described as 'five blokes who shared the same haircut but only one hairdryer', are remembered so fondly by other people, not just us. Right after the last Faces tour I signed on for the Stones 1976 tour of Europe and bought a house in Malibu with my first wife Krissie. We'd been married five years and early in 1976 she got pregnant. In late October, right in the middle of our Halloween party, she went into labour. We got her to the hospital. Mick and I sat down to wait for her. And we did this for the next fifteen hours. Mick stayed with me right till the end, and it's a good thing too. I needed him there with me. Krissie went to sleep and I went home for a few hours to celebrate with our friends. Back at the house, Diana Ross asked me to show her the baby's room. Not having any appropriate gear she took me to a baby shop and decked out my boy's room. His name is Jesse James Wood.

Back in England in 1977, my relationship with Krissie was on its last legs. My relationships were passionate, romantic, even debauched up to this point but the weight of them was nothing to compare to the meaningful direction I was about to be pointed in. I was invited to David Morris' house. He was married to a woman named Lorraine and she was responsible for me meeting the woman of my life. The party was like any other apart from this gorgeous bubbly blonde who was floating around. The blonde reminded me of a young Goldie Hawn, great bottom and all, and was wearing her grannie's blue dress, a Harris tweed jacket and cool beige boots. I had to meet her and after a rejection and a whirlwind romance we moved to LA made some great firends and made our love child Leah.

When the Stones announced that we would not tour in 1979 I rang around and deliberately put together some risky pairings with musicians who had never played together before, or since for that matter. I got Keith, and this was the first time he'd ever done a tour with anyone except the Stones. I got Bobby Keys on sax and Ian McLagan on keyboards. Then I got Joseph Modeliste, otherwise known as Zigaboo. He was one of the original Meters, played with the Neville Brothers and is known for having invented the drumming style called 'second-line funk'. Then I got Stanley Clark, who is the best jazz bass player ever. We were two guitars, a keyboard, a bass, a drum and a sax and we called ourselves the New Barbarians.

After eighteen riotous gigs gigs in Canada and the States, the New Barbarians played one last time, back in England, at the Knebworth Festival in November 1979. We supported Led Zeppelin in their last ever UK gig. The band cost me a lot of cash but it was worth it. I've just released a couple of New Barbarians albums on my record label and had some amazing memories come flooding back to me.

In late 1979 when Bobby Keys arrived one night, all lit up. 'Hey man, I have made the greatest discovery. It's this thing called freebase. It saves your nose. You don't have to use your nose any more. You smoke it instead.' He showed us how to make it up and that was it for me for the next five years.