by Rock and roll stars are rarely troubled by the 10 Commandments, which is perhaps why infidelity has been such a constant, destabilising theme throughout the tenure of The Rolling Stones; the harbingers of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Looking back upon the early days of the blues-rock masters, broken hearts, shattered relationships, and rising tensions were something of an inevitability.
After all, the band members were still teenagers when they first got together, and within a few years they were being hailed as rock gods, riding high on the pop charts week after week, and travelling around the world to play concerts to thousands of screaming girls. When you add copious amounts of drugs and alcohol into the mix, the strange interpersonal relationships of the Stones begin to make sense.
Even when the band started to mature, if only a little, infidelity was still a common occurrence within the ranks of the Stones. Keith Richards, for instance, ended up together with Anita Pallenberg on a trip to Morocco, when the actor’s boyfriend, Brian Jones, was held back a few days due to illness. Arguably, that particular instance could be cited as a prevailing reason for Jones’ further descent into mental health struggles, ultimately spelling the end of his time with the band that he started back in 1962.
Some of the group’s relationship troubles were much more out-of-the-blue than the Morocco debacle, though. During the 1970s, the Stones were well and truly on the upper echelon of rock and roll stardom, and that meant they were able to rub shoulders with a broad range of other celebrity stars, even if those figures weren’t always the most trustworthy.
Namely, the group fostered something of a friendship with the legendary actor and comedian John Belushi, who was about as close to a rockstar that it was possible for a comedian to become – he had perfected the sex and drugs part of the equation, at the very least. From his time with the National Lampoon, to SNL, to the comedic mastery of films like The Blues Brothers, Belushi was beloved by millions of people, but Ronnie Wood wasn’t one of them.
The Rolling Stones’ guitarist was not particularly charmed by Belushi’s comedic talents, and tensions began to arise between the two when the Animal House actor started hitting on Wood’s then-partner, Jo Karslake. “He always used to try to get off with my ex-wife, Jo. He used to propose to her when I was asleep,” the guitarist recalled to Classic Rock in 2010.
“I’d say: ‘John, I can hear you, you fat git. If you weren’t so fat and ugly you might stand a chance.’” Ouch. Still, Wood’s disdain for Belushi didn’t stop there. “Like all comedians he was really pathetic, and he had a low tolerance to alcohol and drugs,” the Rolling Stone continued.
“Dan Aykroyd used to always put him in my care when he came to Hollywood. He used to drop him off at my house and say: ‘I know he’s safe now, I can go off and leave him.’ Then he’d go off and do his stuff.” In fairness, leaving a drug addict in the warm bosom of the Rolling Stones wasn’t exactly the best plan in terms of keeping Belushi out of trouble, although Wood did note, “The only time he didn’t do that was when he died. John booked himself into the Chateau Marmont.”
“He dearly wanted to be a rock star,” Wood concluded, and by the looks of Belushi’s performances as Joe Cocker on SNL, or as Joliet Jake in The Blues Brothers, the comedian might have made a pretty good rockstar. Either way, attempting to sleep with the wife of a Rolling Stone probably isn’t the best path to musical greatness.
