Ronnie Wood Recalls Stones Fans Throwing Cabbages at Prince

Suppose you’re a newbie musician with very flamboyant taste, Prince, and the biggest rock band the in world, the Rolling Stones, wants you to open for them. Awesome, right? So long as you can get past the skeptical Stones fans.

During a recent broadcast of Ronnie Wood’s radio show on Absolute Radio, the Rolling Stones bass player revealed a crazy anecdote that involved Prince having cabbages thrown at him onstage when he was on tour with the Rolling Stones in 1981. Woods claims the Rolling Stones’ fans were so shocked by Prince’s colorful stage antics that they concurred to throw vegetables at him.

“I remember [Stones drummer] Charlie Watts was the first man to turn me on to Prince, he said 'Have you seen this guy, he's got potential,’” Wood said. “Even though he was dressed slightly wrong at the time I thought - he had a rain mac and stockings and suspenders on at the time - and the audience didn't really know how to take him, so he had a few cabbages thrown at him on the early Stones tours that we took him on, but now he's come on and he is such a great performer.”

Wood also had to chance to jam with Prince at a few of the “Purple Rain” star’s famed after parties. "I've had the pleasure of playing with him at some of the after-show gigs that he does, normally does three in one night when he gets going, and his band is really cool,” he said, adding that, for the most part, Prince is a “quiet and quite a reserved guy. Once you plough through his security team and get through to him he is quite a genial guy and very soft-spoken, but very talented.”