He finally got the job in 1975 - ten years after keeping a diary about his early outfit The Birds, which he recently rediscovered and published. Wood tells Rolling Stone: "I knew them from afar, across the room. We tried to keep up - if they were going out for �75 a night we were getting �50. When they were getting �250 a night we were getting �100. All we lacked was a hit record.

"It all came together in the late 60s, around the inauguration of Mick Taylor at Hyde Park, after Brian Jones died. I met Mick and Charlie Watts on the periphery of Hyde Park.