Rolling Stones guitarist Ron Wood, author of a new autobiography about his life in the famed British rock band, has revealed fresh details of his 1977 encounter with a "lovely, dark-haired woman" at a Toronto hotel who happened to be Margaret Trudeau, the just-separated wife of then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau.
"From the moment I met her, we spent as much time together as possible," Wood writes suggestively in Ronnie: The Autobiography, which was released Tuesday in New York.
"No one in the band judged me for what I was doing, but they recommended I be cautious. We both knew it was something that couldn't have a future, but we shared something special for that short time."
Margaret Trudeau's rowdy weekend with the Stones, an irresistible blending of political scandal and rock'n'roll debauchery, is the stuff of Canadian pop culture legend.
The band was booked for a two-show gig at Toronto's El Mocambo nightclub beginning March 4, 1977. That was, by bizarre double-coincidence, the sixth anniversary of the Trudeaus' marriage, and also the day 28-year-old Margaret decided to leave her husband and the official confines of 24 Sussex Drive.
"In the eyes of the world my weekend with the Rolling Stones was the freedom trip to end all freedom trips," Trudeau wrote in her 1979 memoir, Beyond Reason.
"No one but Pierre knew I had already left him for a temporary separation. To the rest of Canada, to the journalists and newspapers of the world, my escapade was yet another example of what a wicked wife I had become, flaunting my infidelities in Pierre's face."
But Trudeau -- despite persistent rumours over the years that she had a fling that weekend with Stones singer Mick Jagger -- denied in her book and in later comments that she had a romantic encounter with any member of the band.
She has, however, mentioned that she "bumped into Ronnie Woods" at the Harbour Castle Hotel and was invited to hang out with the band.
"I hesitated," Trudeau recalled in her book. " 'I'm not a groupie. I can't possibly.' "
But the woman Wood describes in his autobiography as "my pal" and "the world's youngest first lady" was eventually persuaded, and struck up an instant friendship with the then-29-year-old guitarist.