At a time when much of rock & roll is dominated by vapid slickness and commercial calculation, Ron Wood seems to have a raw, roughhouse niche all to himself. And that's just as well, because nobody fills it better.

Gimme Some Neck is the third in a series of solo records that began in 1974 with I've Got My Own Album to Do, followed a year later by Now Look. The earlier LPs were extremely pleasant surprises whose high degree of musicianship and air of after-hours casualness made for some fresh new music that sounded like the best brazen motel-room sessions. The Rolling Stones' second lead guitarist was no stranger to offhand rock after his association with the fun-loving Faces, a band in which craft and invention often took a back seat to good cheer. Not so on Wood's own releases, however, where the backup talents of collaborators such as Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, Bobby Womack, Ian McLagan, George Harrison, Andy Newmark, Willie Weeks and Paul McCartney, combined with the star's raunchy jocularity and come-and-get-me guitar, produced some spirited and original rock & roll.

The sidemen on Gimme Some Neck are typically stellar: Mick Fleetwood, Dave Mason and Jim Keltner, plus Jagger, Richards, McLagan, et al. But the wonderfully cohesive core of this otherwise untamed album is the running dialogue between Wood's guitar, Charlie Watts' drumming and the fine work of Crusaders bassist "Pops" Popwell. Watts' playing is solid but spacious as it meshes with the muscular bass to drive Wood forward. And the guitarist shines like a raised shot glass on such bawdy barroom anthems as "Breakin' My Heart," "Infekshun" and "Buried Alive," It's no accident that all three songs were written by Ron Wood. They're flatout rockers custom-made for a heavy bass drum and Wood's Dylanesque, happy-to-be-hoarse, whiskey voice. The last number features a classic last-call couplet: "You should have been buried alive/'Cause you're far too pretty to die."

Gimme Some Neck has the one take feel of its underrated predecessors, with the quality of Wood's playing ranging from barely rehearsed reliability to impetuous inspiration. When he's good, he's very good. And when he excels (his dobro work in "Worry No More"), it's again obvious why the Stones picked him to wail opposite Richards. Not only do both guitarists share a thoroughly compatible rhythmic attack and succinct phrasing style, but they also have that rarest of exciting attributes: imagination.

Wood & Company are taking a lot of risks here—winging it, some would claim—but the possibility of them ever falling on their faces is practically nonexistent because they've all got plenty to say and play to each other. The resultant jam-session-like immediacy overshadows any attendant raggedness and makes the music exhilarating to behold.

I can't think of more than a handful of other artists who could have cut a nastier, more vivid version of Bob Dylan's "Seven Days" than Wood, but the LP's true high point is "Come to Realise," a hard, celebratory explosion that should be the soundtrack for any serious binge. Like a triumphant stagger across the tavern floor, it lifts the muddled head and the greasy heart.

Is there anyone else in rock today who would dare, care or have the gut-level flair to make a record like Ron Wood's Gimme Some Neck? A few, maybe. But for all its blemishes and spontaneous slurs—and there are many—this disc has a marvelously crazy, skillful and honest sound that's great fun and sometimes downright thrilling. And, say, isn't that a pretty fair definition of good rock & roll? (RS 294)

TIMOTHY WHITE