Ronnie Wood leads Rolling Stones entourage in Detroit for a trip to Motown Museum

The guys in the Rolling Stones are certainly no strangers to Motown music. On Sunday, one of them got a first-hand taste of where it all started.

Guitarist Ronnie Wood, in town for the band’s Monday show at Ford Field, led a Stones entourage of about 30 people to the Motown Museum, touring the original headquarters of the iconic record company and taking photos on the steps of Hitsville, U.S.A.

“He was just like a kid in the candy store,” said Paul Barker, the museum’s director of development and community activation. “He had the biggest smile on his face the whole time.”

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Wood was joined by his wife, Sally, and a group that included bassist Daryl Jones, new drummer Steve Jordan, backup singers Bernard Fowler and Sasha Allen, and Stones manager Joyce Smyth for a private tour of the site where the likes of the Supremes, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder and myriad others made their musical magic in the ‘60s and early ‘70s.

Wood was a member of the Faces in 1971 when he first visited Hitsville, then accompanied by ex-Temptations singer David Ruffin — who had joined Wood, Rod Stewart and the rest of the Faces onstage at Cobo Hall for a performance of “(I Know) I’m Losing You.”

The guitarist became a member of the Stones in 1975, a year after the group notched a hit with their cover of the Tempts’ “Ain’t Too Proud Too Beg” — part of a Stones-Motown legacy that has included renditions of tunes by Gaye and the Miracles.

At the museum Sunday, Wood was full of questions and anecdotes, asking about specific songs and insisting on stepping into the studio control room where so many classic hits hit the tape, Barker said.

“He wanted to immerse himself and make sense of his (Motown) knowledge,” Barker said. “He did what a lot of visitors do — having through that ah-ha moment of ‘all of that really happened here.’”

At one point inside Motown’s legendary Studio A, Stones keyboardist Chuck Leavell took a seat at the Steinway grand piano (an instrument whose restoration was famously funded by Paul McCartney in 2012). Barker said someone shouted out, “What Motown song do you know?” to which Leavell replied: “Name one.”

The veteran rock pianist slipped into the familiar opening of “My Girl” as Stones backing vocalist Fowler stepped up to sing the Temptations classic — an ebullient moment that had Wood and the rest of the entourage dancing, Barker said.

“It was purely organic, and their faces all came alive,” he said. “It was just one of those moments.”

The Motown Museum is a popular Detroit destination for visiting musicians: Star guests in recent years have included McCartney, Beyoncé and Bruno Mars. The facility is closed to the public until next summer as work continues on the museum’s $55-million expansion project.

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Rolling Stones' Ronnie Wood hits Motown Museum ahead of Detroit show