ROD & RON: Never A Dull Moment

(Picture by Barrie Wentzell)

It would have been 46 years ago this week when I last had meaningful conversations with Rod Stewart and Ron Wood. Both were in New York together but separately, Rod touting his forthcoming LP Smiler and Ron his first solo outing I’ve Got My Own Album To Do.

         In a seemingly pointless spirit of competition, both record companies – Mercury for Rod and Warners for Ron – hosted ‘invitation only’ lunches in posh restaurants for their artists on the same day, thus creating a dilemma for me. Lunch with Rod or lunch with Ron? I opted for Ron, solely because I had an interview scheduled with Rod the next day and needed to write something about Ron too.

         Honest Ron was a great luncheon companion, hilariously indiscreet about the rivalry between him and his Faces pal with a similar haircut. There weren’t many of us around the table and he kept us all entertained with his banter, a bit of cheek, a bit risqué, a bit cor-blimey guv. The idea was that he was promoting his solo LP but I don't recall him saying much about it.

         Mick Taylor had yet to leave the Stones so the issue of his replacement wasn’t on the table, but like pretty much everyone else observing the trajectory of the Faces I wasn’t surprised by the vagueness with which he spoke around the subject of their future. “Don’t ask me?” he said. Which rather begged the question, well who do I ask? Rod didn’t seem to know either.

         Ron was more affable, a good deal friendlier than Rod, and I turned what he had to say into a few paragraphs in my weekly New York news column. Rod, on the other hand, required something more substantial.

         When I arrived in his expansive hotel room – The President’s Suite no less – the following day it seemed to me as if he was on the defensive. “What do you wanna know?” he demanded when I settled down and switched on my cassette recorder. I think he sensed that the tide was turning against him, that the unanimous acclaim he’d enjoyed during that glorious run of solo LPs, beginning in 1969 with An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down up to 1972’s Never A Dull Moment, might be drawing to a close. Perhaps in his heart of hearts he knew that Smiler wasn’t in the same league.  

         Rod’s attitude towards the press had changed. In the past he’d been chatty, outgoing, but now he was behaving as if he expected the interview to turn into an argument. Maybe he didn’t trust us writers any longer. Still, I managed to scratch together a 1,500 word piece for the following week’s Melody Maker, dated August 31. It was headlined ‘I Dream Of A Solo Concert’, a dream that would become reality before long. Here it is:

“ANYTHING I say is not meant to be a blot on anyone’s character... or trousers.”

         Rod Stewart, Old Spikey himself, settled into position on the double bed in the St Regis Hotel President’s Suite, running his thin fingers through his hair and occasionally admiring his Spanish tan in one of the two mirrors that the hotel provides for Presidents and others whose bank balance enables them to afford such luxury.

         Rod, whose reputation for being a trifle outspoken is widely known, prefaced this interview with the above remark. He’s got into bother before through opening up a little too loosely on subjects he feels strongly about. A rebel who can’t be gagged, but who often regrets what he’s said earlier.

         The real reason for Rod’s decision to speak out again is the release of his fifth solo album (or sixth if you count Sing It Again). It’ll be out next month, probably September 20, and the title is Smiler.

         The lengthy delays that have preceded its release are due mainly to litigation regarding his contract with Mercury Records, a subject which he’s loth to discuss at present.

         Either way, the delays have rattled him considerably.

As usual it’s an album of Rod’s own compositions with Ronnie Wood, personal favourites from days gone by and a few contributions from friends. This time around, the friends include Elton John and Paul McCartney.

         Rod is in America is complete the mastering of the record, and here’s a rundown on the, as yet unheard, tracks.

         Side one opens with ‘Sweet Little Rock And Roller’, the Chuck Berry song, followed by ‘Lochinvar’, a short linker, ‘Farewell’, a Stewart/Quittenton song, ‘Sailor’, a Stewart/ Wood song, ‘Bring It On Home’, the old Sam Cooke tune and ‘Let Me Be Your Car’, written for Rod by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. This song was to have been on Elton’s  Yellow Brick Road.

         Side too opens with the Goffin/King song ‘Natural Man’, followed by ‘Dixie Toot’, a Stewart/Wood tune, ‘Hard Road’, an instrumental by Quittenton of ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face’ from My Fair Lady, ‘Girl From The North Country’, the Dylan song, and closes with ‘Mine For Me’, written for Rod by Paul McCartney.

         The sleeve is a red tartan pattern and the inside depicts all those involved in the production – about 50 people. There’s a key to say who they all are.

         “It’s been finished for five months,” growled Rod, rolling over on the enormous bed and ordering tea with sugar. “Plus the fact that I’m a little bit slow. The album didn’t take all that long to record, it was just the time taken in getting everyone together.

         “For six months there’s been a problem with the record companies about who was releasing it, but it’s all been sorted out now. It comes out in England on September 20, thank goodness.

         “Yeah, I’m happy with it. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t, It’d have been scrapped by now. Made it all outside the country for a change... Frankfurt, Brussels, everywhere. It seems donkey’s years ago since I started, but it must have been just before last Christmas. I made 17 tracks altogether and picked out the best ones.

         “There’s a couple of numbers that I’ve done that I’ve always wanted to sing. ‘Natural Man’ is one and ‘Bring It On Home’ is another. Paul McCartney came along to sing his number with me – not a bad singer either, that Paul.

         “He says he wrote it specially for me but I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like a cast-off. He mentioned something about it being for Red Rose Speedway, but I don’t care. It’s a fucking good track either way. Elton’s done one for me too. Bernie said it was for me ‘cos it was a good rock‘n’roll number and the only person who could sing it properly was me.

         “I know for a fact that Elton wanted to record that one himself ‘cos he kept saying if I didn’t want to do it, he’d do it himself. He plays the Joanna and sings it with me.”

         Rod walked towards the window and gazed over Central Park. “Nice ‘ere in New York innit,” he said. “I’m ‘ere until Friday. It’s a sort of promotional visit, ‘cos I ain’t done any press for ages. When I’m touring I like to look after my voice and talk as little as possible. Then I’m off to LA to finish mastering the album and I’m making a little documentary film there with Russell Harty.”

         Time, I thought, to dig a little deeper. Is work progressing on another Faces album?

         “No, no way. I don’t know whether we’re gonna do another Faces album or not. I don’t know what the position is there. We haven’t talked about it at all.

         “Kenney Jones has gone off and made a single of his own. He’s a good little singer, y’know, but I don’t know what’s going to happen with the Faces recordings. I know we’re staying together as a band and that’s all that counts as far as I am concerned.

         “Ronnie’s got his own solo album and it wouldn’t be any big hardship if we just got together to play each other’s stuff. As long as we stay together as a band, we’re OK. There’s no backbiting going on. We still get along with each other very well.

         “I’d say I put more work into the Faces’ albums than I do with my own. They’ve always been a bigger headache. Putting this latest album together was a piece of cake compared to a Faces’ album. It’s the first time I’ve ever recorded more tracks than I wanted.

         “Actually it’s more of a singing album than anything else. I felt it was about time I called the tune and sang what I wanted to sing, even though maybe some people might not like them as much.”

         There are no immediate plans for the Faces to tour America, even though they’ll be appearing in Europe soon. Rod likes playing England better than anywhere else, but right now he’s uncertain about the Faces’ popularity in America.

         “Two years ago we were Jack the Lads over here, but I don’t know how strong we are now. We’ll have to see how my album and Woody’s album do first. Everybody tells me fans are fickle, but I don’t think so – not for the brand of music we make anyway. We start a British tour on November 5, and that I really am looking forward to.”

         Was there any chance of Rod following in the footsteps of other rock stars and leaving Britain because of the tax situation?

         “Everybody’s talking about it, but nobody’s actually doing it yet,” he said. “I think they ought to, though. The Government thinks they’ll tax us bastards right up to the hilt because we won’t leave, but that’s wrong because I will if I want to. It’s so bloody unfair.

         “They’re thinking of a wealth tax now and that’s bloody criminal. That’s like, for a young man, paying your death duties before you die. What with a 90 per cent tax ceiling, it’s just not worth living in England any more.

         “I’m all for paying taxes. There’s nothing wrong in that. I’ll pay my dues, but I’ve got one shot at the big ball for all my life. I can’t do anything else but sing and maybe play a bit of football.”

         Conversation switched to the current huge package tours that have been travelling around America recently, the come-back of Dylan, CSN&Y and Clapton.

         “I’ve never thought of Dylan making a comeback. I think it’s detrimental to say they’re making a comeback. Out of the three I would say Clapton was the only one making a real comeback ‘cos he did have a lay off and wasn’t very well for a few years.

         “Dylan’s music has matured and people have matured with him. He hasn’t dropped out anywhere along the line and you can’t expect the guy to be writing songs now like he was when he was in Greenwich Village, can you? I always think comebacks are for really old geezers.”

         Did Rod miss Ronnie Lane’s presence in the Faces?

         “I really missed him at the outset but I don’t any more. He’s found what he wanted and that’s peace of mind and not going through the same old routine.

         “I don’t think it is a routine, though. I enjoy it, coming here and travelling there but Ronnie got fed up with it. It changed his lifestyle so he decided he wanted to change his band.”

         Which promoted me to ask about a change for Rod. “I dream about a solo concert of my own someday. There’s gotta be a chance of it happening with all the people that appear on my albums. I’ve asked them and they all say I ought to do it someday. Mmmmm, lovely acoustic guitars behind me.”

         Rod’s eyes glistened at the thought. “I’ll get round to it. It’s just a question of time. The longer I wait the better it’s going to be when I do it anyway.”

YOU’RE IN MY HEART – ROD STEWART with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

On the opposite side of the road to where I get my hair cut in the Surrey village of East Horsley is a Woking Hospice charity shop where I used to take resilient clothes that no longer fitted our kids. I sometimes buy used CDs there for just £1 each and one day last week I came across this, still in its cellophane wrapping, ie brand new, which is most unusual and wouldn’t have pleased Rod had he been shopping there for cut-price CDs too.

         I used to love Rod Stewart’s music. Gasoline Alley was a fixture on my turntable around the time I joined Melody Maker in 1970, swiftly followed by Every Picture Tells A Story, the album that personifies Rod in his pomp. I tended to prefer his folksy songs over the rock’n’roll covers, songs like ‘Only A Hobo’, ‘Reason To Believe’ and, my all time Rod favourite, ‘Mandolin Wind’, but those first four solo albums were all gorgeous, simply devoid of duff tracks, and it seemed to me that his use of mandolins echoed the pastoral feel of The Band, rivalling even the exquisite ‘Rockin’ Chair’ from their second album. Rod wasn’t prolific but what he did write was thoughtful, homespun and, like the covers, always in the best possible taste.

         I just about wore out his first four solo albums and while the first three Faces albums could be a bit patchy the best tracks were as good as Rod’s. Things started to slip with Smiler (1974) where quality control was lacking somehow, and although the love songs he wrote on subsequent LPs found a ready audience with his female fans I lost interest as he morphed into a flashy rock’n’roll playboy, all loud clothes, yellow Lamborghinis and leggy blondes.

         I met him several times in the early seventies. He’d paid his dues the proper way, rising up from the clubs, but he was a bit of a cocky bugger, a sort of cross between a cockney Jack the Lad (which he wasn’t, of course) and a canny Scotsman (which he was, sort of) whose wallet remained firmly shut at all times. I’d been a big supporter of The Faces, writing glowing reviews of shows in both the UK and US, and he seemed well disposed towards us on Melody Maker, not least because he won the Top Male Singer award in, I think, 1972, and came to the presentation. He liked to be the centre of attention. He wallowed in applause. I suppose he had every right to be a cocky bugger. 

         He had a house at Windsor around that time and occasionally dropped into the Fox & Hounds, a pub in Englefield Green, near Egham, where I once lived and still had friends. I used to go back there from time to time to see them and one night I was there when Rod turned up. He wasn’t expecting to see me and looked at me warily, as if I was stalking him, which I wasn't of course. Unlike in rock environs, chance encounters between music writers and rock stars like this, in out of the way places, can be slightly awkward, as was this. I watched as people bought him drinks and he invariably asked for a large brandy, but he never bought one back which caused a bit of muttering amongst the locals. I suppose he was used to lackeys buying him drinks and had difficulty adjusting to a different environment. That night when he left the pub he found he’d left the lights of his Lamborghini on and the battery was flat, so he went back into the pub and asked for a push. No one volunteered and there were a few smirks but I felt a sort of filial duty to someone from what was now my world and went outside to take a look. Of course there was no way in hell that one person could push a Lamborghini, even a yellow one, so he had to get a cab back home and, presumably, return the following day with a mechanic, all of which would have cost him considerably more than a round of drinks. 

I think there was a touch of the emperor’s new clothes about the way in which his relationship with the press deteriorated. He didn’t like criticism. The last time I interviewed him was in a big hotel suite New York in 1974, when Smiler came out, and he was on the defensive, perhaps sensing that the tide was turning and the goodwill he’d enjoyed from the press was at an end. In the past he’d been chatty, friendly, but now he was behaving as if he expected the interview to turn into an argument. “Well, what do you want to know?” he asked when I switched on my tape recorder. He was unnecessarily abrupt, almost aggressive, and I’d been a supporter. He didn’t trust us writers any longer.

         The only Rod Stewart music I’ve listened to in the past 30 years has been the triple CD-set Reason To Believe which includes his first five solo LPs and a few bonus tracks. The acquisition of You’re In My Heart last week wasn’t an introduction to later songs, of course, because they’re everywhere and, truth to tell, the orchestration suits songs like ‘Tonight’s The Night’ and ‘You’re In My Heart’. ‘Maggie May’, which opens the set, is the only Rod standard with newly recorded vocals. It begins serenely, the first verse taken as a prelude, before settling into the familiar rhythm as the morning sun shows your age. Drums aside, the backing track from the song that topped the UK and US simultaneously is replaced by chunky strings and not until the slide guitar solo and a trace of mandolin during the false ending are we back in the summer of 1971. It is pleasing to note that Rod’s pipes are up to a more than passable reproduction of his vocal from that year.

         Rod duets with Robbie Williams on ‘It Takes Two’, turning it into a full tilt rock’n’roll song in which the strings are largely drowned out by electric guitars. At an overlong 4.27 it isn’t a patch on Marvin and Kim Weston – their classic version was only 2.56, incidentally – the Motown spring is missing, and couldn’t he have found a girl to sing with? Tina? Adele? The perfect fit would have been Amy Winehouse of course.

         Thereafter, until the final track, we are in familiar territory, Rod evidently having decided it was unnecessary to record new vocal tracks to ‘Sailing’ (cheesier than ever), ‘Reason To Believe’ (delightful), ‘Handbags And Gladrags’ (lovely), ‘Tonight’s The Night’ (ok, if you like that kind of thing), ‘I Don’t Want To Talk About It’ (ditto), ‘First Cut Is The Deepest’ (nice but no improvement on the [wonderful] original), ‘You’re In My Heart’ (see ‘Tonight’s…’), ‘I Was Only Joking’ (ok, but a bit long), ‘Young Turks’ (surprisingly rhythmic), ‘Forever Young’ (schmaltzy, with Rod’s amended Dylan lyrics still an irritation), ‘Rhythm Of My Heart’ (forgettable) and ‘Have I Told You Lately’ (lovely, though I prefer Van). The final track is a new song, ‘Stop Loving Her Today’, a tender weepie about blighted romance in the style of his arm-waving ballads.

         As a general rule overdubbed strings on existing vocal tracks seem to me like extreme repackaging. I heard – but didn’t buy – some of the Elvis tracks that were orchestrated a year or two ago, largely because it was mostly ballads and my Elvis is rock Elvis. Mostly out of curiosity and because I’m a big fan, I bought the Beach Boys with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra CD but, in truth, didn’t think the orchestra added much to Brian Wilson’s superb productions anyway. Rod’s excursion into this world, perhaps predictable after his Great American Songbook albums, is the best of the three and for £1 at a charity shop I’m not complaining. But where was ‘Mandolin Wind’?

IAN McLAGAN RIP - Part 2

Part 2 of the extract from Had Me A Real Good Time, Andy Neill’s biography of The Faces, detailing Mac’s early career and his arrival in The Small Faces.

Like many British R&B groups of the period, the Muleskinners were given the unexpected but nerve-racking opportunity to back several of their heroes. In September ’64 a visiting blues package was brought over featuring Sonny Boy Williamson and Little Walter. As well as these two greats, the Muleskinners also backed Howlin’ Wolf. “We played with the Wolf [in December ‘64] at the Ricky Tick, Reading, Corn Exchange, Chelmsford and an all-nighter at the Club Noreik in Tottenham. He was such a sweet man. [Howlin’ Wolf’s guitarist] Hubert Sumlin told me in recent years, ‘The Wolf loved you. He wanted to take you guys back to Chicago’.”

          The Muleskinners recorded some further demos including Howlin Wolf’s ‘Back Door Man’. “I think we recorded at the same studio, Southern Music,” says Mac. “An Irish guy called Terry got us in there and he kind of produced the session.” A tough, Pretty Things-style re-recording of ‘Back Door Man’ (featuring Mac’s Hohner Cembalet) was released on Fontana in January ’65. However, with a plethora of similar-sounding R&B groups around the country, the record quickly vanished. This setback was further compounded by the absence of Dave Pether who became hospitalised following a road accident.    “We had to keep finding guitarists to cover for him,” McLagan explains.

          Ever since hearing Booker T & The MGs seminal ‘Green Onions’, Mac had been seduced by the warm, sexy and soulful sound Booker T. Jones got out of the Hammond L100. “With piano you had to learn a lot of clever stuff but with a Hammond you only have to put your hand on it and it stays, you don’t have to keep hitting it.”

           Thanks to a Boosey & Hawkes trade advertisement in Melody Maker that caught Mac’s eye, a trial Hammond L101 was delivered to the McLagan home on Taunton Avenue. After winning his parents round to the idea, Alec was again pressed into signing HP forms for a Hammond L102 and Leslie cabinet. In a Beat Instrumental profile (dated April 1966), McLagan said, “I changed on to the Hammond last April. What a jump! At first I was completely lost. I felt like a little man with a big machine. The controls were a problem after the simple working electric piano. I learned something different every time I played it.”

           Through Jack Barrie, of Marquee Artists, McLagan left the Muleskinners around June ‘65 to join an outfit Barrie was managing from Kings Lynn, Norfolk, Boz & The Boz People, formerly known as Boz & The Teatime Four.

          Ian McLagan: “Boz wanted to sing jazz so I had to learn jazz chords and I wasn’t happy with it. We were playing all these kind of jazzy R&B things.* One night we played a US army base and we had to do three of these hour-long sets. After the first the bass player came over to me in the dressing room and said, ‘Do you fancy a smoke?’ I’d smelt dope before but never actually smoked it… the next set was just another world and I was so deep into it, I was turned right on, the sound was bigger, deeper and wider and the songs went on forever.”

           McLagan was alarmed to discover that the Boz People displayed even less professionalism than the Muleskinners. “Boz was always a bit of a rascal and he wasn’t taking it as seriously as I wanted. We had these dates in Scotland booked and we broke down on the Friday somewhere north of London and Boz just laughed, ‘Ha ha, we broke down, oh well, what the fuck, we can’t get there’. So the van got fixed and on Saturday we set off again. We got as far as the North Circular as I recall and it broke down again. It was like the Russian flyers in A Night At The Opera, you know, ‘Well we got halfway there, we ran out of gas so we went back home.’ Sure enough Boz started giggling, so I said, ‘That’s it, I quit’. I got my case and I thumbed a lift back home.”

          Now out of a gig and feeling despondent, McLagan was ready to quit the business. “My earnings were getting smaller and smaller each week and I was sick of all the travelling and having to lug my gear about.” It was then that fate intervened.

           “I went to see my girlfriend Irene as I didn’t have anything to do Saturday night and I came back on the tube, she was in Manor House, I was in Hounslow. Completely wrong end of the bloody line. On the way back, I met a pal of mine, Phil Weatherburn, who was actually Gill’s cousin. He said, ‘Hello Mac, how’s the band?’ I said ‘I just quit’ and he said, ‘You should join the Small Faces’ and I went, ‘Yeah, very funny, Phil’. I’d actually already seen the Small Faces on Ready, Steady, Go! doing ‘Whatcha Gonna Do About It’. My dad had called me downstairs to watch them and I thought they were great especially Steve’s voice and the way they looked.

“On the Monday morning, November 1, about nine o’clock, the phone rang and it was Don Arden saying, ‘Can you come up to the office this afternoon? I’ve got a job for you’. I didn’t know what it was for. I thought it might have been for a recording session. While I was waiting in the outer office I looked at the photographs on the wall of all the bands Arden handled - the Nashville Teens, the Animals, the Clayton Squares, the Small Faces and I thought it couldn’t be the Small Faces, the Nashville Teens or the Animals, so it had to be the Clayton Squares who I’d never heard of.

           “When he finally got me in, Arden said, ‘How much are you earning?’ and I lied and told him the figure that my dad was earning as a foreman in an engineering works which was £20 a week. I’d actually been on £5 a week with Boz & The Boz People and I was living at home. Arden said, ‘You start at £30, you’ll be on probation for a month and after a month if the guys like you and they want to keep you on, you’ll get an even split’. And I said, ‘What guys?’ He said ‘The Small Faces’ and I smiled to myself. I thought, ‘Fucking great!’

“Don said, ‘Come back at six o’clock’. I think it was probably around five or 5:30 and I walked to the Ship, the pub next to the Marquee. I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody, it was all top secret, mainly because I think Jimmy Winston didn’t know he’d been fired at that point, and also his girlfriend was the secretary in the outer office but I didn’t know that. So after a couple of pints I called my dad who’d just got home from work. I said, ‘Look, dad, I can’t tell you what’s going on but I’ve got a job with a band and I’m going away, it’s really exciting’. And bless his heart he guessed who it was. It was him who turned me on to the Small Faces in the first place.

“So I went back to Don’s office and I was two pints down on an empty stomach, I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He invited me into his office again. Then the door opened and the three of them came in. Steve looked at me and just grabbed me. They picked me up off the ground and we all started laughing ‘cause we were all the same size.”

As a postscript, after a period of time had passed, Mac enquired as to whether he’d passed the audition. “Ronnie said ‘whaddya mean?’ so I told him about me being on probation. Ronnie said, ‘Did you hear that, Steve? Let’s get this sorted now’. So we went up to the office and Ronnie points at me and says, ‘Listen Don, we like this guy. Mac’s one of us now, fuck this probation bullshit’. That’s when my money dropped down to £20 a week!”

---

* The Boz People recorded four singles for EMI’s Columbia label in 1965-66 but McLagan cannot recall if he played on any of them during his brief tenure in the band.

IAN McLAGAN RIP

It’s a bad week for rock’n’roll. Now I find myself postponing the second half of my Ray Davies interview again because of the sad news that Ian McLagan, the great r&r keyboard player, has died at his home in Austin following a stroke.

          My friend Andy Neill, the author of our Omnibus Press Faces biography Had Me A Real Good Time, e-mailed me overnight with the news, adding his own short tribute: “Mac was a great guy, as many of his friends and fans will attest. The Faces book I did would only have been half the book it was without his invaluable contribution. As well as a convivial and witty raconteur, Mac had his own distinctive and unmistakeable sound – just listen to those classic Small Faces and Faces records. To say he will be sorely missed is putting it mildly. When I get up there, it’s his round!”

          Mac was generous in his support for Andy’s biography, agreeing to be interviewed and answering man follow-up questions. Here's the first part of a long extract about Mac’s childhood and the bands he played with before The Small Faces. Part two tomorrow. 

Ian Patrick McLagan was born on May 12, 1945 at West Middlesex Hospital, Isleworth, with Irish-Scottish ancestry – his mother, Susan Young, was from Mountrath, County Leith, Ireland while Alec William McLagan was born in Shepherd’s Bush to a Scottish father.

Ian McLagan: “My dad’s family all called him John but he preferred Alec. Everybody else called him ‘Mac’. My family all called me Ian but everybody else called me Mac. My brother Mike was always called Mac, too.”

          Alec McLagan was a keen amateur skater and became speed skating champion of Great Britain in 1928 when aged about 20. Ian McLagan: “He belonged to the Aldwych speed club, which was a roller rink - it might have been an ice rink - which is now the site of the Kensington Hilton. One of his close pals at the time was a guy called Joe Weatherburn and Joe’s girlfriend, Paddy, and dad’s girlfriend, later wife, Susan, were best mates. They worked at the John Lewis department store on Oxford Street. My mum came over to England from Ireland when she was 16 and lived in at John Lewis.”

          After marrying, the Weatherburns bought a home in Hounslow where their close friends, the McLagans, lived in a rented house two doors down at 32 Taunton Avenue. Ian McLagan: “Mike was born in ’43. Joe and Paddy found out they couldn’t have kids so they adopted a girl, Gillian, who was pretty much like my sister – still is. Her birthday was within a week of my brother’s and they grew up together. When Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around The Clock’ hit [in January ‘56], they had their first teenage party. I was the youngest one allowed in, I was only 10 and a half at the time. That’s where I discovered rock and roll and sex because that was my first kiss. So there were two teenage parties, one at her house, and one at ours, same people at both parties, same music, same kisses.”

          Mac had a happy childhood raised as a Roman Catholic with regular summer holidays to Ireland, although his education suffered from frequent absenteeism. “I went to infant school, junior school, slid into grammar school by the skin of my teeth and got bored with school almost immediately.”

          Having heard rock‘n’roll and with the massive popularity of skiffle, Mac got his first guitar. “I begged for a guitar and eventually I got one for Christmas. It was a Spanish model but I lost interest in it very quickly because it hurt my fingers. I just thought you picked up a guitar and you could play it.”

          His mother also made him undertake piano lessons under considerable duress. “I had no desire to play piano, which is crazy really when you think about it. It was only because of my mum who’d never had piano lessons and always wanted them. My grandmother was a fantastic concertina player - she could play anything. But my mum couldn’t afford piano lessons so I had to have them.

          “I liked the music but piano lessons didn’t involve rock ‘n’ roll in any way. It was boring, scales and things. It was a long ride on the bus right out to Cranford near Heathrow airport. It got so noisy with the planes, the cups would rattle on top of the piano. This piano teacher, Mrs Morgan drank coffee non-stop and she used to put her coffee cup on the keys at the high end. She had a ruler and she would rap your knuckles if you didn’t get it right.”

Eventually Mac skipped the lessons to hang out at the Temperance billiard hall on Hounslow High Street* with his mates from Spring Grove Grammar School, Alan Worrell and Terry Munro. “We’d meet up there and have cups of tea and cheese rolls and play snooker all afternoon. It was right by Hounslow bus garage so I’d time it right to go home. I saved the bus fare money by walking back home as if I’d been to piano practice.”

          Like so many other British boys of their generation, Alan, Terry and Mac formed their own skiffle group. “Terry could play a bit of guitar. Alan was on washboard and I played tea chest bass. The three of us had these checkered flat caps because we wanted to be like Gene Vincent’s Blue Caps so we were the Blue Men.”

          Mac renewed his interest in guitar after hearing more of the life-changing sounds coming over from America. “I don’t think there was any music on my dad’s side that I knew of. My mum wasn’t really musical. The only instrument my brother could play was the Dansette – which I inherited - and the radio. He turned me on to Buddy Holly, that was my indoctrination. Gill had more of a record collection so I would play her records.”

          After his dismal scholastic record at Spring Grove Grammar School, Isleworth, Mac was lucky to pass the entrance exam into Twickenham College of Technology and School of Art on Egerton Road. “It’s only now I realise what a great advantage kids of my age had to be able to get into art schools. I was absolutely useless at school, I’d lost interest and I’d been put down a year. I really was the worst pupil and a friend of mine, Cas, who I’d been to junior school with, showed me his portfolio. I couldn’t believe he got to paint and draw all day. He was in the junior part of the art school but he was the same age as me but when I did get accepted I was in the year below him. It was just amazing to be able to do lino cuts, litho, still life classes, oil painting and sketching. And also there was the music, girls and drink. It was all happening.”

          Jazz and blues also reached Mac’s ears via the BBC Light Programme’s Jazz Club, hosted by Humphrey Lyttelton. “I heard Thelonius Monk’s Blue Monk and one of the tracks off Muddy Waters’ At Newport 1960 album. It was either ‘Got My Mojo Working’ or ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’. They were almost impossible to buy then. I think I went to Broadmead’s on Hounslow High Street and the guy didn’t know what I was talking about until he looked through his catalogue and ordered them for me.”

          Developing a passion for rhythm and blues, Mac saw the Rolling Stones for the first time in May 1963 during their trailblazing Sunday residency at the Crawdaddy Club, held in neighbouring Richmond’s Station Hotel. “The amazing thing was the sound, they had started playing before I got in [to the club]. I assumed that as they were a blues band, they would be black and American so it was quite a surprise to find that they were white London boys. But the sound, the throbbing bass and the harmonica on top it just convinced me they were black until I walked in. Then it was a case of, ‘Well blimey, I love this music, I’m trying to play it, maybe I can’.”

          Mac had been playing guitar in a group, the Cherokees, with some art college pals. “It was basically an instrumental group with a singer. I was the guy who wanted to be in the band, I was the no-talent. Dave Pether was a brilliant guitarist. It was basically his band. His mate, Mick Carpenter, who, like Dave, lived in Southall, played drums. Dave and I were the same age and Pete Brown, the bass player, was a year above us. Mick already had a job and he had some money, we were just poor artists.

          “Because Dave was a great instrumentalist and soloist I had to learn things like ‘Havah Nagilah’. There were all kinds of instrumentals we did where I just strummed. Bit by bit, we listened to blues, Jimmy Reed and all kinds of R&B and it was just like we had to change. I thought, ‘Well, everyone’s playing guitar’ so eventually I got my first keyboard - a Hohner Cembalet electric piano - because I figured I could play the Chuck Berry rhythm on my left hand and didn’t have to play too much on the right to tip the chords. I mean I just fumbled my way into it. By now, Pete’s mate Nick Tweddell was playing harp, I brought in my friend Johnny Eaton to sing and we changed the name of the band to the Muleskinners from ‘Muleskinner Blues’.”

---

* This venue later became the Attic, a popular club in the area where coincidentally Steve Marriott’s Moments held a residency in the summer of 1964. It then changed its name to the Zambezi.

RONNIE QUITS THE FACES

Another extract, this one quite lengthy, from Had Me A Real Good Time, Andy Neill’s Faces biography. Perhaps due to the number of marital breakdowns and other romantic fall-outs within The Faces’ inner circle, Andy was able to interview a bevy of ex-wags who weren’t coy about the way The Faces went about their business. He also spoke a several members of their predominantly American road crew.

         It is April 1973 and all is not well in the Faces camp. Rod doesn’t like the new album and isn’t afraid to say so, and Ronnie is on the verge of quitting.

Ooh La La was launched with a pre-release playback party at the Warner Bros. offices and a more upmarket gathering at Tramp, on Jermyn Street, the London nightclub of choice for the well-heeled, A-list rock stars and footballers on the razz. The band had graduated to the Mayfair set from the less refined Speakeasy and it was now their playground of choice, along with the likes of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ringo Starr and Keith Moon. Surrounded by tarted up Can Can girls flashing their frilly knickers, the band posed for the press with glasses in hand, a dishevelled Ronnie Lane looking particularly worse for wear.

         Before leaving for America, the band fitted in four British dates around towns and cities left off the previous tour. These included Sunderland on Friday, April 13. It was a week since the FA Cup semi-finals where Sunderland beat Arsenal 2-1 to progress to the final against Leeds. John Peel, a staunch Liverpool and Faces supporter, cherished the memory of that night as one of his favourite ever gigs when both band and audience bonded in one unholy communion. “I’m supposed to have danced in the wings with a bottle of Blue Nun in my arm,” Peel later recalled. “And I’m a person who never dances. Never, never, never.”

         The day after the show at Worcester Gaumont, Roy Hollingworth interviewed Rod at his home in Windsor and found him in a bored, surly frame of mind. When the journalist gave his favourable verdict on Ooh La La, Stewart registered surprise. “It was a bloody mess… But I shouldn’t say that should I? … It was a disgrace but I’m not going to say anything more about it.” Hollingworth tried diverting the conversation to a lighter bent but Rod was on a roll – he hit out at The Faces sticking to the same material, their problems in playing the new songs live and the wasteful work pattern in the studio. Stewart later claimed he’d been misquoted but the damage had been done.

         When the interview, carrying a banner headline ‘Rod: Our new album is a disgrace… a bloody mess’, was printed prominently on page three in the Melody Maker dated April 21, all hell broke loose. “It was very mean spirited of Rod to slam Ooh La La in the press immediately after it came out,” says McLagan. “He was making his own albums, fair enough but he didn’t have to slag ours off and he had no right to because it wasn’t a bad album… The irony is he could have contributed more to it but he didn’t so he had even less of a reason to criticise.”

Amid ill feeling emanating from Rod’s outburst the Faces ninth US tour started just days later with Jo Jo Gunne supporting.* From the beginning it was, to borrow a familiar phrase, never a dull moment especially as Lane deliberately disobeyed the band’s unwritten ‘no wives on the road’ edict.

         [Roadie] Russ Schlagbaum: “The other guys were really pissed off, they felt that Kate [Lane] was putting all this shit in Ronnie’s head. I got the shock of my life because my girlfriend Barbara Morice, who was Ronnie’s secretary, came over with Kate. In Columbus, Ohio, there were a load of girls that I knew from college around, I was working for one of the world’s biggest rock’n’roll bands and I’m all set up. I walk into the lobby of the Holiday Inn and there stands my English girlfriend who I thought I’d left behind in Richmond. It was like ‘Holy fuck, what do I now?’ I thought it was very odd that Ronnie would bring someone over to play au pair but then leave the child with a hotel caretaker or some sort so that Kate and Barbara could go to the gig. They all travelled round in this great big Ford station wagon and I have to give Laney credit because he busted his ass to drive those distances from gig to gig with these women and a kid until the end of the tour in Indianapolis.”

         On May 10, the intractable situation came to a head at Nassau Coliseum, Long Island as Schlagbaum recounts: “It started at the hotel earlier in the day. [Roadie] Charlie Fernandez came in, saying ‘Whoa, something really weird is brewing’. The band got to the gig, had an argument in the dressing room before they went on and while they were walking on stage. I’m standing there, holding Ronnie Lane’s bass. He walks right by me and goes over to Mac and throws a glass of wine in his face, walks back and while I’m putting the bass on Ronnie, Mac picks up a tambourine and throws it as hard as he can. Ronnie ducks and it just misses him. The audience had no idea, they’re thinking it’s all part of the act. The band carried on arguing throughout the set and afterwards, they locked themselves in the dressing room for hours. Chuch and I were pissed off because we wanted to get back to the hotel for the party and the women but the keys to the truck were in the dressing room so we couldn’t leave. We said ‘Can’t we get in?’ and [Faces tour manager] John Barnes said, ‘Absolutely nobody can come in’. They had this huge row and that’s when Ronnie decided he was leaving the band.

         “The next gig was in Roanoke, Virginia and nobody was speaking to Ronnie except Woody who was his usual bubbly self, you know, ‘Let’s put all the bad stuff behind us and have some fun.’ Woody was always desperate that everyone should have a good time. Laney always used to wander round in circles onstage so that his guitar cord would end up in a huge knot, which was always a problem for me but that night he just stood still back by his amps and played bass.”

         Mac, who was celebrating his 28^th birthday, remembers Lane coming up to his face during the gig and swearing at him whereupon an enraged McLagan kicked him up the arse and chased him off the stage. Alongside “Fuck the gig!” and the even more endearing “Bollocks, you cunt!” “I’m leaving the group” was a common Faces catchphrase – a mock cry wolf uttered whenever there was any minor hassle or pressure to deal with, usually with drink in hand and tongue firmly in cheek. But now Ronnie Lane was implacable as Mac recalled, “When he said ‘I’m leaving the group’, I said, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Ronnie.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you come with me and we’ll get another band together?’ I said, ‘I’m in the band I want to be in with you. I don’t want you to leave.’”

         An uncorroborated story has it that after a gig on the tour, the resentment directed at Stewart from Lane descended to a confrontation where Rod, all satin and white gloves, sized up the bass player in his rag and bone man clobber and remarked, “What are you trying to be – a spiv or a Ted?” to which Lane retorted, “Well I’d rather look like a fucking Teddy Boy than an old tart who’s going through the change.” Lane later acidly remarked he knew it was time to move on when Rod “started buying his clothes from Miss Selfridge.”

For Lane it must have seemed a bitter irony – feeling he had no alternative but to leave the band he’d formed – ten years on from finding Kenney Jones in the British Prince. And his chief grievance being the vocalist he had objected to joining in the first place. It is unfair to lay all the blame at Rod’s feet for being the catalyst behind Lane’s decision, and it should be reiterated that Stewart did not want Lane to leave the Faces either. Onstage they were something of a double act – Ronnie doing his best to make ‘the LV’ (lead vocalist as Rod was sardonically referred to) crack up while Rod would piggyback Ronnie around the stage or help keep him vertical. Most crucially Lane’s levelling humour kept Rod’s excesses in check. During the fraught vocal overdubs for Ooh La La, Rod made it known to Circus reporter Barra Greyson that, in his opinion, “Ronnie’s the real songwriter.”

Going further back to the Never A Dull Moment sessions, Rod had expressed concern for his comrade, telling Nick Logan, “I saw Ronnie Lane the other day and he was looking a bit bleary eyed. I must ring him up and persuade him to take an early night.” Although in the same interview, he did admit having problems interpreting Lane’s compositions. “Ron [Wood] and I have this incredible thing between us. We could both be on opposite sides of the world and Ron could phone and play me a tune, and I could put the lyrics to it. Whereas I don’t have that same thing with Ronnie Lane because of the chords and the structures he uses. I can’t get into them.”

         “They always took the mickey out of Ronnie’s songs,” says Jan Jones. “Kenney used to laugh about it. He’d come in from Olympic and I’d say, ‘How did it go?’ and he’d say, ‘We’ve got the statutory Ronnie Lane song, ‘rinky-dinky-dink…’’’ Musically Ronnie and Rod were like chalk and cheese but I loved the blend of Ronnie Lane and Rod’s voice.”

The Faces were predominantly a band built for the stage but, as Mac points out, “apart from singing the opening verse of ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’, Ronnie didn’t really get to do anything with the band so it was no wonder he felt frustrated.”

         Russ Schlagbaum: “Everyone thought Laney was insane. ‘Why the fuck would he leave the Faces right at their peak? He’s got to be out of his mind. It must be the woman he’s with’. Of course, Kate had a lot to do with it but Ronnie was on the alert from the very beginning. Ronnie saw through the Rod thing and he told Mac and Kenney, ‘Rod’s gonna leave you in the shit like Steve [Marriott] did’, but they wouldn’t have it. They didn’t want to get off the golden cart at that point.”

        Ronnie’s brother Stan takes a similar view. “I used to say to Ronnie, ‘You only jump off the boat if it’s sinking.’ And for the first time in his life he was making plenty of money. But I think that Kate was a bad influence at that time because she wanted to be a hippie and live on a farm and all that shit. I think she was the force that dragged Ronnie away from the Faces plus he was pissed off with Rod so I think between the two of them it turned him.”

         ‘Faces Go To Town’ ran the front page of the May 19 edition of Sounds announcing that the band were to play three major London concerts at the Edmonton Sundown on June 1, 3 and 4 as a prelude to a full scale European tour with dates to be recorded for a proposed live album. But of far more drama and consequence was the paper’s announcement a week later: ‘Plonk Quits Faces’. “Following speculation about the future of the Faces, Ronnie Lane announced this week his decision to leave. Prior to leaving for a holiday in France, he said ‘It’s time for me to move on. I feel the need for a change.’”

         The resultant hoopla surrounding the gigs involved fans queuing for over seven hours for tickets with the 3,500 capacity audiences being jammed against the barriers and the inevitable cases of fainting. Such was the fervour that a fourth and final show on June 6 was added. Ironically the Edmonton shows were some of the best the Faces played. “Ronnie was feeling good, his anger had passed,” says Russ. “It was accepted - he was leaving, there was no changing his mind and that was it. There wasn’t a lot of tension – or there appeared not to be.”

         “All I mainly recall of Edmonton is the bar onstage,” support act Andy Bown says. “I couldn’t believe Rod had his wine frozen at the correct room temperature in an ice bucket. I thought what a spoilt bastard but nowadays that’s nothing.”

         Aware of the sense of occasion, Gaff Management hired Mike Mansfield Television to videotape the final night. After a long wait in which an announcement was made that the Faces had been stopped by police on the way to the gig, a line of Can Can girls came on for a vibrant display before the Faces finally took their places on the wide, palm-treed stage with white rubber flooring – Rod in sparkling vest and long tartan scarf with a green feather boa tied around his waist, the two Ronnie’s fags clamped in mouths and Mac with candle atop the Steinway to add atmosphere as well as being handy for lighting ciggies. Kenney sat behind his new Ludwig ‘liquorice allsorts’ kit. If it weren’t for the presence of ‘Farewell Ronnie’ signs scattered among the ubiquitous tartan scarves in the audience, it was difficult to determine this was Lane’s last gig – as if the subject was verboten. The encore of ‘Memphis’ over, Lane joined the others to take his final bow, joining in on the traditional ‘We’ll Meet Again’ sing-along as the five Faces left the stage together.

“That last night at Edmonton was absolutely fucking fantastic,” says Stan Lane. “I was up in the balcony and it was moving. I was shitting meself because I thought it was all going to collapse. Ronnie left there that night and he came with me in the motor and we went to Tramp. He sees Marc Bolan, goes up to him and says, ‘You haven’t got a job for an out of work bass player, have ya?’”

THE WHO & THE FACES AT THE OVAL

This extract from The Faces: Had Me A Real Good Time, Andy Neill’s definitive and often highly amusing biography of Rod and his merry men, includes comments from a certain Melody Maker writer who watched them and The Who play at London’s Oval cricket ground on the same bill in September 1971.

         In 1971 The Faces were on a roll. Over the August Bank Holiday weekend they triumphed at the Weeley Festival near Clacton on Sea before an audience of 100,000, and the following week played the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank Centre where DJ and man-about-town Jeff Dexter was press-ganged into acting as DJ even though he’d dropped a tab of acid on the way to the gig. “Of course the guys in the Faces thought this was highly amusing,” he remembers. “I remember they were particularly great that night. Rod had a fabulous pair of satin strides on – he liked his attire, that boy. And he had a fabulous blonde on his arm, I remember being quite impressed with that too.”

         Next up was the gig at the Oval where the headliners were The Who…

Two weeks later Dexter observed the Faces up close again when compering (with Rikki Farr) the ‘Goodbye Summer’ charity concert held at London’s Oval Cricket Ground in Kennington, just south of Vauxhall Bridge, on September 18 in aid of the Bangladesh Relief Fund. Blessed with perfect weather and organisation, the event was adjudged a success on all fronts with over 31,000 basking in late summer sunshine for the first ever rock show held in an arena where cricket had been played since 1845. After almost being anaesthetised by Atomic Rooster, the crowd were well up for the band of the moment who arrived onstage to a standing ovation in a blaze of colour – Mac in a fire engine red suit, Woody in a tiger striped yellow and black satin jacket and a bare chested, black scarfed Rod wearing a Granny Takes A Trip-designed leopard skin suit.

        “There were problems early in the set, particularly with monitors,” [roadie] Pete Buckland recalls. “I believe it was a WEM system every act other than The Who was using that was cobbled together for the event, although after the first couple of numbers it was OK out front.” The Faces got into their stride as dusk fell with ‘It’s All Over Now’, had the crowd up for ‘Maggie May’ (which was hovering just outside the Top 10 that week) and were the only act to be brought back for an encore with an elongated ‘Had Me A Real Good Time’ which segued into the refrain of ‘Every Picture Tells A Story’. The band left the stage to uproarious cheers and while the delay between the previous acts had lasted no more than roughly 15 minutes, tellingly, there was an unplanned hour’s interval before The Who appeared.

        “The Faces played such a good set,” says Billy Nicholls, “and I thought to myself, ‘This is going to be interesting’. Then The Who came on with their new sound system and it was like someone had notched it up. I remember Rod looking very stone faced because he could tell the difference. The sound, lights, everything was so much clearer and better. The Faces were fantastic, they played a great show and it was great to see the two bands together but it was very typical of The Who to do that.”

Jeff Dexter: “The Faces were great fun, it was refreshing having them come on after bands like Atomic Rooster. I’d already got rather high and then for some reason, I hit the booze with The Faces and I wasn’t very good at holding the bottle at that time. At the end of The Who’s set, when Keith Moon lobbed this brand new cricket bat I’d borrowed from Surrey Cricket Club into the audience, I tried to put the last record on and I really couldn’t do it, I kept falling over.”

The Oval event raised a total profit of £18,336 with The Who donating 25% of the gross box office receipts. Over and above the charitable outcome, the post mortem in the Melody Maker devoted more space to, literally, who topped Who. In his lengthy review, Chris Charlesworth wrote: “The choice of The Who and The Faces to finish off the night was a stroke of genius, not only because both rely on visual excitement to build up their act, but because there was undoubtedly a certain amount of rivalry between the two camps. The Who have long claimed the crown for the most exciting live act on the road – both in this country and across the Atlantic – while The Faces have challenged them for the greater part of this year. Few, I feel, will disagree with me when I say that The Who retained their title.

        “Not that the Faces played badly – they warmed up into one of their spontaneous chunks of excitement comfortably – but The Who played and sounded better… While The Faces establish their friendly rapport with the audience, The Who are surrounded by a charisma which elevates them much higher than the 20 foot high stage.”

Fellow MM writer and Faces fanatic Roy Hollingworth inevitably posited the opposing view, going so far as to compose an Open Letter to Pete Townshend published in Melody Maker the following week, daring to criticise The Who for being “too predictable” and “too perfect… and that’s why I’ll say The Faces were ten times better.”

“Roy was big mates with Rod at the time,” Charlesworth recalls. “He even had the same hairstyle. I think he was being controversial for the sake of it. I watched the show from the side of the stage, while he was right back on the members’ balcony opposite, a good 300 yards from the stage, so I had the better view.”

         While this battle of the bands was being debated, the MM’s readers voted Rod as Top British Male singer in the paper’s annual poll.

Meanwhile, ‘Maggie May’ leaped from number 11 to three. By the following week, it was at pole position where it stayed for a consecutive five weeks and held the top spot in the Melody Maker and NME charts for six weeks. Similarly, Every Picture reached the top of the UK and US album listings, replacing Carole King’s Tapestry, which had sat at number one in Billboard for the past four months. But the most unprecedented achievement occurred when the charts for the weeks ending October 9, 16 and 23 revealed that Rod was top of both the UK and US album and singles charts simultaneously – a feat neither Elvis nor The Beatles ever accomplished and one not matched since – leaving Rod Stewart the only artist in the history of popular music to attain this unique triumph.