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Jason Crawford
In an age when Rock and Roll was losing its Roll, and in ever increasing danger of bloating itself out of relevance, the Faces gave it a shot in the arm. Full of whiskey, women, song, dance, and spiky hair. Right on time, we’ve been gifted with a box set consisting of their four studio albums along with a fifth record of rarities. Its called 1970-1975: You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything. The discs were cut from the original analog masters and all that zany artwork has been recreated down to the last detail. We’ll check them out individually. And we’ll have ourselves a real good time.
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First Step was the band’s first studio long player, and was released a mere months after their formation from the ashes of the Jeff Beck Group (from whence came Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart) and the Small Faces (including Ian McLagan, Ronnie Lane, and Kenney Jones). You may have heard of Stewart before, and if you found him past 1977, I’d forgive you for not believing me when I tell you that he was once the singer in a legendarily brilliant Raunch and Roll band. He was never the best and he’s not the worst now, but he’s had the greatest fall off from when he was relevant to where he wound up. First Step is my fave Faces disc for sonics. It’s grittier with less separation between the instruments. Ragged and right, their version of Dylan’s “Wicked Messenger” kicks the door off the hinges straight away. Shortly thereafter, “Shake, Shudder, Shiver” blasts through the newly vacant frame and lets the listener know that things are different now. This lineup isn’t here to do much besides swing for the fences. Every time up. Until flaming out in a few innings so that the various members could pursue other avenues of expression. Some were more successful and honest than others. If you like the textures in the records of the Stones’ Golden Age, you should like First Step just fine. Ronnie Wood, after all, did fill in quite nicely for that band when Mick Taylor abandoned them. And he’s still making some of the more lively contributions to the Stones’ sound today. (He’d played bass in Jeff Beck’s outfit. I assume that’s why he’s pictured on this album’s cover reading the guitar playing instructional from which the record takes its name. The band’s humor was literally front and center before the needle ever hit the wax.)
This record is well pressed and housed in a sturdy outer gatefold sleeve that takes you right back to 1970. It beats my original for cleanliness, certainly, and seems a bit more transparent too. Wood’s “Pineapple and the Monkey” crunches and cruises along in glorious retro style with a little more on top than what I’m accustomed to hearing on this title. I was super excited after first listen and that’s carried over right up until present day. This is intoxicating stuff, gang. Be warned. Your sponsor will not approve.
The Faces moved on from First Step with the equally stellar Long Player from 1971. Bassist Ronnie Lane’s contributions are especially poignant on this record. There’s something more than a little angelic about his melodies even amongst the grist and incredible power of Stewart’s vocals and Wood’s deliriously sloppy fretwork. Lane would be the first Face to fold once Stewart’s solo career began to overshadow the band’s majesty. It has been said that Lane was discontent with the amount of opportunities he was given to sing lead. Listening to “Richmond” gives credence to the idea that he should have been given more. But, my goodness, it’s hard to argue with having Rod Stewart as the front man when you get a load of album opener “Bad ’n’ Ruin.” The two duets on a live cover of Paul McCartney’s classic “Maybe I’m Amazed” to close out the first side and Stewart’s muscle is undeniable. Both men knew how to play to their vocal strengths, but Stewart’s voice was clearly the flashier of the two. Lane sings some of my favorite Faces tunes on record, but Stewart got the gig the old fashioned way. He earned it.
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“Had Me a Real Good Time” starts off side two and it’s as complete a representation of what makes the Faces great as any song I can think of. Wood’s intro snakes through the first few bars before the band kicks all the way in with McLagan’s barrelhouse piano work pulling everything together into one tremendous, tattered package. There’s a (presumably) false breakdown that leads right back into an instrumental rave-up complete with horns (featuring Bobby Keys, naturally) and Stewart’s off mic exhortations that fades out right in the middle of the whole cacophonous mess. Sort of a metaphor for the band’s career, really. “On the Beach” sounds like someone set a mic up in the middle of the room and the band all gathered ‘round to warble in unison, getting the sea shanty vibe that the Pogues would later approximate to such great effect. Listening to recordings as loose and as celebratory as these often are, it’s not hard to imagine the Faces’ members pulling all of the furniture out of their hotel room and recreating said room in the hotel lobby. Legend has it that the facility’s manager was so impressed with his guests’ initiative that he let them go with a warning. As long as they reassembled the room. Seems like the Faces always pulled it back together when their wobble was right on the brink of collapse. It’s a dangerous terrain requiring expert navigation. Perhaps that’s why they crammed all this magic into five short years. Six may have been lethal.
The texture in my reissue’s top loader is far more pronounced than it is in my originals. That’s kinda true of the recording too, but the fact that my original is the noisiest disc in my Faces collection makes the side-by-side comparison troublesome. The sonics on the album are inconsistent, as is, and this is shown up by the reissue’s clarity. You’ll forget all about it during “Jerusalem” though. And we’re here to have some fun anyway. So relax. And enjoy. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore.
A Nod Is As Good As A Wink… To A Blind Horse was the Faces’ second release of 1971. The reissue is probably the most distinctly different from the original version of any in the box for sonics. Mine has more depth and presence than my original could ever hope to muster. But, as it turns out, I never really had an original in the first place. Or, if I did, the poster was missing from it. Seems that the poster was discontinued after the very first run. Too many pubes and pills for the time, you understand. This was the Faces most successful album from a sales perspective as it includes “Stay With Me.” That one’s a blast, but I’m not sure that it’s more fun than McLagan and Lane’s “You’re So Rude.” If Rod the Mod is involved with that track in any way, I can’t tell. Let’s you know that the band could have existed without him if they’d had to. Fortunately, they did not. The ballad “Love Lives Here” is the most moving of any Faces offering so far when you listen to the records chronologically. There would be more, but perhaps none so adept at pulling on the heartstrings as this one. McLagan’s keys and Woody’s guitar lines weave a tapestry that’s as comfortable as your grandmother’s quilt. The sparse vocal harmonies go right for your guts. Kleenex is recommended.
My copy of Nod has a couple more ticks in it than any of the other records do. By that, I mean that there are three or four as opposed to one or two. The nature of the work probably doesn’t call out to the audiophile as is. But for a Rock and Roll fan, these discs are knocking on the hi-fi door. The pressings are far beyond what you would normally get at this price point (the set equates to around $25 per disc at the manufacturer’s suggested retail rate). And when you consider the care and detail that went into recreating all the original artwork, you start believing you’re in the bargain bin. Musically, Nod seems a little more concise than the other discs do. It’s one of those that blazes past you and leaves you wanting more. Lane’s “Debris” floats out of the gate at the start of side two, and, before you can finish your drink, “That’s All You Need” is closing it down. Somewhere in there, the band manages to exhibit sides of itself that had not been called forth to that point. Soon enough, Stewart’s solo work would begin to eclipse that of the Faces’ and it wouldn’t be long before the whole thing blew over. And I love some of that early Rod Stewart solo sound. I mean, you can’t really argue with Every Picture Tells A Story which also came out in 1971. (That’s three stellar records with Stewart’s name attached to them in 1971, for those keeping score at home.) But you can surely wish that the two could have coexisted for longer than they did. But then Woody may not have joined the Stones. I guess the whole thing was a house of cards from the jump, but falling apart has rarely sounded better than it did when the Faces fell. Growing old gracefully would not have suited them anyway.
And, just like that, we’re coming to the end of the line. 1973 was the year; Ooh La La was the bomb. Ronnie Wood took his first ever lead vocal turn on the title track which closes the album out. Somehow, that feels appropriate. Woody was a prime mover in this outfit, and he went on to do some really great stuff with Keith Richards in the Stones and Wood’s own New Barbarians band. Technically, Rod Stewart may have enjoyed more post-Faces success, but he’s got some real stinkers on his resume. Way worse than even Dirty Work or any of the other maligned latter day Stones discs. I can’t remember where I saw it, probably a “Behind the Music” type of affair wherein Woody encapsulated my exact sentiments by saying, “people still want to hear Rod Stewart sing, they just don’t want to hear him sing such stupid f**king songs.” And then Stewart observed that everyone made some really questionable music in the ’80’s, but he was the only one that had not been forgiven for it. I probably saw that show fifteen years ago by now. And the public has done what the public does regarding crappy ’80’s drivel. They’ve forgiven him for it and decided it was great. It was not. But the Faces were, and I miss them every day.
Ohh La La is a little tidier than some of the other titles we’ve explored, but it’s still quite fertile. It’s reported that Stewart, who was absent during many of the recording sessions, hated it. I love it. Ronnie Lane had a hand in writing every song on side two and “Flags and Banners” on side one. I’m all the time playing that one on my acoustic, but I can’t sing it. Lane’s voice could reach an upper register that many can’t, and he did it with a nonchalance that I envy. Unfortunately, he passed away in 1997 after a long bout with multiple sclerosis. Despite the Let It Be style strife within the band at the time, Ooh La La contains much of the fun and humor that earlier works did albeit with a slightly less raucous presentation. That’s not to say that “Silicone Grown” and “Borstal Boys” are sedate. They’re not. And they still expose what passes for Rock music today as the bastard surrogate that it mostly is. Producer Glyn Johns just swept a bit of the bottle shards off the floor, and let a little fresh air into the saloon, that’s all. By the time “Ooh La La” fades, you still know you’ve been rocked and you still feel ready for another round. “My Fault” would have been worth the entire belly aching if that were the only tune that resulted from the sessions. Instead, you get nine others to latch onto for all of posterity. I’ve begun to hear the band mentioned more frequently in interviews with more current bands, and I suspect that will only expand in time. Let’s hope it helps. I imagine McLagan and Lane would have liked that.
The cover art for this one seems straight out of Terry Gilliam’s imagination. Good luck figuring out where the record should go. Pressing is great, poster is included. These boys went down swinging. We all should be so lucky.
And that leaves us with the scraps that are collected on the fifth record in the set. It’s called Stray Singles and B-Sides. Usually, I don’t go in for this kinda thing. I tend to go on the notion that the material would have been included on the originals if they were worth hearing. But folks were doing things a bit differently in those days. The studio version of “Maybe I’m Amazed” that’s included on this disc was released as the single for the Long Player record which contained the live version, for instance. “Pool Hall Richard” is actually one of the Faces better known songs, but was never included on any of the studio records. It’s a rocker from ’73 that fits right in with the Ooh La La aesthetic. The Faces sprinkled a few instrumentals throughout their records, and “Rear Wheel Skid” and “Oh Lord I’m Browned Off” are a couple of fun ones on the bonus disc. It’s nice to get to hear McLagan spread out a bit on the organ, especially. Woody’s work is always noteworthy, but always pretty well out front in the mix. McLagan has to work a bit harder for his space in the sun. It’s worth it when he does. It would have been really lovely if he’d been around for the Faces reunion a few weeks back, but he passed away in late 2014. The band had been trying to get Rod Stewart to commit to a show forever, and he finally did it on September 5 of this year. One more thing that he won’t be forgiven for as far as I’m concerned. That and The American Songbook debacles.
All of the songs included on the bonus disc can also be found on Rhino’s 2004 CD set called Five Guys Walk Into A Bar… which is totally cool by me. That set may have exhausted the vaulted material and it’s plenty great so get it if you haven’t already. As impressive as this current set is though, I can’t help but wish that a book with liners had been included. They almost could have gotten away with reprinting the one from the Rhino set. There have to be a million untold stories about the Faces, but perhaps no one can remember them. They did have a bar set up onstage, after all. With a bartender. A live one.
All of the records in this set have the classic green Warner Bros. center sticker in place except for Stray Singles which has the Burbank WB label. The inner sleeves do not need to be replaced as they are lined and static resistant already. I feel like folks are starting to get it. Having a recording on vinyl is simply not enough. The degree of quality across the vinyl spectrum is vast, and you have to endeavor to find out where a record has been pressed or to at least rule a couple of the most offensive facilities out. On top of that, you’ve gotta observe the tricky verbiage that the labels employ to make you think that their products were mastered from the original tapes when, in reality, they are often sourced from the original tapes and mastered digitally. This set looks and sounds great, and is reasonably priced too. Don’t sleep on it. You’ll be browned off if you miss it.