In this we hear about frustrations of not having the same level of success in Britain compared with the US. We also learn of Ian MacLagan`s love of music from Motown and Stax.
Read on!
Why the Faces are pleased they don`t sell here
By Nick Logan
“So we were playing this gig in Croydon…”
“Fairfield Halls?”
“No, the pub across the road.”
IAN MACLAGAN – MacHooligan the Face – talking ten to the dozen, spares a second to laugh. He’s come racing up to town from Kingston, an hour late because he’s got the decorators in at home, and since he moved in last November has almost had to rebuild the house brick by brick.
So into his management offices he storms – you can hear him exchanging greetings and laughs with the staff as he works his way down the corridor — and with the usual early sprinkling of anecdotes, mirth and merriment the interview begins to shape up to the Faces pattern. Living up to the expected norm behaviour of a Face obviously ain’t gonna tax the MacHooligan none at all. It’s what comes naturally.
Preliminary exchanges dwell for a minute on this very reputation… a reputation MacLagan feels might be in need of a little damping down.
“It’s getting a bit out of hand,” confides the organist, declining beer for a tea. “You get in somewhere in the States and someone you’ve met there before phones you up: ‘Heard you were in town, great. Which room you in? Let’s wreck a room.’ But we end up with the bill.
“Just recently, and you can’t knock what they’ve done for us, Warners (the Faces record company) have been bringing out the drinks. There have been nights when we’ve gone on sober, but there’s not much chance of it happening. Promoters turn up with bottles, and when you’ve brought a bottle and someone else has a bottle, you can’t help but drink…”
It’s’ nice, like, that we get that treatment now, because people used to hate us for a long time in the States because we were so obviously drinking. I suppose what it does is that it makes me worry a lot less about the music.”
The Faces are now, officially, on a month’s holiday – most of the others have split for foreign parts – after a concerted campaign through the Spring to break the band in England.
By all rights, their excellent “Long Player” album should have been soaring up the charts — so far it has only figured in progressive and Underground listings and, of course, strongly in the U.S. — but the fact that it hasn’t, although naturally disappointing, hasn’t dented the band’s spirits. With America firmly on their side, they can – as Ronnie Lane and Rod Stewart have pointed out in the past – regard Britain not so much as a pressing necessity but as a long term objective.
Indeed, MacLagan feels they can draw consolation for the relative lack of success for “Long Player” from the undoubted success of their live gigs here during the Spring.
“In a way,” says the organist, “we can be well pleased that we don’t sell albums in this country in bulk, because it appears that we don’t need to sell records here to get nice audiences and a nice area of communication.”
On July 9 until August 9 the Faces are back in the States, their fourth tour. Back gigging in England later in the year, they’ll be presenting a largely new act.
“Apart from a couple of new numbers,” says MacLagan, “We have been playing the same act since the second tour of the States, a period of nine months or so. It has never really been fresh in England, because when it was fresh, we weren’t playing many gigs here.
“I suppose it was at its best, it reached its peak, around that second tour, but it is only in this period just gone that we have really worked in Britain.
“It is a drag in a way because we are all a bit bored now with the music, but the next time we play in England we will have a fresh approach.
“I’m really sick of certain numbers. ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ – I’ve played it so many different ways to try and keep it fresh, but now I am really sick of it. At the start it was a really beautiful number to me.
“There are only two now I get any pleasure from. One’s ‘I’m Losing You’ and the other’s the Ike and Tina Turner thing (‘I Want To Be Loved.’) I think we’ll finally finish with ‘Feel So Good,’ though we might keep ‘Had Us A Real Good Time.'”
The band has, says MacLagan, five to six new numbers they are working on, and will probably begin introducing some of the material from “Long Player” not yet adapted to the stage, like “Tell Everyone,” “Bad ‘n Ruin” and “Sweet Lady Mary.”
…Stuff we’ve never really had the chance to rehearse properly because it means Ron Wood has to sit down to play steel guitar and Rod has to play 12-string. The physical changes take a bit of getting used to, and for Rod to have a 12-string for one number… well rather him than me.”
The Faces set is currently one of the most interesting to be heard anywhere, with its subtle mixture of various influences and styles and other writers’ work. On the subject of influences, one of the most interesting facets of the recent NME Musicians’ Poll revolved around the Faces nominations.
Ian MacLagan picked Booker T among his three most admired keyboard players; Ronnie Lane picked Duck Dunn among bassists; Ronnie Wood went for Steve Cropper among guitarists and Kenny Jackson for Al Jackson among drummers. A list of musicians which collectively reads Booker T and The MGs.
Faces music, as was Small Faces music come to that, is well steeped in soul. Had Booker T had a vocalist, he too might well have figured in Rod Stewart’s vocalists’ placings – as it was, Rod did put David Ruffin, the ex-Temptations lead, among his choices… and therein lies another root of the Faces heritage.
Apart from the obvious – ie, the choice of material – it doesn’t take a lot of suss to detect the soul in the Faces work as it dodges between it’s Motown and Memphis influences.
“Motown,” says MacLagan, his hand round the now accepted beer can; “I still think they are so * good. The drag is that people think they are just churning out records. They literally are – but it is of such high quality. Yet people say it is just pop.
“It`s the same with Stax. Someone I met recently said they didn`t like Stax. I took them home and played them me Stax albums, about ten of them, and said `Now can’t you see it? Can’t you appreciate what they’ve got?”‘
Mac’s current rave in the Motown stable is Gladys Knight and the Pips, who the Faces made a point of catching in cabaret last time in the States. “It’s such a shame,” says the organist, “because if she came over here she would not be doing the Underground clubs, not that circuit at all… but she has such soul. To me, she’s the best, the dirtiest female voice.”
Faces sets are liberally sprinkled with other writers’ work, Stones’ tracks “It’s All Over Now” and “Stray Cat Blues,” “Tempts” “I’m Losing You,” Broonzys “Feel So Good,” Elton John’s “Country Comforts,” McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” and so on. Faces albums, as do Rod Stewart’s solo jobs, follow the same varied pattern.
MacLagan explains their early policy of mixing new stuff with known numbers by the need to make their name when they first went to the States. “What better than numbers they already knew?” And although there is no need today to continue that – the group’s own material is as outstanding as any outside material they use – their only only criteria for new material is its quality.
Quite right too. Why should “Only A Hobo” be recorded by Dylan alone and then to a certain extent be forgotten? Why should “It’s All Over Now” rust in the Decca vaults? Or a song as good as “I’m Losing You” not get through to progressives because of their own snobbery. Today, with almost every new band trapped in its own blind preoccupation with presenting its own material regardless of quality, too many good songs are doomed to a short life span. A Government grant to set the Faces up as the country’s re-recorders of song classics wouldn’t be a bad idea.
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