When you add it all up, the Faces had a hand in making an awful lot of rock & roll history -- and some pretty fine music too. Strange then, that when casual conversation turns to the seminal British bands of the Sixties and Seventies, the Faces (or for that matter, their equally great prior incarnation as the Small Faces) are rarely mentioned. But the Faces boasted a boozy, British blues-rock lineup that was second only to the Rolling Stones of the early Seventies when it came to that intangible chemistry, that particular brand of ragged but right musicianship.

The Faces' original lineup consisted of singer Rod Stewart and guitarist Ronnie Wood (both of whom joined when singer/guitarist Steve Marriott quit the Small Faces to form Humble Pie with Peter Frampton), bassist/singer Ronnie Lane, keyboardist Ian McLagan and drummer Kenney Jones. To look at those names now, one tends to think of the Faces as a sort of supergroup. But back then, from 1970-75, they were just a great band that liked to mix filled-to-the-brim cocktails of Saturday night boogie and Sunday afternoon ballads -- acoustic, folk-tinged ruminations that bumped up against what seemed, at the time, like a never-ending weekend of raucous, riff-happy rock & soul. Live or on record, the Faces had just about all the bases covered.

"[The audience] could have a bloody good laugh and a bloody good cry and a bloody good drink and maybe smoke some pot and have a bloody great time," is how Ian McLagan remembers it, calling from his Austin, Texas home, where he's lived since 1991. "We were unpretentious. But we always dressed for dinner on stage. We weren't dressed in denim and looking at the floor like a lot of these bands today."

Upon listening to the brand new Warner Archives/Rhino collection, The Best of Faces: Good Boys ... When They're Asleep, it's easy to hear why McLagan is proud of his band's legacy. The disc brings together nineteen tracks spanning the group's four studio albums, from the signature Stewart/Wood-penned hit "Stay With Me" (which reached #17 on the pop charts in 1972) to lesser-known luminescent beauties like the Lane-penned "Debris" and "Glad and Sorry" and the McLagan/Lane jaunty wink-and-grin of "You're So Rude." And then there's a Stewart/Wood rocker for the ages, "Miss Judy's Farm," which will give the listener an idea of just where exactly the Black Crowes copped their strut.

McLagan, who helped produce the compilation, says he felt the time was right for a proper survey of the band's career -- its first retrospective treatment since 1976's Snakes and Ladders/The Best of Faces. The new overview also gave McLagan the opportunity to revisit what he claims is the under-appreciated songwriting talents of his old friend Ronnie Lane, who succumbed to a fatal case of multiple sclerosis in 1997. "I wanted Ronnie Lane to be represented better than he's been represented," he says. "Most people think it was all about Rod [Stewart], but there were other things that Ronnie Lane did that I think needed to be heard." In fact, Billy Bragg, with whom McLagan is currently touring, has been performing Lane compositions "Glad and Sorry" and "Debris" in concert. "Most people haven't heard that stuff," McLagan says. "I hate the fact that people refer to that band as Rod Stewart and the Faces. I mean, Rod was our singer, just like I was their keyboard player."

Of course, it's tough to argue with the adulation Stewart was receiving at the time, both with the Faces and as a solo artist. During the span of a few short years, Stewart had managed to issue a string of soulful, seminal albums that have made the remainder of his career pale in comparison. Though he's continued to be hugely successful commercially, he's rarely enjoyed the kind of critical acclaim he basked in during the era of Every Picture Tells a Story and Gasoline Alley -- a time when he often tapped various combinations of his Faces bandmates to back him on his biggest smashes. "It was a lot of fun, and very different, working on Rod's stuff," says McLagan, who contributed organ to Stewart's classic "Maggie May" (the tune also featured Wood on guitar). "With the Faces it was always loose, but even early on it was five voices and opinions, and trying to work something out could get tedious. But with Rod, it was easier because he already had the song and he knew what he wanted to do with it."

Like Stewart's early solo work, the Faces material on Good Boys still sounds timeless and relevant, despite the dramatic stylistic shifts in the pop landscape over the past three decades. Part of why the band's music has held up better than other early Seventies boogie-based rock outfits like, say, Grand Funk Railroad, may have something to do with the innate intelligence and charming, easy-going humor that was always at the heart of the Faces' music. They sounded like a band who weren't themselves terribly serious, even though the quality of the music they were making was anything but frivolous. The tenderness and emotional honesty that underpin tracks like "Flying" and "Sweet Lady Mary," for instance, make for elegant, poignant contrasts to party-crashing rockers like "Too Bad" and "Had Me a Real Good Time."

With the exception of Lane (who quit the band in 1973 and was replaced by Testsu Yamauchi), each of the Faces went on to greater renown. Wood, of course, joined the Stones and McLagan has toured the world with them several times; Jones was tapped as Keith Moon's replacement in the Who; and Rod Stewart, Faces frontman, became Rod Stewart, superstar. But there's little doubt that each of those blokes did his best work while with that outfit. So what was it that made them interact musically so well, at least at first (by the time the Faces split in 1975, various factions of the band were no longer speaking to each other)?

"The fact that we had so many writers in the band, and so many different personalities. And that we always had a laugh," McLagan recalls. "We'd rehearse and then go down to the pub. We weren't thinking about the next career move ... especially in the early days, when all of us used to be falling-over drunk all of the time. Like the Marx Brothers, we'd all be sitting together and at a certain point we'd all fall over and grope the girls who used to be hanging 'round. We were all pals, and we were just having the best f***ing time possible. Unfortunately, by the end, I didn't talk to Rod at all except to say 'f*** you' on stage."

But those days, the many good ones and the few bad ones, belong to yesterday. McLagan's moved on (he's since written a memoir of his years with the Faces and Small Faces), and he says he's finally found a way to look back not with regret, but with the humor and love that animated the best of the Faces' music. "There are no bad feelings anymore," he says about the group's disastrous last months together, when ego clashes, Stewart's superstar solo status and bitter fights finally sank the band. "You can't change the way things were, and I wouldn't want to. What we did back then was about a moment in time." Still, old habits -- and tensions -- die hard. McLagan claims the surviving members of the Faces have wanted to reunite for a tour -- everybody, that is, except the singer.

"Look, Rod needs credibility and this would give him the boost he needs, and it would enable him to sell his old solo albums like he always did," McLagan says with a mischievous cackle. "Rod needs a kick in the ass. It took him twenty-five years to realize how great a song 'Ooh La La' was, and he just cut it as a record, didn't he?" Reunion tour or no, it seems like old times already.

JONATHAN PERRY
(September 21, 1999)