Rod Promises Some Surprises

Rod Promises Some Surprises

FACES '74 PART 1

Ben Edmonds

It’s, 4:15 PM, which puts Mr. Rod Stewart a full 45 minutes beyond our pre-arranged connection point. Assured by Shirley Arnold that the subject is in transit from his country estate (which sits almost within the Queen’s view from Windsor Castle and a proverbial stone’s throw from the similarly palatial digs of Elton John and George Harrison), I sink back into the Faces’ office couch and take in the tales that the road crew are gleefully tossing back and forth: stories of hotel demolition and car-meets-telephone-pole drama. Standard Faces fare, but old news is hardly what we’ve come for.

For the most part, new news has been no news at all. Which is fine - , every popstar who fulfills his sweat quota is entitled to an occasional doze by the pool — but it does open the door to all manner of speculation. (Exhibit A: “Has Rod lost his voice,’’gets more request line action than Dylan & The Band at Detroit radio service WABX.) Or worse, if nobody bothers to speculate at all. (Exhibit B: In the last CREEM reader Poll, Stewart failed to. show up among the Top 10 male vocalists, a category he’d won with ease the previous year.) To further compound the situation, the last couple of Faces albums had been received with enough indifference to warrant a little nervousness, and Stewart’s own recording situation remains something of a mystery. In the wake of this Stewart encounter, the question that everyone felt compelled to ask was “How did he look ... was he healthy?” As if every period of relative inactivity was somehow a secret signal that you were really locked in your mother’s basement mainlining away your career.

But talk of an extraordinary performance at the otherwise pathetic deathof-Woodstock ritual they called the Buxton Pop Festival was everywhere, and when he finally did bounce into the room it was obvious that his adrenalin was still being pumped by that triumph. He feigned surprise at the congratulations, and quickly directed the praise toward the Memphis Horns, who’d augmented the band for the occasion. “We’d only had four days to rehearse with ’em, so a lot of the time they had to fall back on their great old Otis Redding intros. The crowd might not’ve known who the Memphis Horns were, but they bloody well recognized those licks! It turned out so well that I think we’ll be taking them on tour with us.”

"There iww a lime when we didn’t think.people had come to listen to us."

" It's like writing a letter hornet and then not having a stamp to send it. "

He looked well-rested and sunbaked from a holiday in Spain (during which he took up .golf under the tutorship of Sean Connery) — as he danced around the room fielding questions from secretaries and road managers, posing for the photographer and proudly flashing Polaroids of his latest automotive acquisition. His energy seemed to be that of a springtime athlete restless for the arena, Still, for a healthy footballlusting popstar (he’d recently chartered a plane so that he and his dad could see Scotland compete in the World Cup matches in Germany), he does occasionally give vent to certain eccentricities. On one occasion, he replied to a radio interviewer’s questions exclusively in French. On another, he refused to allow the interviewer to turn on his tape recorder. The latter interviewer, unfortunately, was me.

Once the machine in question is safely deactivated, however, any formality immediately dissolves. He’s so aristocratically accomodating, in fact, that at any moment you half-expect Aunt Jemimah to slide in with a tray of mint juleps. He plays the Country Gentleman to the hilt, responding to questions as if you’d been granted a friendly audience with some, crusty elder statesman. His no-punches-pulled honesty has caught him in a few tight situations in the past, but he realizes that it’s half the reason he’s such good copy. And Stewart, I think, enjoys knowing that he’s good copy. (“He’s got this romantic thing,” someone speculated later, “about walking down the street and having a reporter at his heels desperately trying to jot down everything he says.”)

Justdhe week before he’d unleashed a righteously pissed-off diatribe at a reporter from one of the weeklies to the effect that he was considering giving up the ghost of England permanently. Several other English musicians are making similar noises in response to a strangulating tax policy — a policy which historically has forced British actors to escape often enough to qualify it as a tradition — but their plans seem cloaked in “will the fans think we’re deserting them’! nervous knees. Not so with Rod Stewart. He went straight to the punchline: ‘{live worked hard all my life, and now they’re trying to take it away in taxes.” Refreshing candor. Good copy.

Having received reports that the Faces, generally regarded to a man as hearty imbibers, had toasted the Buxton devastation of their road crew with orange juice, I inquired as to how their, um, “reputation” had proliferated. “There was a time when we didn’t think people had come to' listen to us, so the only way we could do it was to get pissed. And there was the whole comrade thing; we were one of the few bands at the time who made it obvious that we really enjoyed being onstage with one another. After that, I guess that when people saw us getting off on each other they took it to mean that we were pissed.” Right, but there’s a perverse streak in the rock audience that

wants to .see the clown fall face-down into a creampie filled with razor blades. “God, I’d hate to think that anybody ever bought a ticket to a Faces show because they wanted to see a bunch of drunks staggering about...”

The fact remains that if you’ve wanted to see the Faces staggering about in any frame of consciousness recently (and don’t live in faraway Japan or New Zealand), you’ve had to settle for them one at a time. Rod and Ron Wood have both had solo albums to keep them busy, as well as a full social calendar of guest appearances. New bassist Tetsu joined Stomu Yamash’ta’s East Wind for a few live performances. And Ian McLagan and Kenny Jones join ex-bassist Ronnie Lane and Humble Pie’s Steve Marriott in announcing that the original Small Faces are to re-group for selected dates later this year.

TURN TO PAGE 71.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 39.

With all this, the vaguely persistent talkof a Faces collapse might almost be expected. “I know, I know, but it’s still rubbish. See, the Faces have always been a working band ... God knows, we’ve worked our arses off. Bqt we haven’t been in front of ’em for awhile, and I guess they have to talk about something.” The departure of Ronnie Lane during the lull couldn’t have helped much, though. “Ah, yes, Ronnie Lane. He quit the band because he couldn’t handle it... the hassles. And now he turns around and he’s got more hassles than he ever did before. Carrying around a bloody circus tent.. . Ha!”

But any humor he saw in the situatioh was short-lived, undoubtedly because it brought to mind one very large hassle too close for comfort. Rod Stewart, you see, is currently caught in the middle of a corporate dogfight for possession of his solo soul. Which means that, for the time being anyway, he’s nowhere at alh “I’ve really been depressed these last six weeks,” he tells you without the flourishes that usually punctuate . his conversation. “My album, Smiler, has been completed for so long now, and it’s just sitting there. It’s like writing a letter home and then not having a stamp to send it. All this fighting back and forth. The album will come oqt in September, and then the thing goes to the courts. Winner takes all.”

The situation is a maze of contentions and counter-contentions, stacking up something like this: Toward the end of 1972, Stewart’s solo contract with Mercury expired. Phonogram (the conglomerate of which Mercury is a part) claims that an extension to the contract was signed at this time. Everything was proceeding smoothly toward the release of Smiler when Warner Bros, veep Joe Smith showed up in London with a court injunction barring the release of the album. Warners, it turns out, claims that they have papers on Stewart, effective at the expiration of the original Mercury contract. But Phonogram maintains that at the very bottom line they’re owed at least one album via the original deal. Got it? “We’re looking for a compromise to get the album out as soon as possible,” reported Smith. “Either on Warners or Phonogram, with the royalties to be held in escrow pending the outcome of the court action. It’s conceivable that we might even work out a cooperative solution as we did with the Faces’ live album, but I feel the important thing right now is that the album be released.”

Details about the album itself are almost as vague as its legal entanglements. “Well,” Rod drawls, dangling the possible information, “I’m not gonna give it away just yet, but I promise you won’t be disappointed. I’ve got a few surprises lined up for you.” Could one of them be a reportedly gut-wrenching romp through “Girl From The North Country”? “Ah, I see that you’ve got your spies out! Well yes, that’s one. But I’ve got a few others. I’ll never do a cover version unless I think I can do it better than the original. I mean, my ‘Twistin’ The Night Away’ was better than Sam Cooke ... it was brought upto-date.”

OK, so we’ll just wait and hope that we get to find out for ourselves sometime before Rod begins collecting -his social security benefits. But what, if anything, is happening in the meantime? “Here’s what’s happening in the meantime,” and he waves a tour schedule under your nose that’s so full that it makes you dizzy just looking at it. So much for the breakup of the Faces. Any possibility that, aside from lending a fraternal guidance to Ron Wood’s solo venture, you, might consider lending production assistance to some other worthy product? “God, no. Anything I produce is likely to come out sounding like a watered-down version of one of my albums, and I wouldn’t want to inflict that on anybody. You remember that John Baldry album, don’t you ... ?”

The rock-star-as-drama-student pose being quite in vogue these days (Michael Des Barres is co-starring with Oliver Reed; Jagger’s theatrical agents are forever considering scripts, and rumors of Peter Wolf as James Dean persist even though James Williamson might seem better-suited to the part), Rod should by all rights be a prime target. He certainly seems to have the raw attributes: offbeat good looks, a fine speaking voice ana, more importantly, that certain flair. “Yea, well my desk has been literally swamped with scripts. I was going to play the Local Lad in the film version of Tommy, same as I did for the album. But then Elton John advised me not to do it. He said, ‘You don’t want to be in Daltrey’s shadow.* So I turned it down. And then come to find out, who’s playing the Local Lad but Elton John! The cunt...” With that he

laughs, no' doubt seeing exaggerated newspaper visions of a feud that doesn’t exist.

Where, finally, does all this, leave the Faces? “In a stronger position, I think. Everybody’s working out their own things, and I think we’ll all come back to the band as stronger individuals. We’ll pull that strength together because the Faces is a personal thing, if you know what I mean.” And will this similarly affect the band’s recording ventures, which have admittedly never kept pace with their live accomplishments? “Well, we’ve tried it in the studio four times, and it’s never really worked out the way it should’ve. My albums have always been better than Faces albums, always. We won’t make another Faces album; I think we’ll just cut singles from now on. You know, go for the great performance and cancel out the rest. But maybe I shouldn’t be saying this... maybe the lads want to make another album . . ” He breaks into laughter again, realizing that he’s just taken another spontaneous plunge into territory that he might later be called upon" to relinquish. But he doesn’t pull back his troops, or deny their penetration. And that’sgood copy.