Thus it was that, armed with my own reservations and a transcript of Barbara Charone’s interview with Rod, I went up to yet another blandly plush hotel room to call on the Faces. Or at least Ron Wood and Ian MacLagan, the two more voluble cornerstones of this organization. Here in 1975, time of the bland-out, rock ‘n’ roll was at a dreary pass, and the Faces seemed to be suffering by it no less than everybody else. I’d talked to them on their last Stateside tour, in February, and despite their show of good cheer they’d seemed pretty down at that time if you peered through the wisecracks. The oddity was that in spite of their questionable corporate status the band was playing better than ever. Now things had, on the surface at least, taken an even darker turn: Wood had been loaned out to the Stones for their summer tour, amid myriad rumors of permanent defection; meanwhile Rod had sought professional help in Muscle Shoals (Steve Cropper, A1 Jackson, etc.) for the recording of his latest solo album, and released it accompanied by a fusillade of personal and professional insults aimed at his long-time cohorts, whom he seemed ready to write off as punchup drinking buddies and nothing more.

It wasn’t the first time Stewart had slapped his Faces around in the press -not long after Ooh La La was released, he went out of his way to let an English trade paper know that he considered the album an embarrassment and implied that the Faces would rather juice it up than take care of business — but never had h$ maligned them in such blanket, final terms. Arid yet here they were, scant days later, beginning another tour together, their longest in years. The mood around the, Faces’ office in New York was harried; Rod had his own personal PR people, and was keeping pretty much to himself and his blonde consort, Britt Eklund.

The latter course of action seemed only natural, since a couple in swoonland need their privacy, which perhaps is why it seemed most peculiar to walk into the lobby of the Regency Hotel and immediately pin the glamatic duo hiding behind sunglasses, billing and cooing and playing kneeses for all the world to see. Ascertaining that they were most certainly in a world of their own, I forswore journalistic instinct and ignored them, heading for the bar to have a drink while I waited for Ronnie to get out of bed and MacLagan to finish his breakfast. When I got there I found myself next.to a houndfaced business exec who tore ^himself away from his Scotch long enough to ask me what the hell was going on outside.

“Rod Stewart and Britt Eklund,” I said, thinking he must have caught some earlier commotion I missed.

“Who the hell are they?”

“Well,” I explained to the dunderhead, “he’s a rock star and she’s a movie star, and they’re sitting in the lobby.” Suddenly it occurred to me x how curious their behavior wasl It made sense that they would want to get their faces on the covers of the fanmags, but their approach seemed rather unorthodox - wasn’t the customary procedure, when one wishes to turn on the lights of the papparazi, to run? A few minutes later I asked MacLagan about this, and he snickered and made a pointedly prurient crack about Rod’s amatory appetites. A few minutes later Wood came sliding in, smiling and obviously floating on his own wires. At times, during the interview, it was hard to tell whether his answers were the effluvia of scrambled lobes or merely evasive, and his school prankster’s face was just beginning to grey. Mac’s already had. Two old Pinocchios. I asked them if the Faces, as presently constituted, had a future.

“Future?” said Mac, feigning surprise. “It’sripe, it’s rich.” He looked me in the eye, speaking slowly and leaving measured spaces between his sentences for emphasis. “It’s not over, mate, the band ain’t split up.” A beat. “That’s a fact.”

The silences between Wood’s statements were different — he kept dropping non sequiturs and then laughing at his own private jokes, attention strung out and meandering, a curious stillness to his whimsy. I asked them if they could see any future for themselves with Rod, and he said: “Yeah . . . but does he?” Silqnce, click, whirr. “See a future with himself? That’s why this, uh • • • gypsy, with a crystal ball . . . looked into it and said . . . “Rod, take your hat off, I can’t see your brain cells.” His face snapped sideways and down just slightly in a soundless hippy laugh as if to say, Wow, what a farout thing I just said, but I’m cute and I know it.

I told them what Rod had said in the interview, and Wood leaned forward with a smirk on his face. “Now Lester, come on, you know that’s a pure shit story, scraping the barrel to a terrible degree . . . just because what Rod says is true, and . . . may change the next day ...” He was still smiling. I had never conducted an interview in a room whose atmosphere was dead in quite the way this was. And I have been in some flat places. I told them Rod had called them sloppy musicians.

"Rod shouldn't have said those things, because if the band's gonna split up, surety the band should know about it."

“Yeah, that hurt,” said Mac. “We asked him about that and he said he didn’t say it. We read it in an interviewit may have been something that's going across his mind and it’s just been blown up. I think the whole thing was really because Rod wasn’t in contact with us for such a long time - he was surrounded by Hollywood and all that. Rod shouldn’t have said those things because if the band’s gonna split up, surely the band should know about it. If Rod’s gonna leave the band, then Rod’s gonna leave the band ... we wouldn’t necessarily know about ft$ .

Confused, I asked him if he thought it beyond Rod to simply walk out.

“I don’t know, I class these latest remarks exactly as when he passed all those comments on Ooh La La. Remember?” The bitterness beneath the deliberate vagueness began to assert itself. “We were all very proud of what we’d done, and then he came out and slayed it! At the time we were'fuckin’ happy, because we’d spent a lot of time on it and finally it was finished.”

Wood jumped in, and set about covering up the wounds MacLagan had begun to open. “When ‘e came home, he hadn’t seen us in so long and his imagination was starting to get the better of him.” I said that I thought his latest move was symptomatic of white singers (Janis Joplin, for instance) who want to “legitimize” themselves and that the Faces were the perfect complement to Rod’s singing. “Yeah,” said Mac, “it’s a necessary bit of roughage . . .”

“Actually,” said Ron, “the musicians he’s used on this album are the cream of musicians. But as far as I can see it’s a mistake. It’s using people from one kind of musical field and trying to make them into rock musicians, which they’re not. With Janis, something like the Full-Tilt Boogie Band was fantastic, but Rod’s singing tight with a tight band — each track is its own tight vacuum.”

“Right,” I said. “You hire competent musicians, and you end up with nothing but competence.”

“I was asking Steve Cropper,” said Ron, “like, ‘Ah, fantastic, you played on ‘Red Beans and Rice’ and all that, and he said ‘I don’t remember that. And he doesn’t remember the Sam & Dave things. He remembers some of the songs that he wrote, but there have been so many sessions ... he just kind of seeks his own genius.”

The crux of this matter, it seems to your reporter, is that there is a certain school of journeyman musician who can bfe plugged into any session, and then there are people like the Faces who may be only good at one thing, but have mastered that style so intuitively that they create their own magic that no amount of professionalise can copy. Besides which professionalism is in no way synonymous with inspiration. “Do you think,” I asked Woody, “that after a while musicians like Cropper can’t tell when they’re good and when they’re bad?”

“Some of them . A lot of times it’s not a question of being good or bad, it’s efficiency. Bear in mind Jackson and Cropper, and respect their approach. Because they invented that little idiosyncrasy in the first place, and there are plenty of drummers and guitarists who are still trying to get it. We work differently. Kenny just plays the drums the way he would have anyway; and when it comes time to rehearse Rod’s old songs with the band I have to learn them all again because I forget everything. Not exactly efficient, but it’s not like sitting in my room figuring out the chords either, because I play them instantly with the voice. There’s nothing to it. Although there is a fine line between knowing the stock house of riffs B and delivering it over to a big crowd.”

One way they plan to deliver on this I tour is by augmenting the band with ■§■] Jessie Ed Davis on rhythm guitar and a 4 whole string' section in tuxes and black ties. When I asked whose idea the violinists were, Wood smirked. “Mr. Stew. art.”

“What do you think of that?”

“Well, I had planned with Mac to get a synthesizer . . . incredible sound . . . we knew that was available anyway to any keyboard player. But one thing we all knew was that Rod was dedicated to the thought of having strings for the tour . . . He also suggested getting Steve Cropper, said ‘Woody’s used to playing with another guitarist’.... I said ‘No — Jessie Ed Davis.’ I love Steve Cropper, but Jesse has a lot more weight to lose , and he’ll do that on the road. And he’s got a lot more rocks to get off . . . an d they’ve got loads of money. For instance, I’ve got to do a December tour of Europe with them for nine or ten days. We just work it out each time. And I don’t think it will harm any relationship with the Faces. This working relationship between the two bands can only go on so long, but while there’s no tension, and while it’s helping both bands, it’s no reason to make a major thing out of it.”

"He’s used the cream of musicians on this album, but it’s a mistake."

His attention began to drift again. I asked him about the rumor of him becoming a permanent Stone. “Well, it’s hardly an idea of any foundation. It’s just an arrangement if I’ve got the time .•.. and they haven’t got the money . . . do a tour! But I haven’t got much time,

1 reminded him that Rod had said he wasn’t going to see the Stones and didn’t know if Wood was dead or alive. “Yeah, I read that. Showed pretty good interest at the time. Luckily I was too busy to — it was another bit of press thrown in front of me and ... I didn’t take it too seriously. Especially when I spoke to him, and he said ‘Well, for all I know, you could have passed away.’ But he ... more or less apologized. For saying it.”

What about the long overdue Faces album? “I’ve got twelve songs,” said Mac. “I don’t know how many Woody’s got left but I know he had a lot at one point. He’s still writing . . . and I don’t have to rely on Rod so much for words now. J.P., a buddy of mine, has found he can write lyrics to songs . . I’ve always had problems with lyrics . . . so we’ve been getting songs together easy as hell. . . how good they are, I don’t know . . . basic ideas, down on tape. So I see that, and it’s encouraging. Before if was always a liability for Rod to have to . . .”

Did they, I wondered, think the band was becoming more independent of Rod? “More protective towards ourselves, rather than independent of Rod. I’ve always relied on Rod for words . . .’\

“Plus,” said Ron, “we’ve got a collection of all the songs we think the fans would like to know.” A kind of Best of the Faces “for next year . . . 6ongs you may have overlooked ...” Was he,sure that the Faces were in it for anything besides the money at this point? “All the cats that come to out concerts have curr iosity ... and that’s what . . . collects cash!”

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FACES

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 47.

He smiled at his alliteration. He urn doubtedly thought jt was ap impish grin.

I think the truth, at this point is that even the Faces don’t know whether they’re going to last or not. Rod may see the l?and as chattel or at least a cpnvenience, but there is a certain professionalism -—“The Faces’ last tour was the most competent, the most in-tune blockbusting tour we ever did, at a time when there was real depression and bad outlooks,” Mac told me earlier — that carries them through both Rod’s temperamental thrashings and their own uncertainty and apparent recording stagnation. But all the swallowed pride and best-of albums and friendswriting-lyrics in the world won’t pull them out of their very real quandary.

Meanwhile, it’s thrilling and frustrating to watch thoni stave off the day of reckoning. That night on a football field in Jersey they took to the bpards again, and surprised a jaded press junket by' delivering a piledriving performance that, for the Faces, was downright savage. Rod, in spite of the fact that he was sporting what appeared to be a Davy Crockett haireqt, sang with a fury that made you wonder exactly who all that bitter edginess was aimed at: and it was obvious that, for all his rather insipid affectations of the latter’s blowzy wastedness, Wood had siphoned some dilute guitar fire out of Keith Richard. Simply, the whole band played with a vengeance, in spite of the fact that tlfe elec: / trified string section, Stewart’s folly, creaked and grPaned unmercifully. It may be that Rod’s aggression was directed at Mick Jagger, who slummed around in the mud backstage, jawjacking with Ronnie Van Zandt, lips bigger and eyes smaller than ever. The band may be working so hard for a change because they know that this is the last round before final dissolution. Or perhaps they are out to show Rod, by force 1 if necessary, that they can cut anybody at his riffs; perhaps they will all shove each other into renewed love and inspired interaction. Nah, you know they hate-his guts. But the Faces party never seemed so close to exploding into grid; iron carnage before. If you made this one, you were lucky. It won’t come again.