CREEM—March 1970
by Deday LaRene

The Rod Stewart Plan


(Editor's note: The first mention of the Faces in CREEM was when both were infants. Rod Stewart chatted with  Deday LaRene about the band, and it's amazing how much of the band we came to know and love was already formed. Presciently, LaRene wrote that the Faces "may well be the first great English goodtime band of the '70s." How right he was!)

Rod Stewart has been sliding across the country, well greased by PR men and Lancers, getting a lot of good press. I can understand it, he's good press. I can understand it, he's English-charming, gives a good interview, has a good album, is joining the Small Faces, the underground journalist's favorite English band.

The temptation to refer to him as the English Neil Young is almost overwhelming. His roots are deep in the English folk scene (without knowing, doesn't Young strike you as an ex-folkie?). And now, here he is doing solo albums as well as pickin' and singin' with the Small Faces, a band which somehow reminds me of both the Springfield and CSN (I know, the element of circularity is missing, but then, you can't have everything).

The dual recording career is definitely part of the Plan, just as it is for Young. The Rod Stewart Album is the first course of a diverging stream, not an interim project just to keep him busy. "All the heavy things now are gonna be all on the Faces albums. So the next album I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do a lot of things like 'Man of Constant Sorrow,'" Stewart said.

The Faces stuff is going to be unlike the old Faces stuff—New Ron Wood, Rod Stewart, no Steve Marriott. And the Stewart stuff is going to be unlike the old Beck stuff. "I've done all that—the jangling heaviness—with Beck. Besides, there's always the danger that people will say 'well, it doesn't sound as good without Beck.'"

Stewart and Beck didn't split because there was nothing left for them to do together. "When a group breaks up, the usual line to come out with is 'We couldn't have gone any further.' Well, that's a lot of bollocks. Me and Beck could have played together for years and still come up with nice stuff. As a matter of fact, as far as Beck-Ola goes, I think we was only just starting to understand each other."

He left for a number of reasons. For one thing, Beck was planning on bringing in two Vanilla Fudges. "They were over to London and I'd never met them before. I was gonna stay with Jeff. We all met and they were monsters, so I got out while the getting was good."

There was also Ron Wood, Beck bass player, longtime Stewart associate who emerges on the Stewart album as a thoughtful and sensitive guitar player. "I left because Ron left. As far as my album goes…I wanted to give Ron a chance to play the guitar, 'cause I believed in him as a guitar player. He's only just starting, he's got to get confidence."

Of course… most of Beck's recorded material was written by Stewart and Wood. "In fact, we got so pissed off at the way Beck wanted to do our songs—he was a monster to work with, everything had to be up tempo—that on the Faces album we've redone one off the Beck-Ola album (called) 'Plynth.' We originally wrote it for voice and bottleneck guitar, so we've redone it—it's called 'Above the Plynth.'"

The reconstituted Small Faces may well be the first great English goodtime band of the '70s. The nuclear Faces are all Cockneys, the traditional British goodtime boys, as it were. "It's a happy band," says Stewart, and apparently a big change from the Beck unit, which as a group "didn't get on too well, socially. Like I worked with Beck for two years and I never looked him in the eye. Can you imagine that?"

The music will be less fiery than Beck's, the approach less frenzied. The old Faces were a very loud band, and of course, Beck did love the decibels, but with the new Faces "we're trying not to be so loud. Well, I'm trying to keep it down, and Ron's a very quiet guitar player. We're having some trouble with the drummer, though," Stewart said.

The first album is being gotten together. "It's not unlike my album. Heavier. Better, because Ronnie Lane I think writes better songs than I do. More so than Steve Marriott. I noticed that when the two were separated, Ronnie Lane kept writing good songs and Steve Marriott's songs, like with Humble Pie, their songs are very weak."

And they've been playing together for a while. "We did one quick tour of Switzerland which wasn't too successful really because I think they were expecting us to play 'Itchycoo Park'—which is a fucking drag, but I suppose we're going to get that. Our plans as far as this county's concerned—we're going to make the album, we're gonna set up what we're gonna play."

If you're an English Band you have to be conscious of the American Market. "England's all washed up. There are no FM stations, there is no underground press, there's just no money there to earn. Millions of places to play, but you don't earn much money by American standards. Everything's on a smaller scale in England. It's incredible how much talent comes out of there; competition is so fierce. Now when the pirate stations were broadcasting, everything was good. There were a lot of bands that were very obscure that were being played. But record sales went down, and the record companies started complaining. The record companies have a terrible hold over the government; you can usually find some member of Parliament who has something to do with a record company."

And right now, if it's commercial success you want…you have to look at America. Stewart has some experience with this phenomenon. "Beck was very conscious of appealing to the American audience. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, he knew what they wanted. Like, Christ, he put it down, like he said 'there's a rock and roll revival, we're gonna do 'Jailhouse Rock ' and 'All Shook Up.' Well, actually, it was me suggested we do 'Jailhouse Rock.'"

The original Small Faces never did an American tour, although one was offered them some time before they broke up. According to Stewart: "You know why they blew that tour out over here? They didn't want to play second on the bill to Beck."