by Rod Stewart
In 1971, when ‘Maggie May’ came out and I had to go on Top of the Pops to promote it, the Faces came along for the laugh. Backstage beforehand, we tried – and failed – to break into the dressing room of Pan’s People, the show’s resident female dance troupe, and settled instead for a highly competitive game of football in a BBC corridor against Slade, the glam rock band, the Faces running out 2–0 winners. For the recording, everybody dressed to the nines, and John Peel, our DJ and champion, sat on a stool and very self-consciously pretended to play mandolin (an instrument on which he had less than no experience) while Ronnie, Woody and I hopped off the back of the stage and kicked a football around, not unduly concerned about exposing the golden trade secret of Top of the Pops – that the bands on Britain’s favourite music show were miming. We would go further the following year, when ‘Angel’ was in the charts and Ronnie Lane couldn’t make it along, so we replaced him on the stage with a cardboard cut-out. But the ‘Maggie May’ appearance was truly an emblematic moment, both for me and for the Faces. It forged an image of us as anarchic, silly, rather loveable if we said so ourselves. At that innocent early point, you would have struggled to see how my success could have been anything but good for the Faces, nor how the Faces could have been anything but good for my success.
The waters grew muddier, though. Ronnie and Mac were clearly constantly asking themselves suspicious, vexed questions: what was I giving more time to? Where were my best energies going? Was the band my priority, or me? And all those nights spent playing ‘Maggie May’ and ‘You Wear It Well’ – was that to their advantage or solely mine? Clearly their female partners were joining in on these discussions, too, which was never going to lessen the intensity of the debate. It didn’t help that sometimes, at airports, Warner Bros. would send a car for the Faces, and Mercury Records, with whom I had my solo deal, would send a car for me. Suddenly we were travelling in separate limos: very divisive. Or sometimes Warner would book the band regular hotel rooms and Mercury would book me a suite.
Of course, I could have refused the key and insisted on downgrading. But then . . . well, I wouldn’t have had a suite, would I?
I have to say, these logistical details never seemed to come between me and Woody. In New York for a show at Madison Square Garden in February 1975, I found myself booked into the Sherry Netherland, with Woody staying opposite, across Fifth Avenue, in the Plaza. And he called my room and said, ‘Which floor are you on?’ I said I was on the fifteenth. He said, ‘Brilliant. I’m on the seventeenth. Let’s see if we can see each other.’ We both looked out: nothing. I said, ‘Woody, I don’t think this is going to work.’ He said, ‘Hold on.’ I looked out again, and there, leaning right out of the window, a mile above the street, was a distant, hairy figure, holding a lit newspaper as a beacon.
What niggled Mac and Ronnie most of all, though, was if there was any chance that they could be construed as my backing band. Now, that grievance I really did understand, although there was precious little I could do to control it. Promoters were under strict instruction, from the start, to bill the group on posters or marquees as ‘The Faces’. But in America, even at the beginning, in 1970, I had an album out, Gasoline Alley, that had sold 250,000 copies, and whatever you want to say about American concert promoters, they aren’t stupid. Consequently, we would turn up at venues, and there, in big letters, it would say, ‘Rod Stewart and the Faces’. At which point, Mac and Ronnie would do their nuts. Ronnie was so furious about it one time, he clunked Billy Gaff around the head with a bottle. Invariably, at theatres which had offended in this way, the dressing room would be royally trashed on the way out as an act of vengeance.
Bickering increasingly prevailed. I didn’t particularly help the deteriorating atmosphere within the band when, in an interview, I described the Faces’ third album, Ooh La La, as ‘a bloody mess’. I guess that was me and my previously noted tendency to turn against things I had recently done. But it was not the most helpful thing you could hope to hear from a lead singer on the eve of an album’s release – although a true enough reflection of my feelings. I did apologise to the guys, but Mac was clearly thinking, ‘Typical bloody singer.’
Before long, I was being accused of keeping the best songs for myself – of holding back the juiciest material for my own solo albums, and offering up leftovers for the Faces’ records. That was never the case, and logically it couldn’t have been, because I didn’t write songs all the time, like a proper songwriter – like a Ronnie Lane, indeed. I only wrote when I got into the studio, under near-emergency conditions, when there were recordings to be made and songs were needed. I wasn’t continuously preparing a catalogue of finished items to thumb through and dip back into when I chose.
Near the end of his life, when he was ill with multiple sclerosis, Ronnie took to claiming that I had stolen the song ‘Mandolin Wind’ from him. It was untrue. And, really, the proof of the untruth is the nature of Ronnie himself: he was hardly someone who would stand by, uncomplainingly, while someone purloined one of his songs and not even mention it until years afterwards. He would have fronted it up with me there and then.
Ronnie left in 1973. Nobody thought he was serious at first because ‘I’m leaving the band’ was a group catchphrase: the stock Faces response to any disappointment or setback. If you got slightly rained on between the hotel porch and the limo, you would automatically say, ‘I’m leaving the band.’ It had about as much content as that other favourite Faces expression: ‘Bollocks, you cunt.’ But this time, before a show at Roanoke in North Carolina, Ronnie meant it. I think he thought the rest of the band would go with him, leaving me isolated. Instead, the four of us called a band meeting and sat around trying to think whom we could bring in as a replacement – which I think we all knew was a doomed idea, given what Ronnie had brought to the group, but what else could we do?
My first thought was to ask Andy Fraser, who had been the bass player with Free, a band whose early albums I really respected and listened to a lot while we were on tour. Andy wasn’t interested, so we then approached Tetsu Yamauchi, who had replaced Andy in Free and was a sweet Japanese guy who barely spoke English. Tetsu appeared to be going through some emotional difficulties at the time, but because he didn’t speak English we never really found out what those emotional difficulties were. We did, however, notice that he was a man who could hold his drink. I remember seeing his breakfast go by on a tray in a hotel one morning: sausage, beans, fried egg, rasher of bacon and two shots of whisky. The drink did get the better of him occasionally, though. There was one gig, on his first tour with us, where Tetsu had to spend the show leaning against the bass stack at the back of the stage, with a roadie behind the cabinets reaching round to hold on to his legs and keep him upright.
That, I hardly need add, was during the band’s long, slow decline. Mac was going off me big time. Much as Ronnie had done, Mac thought I was permanently on the verge of leaving and destroying the band, and he seemed determined to feel resentful about it in advance. In fact the thing that triggered my exit was the long-expected decision of Woody to take a job with the Rolling Stones – the band, let’s face it, that he was born to be in. That, for me, was the killer blow. To lose Ronnie was bad enough, but to lose Woody as well . . . The jig was well and truly up.
The Stones had courted Woody for ages, and their interest in him was no secret. I don’t think anyone was surprised that eventually he couldn’t resist, or blamed him for succumbing. How many guitarists wouldn’t have wanted to join the Rolling Stones? But Woody found it hard to make a clean break. For a while he thought he could work for both bands and keep everyone happy, but that was never going to be practical. Woody finished a tour with the Stones, and then came out on the final Faces tour, which took place in the autumn of 1975. We had a big orchestra and a fancy Italian-style balustrade constructed on the stage set, to help with four numbers that I wanted us to play off my new Atlantic Crossing album – all my idea (and paid for by me, I might add), but the rest of t
he band, and especially Mac, clearly thought it sucked.
Mac wouldn’t believe it, but right to the end, right until it became clear that Woody was off, I wanted to be in the Faces – wanted to continue to be part of it. I always had. I didn’t want to strike out on my own. Striking out on my own wasn’t really in my nature. If I could have been a member of the Faces for the rest of my life, I would have been happy. But the grim fact was, by 1975 the Faces were no longer really there to be a member of. People had been in my ear for ages, trying to erode my position, bit by bit, and I hadn’t succumbed. Now Billy Gaff and the record company were at it again, saying, ‘You must be mad, this is over, get yourself a band, do the solo career, do what you want, it’s time.’ And eventually, in December 1975, I conceded that it was.
So the Faces were gone – but never to be forgotten. Eleven years on, in July 1986, at the end of a show I did in the pelting rain at Wembley Stadium, on came Woody, Mac and Kenney, and on came Ronnie, terribly frail now and with a cane, but smartly suited and happy and literally cheered on by the crowd, who, at the first glimpse of him, broke into a chorus of ‘We love you, Ronnie, we do.’ And Ronnie sat on a stool, and I gave the microphone stand a ceremonial fling into the sky, almost impaling myself in the process, and we all then roistered our way, in a near-perfect replica of the old disorder, through ‘(I Know) I’m Losing You’, ‘Twisting the Night Away’ and ‘Stay with Me’.
There was a repeat performance in 1993, on the occasion of my receiving an Outstanding Contribution award (or ‘retirement gold clock’ as one likes to think of it) at the Brits. Ronnie, bless him, who had just four years to live at that point, was too ill to come. But Woody, Kenney, Mac and I did some rehearsing, and also some going to the pub on the Caledonian Road, and gave them ‘Stay with Me’ and ‘Sweet Little Rock ’N’ Roller’.
And then, in April 2012, our shambling contribution to rock’s history (along with that of the Small Faces) was honoured with an induction into America’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I missed the ceremony in Cleveland – struck down with strep throat. But then I’m doomed when it comes to Hall of Fame events. I didn’t make it to my own solo induction either, having been pinned back at home by the great LA earthquake of 1994. Typical: you get into the Hall of Fame and, the night before, the earth tries to open up and swallow you.
Still, I’m mindful of the last days before my dear old mum died in 1991, aged eighty-five, when I would go and see her and sometimes find her sleeping. The confusion was most certainly upon her in those last few years, and very often she would wake up and say, ‘Oh, hello, Roddy. How are the Faces doing?’
They’re doing fine, Mum.
DIGRESSION
In which our hero survives a gunfight, wears some soppy shoes in front of one of the world’s hardest men and uncovers an everlasting love for Celtic. And in which he receives a memorable visit at home.
I don’t like to think how much travelling all over the world to watch Celtic and Scotland has cost me down the years. But I do know that, in 1978, it nearly cost me my life.
That was the summer of the World Cup in Argentina. For the second successive time, Scotland had qualified for the tournament and England hadn’t – a detail which by no means diminished the emotional richness of the occasion for Scotland supporters. Having failed once again to make the squad, I was at least selected to compose and record Scotland’s official World Cup song, ‘Ole Ola’. I think everyone was expecting bagpipes, but instead I opted for a South American flavour and thereby ended up standing in a studio in Los Angeles and delivering the immortal line:
‘Ole ola, ole ola,
We’re gonna bring that World Cup back from over tha.’
The team set off for South America amid an unusually heady gale of optimism and hype. Ally MacLeod, Scotland’s beloved manager, had outlandishly declared that, even if Scotland didn’t win the World Cup, they would definitely come back with a medal. I couldn’t wait. Scotland were going to play three matches in the opening stage of the tournament – against Peru, Iran and the mighty Holland – and I wasn’t planning to miss a minute.
I flew down to Argentina with my pal, Ewan Dawson, and we settled ourselves into the Four Seasons Hotel in Buenos Aires in anticipation of a week of high living and football. The night before Scotland’s opening match against Peru, the local record company people kindly offered to take us out for dinner, and, as it very much goes against the grain with me to decline any free meal offered by a record company, I accepted. The record company said, ‘We’re going to take you to the most exclusive restaurant because we don’t want any trouble with bandits.’ And Ewan and I thought, ‘Fair enough, neither do we.’
That night, despite the undeniably high-end nature of the chosen restaurant, I couldn’t help noticing that two security guards had been appointed to accompany us on the journey from the hotel to the dining room – the only time in my life that I have ever had a personal bodyguard looking after me. Still, all seemed to be perfectly in order until right at the end of a very delicious meal, as the dessert plates were being cleared, when the doors to the restaurant crashed open and in ran two men with guns.
Bandits, apparently.
Terrifying. We were told to remove our jewellery and leave it in front of us. I nervously, and reluctantly, unclasped a rather nice Porsche watch and dropped it on the tablecloth. However, someone must have hit an emergency alarm button because before the bandits could collect their prize, the sound of a two-tone police siren was heard from the street. And at this point, it all kicked off properly. The bandits were inside, shooting out, and the police were outside, shooting in. And I, with my heart pounding, was suddenly under a table with a security guard on top of me, listening to the sounds of gunfire and splintering glass.
Eventually the room fell quiet and we crawled out from under the table, scared out of our wits. It was clear that the gunfight had adjourned to the street and had then ended. A policeman checked we were all right, and then said, ‘We shot them. Do you want to see?’
Well, many would have declined. But my feeling was, how many times in your life are you invited to get a look at a pair of bandits who tried to have your watch away but are now dead in a gutter? So I went out for a peep. Strangely, what stays with me, though, isn’t the sight of the bodies so much as their guns on the ground: old-fashioned, long-barrelled things, like you might imagine Wyatt Earp carrying.
And then the bloke who owned the restaurant tried to charge the record company for the meal.
Are you kidding?
They didn’t pay. And Ewan and I also had a bottle of brandy off him to help calm our shattered nerves.
Anyway, the following day Scotland got beaten 3–1 by Peru, despite taking the lead in the nineteenth minute with a goal from the brick-built Joe Jordan: a humiliating result after all the pre-tournament bragging, and one which instantly sent ‘Ole Ola’ plummeting down the UK charts in the direction of oblivion. That evening someone from Warner Bros. called to say they wanted me out of Buenos Aires because it was too dangerous and their insurance didn’t cover me for acts of banditry in restaurants, even posh ones. So home I went, meaning I wasn’t there to see Archie Gemmill score arguably the greatest goal in World Cup history, against Holland, and bring Scotland to the brink of qualification for the next round, only for Johnny Rep to pull a second goal back and put Holland through at Scotland’s expense. Bloody bandits.
Where did it come from, this Scottishness, this passionate sense of identity with a place and a people 300 miles north of where I grew up, and somewhere I was never taken as a child? I always had trouble explaining it. People thought it was adopted or affected, and even disloyal. ‘You’re a cockney, ain’tcha? Woss all this tartan nonsense?’
Obviously, my dad was Scottish. But he never foisted Scottishness upon us, and I never claimed to be Scottish. I grew up in England, after all, and my mum was English and I shared her English accent – an accent which often, in the 1960s, meant watching Scotland play Englan
d on the sloppy terraces of Hampden, in Glasgow, with a tartan bonnet on my head but my lips firmly sealed for fear of revealing myself to be one of the enemy. (Those Hampden terraces were sloppy by the way because they were made of compacted mud held up by railway sleepers and often flowing with the piss of over-refreshed supporters. I don’t understand why it’s obligatory to be mashed off your face when you go to watch Scotland play, but that’s the way it has always been, since time immemorial.)
Scottishness was what I knew, though – not just from my dad, but also from his brothers, my uncles, who were around a lot. Their accents filled the house and seemed both perfectly natural and yet wonderfully exotic to me. Those voices made it clear that I had inherited a connection with something deep, romantic and truly compelling, a spiritual home, and all I had to do was reach out for it and claim it. And from then on it was bagpipes and all things tartan as far as I was concerned.
And Scottish voices told the football legends I grew up with. Scotland matches were sacred to my dad and had been all his life. In 1928, on the historic day when Scotland’s ‘Wembley Wizards’ beat England 5–1 in the home internationals, he had gone along to Wembley Stadium, ticketless, with my uncles, and had climbed in over the back wall (Wembley had no roof in those days). He then looked around for somewhere to watch the match from, and settled on a spare seat in the Royal Box, reserved for the king of Afghanistan, who for some reason had not turned up. That tale, so often repeated in my house, of my dad the Scot, in the home of English football, crashing the royal party and living like a king, took on an enormous resonance for me.
Consider also the events of 30 July 1966, when, in what remains historically the greatest moment of glory for English football, England beat Germany to lift the World Cup. Pretty much every household in England with access to a television set watched that climactic and still resonant moment in the nation’s culture. But not the Stewart household. My dad switched off the television in extra time when it became apparent that England were going to win. Things like that have a formative effect.
