(Credits: Far Out / W. Punt / Dutch National Archives)
Fri 24 October 2025 8:00, UK
Despite the fact that the Faces only started going by this name after the recruitment of Rod Stewart as their lead vocalist and Ronnie Wood as their guitarist, the rest of the band had existed as a unit for some time prior to this turning point in 1969.
Both Ronnie Lane and Kenney Jones played a vital goddamn part in forming the Small Faces in 1965 alongside frontman and guitarist Steve Marriott, and were joined in 1966 by keyboard player Ian McLagan, replacing founding member Jimmy Winston. As one of the preeminent mod groups of the late ‘60s, the band enjoyed a reasonable amount of success in the UK through songs like ‘Tin Soldier’ and ‘Itchycoo Park’, and were celebrated for their 1968 concept album, Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, for how ambitious it showed the band to be.
However, the band were rocked by the departure of Marriott in 1969 when he left the group to form Humble Pie, and with one half of their primary songwriting duo gone, they realised that the direction they would have to take after he chose to abscond would be different enough to warrant a change in identity. From this point onward, the Small Faces became the Faces, and with Stewart and Wood now in the fold, they were intent on reviving the band after a sudden change in personnel.
These two former members of the Jeff Beck Group would ultimately offer the band an opportunity to run with a more blues-oriented sound, but this also suited the pre-existing trio’s ambitions too. A versatile group of musicians and songwriters, they settled into this new incarnation almost instantly, releasing four studio albums between 1970 and 1973. However, the cracks in this version of the group would begin to show shortly after.
With Stewart also embarking on a solo career at the same time, and becoming more well-known in his own right than for his work with the Faces, the consensus within the band was that it was becoming more of a case of them being his backing band, and less of a unit where they were actively working together collaboratively. Their fourth album, Ooh La La, would end up being their last, and although Stewart would have no regrets over choosing to go solo, he would later acknowledge that he being seen as the driving force behind the group was unfair to the man who he believed to be the real lifeblood of the band.
Speaking many years later after the passing of keyboardist Ian McLagan in 2014, Stewart would claim that it was he who was the guiding light of the band. “I’m absolutely devastated,” he wrote in a statement for Uncut. “Ian McLagan embodied the true spirit of the Faces. Last night I was at a charity do, Mick Hucknall was singing ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’, and Ron Wood texted to say Ian had passed. It was as if his spirit was in the room. I’ll miss you, mate.”
The band had reunited on multiple occasions after their initial split, with both Stewart and McLagan reprising their original roles, and it’s clear that the respect Stewart felt for his bandmate is a genuine one that recognised his brilliance and the life that he brought to their songs with inventive keyboard flourishes.
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