Trivia / Faces

• Black Sheep Hit:
  • "Ooh La La" is probably their best-known song among younger generations, from its use in Rushmore, but rather than a Hard Rock song sung by Rod Stewart like the majority of their output, it's a wistful, acoustic, Country Music-influenced number sung by Ron Wood.
  • "Flying" from their debut album, which became an FM radio favorite in America, leans more in the direction of Psychedelic Rock than their usual sound.
• Breakup Breakout:
  • Zig-zagged a bit with Rod Stewart, since his Breakthrough Hit "Maggie May" came when he was still in the band, and his bandmates helped out on his early solo albums. In fact, Stewart's solo success gave Faces a Colbert Bump, with their biggest hits coming after "Maggie May". But Stewart becoming an A-list rock star after the breakup can be taken as a classic example of the trope.
  • Arguably the case for Ron Wood and Kenney Jones as well, since they became much more famous after the breakup as members of The Rolling Stones and The Who respectively.
• Fake American: In the lyrics of "Three Button Hand Me Down", Rod Stewart, a culturally Scottish Londoner, claims to have been "raised in a clinic down in Oklahoma."
• Hostility on the Set: The final American tour before Ronnie Lane quit in 1973 saw the dissension of the Ooh La La sessions spill out into the open. The low point was a show at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, which saw the band openly argue between songs, with Lane throwing wine in Ian McLagan's face at one point, followed by McLagan tossing a tambourine at him in retaliation. The audience naturally just thought it was All Part of the Show. Things mellowed out a bit after Lane quit, but by their final tour they were at each other's throats again. Responding to a false story that they were planning a farewell concert to be aired on closed-circuit TV, Stewart joked that "Our last concert will be a televised show of us kicking the shit out of each other."
• Limey Goes to Hollywood: Stewart famously left England for L.A. as a tax exile. McLagan went to California after the breakup, but then moved to Austin, Texas in The '90s and became a beloved fixture on the local music scene. Ronnie Lane also moved to Austin, but ended up living in Colorado in hopes that the dry mountain air would help him cope with his multiple sclerosis.
• The Pete Best: Sort of an inversion of this with Jesse Ed Davis, who joined the band in its final stages before their 1975 breakup, after they'd made their final recordings, for what amounted to a few live shows on their last tour, so most people aren't aware that he was a member of the band.
• Production Posse: While Rod Stewart used a distinctly different musical configuration for his concurrent solo albums, all of the Faces members played on various songs. Ronnie Wood was the lead guitarist on Stewart's first five albums, Ian McLagan played various keyboard parts (including the organ on "Maggie May"), and six solo Stewart songs have him backed by the full Faces lineup ("My Way of Giving"—appropriate, since it's a cover of a song by The Small Faces—and "You're My Girl" on Gasoline Alley, "(I Know) I'm Losing You" on Every Picture Tells a Story—released as a single credited jointly to Stewart and the band, "True Blue" on Never a Dull Moment, and both sides of the non-album single "Oh No Not My Baby" and "Jodie", with Wood overdubbing the bass parts since Ronnie Lane had quit).
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Rod Stewart had been a big fan of The Small Faces, and later told an interviewer that he felt that Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake should've been the cultural icon that Tommy became.
  • Glen Matlock was first turned on to music listening to the Faces and even played "Three-Button Hand Me Down" in his audition for the Sex Pistols.
• Reclusive Artist:
  • While his bandmates kept a high profile after the breakup, Ronnie Lane's worsening multiple sclerosis limited his time in the spotlight. He spent his final years living in a small town in Colorado.
  • Tetsu Yamauchi returned to his native Japan a few years after the band dissolved, and retired completely from music by the end of The '90s. He turned down an invitation to take part in the 2009 reunion.
• Scully Box: Since he was 5' 5"/165 cm, Ronnie Lane would sometimes need to literally Step Up to the Microphone and use one of these for his lead vocals in live shows.
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: They lasted a little over five years in their original incarnation, and released just four studio albums (and a live album), but their raucous Three Chords and the Truth sound and their unpretentious, "go out and have some fun" attitude toward music was a big influence on future Hard Rock and Punk Rock bands.
• Troubled Production: Ooh La La. Their previous three albums had all been completed in a matter of weeks, but the sessions for this album stretched out over six months, and it's where the tension over Rod Stewart's solo success finally exploded. By this point the band had split into two camps: the guys who wanted to get to work (Stewart, Jones) and the guys who wanted to party (Lane, Wood, McLagan), and the frustration over the second camp either showing up late to sessions or blowing them off completely led to Stewart excusing himself from the majority of the sessions, leaving the other four to record the instrumental tracks so he could add vocals later. Lane, who'd already suffered through a frontman deciding to ditch his band in The Small Faces, took this as a personal affront, coupled with his suspicion that Stewart was holding his best material for his solo albums. But meanwhile, Lane's own personal life was a mess, havingly suddenly left his wife for the wife of one of his close friends, so much of the band's entourage was ticked off at him, especially since they viewed his new partner in a Yoko Oh No light. Stewart further stirred the pot by slamming the album in a Melody Maker interview. While it hit #1 in the UK, it fell off slightly from the previous album's performance in America, which had always been their strongest market, and the Teeth-Clenched Teamwork on their ensuing American tour turned into all-out Hostility on the Set, with Ronnie Lane quitting the band once they got back to England.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In the period after Steve Marriott quit but before Stewart and Wood joined, Lane, McLagan and Jones tried to get signed to Apple Records, but a meeting with an uninterested Ringo Starr shot this idea down.
  • Also around that time, Donovan offered to hire the trio as a backing band, but they turned him down.
  • They tried to record a fifth studio album in 1975, but lacked the interest or discipline to do much work. A session at AIR Studios in London ended up as a glorified rehearsal, and an L.A. session devolved into aimless jamming.