FGWIAB
Five Guys Walk Into A Bar – A great box set if there ever was one, collecting studio tracks, rehearsals, live songs, alternate mixes, and 31 previously unreleased songs, altogether reproducing 26 of the 38 songs the band released officially on their four albums and various non-album singles. Included is also the flexidisc B-Side “Dishevelment Blues”, which the band members claim they never intended for release at the time but went out anyway as part of a sample. There are 67 songs on the four discs in this set, a 45-page booklet, and tons and tons of pictures, including five of all five guys in the band (one of these group pics is used on the box set’s cover). Nice. Also in the booklet are full track notes, and pictures of their memorabilia, and finally also a totally unnecessary transcription of band banter before their cover of “Jealous Guy” (honestly – who cares what they’re saying?!).
The songs are, of course, great. There are mellow songs, like “If I’m On The Late Side” that are great, with gentle guitar, bass, burbling keyboards, and Rod Stewart’s inimitable voice; meaty psychadelic-tinged tunes like their first single “Flying” (featured here in both studio and Live At The BBC versions); there are also, of course, all those wicked honkey tonk rockers like “Too Bad” (and the massive hit “Stay With Me”, the last song on the last disc in the series) that The Faces are so well known for. Songs like “As Long As You Tell Him” have superb guitar solos by Ron Wood, outdoing anything he’s done since with the Stones. A few, such as “Richmond” and “Debris” are sweetly sung by Ronnie Lane, with the effect being similarly jarring/distressing to Keith singing a Stones song, or Bill Ward singing a rare Black Sabbath song; it’s like it’s another band.
Ironically, the last song on the last studio album by The Faces is one sung by Ron Wood, the title track “Ooh La La”, it was also his first uneasy stab at Joe Walsh-esque singing, which he later followed through for full effect on his magnificent solo albums (where he develops more of a Dylan-esque wheeze), and concerts and solo tour with Keith Richards (see The First Barbarians, and The New Barbarians).
But it’s the previously unissued songs that are of the greatest interest. “Jealous Guy” is a very slow, lumbering version of the 1971 John Lennon song, that they recorded at Mick Jagger’s Stargroves estate two years later as one of the last they ever did with the original line-up (the choice is ironic, given that Stewart’s ego was out of control and his solo career was causing such band resentment that Ronnie Lane left early). “Maggie May”, a Rod Stewart song that the band hijacked for the BBC, is pretty conventional, although done here without the mandolin. “Cindy Incidentally”, an alternate mix of this song from the fourth is very nice (hard for me to tell the difference, as I’ve never heard their regular releases). “Maybe I’m Amazed”, a Paul McCartney song that the band covered on their second album, is here in a live at the BBC version, full of strut and attitude and double the length of their own studio version – great blues guitar, throbbing bass, burbling organ, and crashing Kenney Jones drums. “Around the Plynth/Gasoline Alley” is a raw, sawing slide guitar rocker that bristles with electricity and howls that is just as good as anything Led Zeppelin would have done in this vein – a cover, of sorts, of the Jeff Beck Group song “Plynth (Water Down The Drain)” – that is on one of their studio albums, also from 1970, except this one tacks on “Gasoline Alley”, from Rod Stewart’s solo recordings of the time. “I Came Looking For You” is on the collection as a hotel demo that Ronnie Lane put down a guitar track for while Ian MacLagan accompanied on electric piano, with its funny, hammy moments. By the time it was recorded, it was rocked up and became “Last Orders Please”, also on this collection (the two songs are back-to-back for comparison). “Wyndlesham Bay (Jodie)” is an outtake from the last album’s sessions, a very good rocker with a funky keyboard and guitar interlude. The band goes for a very funky live version of “I Can Feel The Fire”, from Ron Wood’s first solo album (which Stewart and McLagan played on, along with Jagger, Richards, and George Harrison, among others). “Tonight’s Number” is an interesting instrumental Ron and Ronnie recorded for the soundtrack of Mahoney’s Last Stand in 1976, long after the band broke up (um… why is it included here?), with its very nice horns and musical progression. “Come See Me Baby (The Cheater)” is an outtake from the last studio album, and is a pretty mellow tune that focuses on Stewart’s cheeky lyrics, “If you lost the man you love, come and see me babe/ Cause I’ve lost the woman I love, and I feel lonely.” There’s a nice cover of “The Stealer” by Free, Rod’s favorite band (the booklet mentions that Free could always be heard blasting out of his dressing room pre-show), that Rod starts off with announcing “here’s a number by a band that we think are one of the best; it goes like this…” Nice rockin’ funky number full of honkey tonk guitar. “You’re My Girl (I Don’t Want To Discuss It)” is a cool rocker, played live at the BBC, complete with some corny stage banter. Another outtake from Ooh La La, “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want To Be Right” is absolutely stunning, and compares favorably with Luther Ingram’s original. Scrumptious. Why on earth was this recording not included on their last album, shocking!!! “Take A Look At The Guy”, another song from Ron Wood’s 1974 first solo album, makes an appearance here at a 1975 live show, one of the last that the band played. “Bad ‘n’ Ruin” is a funky live version, and there’s also a steamin’ “Cut Across Shorty”, a song Eddie Cochran made popular and which Rod Stewart had already recorded in 1970, one year earlier (they eventually also played it on their live album Coast To Coast: Overture and Beginners, of which no songs appear on this box set, which came out in 1974 too). “(I Know) I’m Losing You” and “I’d Rather Go Blind” also both appear as very long live versions, the former being a Motown song that the band had played together on for its inclusion in Stewart’s third solo album Every Picture Tells A Story (nice drum solo on this one too), and the latter a song made famous by Etta James that they also included on Coast To Coast – nice mellow version that leans on Stewart’s vocals ( with also a nice solo at the end). The band does a chilled-out version of Jimi Hendrix’s “Angel”, and there’s a cool honkey tonk live “Stay With Me”. The impossibly-titled “You Can Make Me Dance, Sing Or Anything (Even Take The Dog For A Walk, Mend A Fuse, Fold Away The Ironing Board, Or Any Other Domestic Short Comings)” is a scrappy bit of funkified poppy fluff (ughhhh – are those imitation strings?!?), with nice Rod Stewart vocals, and Yamauchi Tetsu’s only songwriting credit with the Faces; it was the B-Side to non-album single (of which there are quite a few here) “Pool Hall Richard”, which is a wicked piece of near-”Stay With Me” rudeness. “Miss Judy’s Farm” is a nice live funk-rocker, while “Love In Vain” is a deeply long wonked-out slowed-down cover of the Robert Johnson masterpiece (“We’re going to continue and give you a bit slower. This one we’ve done many times before, an old Stones number, and we’ll probably dedicate this one to Mick, as he’s no longer one of us, for those who are not married – ‘Love In Vain’, God bless his socks.” (An old Stones number?!?!) It starts off slow, and is a bit hesitant at moments, but it gets in full noisy swing in patches throughout. “My Fault” is cool live rock ‘n’ roll, while “Flyin’” has a supreme Sixties blues-rock feel to it (and a rare bit of psychedelia in the “buttons and bows” refrain). Finally, the “Dishevelment Blues” is a wonky out-take of Willie Dixon’s “Evil” that sort of saunters through it all, with lots of squeaky soloing.
One of the marvels of the set is that it contains three songs from the band’s first rehearsal from the summer of 1969, which happened soon after a dejected Ronnie Lane called Ron Wood about the sudden break-up of The Small Faces (Steve Marriott pulled the plug abruptly New Year’s Eve 1968) and got an invitation from Ron to jam, “you fancy comin’ over, and we’ll have a little play?” “Shake, Shudder, Shiver” is full of piss and vinegar. Love it! ”Evil”, a Willie Dixon song, is pure lunatic psychedelic crashing blues magic, with Rod’s howling lively-ing things up (it’s interesting that the Faces did blues numbers – they never had as the Small Faces, this is the influence of Wood and Stewart). “I Feel So Good” is sweet sweaty blues noise that gloms and gloms.
And just as the box contains four songs from the band’s first rehearsal, they also have the whole of their final recording session together, which took place in January 1975, when they did originals “Open To Ideas” and “Rock Me”, as well as Tommy Tucker’s “Hi-Heel Sneakers” played together with Solomon Burke’s “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love”, and the Beach Boys’ “Gettin’ Hungry”. These were the only studio sessions with a different line-up from the one that recorded the band’s four studio albums (and its live line-up until 1974), the addition being Japanese bassist Yamauchi Tetsu, who was a session musician in Tokyo and London during those years. “Hi-Heel Sneakers” is nice funky blues, standard, “Everybody Needs Someone To Love” blends seamlessly near the end, with a cool refrain to the tune – very inventive, as it’s nearly the same riff anyway. “Gettin’ Hungry” starts off real slow, sounding like a Rod Stewart solo song, before popping into bop-land, perhaps fulfilling the potential that the goofy and under-produced Beach Boys song offered (at least until it warms up a bit). “Open To Ideas” is a soft rocker and also a bit dull, while “Rock Me”, as a rare Ian McLagan solo original, does just that, keeping the past swift and fun.
The booklet is good, containing an intro from Ian MacLagan, a history and appreciation by David Fricke, and an afterword by Ian with some words for the sadly-departed Ronnie Lane. In between there are the expected “appreciation boxes” by musicians that were influenced by the Faces; these are Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Gaz Coombes of Supergrass, Rich Robinson of the Black Crowes, Slash, Glen Matlock and Paul Westerberg. The pictures are great and show a band with highly eclectic fashion taste. The story starts off talking about how the band was formed from the ruins of the Small Faces (Kenney Jones, Ronnie Lane and Ian MacLagan) and the Jeff Beck Band (Ron Wood, now switching back to his beloved guitar from a short stint as Beck’s bassist, and Rod Stewart). Throughout the book there is also a certain emphasis on the band’s drinking – they had a full bar onstage with them and any member could take a drink at any time – and of course throughout the sessions as well (this is a rep that they share with the Replacements and Guns N’ Roses, so it’s nice to see that Paul Westerberg and Slash appreciated the Faces). The booklet also gives certain factoids, such as mentioning that their first practice space came free via the Stones’ Ian Stewart, a good friend of Ronnie Lane’s. They initially didn’t want to take on Rod Stewart as a singer, not wanting “another Steve Marriott” and his tantrums, but that magic voice won them over. “We had no direction, just influences,” MacLagan says of their early years, when covers played heavy in their live sets. On the songwriting process, Stewart claims that he didn’t hold anything back for his solo albums, while Wood says that “we did most of our writing in the dressing room, before a show.” The booklet describes the band, their history, their attitude, their cameraderie, the live experience (including one reprinted letter-to-the editor disputing a claim that they were “sloppy” – drunk, yes, but never sloppy), and the eventual break-up. Sad, but true – all good things have to come to an end. But with a box set like this, it doesn’t need to end.
A parting glance: their amazing version of “Stay With Me”, and for those with more time, the full concert follows.