“Just haunting”: The Muddy Waters song that Rod Stewart says shaped the Faces
By the end of the 1960s, Rod Stewart had started to assert himself as quite an established figure in the music industry, despite not necessarily having the commercial success to back it up yet and not having turned himself into a household name. His stints with outfits such as the Dimensions, Long John Baldry, and the Jeff Beck Group were what made him a recognisable figure on the blues circuit in the UK, allowing people to realise his prowess as a vocalist and harmonica player.
However, it would be his decision to join the newly formed Faces, a band that rose from the ashes of the Small Faces, in 1969, that helped him to really elevate his career to the next level. It was also around this time that he started to establish himself as a formidable and prolific solo artist as well, scoring several hits throughout the 1970s and beyond once he had reached the upper echelons of the business. By this point in his life, he was something of a star, and it was a degree of fame and notoriety that he would never find himself truly falling from.
Having had plenty of experience in blues outfits prior to joining the Faces, you can understand how this particular style of music would have found its way creeping into the output of the group for which he was sharing the principal songwriting duties. There was always a significant amount of blues influence already present in what Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones had been doing alongside erstwhile Small Faces frontman Steve Marriott prior to his departure, but with Stewart at the helm and Ronnie Wood also present, things went further in this direction.
There was one artist in particular who had always shaped Stewart’s love of blues music, and in the past, he’s spoken effusively about how much one particular song from this blues icon has helped to shape his career. As with many other adoptees of the blues sound, people were looking at those from the early days of blues music as their main idols, and for plenty of aspiring talents across the world, Muddy Waters was always the one who people were desperately trying to emulate the talents of.
His love of ‘I Feel So Good’ in particular is one that had a heavy impact on the trajectory of the Faces in their brief time together, and when Stewart appeared as a guest on Ken Bruce’s BBC Radio 2 show Tracks of My Years in 2018 to discuss the influence of the song, he would explain just how much it shaped the sound of the band’s work.
“It was one of the first albums that I bought,” Stewart explained. “It was Live at Monterey, I think, it was a live album. Was also a great influence on the Faces because we used to play this song. I think we recorded it and just lovely – Little Walter on the harmonica, Francis Clay, Willie Dixon on bass – just haunting!”
The album in question would have been Muddy Waters Live at Newport 1960, rather than the erroneously reported Monterey, but this Waters reworking of Big Bill Broonzy’s 1941 track certainly has all of the key elements that make up the iconic sound that Stewart established for the Faces, and while it’s something of a rarity, it’s a fine song to base a direction upon.
