“Big fans”: The Faces’ rivals Rod Stewart would have loved to join
One of the band members of The Faces, Frederick Lane, was an exceptional musician, but he also hated life in the spotlight.
While he was one of the most important members of the band and helped them rise to fame, he also felt that said rise to fame got in the way of the band’s creativity. This criticism didn’t just exist within the confines of his own band, either, but among other artists as well. He hated the idea of being famous because of these apparent creative speed bumps.
“As far as I’m concerned, if half of them had never been stars, they would have done something better; it’s totally stardom that’s fucked them up,” said Lane when talking about some of his musical counterparts.
“Or this illusion of stardom; it’s not even real. Alright, let the little girls’ magazines say it’s glamorous and all that, but Christ, we’re grown men, aren’t we? We should know better. But no. All the ‘stars’ think it’s glamorous too…”
Of course, while Lane might not have been too bothered about becoming famous, one of his band members, Rod Stewart, knew that he was destined for the spotlight. He was happy to achieve that both in a band and as a solo act, whatever helped project him further up the top of the charts.
It was his success as a solo artist that eventually led to the split of The Faces. He worked with them on his solo album, and it was an incredibly successful release. It went to number one in both the US and UK album charts, and his single ‘Maggie May’ continues to be one of his most successful tracks of all time. However, when this solo record took off, he knew that his band were operating on borrowed time.
“That was really heartbreaking for me,” said Stewart. “The boys all went, ‘Fuck it, don’t worry,’ but I could tell Ronnie Lane and Ian McLagan were hurt, because they’d got away from a somewhat egotistical singer in Steve Marriott and they didn’t want that again.”
While it might have been a difficult period for Stewart, it also opened the door to what would become a pretty successful career. Throughout the decades as a solo artist, he rose to the top performing soul and R&B, but has dabbled in nearly every genre under the sun, and worked with a plethora of exceptional artists. You’d be forgiven for thinking that there isn’t a band Stewart couldn’t lend his vocals to. So, with that in mind, what band would he most like to be the frontman for?
“I would have liked to have fronted The Stones, you know, because they were a London band and we all loved them,” he said. Stewart also admitted that the band were a big influence on him and everyone else in The Faces, despite the fact that the two were often compared against one another.
“It was a big influence with us when we used to go on stage,” he said, discussing the band’s live album Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out. “So definitely The Stones.”
