The ever-optimistic NME is claiming that The Faces are likely to reunite, bringing together Ronnie Wood, Rod Stewart, and most of the Small Faces for the first time in 30-odd years:
Speaking to BBC 6Music, keyboardist Ian McLagan said: “We’re hoping to get together later this year to play and then we may have some news, but I want it to happen, badly.
“Rod hasn’t wanted to do it for a long time. He didn’t see the need in it but I think he really wants to now.”
Referring to the possibility of a new studio album, McLagan said: “It would be great to record new tracks. I have a couple of songs that Rod might like. We’d have to see – I think that would be the way to go, though, not just to go out on tour. It’d be great to have an album.”
Unfortunately, bassist Ronnie Lane died in 1997 of multiple sclerosis-related pneumonia.
Video: The Faces – “Stay With Me” (live)
More Faces video after the jump…
Video: The Faces – “I’m Losing You” (live)
Video: The Faces – “Gasoline Alley” and “Around the Plynth” (live)
Video: The Faces – “Ooh La La” (fan video)
This is the proverbial good news/bad news sort of thing, and it sort of gets into some sort of extestential “When is a band that was a band no longer the band they were?” My appreciation of the Faces notwithstanding–OK, I’m a fan–I’ve got to say that Stewart has shown himself to have become nothing but a tired hack wheezing out MOR tunes, and so I have a hard time conceiving him circa right now as fronting the band that was once the Faces. In some regards it goes to the point of being something of a curiousity or even a novelty act. Or something more sad. This is not to say that I take away anything from the musical abilities of the individual members, but isn’t this a little like seeing the girl you lusted after in high school who is now on her third marriage, working as a school bus driver, sitting in an Applebees chain-smoking generic cigarettes?
While it’s not exactly Thin Lizzy touring without Phil Lynott, without Ronnie Lane, I don’t think you can really call it The Faces.