They were never the tightest band in Britain. They were rarely the soberest. And they were not, despite what some record-company ads implied, simply Rod Stewart’s backing group.
The Faces were something rarer: a working-class rock ’n’ roll gang who treated the stage like a Saturday night pub that had somehow grown a PA system. For six years at the start of the 1970s they made loose, bluesy, soul-soaked records, toured like a traveling party, and left behind a handful of songs that still sound like last call.
They also launched two of the biggest careers in rock. Then they fell apart. Then, half a century later, they started circling back.
From Small Faces to Faces
The story starts with another band. In the mid-1960s the Small Faces — Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones, and Ian McLagan — were London mods with chart hits, sharp clothes, and a gift for soul and psychedelia. “Itchycoo Park,” “All or Nothing,” and the concept album Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake made them stars at home.
On New Year’s Eve 1968, Marriott walked offstage and out of the group. He wanted a heavier sound and soon formed Humble Pie with Peter Frampton. That left Lane, Jones, and McLagan without a frontman or a lead guitarist.
They found both in the wreckage of the Jeff Beck Group. Rod Stewart already had the rasp and the showman’s instinct. Ronnie Wood, who had been playing bass with Beck, switched back to guitar. The two men were taller than the old Small Faces, and the new band dropped “Small” from the name. Record executives in America still billed the first album as the Small Faces. The musicians insisted they were something else.
They were. The Small Faces had been tight, stylish, and often studio-clever. The Faces were sloppy on purpose — a five-piece that mixed British pub rock, American blues, and Motown feeling, with McLagan’s Hammond and Wurlitzer holding the middle while Jones and Lane pushed the groove.
The classic lineup:
- Rod Stewart — lead vocals
- Ronnie Wood — guitar, vocals
- Ronnie Lane — bass, vocals, songs
- Ian “Mac” McLagan — keyboards
- Kenney Jones — drums
That was the band that mattered.
First Steps, Then a Wink
First Step arrived in 1970. It was promising and uneven: Wood’s instrumental “Pineapple and the Monkey,” the rolling “Three Button Hand Me Down,” Lane’s more inward writing sitting next to Stewart’s bark. In the U.K. it reached No. 45. In the U.S. it barely registered.
Long Player (1971) was stronger and still not a smash — No. 31 in Britain, No. 29 in America. “Bad ’n’ Ruin” opened like a bar fight. “Sweet Lady Mary” showed they could slow down without going soft. A live take of Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” proved they could turn a ballad into a shout.
Then came the record that defined them.
A Nod Is As Good As a Wink… to a Blind Horse, released in November 1971 and co-produced with Glyn Johns, is the Faces album. It peaked at No. 2 in the U.K. and No. 6 in the U.S. and went gold in America. It had the party tracks — “Miss Judy’s Farm,” “That’s All You Need,” “Too Bad” — and it had the one song that finally put them on the radio.
“Stay With Me,” written by Stewart and Wood, is a groupie kiss-off with a riff that refuses to sit still. It hit No. 6 in the U.K. and No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100. McLagan’s electric piano, Wood’s slide, Jones’s drums, and Stewart’s leer made it a standard. The B-side in much of the world was Lane’s “Debris,” a quiet, aching song about his father and East London that still stops people cold.
That same season Stewart’s solo album Every Picture Tells a Story and the single “Maggie May” exploded. Faces members played on those records. The overlap was the band’s blessing and its wound. Audiences often came to see Rod. The other four were a band, not a backing unit, and they knew it.
The Last Studio Shot
By 1973 the strain was public. Stewart was a solo star. Lane wanted more of his own songs heard. Sessions for Ooh La La were messy. Stewart missed early dates. Wood ended up singing the title track — a Lane/Wood song about a grandfather’s warning that I wish I knew then what I know now. Stewart later called the album a mess. It still went to No. 1 in the U.K. and No. 21 in the U.S.
“Cindy Incidentally,” a McLagan/Stewart/Wood co-write, reached No. 2 on the British singles chart. The title song was not a hit at the time. Decades later it became the Faces song a lot of people know first, thanks to films, covers, and the way Wood’s vocal sits on that circular guitar figure.
Lane left in 1973. Japanese bassist Tetsu Yamauchi, who had played with Free, took his place. The later lineup cut two non-album singles — “Pool Hall Richard” (U.K. No. 8) and the gloriously 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 Shortcomings)” — plus the live album Coast to Coast: Overture and Beginners (1974). The chemistry was not the same.
Wood began sitting in with the Rolling Stones after Mick Taylor quit. Stewart’s solo career kept climbing. A troubled 1975 American tour was the end. The Faces split that December.
What They Sounded Like Live
On record the Faces could be ragged. Onstage they were the point of the 1970s that people mean when they talk about “a good time.” Footballs got kicked into crowds. Drinks appeared on the amps. Sets mixed Faces songs with Stewart solo numbers and old soul covers. They were one of the era’s top-grossing live acts in Britain, Europe, and later the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.
John Peel championed them on the BBC when the singles were still catching up. Those sessions, collected in later box sets, catch the band between the studio versions and the chaos of the road: looser, louder, and often better.
They were not Led Zeppelin. They were not the Who. They did not need to be. Their gift was feel — the sense that five friends had wandered into the same room and decided to make a noise before last orders.
After the Party
Stewart became a global pop-rock star. Wood joined the Rolling Stones and never really left. Jones later stepped in for Keith Moon in the Who. McLagan became a first-call keyboardist in America, settled in Austin, and led the Bump Band until his death from a stroke in 2014 at 69.
Lane formed Slim Chance, scored a U.K. hit with “How Come?,” made the lovely Rough Mix with Pete Townshend, and spent his later years fighting multiple sclerosis. He died in 1997 at 51. People who knew the Faces still talk about him as the heart of the group. Stewart has said as much: without Lane, the spirit went out.
Yamauchi returned to Japan and later died in 2025.
The Faces and Small Faces were inducted together into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. Stewart was too ill to perform that night; Mick Hucknall of Simply Red sang in his place. Wood collected a second Hall of Fame honor after the Stones.
There were reunion flashes: Wembley in 1986 with Lane in a wheelchair; the Brit Awards; charity shows; a 2009–11 run with Hucknall and Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock when Stewart stayed away. In 2020 Stewart, Wood, and Jones closed the Brit Awards with “Stay With Me.”
Since 2021 the three surviving original Faces have been back in the studio. Jones has said they have about eleven tracks, a mix of new work and older ideas, with a possible album in 2026 if calendars ever line up. Wood and Stewart even shared a Glastonbury stage in 2025 for a mini-reunion moment. Whether a full record arrives is still a Faces story: promised, delayed, and somehow still alive.
Why They Still Matter
The Faces never piled up the hits of their peers. That is part of the charm. They left four studio albums, one essential live document, and a style that later bands treated as a blueprint: back-to-basics rock with soul in the joints. Punk acts cited them. Pub-rock and roots-rock bands copied the looseness. “Stay With Me” still opens bar playlists. “Ooh La La” outlived the album Stewart once dismissed. “Debris” remains the secret favorite.
They also sit at a crossroads of 1970s British rock. Out of the Small Faces came Humble Pie and the Faces. Out of the Faces came Stewart’s early solo peak and Wood’s decades with the Stones. Jones carried the beat into the Who. Lane’s songs keep getting rediscovered by people who thought they only liked the hits.
If you want the short version: five London musicians, 1969 to 1975, too much booze, not enough patience, and a sound that felt like friendship with amplifiers.
If you want the listening version, start here:
- “Stay With Me” — the hit, and still the best introduction
- “Debris” — Ronnie Lane, no filter
- “Cindy Incidentally” — the last great single
- “Ooh La La” — Wood on vocal, the song that aged better than the band’s mood
- “Had Me a Real Good Time” — the mission statement
- “Miss Judy’s Farm” — Faces at full swagger
- “Sweet Lady Mary” — proof they could be tender
- “Pool Hall Richard” — late-period bounce
- “Bad ’n’ Ruin” — Long Player at its meanest
- “Three Button Hand Me Down” — first-album swagger
The Faces did not last. They were not built to last. They were built to have a real good time — and, against the odds, they left the evidence on tape.
