Rod Stewart, who told The Hollywood Reporter in May, “Me and Ronnie Wood were out plotting the Faces’ future,” confirmed in a Dec. 2nd interview on Boston’s WZLX radio that the Faces, founded in 1965, would reunite as a live band after Wood’s next tour with the Rolling Stones. Said Stewart, “We’re earmarking 2015,” which is the 40th anniversary of the band’s breakup. The Faces were named after the 1960s British hipster expression for a fashionably mod “mover” on the pop scene; in fact, the first time Ron Wood introduced himself to Stewart, they both said, “Hello, face.” The band began life as the Small Faces, because the original lineup was comprised of fashionable short guys: lead singer Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Kenny Jones, and Jimmy Winston, soon replaced by Ian McLaglan. (Lane died of MS in 1997; and Marriott died in 1991.)
After a 1967 hit urging Oxford students to skip school (“Why go to learn the words of fools?”) to get high and “feed the ducks with a bun” in the park, Marriott quit the band to start Humble Pie. Stewart replaced Marriott in the Faces from 1969-75, as his solo career simultaneously soared. Wood joined the Faces in 1969, too. When Mick Jagger wooed Wood away to the Stones — after repeatedly promising Stewart never to do so — Stewart quit too. In his memoir “Rod,” reprinted in 2013, Stewart says the Faces drank too much, and one member wore a fake carnation full of cocaine onstage to sniff from discreetly in concert. He recalls them “squabbling like cats in a sack. But while it worked, God, it was brilliant. On a good night, the Faces were something special. On a bad night, we were bloody awful… but being bloody awful could sometimes be even more special than being good.”
