Nearly three years after revealing that they were working on new music for their former band Faces, Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, are still struggling to get a new album together, the band’s first new material in more than 50 years.
“I’ve sent a lot of them [songs] to Ronnie Wood,” said Stewart. “I told him, ‘This is stuff we’ve recorded with my band, maybe The Faces would like to do it instead?’ We’re still struggling to make this album. We’ll see. Some of them might see the light of day.”
In 2021, the surviving members of The Faces, Wood, Stewart, and drummer Kenney Jones, who later went on to play with The Who and other bands, said they had recorded 14 new songs and had plans for an arena tour in the U.S. and UK. “We’ve done about 14 songs,” said Jones at the time. “It’s a mixture of stuff we never released which is worthy of releasing and there’s some new stuff which is really wonderful. Rod is writing the lyrics and he’s really keen on it.”
Stewart also revealed that he has been writing many songs that have never been released. “There are a lot of songs I’ve written that I haven’t put out, and nobody knows about them,” said Stewart. “My songs are like my children. I gave birth to them, and then I put them out there in the world and see how they do.”
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The band released their fourth and final album together, Ooh La La, in 1973, and have performed together in the decades since splitting in 1975. At the time, Wood had already guested on two albums by The Rolling Stones and joined the band on their ’75 tour before officially becoming a member in 1976.
After Small Faces singer Steve Marriott began working with Humble Pie in 1969 Jones, the remaining members of Small Faces, Jones, keyboardist Ian McLagan and bassist Ronnie Lane continued on with Wood and Stewart, who were then recruited from The Jeff Beck Group, along with Kim Gardner and Wood’s brother Art. After Gardner and Art Wood left the band, they renamed themselves Faces.
Faces released their debut album First Step in 1970, followed by Long Player and A Nod Is As Good As a Wink… to a Blind Horse in 1971, and Ooh La La in 1973 before breaking up in 1975. Lane died in 1997 at age 51, and McLagan followed in 2014 at the age of 69.
In 2021, Jones released Small Faces, Live 1966, the band’s earliest known live recording, on his label Nice Records, and revealed that he and Wood unearthed more than 100 lost songs from their archives that could be used for Faces. “Ronnie has found around 90 pieces of music, and I’ve found around 50 pieces of music,” said Jones. “Some are whole tracks, some are not, some are just bits.”
Throughout the decades, Faces regrouped several times, including a brief reunion tour from 2010 through 2011, and other shows through 2020. In 2015, the band performed at a charity event in 2015, and closed the Brit Awards in 2020 with their 1971 hit “Stay With Me.”
Photo: Fin Costello/Redferns
