For a while in the early 1970s, The Faces looked unstoppable. With their swaggering rock ’n’ roll energy, Ronnie Wood’s blues-soaked guitar, and Rod Stewart’s unmistakable rasp leading the charge, the band seemed destined to go down as one of Britain’s greats.
Yet behind the bravado and boozy camaraderie, tensions were brewing – and according to Stewart himself, it was one song in particular that started it all.
Speaking about the group’s demise, the singer didn’t shy away from naming the culprit. “‘That was probably what started the break-up of The Faces,’” Stewart admitted in an interview with Quietus. “‘‘Maggie May’ became a hit, and then of course it became ‘Rod Stewart And The Faces’, which pissed some of ’em off.’”
The irony is that Stewart hadn’t set out to eclipse his band. When he first joined The Faces in 1969, fresh from his stint with the Jeff Beck Group, he’d already signed a solo deal with Mercury Records. He insists there was no secrecy about it.
“‘When I joined the band I’d just signed a solo deal with Mercury, which I made the band fully aware of. And they were perfectly OK with that. Until ‘Maggie May’ became a hit,’” he explained.
That runaway success in 1971 changed everything. ‘Maggie May’ shot to number one on both sides of the Atlantic, turning Stewart into an international star. The problem was that the public – and the press – increasingly saw The Faces as his backing group. Concert posters soon billed them as “Rod Stewart and The Faces,” much to the irritation of his bandmates.
Stewart recalls walking into rehearsals to a different atmosphere, the easy camaraderie soured by defensiveness. The other members – Wood, Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones – resented the fame imbalance.
The more Stewart’s solo career soared with albums like Every Picture Tells a Story and Never a Dull Moment, the more The Faces risked becoming obsolete.
Yet in spite of the cracks, the band continued to deliver. Their 1973 record Ooh La La is now considered a classic, brimming with swagger and melancholy in equal measure. But as Stewart admits, by then he already had one foot out the door.
Still, Stewart insists it wasn’t a calculated betrayal. “It wasn’t like I was desperate to leave them in the dirt,” he has reflected. The truth is more bittersweet: he loved the band, but the success of ‘Maggie May’ set him on a course he couldn’t turn back from.
By the mid-1970s, The Faces had split, with Ronnie Wood heading to The Rolling Stones and Stewart cementing himself as a solo superstar.