Faces - First Step Album (1970)
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Faces - First Step Album (1970)
March 21, 1970 - Faces - First Step debut album is released -UK cover
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Faces - First Step Album (1970)
Released: March 21 , 1970 Recorded: August 1969 – January 1970 at De Lane Lea Studios, London Length: 46:22 Label: Warner Bros. Producer: Faces Released in early 1970, First Step is the debut album by the British group Faces. The album was released only a few months after the Faces had formed from the ashes of the Small Faces (Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan) and The Jeff Beck Group (from which Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood hailed.)
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Faces - Band Personnel
- Rod Stewart - lead and backing vocals, harmonica, banjo (track 4)
- Ronnie Lane - bass, rhythm and acoustic guitars, backing vocals, lead vocal (track 4), co-lead vocal (tracks 2,3 & 8)
- Ronnie Wood - lead, rhythm and acoustic guitars, second bass guitar (track 10), backing vocals
- Ian McLagan - Hammond organ, Wurlitzer electric and acoustic pianos, backing vocals
- Kenney Jones - drums and percussion
- Martin Birch - engineer
- Faces - producer
First Step is credited to the Small Faces on all North American issues and reissues,[1] while record labels for initial vinyl printings give the title as The First Step.[2]
The album cover shows Ronnie Wood holding a copy of Geoffrey Sisley's seminal guitar tutorial First Step: How to Play the Guitar Plectrum Style.
March 1970 - Faces - First Step debut album is released -USA cover
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March 1970 - Faces - First Step debut album is released -Canada
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March 1970 - Faces - First Step debut album is released -Austrailia
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March 1970 - Faces - First Step debut album is released -Japan
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Faces - First Step Album (1970) sleeves, album sides and back cover UK RELEASE
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March 21, 1970 - Faces - First Step debut album is released -UK cover
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Faces - First Step album -UK inside cover
Faces - First Step album Photo Credits go to Martin Cook!
~71 many never seen Faces photos from Martin Cook -Click on "Photos"... https://martincook.zenfolio.com/?q=Faces |
Faces - First Step album -UK back cover
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Faces - First Step album -UK Side 1
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Faces - First Step album -UK Side 2
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Faces - First Step album -UK Spine
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Faces - First Step Album (1970) album sides USA, Canada and Australia releases
Faces - First Step album -USA Side 1
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Faces - First Step album -USA Side 2
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Faces - First Step album -Canada Side 1
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Faces - First Step album -Canada Side 2
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Faces - First Step album -Australia Side 1
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Faces - First Step album -Australia Side 2
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Listen to Faces - First Step album on YouTube!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mVwh8b0rKVkeAC_E-1N8gIooS3AZmVBZY
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mVwh8b0rKVkeAC_E-1N8gIooS3AZmVBZY
1970 Faces - First Step Track List
Length: 46:22
Length: 46:22
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Side One
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Side Two
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2015 Reissue bonus tracks
- "Behind The Sun" (Jones, Lane, McLagan, Stewart, Wood)
- "Mona: The Blues" (instrumental) (Lane, Wood)
- "Shake, Shudder, Shiver" [BBC Session] (Lane, Wood)(lead vocals: Rod Stewart, Ronnie Lane)(duet)
- "Flying" [Take 3] (Lane, Stewart, Wood)
- "Nobody Knows" [Take 2] (Lane, Wood)
The 2015 reissue replicates the US edition of the LP, containing minor edits not present on the UK original, most noticeably the omission of Stewart shouting "That's yer lot!" at the end of "Around the Plynth".
Kenney Jones - Faces Photo Credit: Getty/Peter Sanders
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Kenney Jones explains why on the Faces first album, First Step, the band was billed as "Small Faces".
~8 minute interview! https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06sw5z1 |
While the album was recorded after the group's official formation and signing to Warner Bros. Records in the Autumn of 1969, the band members had been rehearsing, performing and recording together in various combinations since May of that year.
First Step is the band's lengthiest original release and many modern critics regard it as promising, but sprawling and unfocused - their least cohesive and most undisciplined offering. It is however perhaps the most democratic of the Faces releases, highlighting the band's talents as a unified whole and affording each member at least one composer credit, as opposed to the perceived dominance of Stewart and his songwriting partnership with Wood as their career progressed.
On 28 August 2015, the album was reissued in a remastered and expanded form, including two previously-unreleased bonus tracks recorded shortly after the album's release, "Behind The Sun" and "Mona: The Blues" (the latter was remade and refined by Lane and Wood in 1972 for their Mahoney's Last Stand film soundtrack).
Reviewing in 1970 for Rolling Stone, Joel Selvin found the Faces to be "a fine rock band" but also "highly derivative" and who "play with more control than soul", going on to say, "They know exactly what they are doing and they do it well, as good musicians should, but the precision and purity of their sound seems a little sterile, and they lack the drive and power to make their music work without subtleties."[6]
Reviewing in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau viewed the record as "one more complication in the Rod Stewart mystery", saying, "With Jeff Beck he parodies himself before he's established a self to parody. With Lou Reizner he establishes himself as a singer-songwriter of uncommon spunk and a vocal interpreter of uncommon individuality. And here he steps into the shoes of a purveyor of Humble Pie to pose as the leader of a mediocre white r&b band. Best cut: Ronnie Lane's 'Stone.'"[4]
Allmusic - Faces First Step Album Review
The notorious sloppiness of the Faces was apparent on their debut, almost moreso on the cover than on the music, as the group was stilled billed as the Small Faces on this 1970 debut, although without Steve Marriott in front, and with Rod Stewart and Ron Wood in tow, they were no longer Small. They were now larger than life, or at least mythic, because it's hard to call an album that concludes with a riotous ode to a hand-me-down suit as larger than life.
That was the charm of the Faces, a group who always seemed like the boys next door made good, no matter where next door was. Part of the reason they seemed so relatable was that legendary messiness -- after all, it's hard not to love somebody if they so openly displayed their flaws -- but on their debut, it was hard not to see the messiness as merely the result of the old Faces getting accustomed to the new guys.
Fresh from their seminal work with Jeff Beck, Rod and Ron bring a healthy dose of Beck's powerful bastardized blues, bracingly heard on the opening cover of "Wicked Messenger," but there's a key difference here; without Beck's guitar genius, this roar doesn't sound quite so titanic, it hits in the gut. That can also be heard and Rod and Woody's "Around the Plynth," or "Three Button Hand Me Down," which is ragged rocking at its finest. Combine that with Ronnie Lane and Ian McLagan finding their ways as songwriters in the wake of the Small Faces' mod implosion, and this goes in even more directions.
Lane unveils his gentle, folky side on "Stone," McLagan kicks in "Looking Out the Window" and "Three Button Hand Me Down."
All these are moments that are good, often great, but the record doesn't quite gel, yet that doesn't quite matter. The Faces is a band that proves that sometimes loose ends are as great as tidiness, that living in the moment is what's necessary, and this First Step is a record filled with individual moments, each one to be savored.
Ronnie Lane Fan Reviews
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A great band no matter what you want to call them ~Nigel C.
Can't ever get enough of Devotion and Flying. Love those two! ~Al A.
Great cover image, whoever came up with that. A fine album indeed. ~Daniel S.
Response: Taken in Kate and Michael's living room. Mac said that Kate added wood alcohol to the punch bowl and almost killed them all. By the end of the afternoon Ronnie Lane had swung from the light fixture and fallen on the coffee table and broken it ~Selina T. NOTE: Photo Credit goes to Mr. Martin Cook https://martincook.zenfolio.com/p834155900/h13327e9b#h13327e9b Around the plinth, flying, stone, devotion and more showed raw energy with a heart and soul. Exciting stuff!
~Don K. My favorite album of theirs ~Bruce A.
It is unlike any other Faces album in that Glyn Johns was not involved in any way with it. You can see where they decided to have some jams instead of pop songs and that didn't stick around so much later. Tis a stellar debut ~Tony S.
Absolutely perfect from first note to the last note. Curiously I do not feel that way about any of their other records but this is overflowing with perfect songs and guitar and bass parts that can drop me to my knees in awe . Boy Oh Boy do I love this record. ENOUGH. Did I mention Drums and keyboards. ~Kent H.
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I love this album, I saw that tour and have a bootleg of that tour and the First Step book. I'm lucky to have it and one of my Zemaitis I love to play! ~Dave Dalton
Faces - First Step collage, with Zemaitis guitar, Photo Credit: Dave Dalton
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Release Date: https://www.discogs.com/release/1806996-Faces-The-First-Step
Ronnie Lane Complete Album Discography:
https://www.ronnielane.com/ronnie-lane-complete-album-discography.html
https://www.ronnielane.com/ronnie-lane-complete-album-discography.html