As you may have heard by now, Rod Stewart confirmed last week that all the surviving members of his old band, the Faces (including current Rolling Stone Ron Wood and former Who drummer Kenny Jones), are planning to reunite for at least a tour next summer.
Could this be a case of Rod redeeming himself? Well, perhaps. I did mention in an earlier post that the best thing Rod could do at this point in his career was record a quick album with Wood and a tight rhythm and horn section. This is probably the next best thing to that. It sounds, too, from Rod ’s quotes that he’s quite into this reunion idea; maybe he was even the driving force behind it.
But before you or I get too vibed about this, I do think it is necessary to temper everyone’s excitement. After all, the man is now in his 60s, more than 30 years past the last Faces recordings and tours. What will be heard in 2009 is simply not going to be more than a good approximation of what occurred in the early 1970s. While Rod can still hit the notes with the same regularity as his did back then, the tone, the texture, the feel and the soul are not going to be the same. The voice is there, but it’s changed, no buts about it. Anyone interested in seeing the outcome of this possible reunion has to — like most band reunions — hope for the best but expect much less. Better to be pleasantly surprised by what happens than to feel that what you’ve just experienced was yet another sad coda to a historic band and a waste of money.
A second point that needs to be considered is that, while Rod seems to be genuinely excited about this reunion, he has been genuinely excited about lots of other things in his musical career that haven’t turned out to be what we, as fans, wished for. In the last couple of decades we’ve heard very good things about albums like A Spanner in the Works or When We Were the New Boys, and while they may have been the most solid works he’s laid down in the studio during that period, they were far from the “returns to form”
that many Rod fans may have built them up to be. (more…)
