I saw the Faces on May 12, 1973, in Roanoke, VA, and I always rank it as one of the most disappointing rock shows I ever attended. I always loved their stuff, and was very psyched to see them live, but they were bloody awful.
This was in the stage of the bartender on stage (also chronicled in Ronnie's book), and they were absolutely ripped, falling around the stage. Rod Stewart was in good voice, had a good stage presence (flipping the mike stand way up to the ceiling of the arena, catching it, flipping it back around....looked sharp). But the songs never really ended, they just.....fell apart at the end, with loud "thank you thank you thank you"'s from the band. I remember they came back out for the encore and almost no one in the entire civic center was applauding.
You know how it is.....most shows you are up dancing, drinking beer, etc. (like all nine of my Stones shows). Other times the overall mood of the crowd is wanting to just sit and listen to the band. That might have been part of the problem....the Doobie Brothers had been the opening act, had just done a very tight and together set, and the Faces wound up sounding very sloppy and thrown together. My feelings at the time were that if all of us had been in a smaller hall and also ripped, it would have had been a much more friendly environment.
I was always glad I saw Ronnie again for all those Stones shows.
Now.....with all of that being said:
This morning I was looking around some Faces websites (I still love the band), and came across a good explanation about the Roanoke show - Ronnie Lane had just announced to the group minutes before they took the stage that night that he was leaving the band after two more gigs. Found this on a website this morning:
Lane’s departure, however, was not amicable. Before a performance in Roanoke, Virginia, in May, 1973, Lane announced backstage that he was leaving the band. This moment precipitated a violent row between McLagan and Lane that carried its way onto the stage and off again.
“There was no send-off party [for Lane],” Mac recalls. “It was ugly. We didn’t want to speak to him. I mean, there’s a picture in [the official live release, Coast to Coast/Overture and Beginners] of the four of us sitting around a table [drunk and unhappy]. It got more and more bloody horrible towards the end. I kicked him off the stage at one point, God bless him!”[
www.the-faces.com]
Makes a lot more sense now.
The only other time I was that disappointed with a show was the same year, 1973. I got a chance to see Badfinger, and was really psyched up to hear them live, and they were one of the all time worst concert experiences I ever had. Understanding later that they also had quite a few issues going on at the time puts that show into perspective, too.