Friday 20th December

“Here’s one you may well know, and if you don’t know it – I really don’t know where ya bin.”  So declared Rod the Mod as the Faces went into a live rendition of ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’, a song which Paul McCartney had included on his solo debut record.  As would be the case for a while Rod and the Faces knocked the socks off Paul’s insipid version.   Rod first sprung to real fame when he replaced Stevie Marriott in the Faces.  He had also secured a record contract as a solo artist with another label.  And so Rod and the boys released an album every few months sometimes under the name of Rod and sometimes as the Faces.  ‘Maggie May’ was an enormous hit on both sides of the Atlantic and so the legend of Rod was born.  And he was certainly larger than life, a real working class hero made good, with a string of celebrity friends and Britt Eckland on his arm, he was every girls dream lover and the envy of every boy too.

Through the seventies he continued to reign supreme, releasing hit album and single one after the other, and he certainly never let us down.  Then he made ‘Do You think I’m Sexy’, which Rod now insists was parody, but maybe arrogance was nearer the mark.  Slowly he started to go soft and worst crime of all ‘Middle of the Road’.  The Faces were long behind him, Ronnie Wood had joined the Stones, a gig Rod always fancied for himself, Ronnie Lane was poorly and even for Rod the hits started drying up.  He limped on into the eighties, with a few good songs sprinkled among the dross.  I had stopped buying by then, and when he started his ‘American Songbook’ series of albums it seemed there was no hope for him.

He is though the great survivor, wives, many children, throat cancer – none could dent Rod’s character and he is still going strong and almost as popular as ever, though with a slightly different audience than he had back with the Faces.  He still has a great gravelly voice, and the threatened reunion with Ronnie Wood and the other living Faces is still rumoured occasionally.  Now that gig I would certainly pay good money to see.