First Step (Faces album)

First Step is the debut studio album by the English rock band Faces, released on 27 March 1970 by Warner Bros. Records. The album was released only a few months after the Faces had formed from the ashes of the Small Faces (from which Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan hailed) and The Jeff Beck Group (from which Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood hailed). The album is credited to the Small Faces on all North American issues and reissues,[3] while record labels for initial vinyl printings give the title as The First Step.[4]

First Step
Studio album by
Faces
Released27 March 1970[1]
RecordedDecember 1969 – January 1970 at De Lane Lea Studios, London
GenreBlues rock,[2] R&B
Length46:22
LabelWarner Bros.
ProducerFaces
Faces chronology
First Step
(1970)		 Long Player
(1971)
Singles from First Step
  1. "Flying" / "Three Button Hand Me Down"
    Released: 1970
  2. "Around the Plynth" / "Wicked Messenger"
    Released: 1970 (US)

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.

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.

At 46:22, 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).

Artwork

The photography for First Step was taken at Willoughby House, the home of artist Mike McInnerney and his wife Kate, who, like Lane, were followers of Meher Baba.[5] During the shoot, Kate served the band punch spiked with methanol; McLagan recalled: "We ended up getting extremely drunk ... jumping up and down on this low table and smashing it to splinters."[6] The front cover photo was taken by photographer and fellow Baba follower Martin Cook.[6] It shows Wood holding a copy of the book First Step: How to Play the Guitar Plectrum Style,[7] which biographer Terry Rawlings suggests is symbolic of the public perceiving him as only a bassist due to the Jeff Beck Group.[8] McLagan and Lane are shown holding Mickey Mouse figures,[8] of which McLagan said: "I don't remember bringing [them] along with us ... I get a feeling the doll must have been at Mike and Kate's house although Ronnie Lane is wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt so maybe they were his."[6] The album's black-and-white gatefold photo was taken in the garden and shows the band pretending to play their instruments, except Lane, who was oblivious and instead has his hands in his pockets.[6]

Release and reception
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[9]
Christgau's Record GuideC+[10]
MusicHound Rock[11]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[12]
The Vinyl DistrictB+[13]
The Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music[14]

The single "Flying" / "Three Button Hand Me Down" was issued prior to the album's release. The band promoted it by appearing on the BBC TV shows Top of the Pops and Disco 2, but it still failed to chart.[15] Lane said that the band "didn't really want to put out a single" and as such "didn't really care if it was a hit, but it would have been nice if it was."[8] Released on 27 March 1970,[7][16][nb 1] the album reached number 45 on the UK Official Albums Chart[18] and number 119 on the Billboard Top LPs.[19] Another single, an edited version of "Around the Plynth" backed with "Wicked Messenger", was released in the US, but also failed to chart.[20] Stewart claimed that the album sold 250,000 copies within a month.[21]

First Step received lukewarm reviews on release.[22] Joel Selvin from Rolling Stone wrote that the album was "original" but also "highly derivative" and failed to live up to the expectations of Faces' lineup.[23] New Musical Express described it as "weirdo sounds" and doubted if it would be accepted by Small Faces fans. Melody Maker wrote that the band kept Small Faces' appeal, but the album was nonetheless "rather patchy." A review from Billboard was more enthusiastic, proclaiming it to be "[t]he most together of any first album I've heard in a long time!"[22]

Reviewing in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau viewed the album 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.'"[10]

Track listing

All lead vocals by Rod Stewart except where indicated

Side one

  1. "Wicked Messenger" (Bob Dylan) – 4:00
  2. "Devotion" (Ronnie Lane) – 4:48 (lead vocals: Rod Stewart, Ronnie Lane)
  3. "Shake, Shudder, Shiver" (Lane, Ronnie Wood) – 3:09 (lead vocals: Rod Stewart, Ronnie Lane) (duet)
  4. "Stone" (Lane) – 5:33 (lead vocals: Ronnie Lane)
  5. "Around the Plynth" (Rod Stewart, Wood) – 5:45

Side two

  1. "Flying" (Lane, Stewart, Wood) – 4:10
  2. "Pineapple and the Monkey" (instrumental) (Wood) – 4:23
  3. "Nobody Knows" (Lane, Wood) – 4:05 (lead vocals: Rod Stewart, Ronnie Lane) (duet) – 4:04
  4. "Looking Out the Window" (instrumental) (Kenney Jones, Ian McLagan) – 5:00
  5. "Three Button Hand Me Down" (McLagan, Stewart) – 5:30

2015 reissue bonus tracks

  1. "Behind the Sun" (Jones, Lane, McLagan, Stewart, Wood)
  2. "Mona: The Blues" (instrumental) (Lane, Wood)
  3. "Shake, Shudder, Shiver" [BBC Session] (Lane, Wood) (lead vocals: Rod Stewart, Ronnie Lane) (duet)
  4. "Flying" [Take 3] (Lane, Stewart, Wood)
  5. "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".

Personnel

Notes
  1. The release date of 21 March 1970 is given by an article from Rhino Entertainment[7] and the book The Small Faces & Other Stories by Uli Twelker and Roland Schmitt.[16] Another article from Rhino, however, gives 27 March.[17]

References
  1. "This Day in 1970: Faces, FIRST STEP". Rhino Entertainment. 27 March 2018. Archived from the original on 11 October 2022. Retrieved 16 March 2023.
  2. Toland, Michael (25 December 2015). "Faces – 1970–1975: You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything ... Album Review". The Austin Chronicle. Archived from the original on 28 November 2020. Retrieved 17 March 2023.
  3. "Small Faces* – First Step". discogs.com. Retrieved 10 August 2014.
  4. Neill 2016, p. 159.
  5. Neill 2016, pp. 130–133, 162.
  6. Neill 2016, p. 162.
  7. "Rhino Factoids: Small No More – The Faces Introduce Rod Stewart to the Fold". Rhino Entertainment. 21 March 2017. Archived from the original on 23 August 2022. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  8. Rawlings 2010, p. 102.
  9. Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Faces / Small Faces – First Step Review". AllMusic. Archived from the original on 20 October 2022. Retrieved 16 March 2023.
  10. Christgau, Robert (1981). "Consumer Guide '70s: S". Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies. Ticknor & Fields. ISBN 089919026X. Retrieved 12 March 2019 – via robertchristgau.com.
  11. Yonke 1999, p. 404.
  12. Evans 1992, p. 236.
  13. Little, Michael H. (3 March 2017). "Graded on a Curve: Faces, First Step". The Vinyl District. Archived from the original on 4 March 2017. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  14. Larkin 2002, p. 428.
  15. Neill 2016, pp. 167–168.
  16. Twelker & Schmitt 2011, p. 122.
  17. "This Day in 1970: Faces, FIRST STEP". Rhino Entertainment. 27 March 2018. Archived from the original on 11 October 2022. Retrieved 16 March 2023.
  18. "first step | full Official Chart History". Official Charts Company. Archived from the original on 13 November 2022. Retrieved 18 March 2023.
  19. "Chart History: Faces (Billboard 200)". Billboard. Archived from the original on 25 September 2022. Retrieved 18 March 2023.
  20. Neill 2016, pp. 175, 423.
  21. Giuliano 1994, p. 74.
  22. Rawlings 2010, pp. 102–103.
  23. Neill 2016, p. 175.

Bibliography
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