Lunch with Rod Stewart and Faces for Monday – recorded at Edmonton Sundown on June 4, 1973.
Significant in that this was, for all intents and purposes, the last series of concerts with the original lineup before bassist Ronnie Lane left and was replaced by former Free bassist Tetsu Yamauchi before officially splitting up in 1975.
It was a bittersweet concert, and listening to it now brings back memories of what a seismic period of time it was in the 1970s and how everything was on the verge of yet another change before the decade closed out. Rod Stewart had firmly cemented his solo career, which in many ways overshadowed his work with The Faces. How Rock was heading into Arenas and albums were heading into double and triple-platinum territory. There was the growing division between Rock that was mainstream and Rock that was “underground” – how FM became dominant, leaving Top-40 AM to flounder for the better part of the decade and how FM, once the bastion of underground and Progressive Rock was now being taken over by those bands and artists who were filling arenas.
Pop Music was becoming a gargantuan industry – with lavish production costs for albums and equally lavish promotion of those albums. Everyone had a shot, no matter how insignificant it was, to be associated with Rock Royalty. And depicting Rod Stewart and Faces as the ultimate Party Band reflected, in no small way, how the 70s had the corner on hedonism and “no tomorrow”.
So listening to this concert, there is a sort of “if we knew then what we know now” aura about it – particularly if you were there. It was all about how far it could go before anybody hit the brakes. No one knew at the time it would be closer than we realized – that things looked good on paper and nobody really wanted to know how much of a house of cards we were living in until we heard the phrase “shipped Gold – returned Platinum” frequently.
But smack in the middle of June 1973 the future hadn’t arrived and we were all convinced Rod Stewart and The Faces would be forever and the party had no plans to end.
Crank this one up and do a little time-traveling.
