Fujirockers: The official fansite of the Fuji Rock Festival

Ronnie Wood. Now *That's* A Face If Ever There Was One.

For my money, Faces were an almost ideal act to headline the Green stage: a band I was eager to see, and a big heap of nobody waiting to see them. Seriously, I’ve rarely seen the Green Stage that empty at 3:30pm on Friday afternoon, let alone for Saturday night’s headliner. I arrived late, and went straight for the pole position in front of the sound booth. Not like Oasis in ‘09, where my late arrival required me to shove in front of hundreds of very grumpy people who had been waiting hours in the rain, and where my fresh-from-indoors enthusiasm got me on the shit list of dozens of people I will never meet again.

I do say “almost” though, because in that ideal world the crowd would have filled in around me as the show progressed, and we would have ended in the usual huge Green Stage Saturday night love orgy. But that resolutely did not happen. I put the attendance at about 1/3 of the average Green Stage headliner, 1/5 of what the Chili Peppers pulled in a few years back. There were wide open spaces in front of the sound booth the entire show, and you could have had a nice game of footie in the mud next to it. Only advantage: it was easy to keep slipping out for more beers. This is blooze rock after all. (This would prove detrimental to the rest of my evening though.)

Not that any of the Faces or their recent additions noticed. Mick Hucknall, in place of Rod Stewart, greeted the crowd with “L’layalilrah’rol’eh?!!!”, which is how they said “Let’s play a little rock and roll, eh?” in the 1970s. I came into this with a very open mind, hoping that Hucknall would tear it up, and in truth the man did a stand-up job. But as soon as he opened up to sing the first song, “Miss Judy”, the feeling was unmistakable: “dang, I miss Rod”. You can imagine how bad that makes a man feel, to realize he is missing Rod Stewart. But the guy is one of the best-selling artists of all time for a reason:nobody, absolutely nobody, sings like he does. Hucknall’s supple tenor really killed on songs that didn’t invite the comparison though. He did Ronnie Wood (”Ooh La La”, with Wood standing right next to him), Paul McCartney (”Maybe I’m Amazed”), Ronnie Lane (”Debris”), and at the end, Steve Marriott (”Tin Soldier”). Hucknall had more swagger than you’d expect the frontman for Simply Red to have; he was clearly playing a part rather than inhabiting it the way Rod did, but he wore it rather well.

New Face Mick Hucknall

Ronnie Wood’s guitar tone was spot on. Even if you’d only ever heard “Stay With Me” once on the radio when you were 12, hearing him rip into the first chords of “Miss Judy” Saturday night you’d've thought “well, roger me with broomstick if that isn’t the Faces, man.” It’s worth noting that if Ronnie Wood wasn’t a Rolling Stone he’d look like a total twat, because if anyone other than someone who looked exactly like Ronnie Wood were caught playing beside Keith Richards, he’d look like a total twat. These ancient guys in these super tight clothes, it’s fascinating to contemplate what rarified universe they inhabit. Wood was barely able to remove his leather coat to launch into his bottle-neck blues solo, and he looks every bit as shocking as Richards naked. Old men are supposed to have some flab on them; these guys have tendons and sinews I didn’t know existed. Ronnie Wood also did an excellent Ronnie Wood impression too: after Hucknall took a particularly soulful chorus, Wood extended his arm in appreciation and treated us to this gem: “erhhah, the very Mick Hucknall!!…aarhher…”

Kenney Jones was sporting a t-shirt that looked conspicuously like a union jack, an interesting choice for the man who replaced Keith Moon. And what about that drum solo on “(I Know) I’m Losing You” I was going on about before? Jones seems to have learned some tricks since the early 70’s. Unfortunately. It may matter whether Ronnie Wood is playing guitar or Ian McLagen is playing keyboards on a stage the size of Green, but any English a drummer brings is going to get sucked into the mix (it even got Dave Grohl a little last year). Jones’ one chance to shine, to shamble through one of the greatest rawk drum solos of all time–certainly one of the most danceable–and he dropped the ball with some trickery any mid-80’s studio hack could’ve pulled out in his sleep, under the mistaken notion that what that solo needed was more space. It stopped the momentum of the song dead. He didn’t even maintain the syncopated kicks of the original solo; just a standard issue 4/4 with some fancy tom-tom work. Deeply disappointing.

Ian McLagen’s keys were buried a little too far in the mix; he certainly brought some energy (he’s the one that spearheaded the reunion after all), but he wasn’t as audible as Wood. The two together certainly created a fine anarchy though, in the best Faces tradition. My worst fear was that they’d've accidentally gotten tight. And they filled out the sound with Ronnie Wood’s son Jesse on 2nd guitar. These old ones are always trying to fill out their sound now that they’ve got pull. Dylan travels with like eight guys. I reckon they could have gotten along fine with Ronnie and Ian carrying the band. (Glenn Matlock was on bass, but he didn’t take any spotlights).

The setlist hewed pretty close to what they’ve been doing at every show, and was pretty hot. The people that did show up knew they had shown up for the Faces, that’s for sure. Spotted one Japanese fellow singing along word for word to “Flying”, their best song off of their worst album. Big surprise: their first encore was a two-song tribute to the Small Faces. Bigger suprise: the Japanese crowd knew “Tin Soldier” better than any of the Faces material. Is there a secret syndicate of solidarity in diminution I didn’t know about here? Can we get Randy Newman out here to test this theory?

They ended with Stay With Me, of course. Rollicking, but someone (possibly Jones, possibly a band decision), took it too fast into the time change after the intro. That’s supposed to strut, man. The crowd was no more filled out than it was at the start. Incubus, Widespread Panic, and Congotronics must have been taking up the slack; that’s a lot of slack though. I’ve never seen less than at least twice that at a Green Stage headliner on any night. It’s a tough call to say how many of the youthful Fuji Rock crowd would have turned out for the actual Faces even, but this was downright shocking. I hope no one took it personally.

-Kern

photos by ikeda. more here