Ian McLagan was in the UK recently for a series of concerts with the Bump Band. Ian and the Bump Band had recently released the excellent Rise & Shine! album. Also in the works was the often talked about Faces boxed set, which Mac has been working on for the last four years. With the boxed set 'Five guys walk into a bar...' now set for release at the end of June. Jon Kirkman spoke to Mac about the new Bump Band album and the Faces box and the possibility of a Faces reunion.... Read on

Jon Kirkman: Your new album is great. I really think this is the best album of your career.

Ian McLagan: Well, I know it is, and that's because I recorded it at home. I'll never use a studio again (laughs).

JK: Do you think it is better because the pressure isn't on when your time is your own and you're not watching the clock?

IM: Well that's the thing but also it is the question of getting the flavour, you know, and just being able to... Well, after I had got my hard drive rigged up, Gurf Morlix called and I told him that I had just put a demo down and he said, "Mac, you just made a track, you didn't cut a demo, those are tracks". That's the difference, so if I put acoustic down that might be the basic for the whole track. I love it.

JK: Well the thing that comes across is a real loose feel about it but you are bang on the money as well, which is a very hard thing to actually get. Plenty of people try it and they fail but you have just hit on it.

IM: Well I tell you what, it's not conscious, it is unconscious. It is basically because the guys I work with Don Harvey, 'Scrappy' Jud Newcomb, Gurf Morlix and George Reiff are so in tune. Since this album we have got only about four tracks down, but we were asked if we would like to do a song for the Alejandro Escovedo benefit album and I jumped at it. One of his songs that I love so much is Wedding Day and we cut it at the house. Two of the guys had heard the song before and it was like a second take you know. It gets easier and easier when you are in tune with the guys.

JK: You seem to have been very lucky with the bands you have worked with. Let’s look at the Small Faces and the Faces. There was definitely that kind of feeling with their records as well.

IM: Yeah, absolutely. It is all down to really having fun. I have been asked to play on different people's records over the years that I have turned down and I just told them I was busy but they were people I didn't particularly like. Even if I was broke I just couldn't do it. I was invited to audition for the Grateful Dead and I had never really listened to them much. I bought one of their records and my wife came home to find me sitting there in the dark with a very sad face and she said, "What's the matter?" I said, "Oh nothing I have just been listening to this band. I just can't bear them so I couldn’t do it." The potential was huge amounts of money and she said, "Mac, you can't do it. If it puts you in that sort of mood, forget it!"

JK: But in the past, the Small Faces aside and let's be honest, you and I have had this discussion before, and you never made a penny as the Small Faces. Any money had come subsequently to that and in fact recently. The Faces did very nicely though but it was never contrived.

IM: Right, also we were lucky to have Glyn Johns on the last two albums because he captured events. So often you go into a studio and you are getting sounds for ages and you have to do the drums again and it's oh we need another mic and the concentration goes. You just need to be able to walk in and as soon as possible play. Glyn always caught us on the first or second take, maybe the odd third take and I don't know if there is any actual proof of that but Stay with Me was only the second take, I'm sure it was. I actually made a mistake on it at the end but it doesn't matter.

JK: That mistake is part of the record isn't it? I know which mistake you are talking about and it is part of the record.

IM: If you listen to Green Onions, one of my all time favourite records by my favourite band, at the end Booker makes a goof, and I thought Yeah.

JK: But for instance if someone was to play for instance Stay with Me now and that mistake had been corrected they'd go that's wrong.

IM: With some producers we would have gone for tenth and eleventh take and missed the point all together. What I do with my band is we work on a song and we will cut something a couple of times and listen to it and if we're not excited by it we move on and cut something else and then another time or later on that day we'll have another go at it. You don't want to get like it is a job or know what you are doing because you don't want to know what you are doing sometimes. Here's an instance, the guys came over for a rehearsal two or three weeks ago. Scrappy started playing a riff and George fell in with him. As soon as they started playing I just switched record and it wasn't really ready but the mics were all set you know, it was just for the joy of it. That is now going to be on the next record. At the moment it has got the title of Scrappy Jam because he started it. I put vocals on it and all kinds of things. I got to the piano and started playing later on, but those little happy accidents are what you want to capture.

JK: How much of Rise & Shine! has made it to the live set?

IM: Oh quite a lot of it actually, You're My Girl, Been a Long Time, Date With An Angel, Anytime, Your Secret.

JK: Date With An Angel is one of my favourite songs. It is the song of the album for me. That may change because I am still listening to it you know. For me that just really stood out.

IM: Well thank you. That's one track that isn't the band, just Don Harvey on drums and me on everything else. That is unusual but where it came from was that I was actually supposed to meet my wife Kim at a restaurant and the truck was overheating and I had to drive as fast as possible with no air conditioning on. To cut a long story short, I wrote it on the way and was able to get all the words down or I would have lost it. I got home a couple of hours later and put an acoustic down and then put a bass to it and then electric. Then I put another acoustic on and Don came over the next day and he tried to put the drums once and I said that I'm thinking it is almost like reggae but not. So I kept the drums he'd put on and used another track of drums on the chorus and yet another on the verses and the rest of the song. We just worked on and he said, "Oh my God. I am supposed to be home for dinner so I got to go! Don't do anything with it, I'll come back tomorrow. I called him the next morning and told him the track was finished.

JK: Well that's another kind of instant thing isn't it? As in I've done it and there you go, let's not play with it.

IM: Yeah, that's the magic of recording at home. Also, the vocal on She Ain't My Girl. I went to bed about three in the morning and I'm lying in bed nodding off and kept thinking about the track and the vocals for She Ain't My Girl and I suddenly got it. I'd written it on the piano and it was a kind of a Huey 'Piano' Smith vocal, and the track turned out quite different but I felt that was how I had to sing it. So I went downstairs and that's the vocal you got. My voice was the way it is now; I didn't warm up or anything. It'll be fine by this evening.

JK: In terms of the Bump Band, you just started earlier this week a UK tour. Where else are you going with the band?

IM: Unfortunately we don't have an agent in America. We've exhausted almost every possibility. The touring business is so expensive anyway but I had an English agent here for a couple of years and we've been building up to getting this record out but I don't have one in America. I have a good record company, they're real keen and they are real helpful but I am going to have to do solo gigs, which I enjoy doing too but I love my band you know. At a solo gig I just have a piano. I'll read from a book, chat, answer questions, play a few songs and leave. I want to get on the road with the guys. My manager who happens to be my drummer, and I were talking about it in the van today and as soon as we get back on Tuesday we're going to get it sorted. I'm going to call Bonnie Raitt and a few other people to see if they need an opening act. I've got to get out there.

JK: Well it is important that you promote the album of course.

IM: Yeah it's crazy. I've waited a year to get the record out and you know it's a funny old business.

JK: Let's have a look a little further back in your career. You are about to release the Faces box set. I spoke to you about this about three or four years ago and it has changed a little bit, it a totally different beast from the one you had envisaged, for instance there's an awful lot of unreleased stuff.

IM: Yes, I had originally said we need all the A sides and all the B sides off the albums and all that, but Eric James from Warners said, "No, I'm a Faces fan, I want to hear the alternate tracks. I want to hear some of the BBC sessions, I want to hear some stuff from the vaults, come on!"

JK: He's right because like many fans I have got the four original albums on CD, I've got the Best Of and I've got the bootlegs like many people but I know there was more stuff, I knew there was a lot of BBC stuff. One of the tracks that really blew me away however was Ronnie Wood's song I Can Feel The Fire.

IM: The four CDs come from my studio and I didn’t think to take You Can Make Me Dance from 'Good boys... when they're asleep'. I forgot it was on CD because that was off a record. Those are my sketches. I'm glad you've heard the whole thing, that's great.

JK: It really is superb. There are a lot of people who aren't aware of what Rod did with the Faces, which is a great shame, and listening to something like Evil and certainly some of the live stuff is going to give them the other side of the coin.

IM: Well Evil, that was recorded on my cassette machine before we cut records, that and I Feel So Good and Shake, Shudder Shiver. Having put all this together I then discovered five more cassettes, which I haven't actually listened to yet.

JK: There's talk that maybe some of the bootlegs will come out because the Faces were a wonderful live band. I saw them twice in Liverpool at the Liverpool Stadium and I have got very happy memories of seeing the Faces live but the live album was very disappointing for me, I remember you agreed at the time. You told us why that was and that the recording wasn't great.

IM: The thing was that we did a gig and then we had a party and then went to mix the album! I think there is better stuff but Warners weren't keen for us to use that because Universal, Mercury whatever have the rights to that. We thought the rights were shared equally but it turns out they have more rights to that, so I just left that alone.

JK: What are the chances of some of the bootlegs or live gigs coming out? There are some great Faces bootlegs out there, I'm sure you've got them yourself.

IM: I'm sure that I've got every one of them. Some of the best stuff I found was on one bootleg and there's three or four tracks from that and it said Paris on the cover, but whoever bootlegged it got it off the radio because it was Paris studios, London and it was BBC sessions. We hadn't got it from the BBC though we thought the BBC had sent us everything.

JK: Is that the one with John Peel introducing it?

IM: John Peel introduces part of it actually.

JK: I have got one that was done at the Paris studios in London, which was around about the time of Ooh La La, which is a very good one.

IM: I can't remember which is which right now. When I sent those four CDs to Rhino, Bill Inglot, who mastered the box said, "Well, if that's from the BBC you should have that album." What was also confusing to me was that there's one track where there's an overdubbed guitar; an overdubbed slide, which is Bad 'N' Ruin, and I haven't got to the bottom of that yet. I don't know how that could have happened. That's a BBC track as well. All the bootleg stuff that I wanted to use has come from source stuff otherwise I would have used it straight from those CDs.

JK: What I like about this is, if you have the four albums and the 'Best Of' and you get this, you have got the whole kit and caboodle really. You've got as much as you need from the Faces really.

IM: I reckon, from all the BBC sessions there is some really good stuff and also there is some live BBC TV stuff that I wanted to use, but never got round to which was Sweet Little Rock 'n' Roller from the Brit Awards in '86.

JK: There is a gig in London that is out on bootleg DVD. What is to stop you guys from putting that out and bootlegging yourselves?

IM: Absolutely nothing! They are basically thieves. I've spoken to them and emailed them backwards and forwards. The company that bought the rights to it paid £100 and our accountant was allegedly responsible for that. He had no right to do it and he is not working for me anymore. We only discovered this just before Christmas.

JK: Well I got this from Brazil and of course it is Rod Stewart and the Faces and Keith Richards is guesting. I think it is probably from about '74.

IM: It's being called the 'Faces last concert', but it isn't.

JK: Yeah, yeah that's the one. I think it was at the Kilburn State. It's a good gig. I remember emailing you about this and you said, "It's a bootleg, we don't get anything for it and it's a pain in the arse but there you go." This must drive you mental.

IM: It does, especially after the way the Small Faces have been treated. When Eric James talked me into getting wild with this thing I just thought, where are the DVDs? Why can't we make a DVD? He said, "Who owns the rights?" I said, "I have no idea." He said, "There's your problem, we don't own the rights." We can only bootleg those people and it's an impossible situation at the moment. The trouble is we haven't got one manager. If we were a living band we would have someone working for us who would be steaming in on this like Kenney's been doing on behalf of the Small Faces all these years, but it's very difficult.

JK: I have read that you have announced that there will not be a Faces reunion but the rumours persist.

IM: Actually I've started a reverse rumour this week. I sent Rod everything last year and he loved it, Woody loved it and Kenney loved it. I then sent all of them the finished artwork three or four weeks ago. Rod was in Dallas and I sent it there. Next thing, I get a call from his manager Arnold Stiefel who said, "You know If only you would let us do a Faces reunion." I just laughed because it's Rod that's been prevaricating on it for years, we'd wanted it all along, and I'd been denying that there ever would be one. He said that nothing could have been further from the truth, and I said get out of here. Of course Rod's last few albums have sold incredible amounts and good luck to him. But I think he misses something, he realises he has gone slightly left of field and he wants to get back and make a real rock 'n' roll album. Whether he will ever be able to do that or not I don't know.

JK: Do you wake up some mornings and just think what do I have to do here because you have been pushed into so many different corners by the business.

IM: I know it. The easiest thing to do is to get up in the morning and record a song that you have just written. That's fun and everything but getting that song released, getting anyone to play it, getting the money for it and then keeping the rights is just impossible.

JK: The thing is that you are a musician, you are creative. If you wanted to be in business you could have been a banker and made more money you know. But I hope the Faces finally get to do something. Oddly enough I went to see Rod Stewart about two or three years ago and he was very, very good. He was far better than thought he was going to be. But it is not the Faces. I'd go half way round the world to see the Faces and I know other people would too.

IM: Rod's problem is he has had his band for so long I don't know if he can handle the decisions that would challenge him and push him which is what the Faces did and what he used to do to us, all of us. We pushed and elbowed our way past each other and it was like a horse race. The end result is that you have a fantastic event. Rod is used to coasting and I don't mean that in a bad way but he is used to being the boss telling people what to do. I toured with him and I found it very boring, not because of the music, not because of him, because he's singing better than ever, it's just that I didn't want to do half the songs. I became a backing musician.

JK: I would say these days and even more so with these new albums you have to take them out of the equation because that is not what people call Rod Stewart. I love Rod Stewart but he seems to be playing to women with purple hair these days.

IM: Yeah (Laughs) Funnily the first of the five gigs on this tour with the Bump Band was a sit down gig, and the audience wasn't that young. They weren't all old either, but they were older than last night's audience and I think tonight's audience will be much more mixed generally.

JK: Well it has been great speaking to you as ever.

IM: You too Jon and let's hope for a Faces reunion. The plan is for just one gig at the moment, probably in L. A. but we're working on it you know.

JK: Well fingers crossed then and once again the boxed set is wonderful.

IM: Thanks. Cheers Jon take care.