A new
compilation shows the former Small Faces and Faces stalwart should have been a
star in his own right
There
has never been any shortage of reasons to love Ronnie Lane. If his barrow-boy
twinkle and the fact that his nickname was Plonk aren't sufficient, well,
there's always the music.
Most of
the discourse surrounding Lane inevitably focuses on 1965-73, the period when
he was the bass player in the Small Faces, and then the Faces. And fair enough.
Lane co-wrote the majority of the former's hits, he gave the latter the
heartbreaking Debris and wryly romantic Ooh La La, and his input in both bands
went way beyond songwriting. No shrinking violet, he nonetheless balanced their
innate boisterousness with heart, soul, warmth and wit. Rod Stewart called him
the "backbone" of the Faces. When he left in June 1973 they quickly
fell apart.
If Lane
still doesn't get full credit for his role in two groups dominated by their
turbo-charged vocalists, his post-Faces career is even more badly undervalued.
A new anthology confirms that he did some of his greatest work in the mid-70s
with Slim Chance, a loose rustic-rock band he built in his own image, the
good-time exterior masking genuine soulfulness.
I like
this Lane a lot. I might even like him best. After leaving the Faces he'd
retreated to Fishpool farm, near the village of Hyssington on the Welsh-English
border. The music he made there was dug from the soil and baked in the sun. It
mixed eclectic covers with originals and drew from rock'n'roll, country, folk,
blues, early jazz, vaudeville and blue beat.
The
first Slim Chance album, 1974's Anymore for Anymore, was recorded with a
line-up that included Scottish folkies Gallagher & Lyle. The next two,
Ronnie Lane's Slim Chance and One for the Road, were cut with members of St
James's Gate and sundry other friends. Fishpool sounds a bit like a Welsh Big
Pink, only with sheep farmers living down the lane rather than Bob Dylan. The
musicians slept at the farm, recorded in the barn, playing acoustic guitars,
fiddles, squeezeboxes, mandolins and piano.
Lane
blossomed creatively out in the sticks, but commercially Slim Chance never
really caught fire. Their first single, How Come, was the only hit; its
follow-up, The Poacher, was less successful but a much better song. A
classical-pop ode to the simple joys of fishing – almost certainly without the
necessary paperwork in place – it is pastoral Plonk in excelsis, a hymn to
salmon "with eyes of jewels and mirrors on their bodies, bigger than a
newborn child".
As far
back as Itchycoo Park and Song of a Baker, Lane had been attuned to nature, but
the sense of communion comes through much stronger in his solo work. Songs like
The Poacher, Burnin' Summer and Harvest Home reveal a mystical connection to
the surrounding countryside. For balance, the other side of Slim Chance – heard
on G'Morning, or One for the Road – was all Cockney hi-jinks and jug band
stomps.
Lane
combined both elements when the band hit the road. The Passing Show tour of
1974 has entered the annals as one of the most heroically ill-judged attempts
to enliven the traditional touring model. Determined to take a Romany caravan
across the English countryside, Lane rolled into towns with a rag-tag group of
musicians, jugglers, fire-eaters, dancing girls and what he described as
"the world's unfunniest clowns". He pitched his Big Top tent and
watched his money disappear.
In need
of cash, shortly after One for the Road Lane dabbled briefly with an ill-fated
Small Faces reunion, and went on to make the excellent Rough Mix with Pete
Townshend. But by the time of See Me, the final Slim Chance album in 1979, he
had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and his creativity became
increasingly thwarted. He died in 1997, aged 51.
But what
better way to remember him than as he appears on The Poacher: the mystic mod in
his prime, chewing on a straw of hay as he heads for the river, singing,
"I've no use for riches, and I've no use for power." If you listen
closely you might actually believe him.
• Ooh La
La: An Island Harvest is released on 24 February on Universal
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