Can Rock Survive The Holocaust Article: 1976

Faces
Jan 17, 1976
8 min read

Updated: Jan 17

Ronnie Lane's Doomladen Prophecy

Published in the UK on January 17, 1976, New Musical Express’s one-page feature “Can Rock Survive the Holocaust” and one full-page advert for the One More for the Road Tour. Chris Salewicz probed prophetic Ronnie Lane about his life after leaving the Faces, his new band Slim Chance, the Passing Show circus tour, and his move to a farm in Monmouthshire. Lane discussed the problems of going solo, the expense of studios, the boredom of the rock-star lifestyle, and his belief that technology and society were heading for disaster. He described the Faces era as “amateur night out” and expressed contentment with a simpler, more real way of living.

Article Overview

Publication Details

Magazine: New Musical Express (UK).

Date: January 17, 1976.

Format: One-page feature article + One More for the Road Tour full-page advert.

Do you have this NME feature in your archive? Ready for the holocaust forecast? Share in the comments!

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CHRIS SALEWICZ probes prophetic RONNIE LANE.

R ONNIE LANE'S up in town today. Been up from the farm in Monmouthshire for about a week now.

Played the Olympia Great British Etc. with the new permanent issue of Slim Chance, recorded a couple of numbers for Supersonic down at London Weekend the day before yesterday, and now he's in the offices of EG Management on the Kings Road, doing a phone interview with an Edinburgh daily.

Ronnie Lane's Slim Chance start a 22date British tour in Edinburgh the day after tomorrow.

We leave the two kids in manager David Enthoven's office watching the colour telly the Lanes don't bother with a TV at home and Ronnie and Kate Lane and Adi Hunter, his publicist, and me go round the corner to "The Phoenix" and have a bit of a talk. It's a Watneys pub so we have to drink wine.

Since leaving the Faces Ronnie Lane's existence, within the terms of the music business, has seemed confused to say the least. Now, though, he's got "One For The Road", his second album for the Island label released next week, and a management deal with the same company that has been the careerminders of Roxy Music and King Crimson, not to mention ELP and Julie Felix.

Lane split with Billy Gaff, the Faces' manager, "because he had too much on his plate sorting out the Warners/Mercury thing for Rod. He was like doing a Dr. Kissinger backwards and forwards to America all the time."

Then Lane was introduced to Trentdale, a management company who were handling the Sharks and Andy Fraser.

RONNIE LANE then brought himself and Slim Chance to EG. Life as a solo artist had so far proved to be Problem City.

"There was a helluva lot of problems. I mean, I'm still sorting 'em out in actual fact. I mean, like the hangover from that period is quite considerable. You know, VAT (laughs) and things like that, let alone

"In a way I just ended up trusting a lot of people to do things which they said they could do which they couldn't, you know?

"It sort of backfired on me more than anyone else, really.

"Bit of an amateur night out. I mean I was pretty amateur too. I just used to take pot luck. but I can't really do that any. more. Because I can't afford to."

Just an expensive way of finding out?

"Yeah," he nods, licking up a rollup. "It was also a way of starting up and doing something completely different which was one of the reasons the Passing Show (Lane's circus tent tour) came about.

"When I left the Faces I couldn't really face the prospect of going back on the road to do a tour like what I'm about to embark on now. But I hadn't set the Show up properly anyway, I did learn a helluva lot, you know. I think I'd know how to do one properly now."

If it was done properly it could be done, could it?

"Well, yes. It wouldn't make a lot of money. But it's such a nice way to live... Well, I suppose it could make a lot of money but there's no point in letting it get that big. Otherwise you might as well go back in the halls again," he laughs, as "Let's Twist Again" provides the soundtrack from the pub jukebox.

Like fellow former Small Face Steve Marriott, much of Lane's earnings were sunk into a studio. Marriott's studio, of course, caused The Death Of A Horse. Lane's Mobile saved his skin.

"It did pay for the Passing Show. What money it made went straight into that. And it still wasn't enough. I had to get subs all the way round to keep it on the road the last few weeks.

"But I'm very pleased the way the mobile's turned out. We just done this record on it and it's the way I wanna record. I don't like studios very much. We even mixed it in the mobile this time. We started it in there and we finished it in there, which really is what I'm after. And it worked too.

"It works for me. I don't say it'd work for everyone but I work in a ." he pauses. . in a slightly different way to a lot of people in the busi66 ness.

"They're not happy to put up with a bit of rough."

Oh, you mean you're prepared to put up with the kind of conditions that most people have to put with in their everyday lives anyway.

"Yeah, I suppose so. Instead of trying to avoid them all the time."

I suppose that's the antithesis of the way you used to record with the Faces. Rod Stewart's moan was that studios would get booked and then all the time would be spent in the pub. Which must have thoroughly disturbed his Scottish understanding of fiscal affairs.

"Really expensive," Ronnie Lane smiles. "But it was exaggerated. A lot of time wasn't spent in the pub. Only if someone hadn't turned up because there was bugger else to do. But even then we used to carry on without them.

"But that was basically what started to go wrong. I mean 'Nods As Good As A Wink' was started and finished in twelve days. So there couldn't have been a lot of time spent in the pub there. But 'Ooh La La' was a saga.

there "It started off great guns like 'Nods As Good As A Wink'. But then finishing it just wasn't the interest there anymore," he shakes his head.

You were living in a caravan, weren't you?

"We're living in one now," says Lane. "Up here. Except it's not a caravan. It's my old bus."

I'm quite interested in why you started getting into all of this, oh, Getting Back To Your Roots, as it were. After all, it comes over very strongly in your postFaces music, even down to "One For The Road" having the Welsh farm on the sleeve.

"Quite interested? Why?" Because I quite possibly agree with you.

What "Well, you see can I say. I don't wanna particularly preach to anyone

My theory of why you're into it would go like this: that you all got so bombed on the Faces tours that you eventually began to get bored by it all. And after a while you began to think that maybe that wasn't the way to do it.

"I don't particularly want to get used to that way of doing things, because it's not real. I come from a workingclass background. Why should I try and become the aristocracy of this age, you know? It's not an ambition of mine.

"I just want to stay the way I am. You can surround yourselves with all sorts of facades but I'd rather get on with living. "It's very hard to talk about it, really," he adds, looking pensively through me.

So success didn't change our Ron, eh?

"Uhhhh. Oh, I enjoyed it," the Stratford accent filters through on the emphasis "Don't get me wrong. I really enjoyed looning about in the limousines. It was a good game. But it never became any more than a game.

"We was just playing pop stars. That's all. It's like cowboys and Indians. You had to grow up some time."

And the music that you're writing now. That seems to come very much out of the way you're living now. Right?

"Yeah. Totally."

Could you not have written songs like the ones you're writing now, then?

"Well... no. It's a different sort of band. The Faces was a heavy sort of rock band. And also had, like, a geezer up the front with a very powerful voice. Which I don't possess.

"I mean, what I'm doing now The band's basically a vehicle for the stuff I write. I mean, it is a band and the way it's been got together it's good for the stuff I write, whereas the Faces and even the Small Faces weren't particularly good for the stuff that I personally conceived.

"It was great to write with one of the Faces like Ronnie Wood or with Steve in the Small Faces. It was great to actually write something for that band.

"But when I wrote something on me own it didn't really fit. It didn't really stick."

"AM I disillusioned with the rock business?

"No. Of course I'm not. I think it's a ONEDERFULL function. HaHaHaНаНаHa!!!

"It just got boring, that's all. It lost its point somehow. Became like Marks and Spencer.

"You know what I mean? Marks and Spencer has branches everywhere and has a huge turnover and it just became like that." He yawns, as if to emphasise a point.

"I don't know. It's very odd. You're talking about a long period of time. And for me to sum it up in a few words is very hard, you know. I mean, you could write a book about it if it weren't so boring."

LONG MOMENTS of silence. Then: "1976. What a violent start it's had, hasn't it? Innit shocking?"

Yeah, I think it's gonna be a very bad year.

"It's gotta be a bad year.

"You see, I think things are going to get so bad a lot of people ain't gonna know what's hit 'em.

"In a way I try to be ready for that sort of thing rather than be caught with me pants down. I mean, we're all gonna get caught with our pants down anyway, without totally living in cuckooland as well and then suddenly waking up one morning and it's all happening, you know.

"I didn't move down to the country to run away. I moved because there I could live a bit more like I wanted to. I don't want to bother anyone. On the other hand I don't want anyone to bother me either.

"Anyway, we don't want this interview turning into a forecast of doom, do we?"

Well, you never know: it might be quite profitable.

"No. The point is... I mean, you can shout about doom as much as you like but noone will realize it's coming so it's best just to keep it to yourself, I think, and try and keep the troops happy.

"You see, we've all been brought up in a society that said that technology was going to be such a wonderful thing. I mean, like when we was kids don't worry. Man will find out how to do it.

"And noone can actually grasp the fact that really we've buggered the whole system, you know."

"It was like that yesterday in the hardware shop," Kate Lane reminds her husband.

He nods: "We were down the East End. We found this hardware store. And for all the world it was like a hardware store that you'd go into fifty years ago. Right? And we

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