First Step
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Album Summary
First Step was laid down in the dying months of 1969 and came rolling out to the world in March of 1970 — Warner Bros. Records carrying it stateside, while Vertigo Records handled the UK release. Now here's where the story gets beautiful, baby: this album was the official first breath of the Faces, that magnificent beast of a band born when the Small Faces lost their firecracker Steve Marriott and went out and pulled Rod Stewart and Ron Wood straight out of the Jeff Beck Group. The legendary Glyn Johns sat behind the boards as producer, and what he captured in those sessions was something you just couldn't manufacture — a loose, living, breathing communal energy, the band playing largely live in the room together, all that raw R&B and rock and roll spirit pouring out unfiltered and unashamed.
Reception
- First Step made a modest entrance commercially, failing to register in any significant way on the UK or US charts — the Faces name was still young and the world hadn't yet caught up to what these cats were doing.
- Critical reception in 1970 was a mixed bag, with some ears appreciating the album's rough-hewn honesty while others measured it against the more polished sounds ruling the airwaves and found it wanting.
- Time, as it so often does, has been kind — retrospective critical assessment has warmed considerably to First Step, recognizing it as a genuine and unvarnished document of British R&B-rooted rock caught in its most spontaneous form.
Significance
- First Step stands as the debut document of a lineup that would grow into one of the most electrifying live acts the early 1970s ever produced, and you can hear right here the seeds of that loose, joyful, room-shaking camaraderie that made the Faces a religion for their fans.
- The album helped plant early flags for the values that would fuel the pub rock movement and inform a harder-edged British rock sensibility — the idea that raw, honest performance in a room together meant more than any amount of studio gloss.
- This record marks the first major creative showcase of the Rod Stewart and Ron Wood partnership within the Faces, a collaboration that would go on to leave an enormous fingerprint on British rock throughout the entire decade of the seventies.
Tracklist
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A1 Wicked Messenger 80
4:00
-
A2 Devotion 110
4:48
-
A3 Shake, Shudder, Shiver —
3:09
-
A4 Stone 103
5:33
-
A5 Around The Plynth 92
5:45
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B1 Flying 137
4:10
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B2 Pineapple And The Monkey 80
4:23
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B3 Nobody Knows 129
4:04
-
B4 Looking Out The Window 123
5:00
-
B5 Three Button Hand Me Down 122
5:30
Artist Details
Faces were a magnificent, loose-limbed rock and roll outfit that came together in London in 1969, born from the ashes of the Small Faces when Rod Stewart and Ron Wood came sliding in to join Kenney Jones, Ian McLagan, and Ronnie Lane, creating one of the most gloriously ramshackle and soulful bands Britain ever produced. Their sound was a beautiful, whiskey-soaked blend of rock, R&B, and rhythm and blues — raw, ragged, and full of heart — best captured on albums like *A Nod Is as Good as a Wink... to a Blind Horse*, which showed the world that music could be both loose and transcendent at the same time. Though internal tensions and Rod Stewart's parallel solo stardom eventually pulled them apart by 1975, Faces left a fingerprint on rock and roll that runs deep through the DNA of every band that ever believed in the holy power of a good time played loud and from the soul.
