Features

Ronnie Wood and Kenney Jones: Had Me a Real Good Time

Photo by Tom Wright

You’ve brought up Detroit several times as we’ve talked and it features prominently in the book. Why was that such a special market for you?

Wood: It was like coming home to us in Detroit. [Our fans there] all worked for the Ford Motor Company and they’d all come in leather jackets straight from work. They were all ready to rock and it was a bit working-class, the equivalent of the East End of London.

Jones: Don’t forget that we were really good friends with a lot of the American people we bumped into.

Wood: Like David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks (of the Temptations), we used to meet up with them. And Bobby Womack, who’s sadly ill at the moment.

Jones: Tina Turner used to come and play with us if she was around. All the different spontaneous moments with The Faces were so great.

Did you feel more of an affinity with that type of working-class American city than with the more glamorous media centers on the coasts?

Wood: We were always a bit outside the glamour. We were always a bit rebellious; [we] didn’t think we [were] worthy or whatever it was.

Jones: We weren’t commercial by any stretch of the imagination, and I think that’s what made us special to the people who liked us. We were just doing what we wanted to do and not what the record label wanted us to do.

Wood: We used to say, “We’re gonna do this,” and they would say, “Well, we don’t know if we can really get behind it, then.” And we’d say, “Well, sod you, we want to do it.” It was always a bit of a struggle because they didn’t really understand—they just wanted a pop hit, the usual.

Jones: And now, they want exactly what we were—all that old stuff that’s really special, that they wouldn’t promote at the time.

Talk of a Faces reunion comes up frequently, even before the Hall of Fame. Are you thinking at all about what might happen after this coming weekend?

Jones: I think if it’s going to come together, it will come together naturally. And that’s the way it should be left, really. When we come together, it’s like we’ve always been together. It’s a weird feeling. And that’s what I love about The Faces: that the friendship is always going to be there. You’ll either tour or you won’t, but it’s gonna be for the right reasons and not the wrong reasons.

Wood: The magic will be just getting together again, having an exchange between the guys musically and who knows what will happen? I think Rod is pleasantly surprised at the memories and the acclaim that the band is getting late in the day, but I don’t think he realized how loved the band was. None of us did, really. We always underestimated ourselves. We always thought we were just a band, doing what we do. We didn’t realize so many people loved it.