“Who is this Ronnie Lane bloke?”, I remember asking myself as I bought Rough Mix, the album by Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane. It was sometime in late 1977 and being an avid Who fan, I picked up the album because it was Townshend’s second solo effort. I had no idea who Lane was. Opening up the gatefold sleeve, there was a photo of somewhat worn looking but smiling Pete sitting along side a gentleman with an impish grin, who also appeared to be a bit battered around the edges himself. When I played the album, Townshend’s songs were great enough but it was his partner’s tunes that really got to me. Lane’s voice sounded as roughed up as he looked, yet I could also detect an easy going charm underneath the gravel. There was a comfortable hominess in Lane’s tunes that offset Townshend’s occasionally grander musical schemes, giving the whole project a relaxed charm all its own. It was as if Lane was nudging Pete and telling him with that mischievous smile, “C’mon mate, don’t be so serious all the time.”
One evening last year I pulled out my Rough Mix LP and found an envelope bearing a British postmark tucked inside the sleeve. The envelope contained a photocopied typewritten note and a photo of Ronnie Lane with a scrawled signature in the upper right corner. I’d forgotten all about this! About five years after Rough Mix‘s release, stories in the press revealed that Ronnie had Multiple Sclerosis. After reading about Lane’s illness in Rolling Stone, my girlfriend (now my wife) Kathy wrote him a letter. Kathy and I had just met a few months before and I guess her show of support towards Ronnie was a way of helping her deal with my own disability. (I have Cerebral Palsy, which is a condition I’ve had since birth and not a degenerative disease like MS.) A few weeks later Kathy received the note thanking her for her support, along with the autographed picture, obviously signed by Ronnie’s own, and now shaking, hand. It was strange looking at the picture after all these years with Lane gone. The disease he battled for over twenty years finally took his life earlier in 1997.
I never got around to checking out more of Lane’s own music while he was alive. When I played Rough Mix again that night for the first time in a long while, I fell for Ronnie’s songs all over again and knew it was time to explore his music further. Thanks to a few decent used CD stores and the Internet, I found all sorts of Ronnie Lane music with little effort. The only problem was finding a place to start my journey.
Kathy started things off and provided some background on Lane’s early career by getting me a Small Faces hits collection for Christmas. Lane was the bass player and one of the primary songwriters for this British sixties band, often thought of as the Who’s Mod rivals (a fact that may have influenced the Who to choose drummer Kenney Jones as Keith Moon’s replacement many years later). Since lead singer Steve Marriott handled most of the vocals and also claimed to have written most of the Small Faces hits himself (even though they are credited to the Lane/Marriott songwriting team), it’s hard to say how much of Lane’s influence is heard on these songs. Many of them do have an echo of Lane’s old-timey, laid back style to them. Maybe Lane’s contribution to the band is more felt than heard, at least when discussing the Small Faces’ hits anyway. All these speculations really don’t matter all that much since the Small Faces were a great band. From heavy soul influenced “All or Nothing” to the psychedelic pop sound of “Itchycoo Park” and “Tin Soldier,” their music is slightly eclectic but always catchy and a lot of fun. I’m glad my expedition into Ronnie Lane’s music led me to the Small Faces.
The band that the Small Faces became once Steve Marriott left in 1970 is even better. The Faces formed when guitarist Ron Wood joined the band and brought along his friend Rod Stewart to take over as lead vocalist. Their boisterous live performances made The Faces enormously popular, especially in the U.S., but the band did record four albums as well. So far I’ve heard only one of them. It’s called Long Player. It’s excellent. Anchored by Ian McLagan‘s soulful keyboards and Wood’s crackling guitar, not only does the album prove that Rod Stewart was once worth listening to, it also uncovers the talents of Ronnie Lane. Stewart shines on the powerful live performance of Paul McCartney‘s “Maybe I’m Amazed” (I remember hearing this version quite a bit on the radio when I was growing up) and on Lane’s gospel ballad “Tell Everyone.” Lane takes a turn at vocals on his homesick country blues of “Richmond.” The gentle rasp of the slide guitars mirrors the lonesome roughness in Ronnie’s voice. His voice doesn’t sound quite as knocked about yet but the down home charm that I found so winning on Rough Mix is already evident in his early work. It’s great music that makes me want to go out and get the following Faces album too, A Nod’s As Good As a Wink. . . To a Blind Horse, which I hear is even more terrific.
Lane had been reluctant to let Rod Stewart into the band from the start so when Stewart’s solo career took off into the stratosphere with the hit “Maggie May” and began overshadowing The Faces, Ronnie had to leave the band in 1973. Lane then put together his own group called Slim Chance and lived out his back to basics fantasies by embarking on a rag-tag tour of the English countryside. The tour was like a traveling side show with a troupe of clowns, dancers and musicians that went from town to town in a fleet of brightly painted dilapidated buses. Ronnie loved the gypsy lifestyle and playing close to the people. Unfortunately, the poorly organized tour was a financial disaster.
But Slim Chance was far from being a musical disaster. Using a line up that included accordion, saxophone, mandolin and fiddle, I say Ronnie Lane came close to creating music that is the British equivalent of the Band. Yes, I know Fairport Convention holds that honor already. It is true, like the Band, Fairport Convention uses elements of traditional music in their work, but the styles of Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson pull the listener into the modern age, despite their influences from the musical past. Fairport’s work, as great as much of it is, just doesn’t have the same timeless quality found in the Band’s best music. I do hear the a similar agelessness of the Band’s work in Lane’s music with Slim Chance however, and it makes for transcendent listening.
The first Slim Chance album, 1974’s Anymore for Anymore, is quite simply outstanding from beginning to end, even though the CD reissue begins and ends differently than the original LP did. The album is now bookended by two songs from a single released shortly before the album came out. This slight revision works perfectly. “How Come” with its jaunty ragtime feeling makes a great introduction. The lyrics are great fun too. It seems that Ronnie’s woman friend has him feeling a little concerned. Why does she keep hemlock in her spice rack? Why do her friends give her lilies on her birthday? Just to be on the safe side, Ronnie has broken her broom and done away with her black cat. He’s not superstitious, you understand, but some of the things he’s seen are slightly worrisome. The single’s B-side makes a fine coda to the album as well. “Done This One Before” with its earnest vocal puts me in the mind of Rick Danko‘s work with the Band. The richly textured sound of the organ and mandolin layered with the playful harmonica breaks combine to make the tune a subtle yet soaring finale.
There are plenty more gems found on the actual album in between the two supplemental songs. I only have time to cover a few of the highlights: “Roll On Babe” is an American folk song that in Lane’s hands reminds me a lot “I Wasn’t Born to Follow” by the Byrds, only prettier. “Tell Everyone” from the Faces’ Long Player is revisited. Where Rod Stewart rips out your heart with his vocal take, Ronnie’s fragile vocals feel more like a gentle tap on the shoulder and whisper in your ear, making an already heartfelt love song even more intimate. “Chicken Wired” shares the fifties rocker stylings of Rough Mix‘s “Catmelody.” As much as I love “Catmelody,” it feels to me like it could rock out a tad bit more. It just misses going into overdrive and over the top, I think. But “Chicken Wired” swings so hard it nearly flies off the CD. With its chicken scratch fiddles and electric guitars, along with Lane’s exuberant singing, it sounds like the most wired country western band on earth tackling Chuck Berry‘s “You Can’t Catch Me” and burning down the house in the process.
Then there is “The Poacher.” Before I heard any of Ronnie’s albums, I read a few of the reviews and the most common word used to describe Lane’s music was “pastoral.” The definition of pastoral is “having the qualities of idealized country life.” I can’t think of a better way to describe “The Poacher.” The song is a masterpiece of simple beauty. It’s the ultimate in pastoral music and perhaps Lane’s finest work. A small woodwind and string ensemble lightly skips in before each verse, preluding Lane’s high frail vocals, and capture the beauty and solitude of a carefree country life. The sound is almost classical, though it still maintains Ronnie’s unique rustic quality. Since the CD booklet does not print the lyrics, the words are often somewhat difficult to understand but as near as I can gather, the song is about an old fisherman who sits and fishes while letting the world go by. His surroundings are so peaceful that he feels as if he is the very first human to fish the river or, as he puts it, “the world’s first poacher.” His mind is only “on his tackle and the words upon his mind.” and some of these words going through his mind sound like the philosophy Lane followed throughout his life: “I have no use for riches/I have no use for power/I have no use for broken hearts/I’ll let that world go by.” “The Poacher” is quite possibly an intimate portrait of the artist himself.
Ronnie liked to keep his life and music as simple and uncomplicated as possible. None of his albums reflects this attitude better than Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance, released in 1975. More rough and tumble than its predecessor, Slim Chance’s second album gets back to Lane’s musical roots. His love of dance hall music (“I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter”), country & western (“Single Saddle”) and fifties rock ‘n’ roll (“You Never Can Tell” and “Blue Monday”) is worn on his sleeve in his choice of cover tunes. All are given Slim Chance’s engaging loose-limbed Celtic country swing treatment. This must have been what the band sounded like on their gypsy road show gigs. I can’t think of better music for an evening of wild drinking and dancing. Its good-time quality is intoxicating even if you can’t dance and don’t drink like me.
The original songs on Slim Chance are just as delightful. And to my surprise, two of them were already familiar to me. “Stone” began life as “Evolution” which appeared on Pete Townshend’s first solo album Who Came First. The earlier version is a driving acoustic take with Pete handing the vocals over to Ronnie. For Slim Chance, Ronnie snatches the song back again and infuses it with a shuffling Cajun arrangement. The melody to “Give Me a Penny” surfaces again two years later on Rough Mix in the form the beautiful ballad “Annie.” “Annie” is my favorite song on that particular album. It’s definitely one of Lane’s finest “pastoral” creations. The sad harmonica and accordion arrangements and the “God bless us all” refrain melt my heart every time. So to my ears “Give Me a Penny” has a lot to live up to. “Annie” still ends up with top honors in my book but “Give Me a Penny’s” lively arrangement fits right in with the party atmosphere of the second album and is a wonderful tune in its own way too.
The comparison between “Annie” and “Penny” may reveal the reason why I prefer Anymore for Anymore over Slim Chance, if I had to make a choice. For all the ramshackle charm of the latter album, it is missing some of the pastoral (that is such an appropriate word for Lane’s music) beauty of the former. The third album One For the Road returns to the mix of timeless prettiness and barroom swing of the first Slim Chance album. The album’s opener, “Don’t Try ‘n’ Change My Mind” lopes along in an easy-going boogie with the bass guitar and fiddles leading the way. “Burnin’ Summer” is Lane at his most mysterious sounding. His hushed vocal backed by quietly strummed acoustic guitars makes me feel the oppressive heat of the season. “Harvest Home” brings to mind a cooler time of year. The accordion, piano and guitar melodically flow along, subtly rising and falling in intensity, like sunlight fighting through the passing clouds. No need for vocals on this one. The instruments say it all. And the hearty sing-a-long title track would not have been out of place on a Faces album. Perhaps not as raunchy as the earlier band, it nonetheless conjures up the spirit of the Faces. Lane’s voice on the chorus even sounds a lot like Rod Stewart’s.
One For the Road is an apt title for what would be Slim Chance’s final call. At the end of 1976, left with a pile of debt from financing Slim Chance’s countryside tours, Lane could no longer support the band. He asked his old friend Pete Townshend if he would collaborate on an album in hopes of bringing in some money. Townshend agreed and the splendid Rough Mix was born.
A couple of years later, Townshend helped Lane out again by producing a single for him called “Kuschty Rye.” The single’s accordion laced sound proved that Lane hadn’t lost his touch. “Kuschty Rye” was just one of the memorable songs on Lane’s last album, 1980’s See Me. The wryly titled “Lad’s Got Money” recalls the heart-tugging gospel feeling of Long Player‘s “Tell Everyone.” “She’s Leaving” is a beautiful breezy ballad that has an irresistible sweeping chorus. Co-written by Eric Clapton, “Barcelona” may be the most tender song on any Ronnie Lane album. But my favorite is “Only You.” While not the old Platters tune, this Lane original certainly takes its rock ‘n’ roll heart from the earlier fifties ballad and features Lane’s best forlorn vocal. See Me also tries to slick up Ronnie’s sound and it doesn’t always work. The dance beat on “Good Ol’ Boys Boogie” is almost embarrassing as it reins in Ronnie’s usual relaxed charm. And “Don’t Tell Me Now” attempts to join Lane’s love of the accordion with a slow reggae rhythm, making for an unusual but jarring mix.
The cover of See Me is a partially developed photograph of Lane with his image barely visible. He must have felt as if he were disappearing around this time since the symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis were growing progressively worse. He still performed music as much as he could, playing some gigs around London following his last album, organizing a series of all-star concerts in Britain and America to raise money for MS research in 1983, and, as he relocated to Austin, Texas a few years later, becoming a part of the city’s thriving music scene. One of the groups Lane formed while in Austin had an instrumental line up very similar to Slim Chance and included a guitarist named Alejandro Escovedo. (Escovedo jumped at the opportunity to play in Lane’s band. He had been a long-time Faces fan, always securing himself a place in front of Ronnie’s side of the stage whenever he went to their shows.) Ronnie spent his last years living quietly with his wife and step-daughters in Trinidad, Colorado until he passed away on June 4, 1997.
It is a shame it took Lane’s death to motivate me to finally seek out his music. But getting to know Lane through his music has been an unforgettable experience. I know now that Ronnie Lane was much more than a person who battled MS and Pete Townshend’s sometime protégé. He was a romantic who followed his muse with his heart, producing music that in many ways foreshadows the “alternative country” genre of today. The music of this grinning Englishman with the twinkle in his eye trespassed into my heart and captured it, making Ronnie Lane not only the world’s first, but also the best poacher.
FALL 1997
Letter to the Vatican 