Faces - Open to Ideas (1975)

Ronnie Lane left the Faces in June 1973. This departure was a long time coming, seen as many issues plagued the band by the time 1973 rolled around: Lane's folkier tendencies were incompatible with the rest of the band, who much preferred to play rock and roll, and lead singer Rod Stewart's neglected the band due to his concurrent solo career, which was starting to take off in the US. Such was his neglect that the last Faces album to feature Lane, Ooh La La, was almost entirely led by him, with Stewart's contributions few and far between. As if that wasn't enough, soon after the record was released, Rod gave an interview where he badmouthed the album and criticized its songs, which incensed Ronnie and became the final straw: he quit the band and started a solo career. Wasting no time, the group replaced him with Japanese bassist Tetsu Yamauchi, who had already replaced bassist Andy Fraser in Free, and toured for the better part of 1973. For the next year, the band recorded some non-album singles but seemed directionless, with sessions for a purported fifth studio album in January 1975 going nowhere and plans ending up scrapped. After a final US tour in December 1975, Ronnie Wood quit to join the Rolling Stones, with whom he'd already toured, and replace Mick Taylor, and the band finally ended for good. But what if the Faces had managed to release a final studio album?

This post is an update to my June 2018 fifth Faces album, titled Open to Ideas. This time around, we will try to create an album that doesn't feature anything that's already on any albums by Ronnie Wood or Rod Stewart. That way, we'll have something that can coexist with the rest of the Faces' discography as well as their members' solo careers without any issues or overlap in songs. To do so, anything they recorded or released after Ooh La La is fair game for our intent. That means songs from the August 1973 to January 1975 period will be considered, which admittedly is a pretty long span of time. But it's pretty much the only way we could make this work, given the dearth of material available from this time period. All songs will feature Tetsu Yamauchi on bass, as he replaced Ronnie Lane right after the release of Ooh La La, with one notable exception which will be explained later. Again, since there's not much material up for consideration and all the songs are pretty long, I figured eight songs and 35 minutes is more than enough for a full-length Faces album, given their track record. We will be including covers, as the band had the habit of including those in their albums, but the majority of songs on the album will be originals. But even with two songs less, it's still a couple of minutes longer than its predecessor! With that out of the way, here's what our updated Open to Ideas album looks like:

You Can Make Me Dance, Sing, or Anything (Five Guys Walk Into a Bar)

As Long as You Tell Him (Five Guys Walk Into a Bar)

Gettin' Hungry (Five Guys Walk Into a Bar)

Rock Me (Five Guys Walk Into a Bar)

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Pool Hall Richard (Five Guys Walk Into a Bar)

Jodie (The Mercury Collection)

Hi Heel Sneakers/Everybody Needs Somebody to Love (Five Guys Walk Into a Bar)

Open to Ideas (Five Guys Walk Into a Bar)

Download link:
Faces - Open to Ideas (1975)

Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart performing during the Faces' final US tour, late 1975.

Ooh La La outtake "Jodie" was re-recorded shortly after the album's sessions were finished in August 1973 and issued as the b-side to a Rod Stewart solo single. It does feature Ronnie Lane on bass, but given that it was recorded after Ooh La La was finished and wasn't included in any album either by the Faces or Rod, I decided to include it. From November 1973 is the single "Pool Hall Richard", and from nearly a year afterward in October 1974 comes another single, "You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything", along with its b-side "As Long as You Tell Him". All three are pretty good, poppy songs that were probably never meant for an album in the first place, but given our limitations have to find their homes here. From January 1975, come the proper fifth album sessions themselves, which yielded originals "Rock Me" and "Open to Ideas", as well as covers of the Beach Boys' "Gettin' Hungry", and as a rhythm and blues classics medley consisting of Tommy Tucker's "Hi Heeled Sneakers" and Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love". Sure, featuring four previously released songs in an album is a bit excessive, but by having those singles serve as side openers and the newly recorded material filling up the record, we can strike a pretty good balance between the old and the new through sequencing, and what we end up with is a pretty cohesive album in spite of its issues.

The album is titled Open to Ideas after the strongest of the original songs, which is accompanied by original artwork I put together with a photo of the band from 1974. Good pictures of the Faces with Tetsu are pretty hard to come by, so it was a lucky thing that photo was available. No new singles would be pulled out from this album as three songs were already released as singles, and frankly, there really aren't any songs left that could do well in the charts. The band certainly suffers from Ronnie Lane's absence, as his songwriting, singing, and bass playing were integral to the band's sound, and however serviceable Yamauchi was as a bass player, he wasn't able to replace Lane to that level. However, this proves that even without him they'd be able to create a perfectly able farewell album that featured what the band could do best: play some good rock and roll. This certainly doesn't reach the heights the Faces reached with their classic records, but I don't think anyone was expecting anything of the sort from a band that was, at that point neglected by their lead singer and double-timed by their lead guitarist, who would become a Rolling Stone later that year. This reconstruction is a great glimpse into an often-forgotten era of the band, giving a home to outtakes and hit singles alike, and chronicling their dysfunctional final days before they either joined the competition or crossed the Atlantic.

Sources:
- Faces - Five Guys Walk Into a Bar

- Rod Stewart - The Mercury Collection

- Woodworks 1957/1975: Ronnie Wood Chronology

Pink Floyd - Spare Bricks: Music from the Film "The Wall" (1982)

"Pink Floyd – The Wall", released in 1982 through MGM Studios, is a feature film based on the album of the same name. Directed by Alan Parker with a screenplay by band member Roger Waters, the film project first started out as a concert film of the band's Earls Court residency, to be interceded by newly filmed footage, such as Gerald Scarfe animations and dramatical scenes starring Roger Waters as Pink. However, at some point, the live footage was deemed unusable (it was apparently "too dark") and so the film became a straight adaptation of the original album, with Bob Geldof taking on the role of Pink and any live music being dropped. From then, the film had a considerably troubled production, with Parker and Waters constantly clashing over the direction of the film, and both describing the experience as extremely unpleasant and miserable by the end of it. However, by its release, The Wall was a success, managing to receive generally positive reviews and to gross 22 million dollars at the box office by early 1983. Said success led to a renewed interest in the record, already three years old by that point, which made Pink Floyd's label EMI become interested in releasing a soundtrack album to the movie. After all, some of the songs were altered or re-recorded to be featured in the movie, and two new tracks were featured in the movie: "When the Tigers Broke Free", newly recorded and split into two parts, and outtake "What Shall We Do Now". However, Waters and the rest of the band decided against the idea, as that wasn't enough to warrant a soundtrack. But they did become interested in a different approach: combining the re-recordings with outtakes and new songs related to the concept to form a new album.

That new project, the adequately titled Spare Bricks, would be able to give a home to the re-recorded soundtrack songs while simultaneously giving a home to songs meant for The Wall but left unreleased, or new songs meant to flesh out the album's narrative, essentially a best of both worlds scenario. The sessions for it began in July 1982, with the band managing to record the basics to some six new tracks, all of them in some way related to the Wall concept. However, Roger Waters was still not fully satisfied with the direction of the album. The Falklands conflict, which started earlier that year, weighed heavily on his mind, as did his dissatisfaction with how the film turned out, which combined spelled disaster for the Spare Bricks concept. It led Waters to write new material inspired by his feelings about the conflict and the state of English politics in the age of Thatcherism, adapting the previously recorded songs and creating the highly personal concept of Requiem for the Post-War Dream, later retitled simply to The Final Cut. This decision was also one that further alienated Floyd member David Gilmour. He also wasn't very enthusiastic about the Spare Bricks concept, but The Final Cut barely even features any contributions by him, be it by songwriting, singing, or even guitar playing. He did ask for some time to write some material of his own to contribute to the album, but was denied by Waters, who felt he was on a roll and could finish the album quickly and to his liking alone. With Gilmour thrown to the side, Richard Wright long gone by this point, and Nick Mason a secondary presence, the band had essentially broken up by the time the album was released. But what if Pink Floyd had released Spare Bricks?

This reconstruction is an upgrade to the very first post on the blog, dating from January 2018. We will be tackling the unreleased Spare Bricks album, again trying to put together the best possible version of this lost Pink Floyd album. Between re-recordings and film exclusives we have "When the Tigers Broke Free", "Mother", "What Shall We Do Now?", "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3", "In the Flesh", "Bring the Boys Back Home" and "Outside the Wall". Of those, most are pretty safe bets for inclusion, with the exceptions of "In the Flesh" and "Mother", which Waters thought didn't translate well going from the soundtrack to the album, and "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3" was surplus to requirements. While I disagree when it comes to the gorgeous version of "Mother" used in the film, the other two are pretty fair assessments, especially considering no version of "In the Flesh" without film noise obscuring most of the song exists. The songs recorded before Spare Bricks became The Final Cut were "The Hero's Return", "Paranoid Eyes", "Your Possible Pasts", "The Fletcher Memorial Home", "The Final Cut" and "The Post-War Dream". Again, not all of those would have been included, and songs that go beyond both lists and could have been recorded for the project had world politics gone a different way won't be considered, even those that have a clear and indisputable link with either the album or the movie. Our goal then is to create the closest approximation we possibly can to what an accurate version of Spare Bricks would look like in 1982. With that out of the way, here's what I've managed to come up with:

When the Tigers Broke Free (The Wall Soundtrack)

Mother (The Wall Soundtrack)

The Hero's Return (The Final Cut)

Paranoid Eyes (The Final Cut)

What Shall We Do Now? (The Wall Soundtrack)

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Bring the Boys Back Home (The Wall Soundtrack)

Your Possible Pasts (The Final Cut)

The Fletcher Memorial Home (The Final Cut)

The Final Cut (The Final Cut)

Outside the Wall (The Wall Soundtrack)

Bonus tracks:

Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3 (The Wall Soundtrack)

In the Flesh (The Wall Soundtrack)

The Post-War Dream (The Final Cut)

Download link:

Pink Floyd - Spare Bricks: Music from the Film "The Wall" (1982)

Roger Waters as pictured during the filming of Pink Floyd - The Wall, early 1982.

Starting off with two songs that are practically guaranteed to have been part of the Spare Bricks album, both sides of the "When the Tigers Broke Free" b/w "Bring the Boys Back Home" are featured here, the only official release of any songs from the film. All other movie pieces will be sourced from cleaned-up DVD rips of the soundtrack. Sure, they're not release quality or anything but the work put behind them by fans is admirable and they're quite usable. Most, like "Mother", "In the Flesh" and "Outside the Wall" have new, completely different arrangements, while "What Shall We Do Now?" was cut from the album at the last minute but restored for the movie because of its narrative importance. Spare brick "The Hero's Return" is featured in an extended version, as released on the b-side of the "Not Now John" single, presenting the complete story of the teacher as a WW2 veteran suffering from PTSD.  "The Fletcher Memorial Home" is featured without the spoken word interlude, which tied it down too much with the concept of the Final Cut and 1980s politics. Other than those two, all other spare bricks are featured in their regular album versions. Roger Waters's solo track "The Moment of Clarity" wasn't recorded during these sessions, but was recited by Bob Geldof following "Stop" during the movie, later being featured in Roger's first solo LP. Unfortunately, as the song is a core part of the Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking concept and wasn't recorded by Pink Floyd, it cannot be included on the album. Coming from later on in the Final Cut sessions is "One of the Few", a song that dates back to the original Wall demos as "Teach", with its absence owing to the fact that it wasn't recorded in time for Spare Bricks.

Speaking of songs that won't make the cut, "In the Flesh" isn't included as it was sung by Bob Geldof and features no members of Pink Floyd, which wouldn't make sense in a Pink Floyd album, and Roger didn't consider it one of the main contenders for the Spare Bricks album in the first place. In addition, "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3" is so similar to its album version that there's no point in including it in this reconstruction, and Roger didn't have many plans for it either. When it comes to the mid-1982 sessions, "The Post-War Dream" is also omitted from the album, even though it hailed from the Spare Bricks era, as its lyrics are way too tied up with the critique of Thatcherism or the general conceptual narrative of the Final Cut album. "Sexual Revolution", which got as far as being demoed by the band in late 1978, wasn't considered for the Spare Bricks project, as Waters was probably already holding it back for use in the Pros and Cons album. As for the tracklist, the album is sequenced within the rough narrative structure of the album and movie, as it's the only way this combination of new songs and re-recorded soundtrack pieces could ever make sense as a cohesive record. This also helps show the narrative function of the newer songs, be it to humanize the Teacher and connect him to the impact of WW2 in young Pink's life ("The Hero's Return"), to portray Pink's fragile psyche and insecurities through a lens of "stiff upper lip" English culture ("Paranoid Eyes"), or to further document Pink's descent into self-destruction and reminiscing ("Your Possible Pasts", "The Fletcher Memorial Home", "The Final Cut"), fleshing out the album's narrative and giving it depth it didn't previously have.

A 40-minute album that's divided evenly into five songs from the film and five newer unheard songs, Spare Bricks is the realization of a very interesting concept, that most certainly would lead to the newer songs being much better received than they ended up being. The Final Cut album is already heavily criticized for consisting of "The Wall leftovers", so admitting to it up front and giving the songs the necessary context certainly eases the criticism, even if some of the highlights of the album aren't featured here. If you wanted to you could shoehorn "The Post-War Dream" into side two, but I find the selections I've made create the strongest possible album. I'm also not sure what would happen to the rest of the Final Cut's material, written after the Falklands conflict began, with them being shoehorned into The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking to turn it into a double album or not written at all. But maybe Waters could have written a new album from scratch about the Falklands War, with more involvement from Gilmour as he'd have time to write some songs, something he complained about quite a bit during the TFC sessions. The second single off this project would probably be "Your Possible Pasts" b/w "The Final Cut", a planned single off The Final Cut that for whatever reason never ended up being released. It obviously wouldn't be a hit single, but I could see it doing ok. The great album cover seen here is taken from the I Design Album Covers Tumblr, which is much more Hipgnosis than Gerald Scarfe but still works great. Given that forty years have passed and the soundtrack to The Wall remains unreleased, this might be the closest we'll ever get to seeing these spare bricks slotted back where they belong.

Sources:

- The Wall Soundtrack - Sequenced and Extended by }{eywood

- Pink Floyd - The Final Cut

- Pink Floyd - When the Tigers Broke Free [7" single]

- Pink Floyd - Not Now John [7" single]

- Pink Floyd - Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd

- The Wall Complete: The Missing Songs from Pink Floyd the Wall