Ian McLagan, who has died aged 69, managed that rarest of things: to be in two great rock’n’roll bands. The irony is that two other men did the same thing, in the same bands – Kenney Jones and Ronnie Lane with the Small Faces and the Faces. McLagan was never the starriest operator in those two bands – in the Small Faces, Steve Marriott, one of the great British R&B singers, was the focus; in the Faces he had Rod Stewart and Ron Wood strutting in front, and Lane stealing the show with his exquisite songwriting – but he was crucial to the sound of both.
When one thinks of McLagan, one thinks of the Hammond B3 organ, and the richness he added to a series of great records: think of what Afterglow by the Small Faces would have sounded like without those magnificent swells. Even on relatively minor pieces, like Three Button Hand Me Down, from the Faces’ debut album, First Step, he elevates a generic boogie into something greater than the sum of its parts with those judiciously chosen organ lines.
McLagan had the same B3 since 1969 – he called it Betsy – describing “her” as a “Ferrari compared to what comes out of the factories. It’s as loud as fuck. I defy any guitarist to compete.” But his work wasn’t about brute force, which was one reason both the Faces and the Small Faces were able to play so many styles with such mastery.
With the Small Faces, he could be playful: his line is crucial to the music hall feel of Lazy Sunday; it’s not just about the lyrics. He could be a colourist: listen to Itchycoo Park and the way the organ adds the shade to what might be a fairly workaday song without it. He could be soulful, tipping the soul into something more powerful, as on Tin Soldier. And he could be trippy when the song required it, as on Green Circles.
Maybe, though, it was with the Faces that he got the greatest chance to shine – it’s not that his role was more integral, more that he got the single best moment on any Faces song, 30 seconds or so into Stay With Me, when that pellmell opening riff falls away, and McLagan comes in with that tumbledown descending honky tonk line. Ron Wood joins in on guitar, and somehow a song coalesces, seemingly out of boozy chaos: it’s wonderful. The rest of the song ain’t bad, either.
But the Faces did subtle, too, especially when Ronnie Lane was writing. Perhaps their best song, Debris – “I left you on the debris of the Sunday morning market,” is one of rock’s most evocative opening lines – is a fabulous group performance, and McLagan’s beautiful, lyrical, autumnal playing is a substantial part of that performance.
When the Faces folded, McLagan played with scores of greats – the Stones and Bob Dylan among them – and it wasn’t just because he was a laugh: he was one of the greats. In the late 90s he joined Billy Bragg’s band, and could be seen playing for audiences who maybe didn’t always recognise who the older bloke behind the organ was. And that also led to McLagan reviving a solo career that had spluttered briefly in the the late 70s and early 80s, with several new records emerging as the new century began. He’d relocated to Austin, Texas, which seemed fitting for someone whose best music, no matter how English, had an American soul behind it.
This year’s album United States saw him playing piano and that marvellous, marvellous organ, and singing about relationships, in a voice that, while hardly Stevie’s or Rod’s, was characterful and human, full of warmth and hard earned wisdom. It sounded like the voice of a man you’d want to know.
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