After I’d been at Banstead Hall a few months, they started trying to introduce us to the world of work. You know when you have to meet someone, and it takes precisely ten seconds to realise you’re gonna hate ’em? Well, that was pretty much how it was with me and normal paid employment. I just never thought it was something I was meant to do, and my early experiences in the labour market did nothing to change my mind.
The first job they sent me to out in the local area was as a plumber’s mate in a children’s hospital. It was one of those places where all the kids had massive heads; encephalitis, I think that’s what they call it. I was carrying this geezer’s tools through wards full of kids who looked like aliens and it kind of freaked me out. There had to be easier ways of making a buck, and I already knew several. What I needed was someone from a similar background to me to look up to as a role model. Luckily, I already had a steadying influence who could help give me an appropriate set of aspirations for a working-class boy made good. That man was Rod Stewart.
In Britain at that time there weren’t many examples of people like me who things had worked out for. Rod certainly fitted the bill, though. He was a normal bloke whose destiny fell into place just because he had the hair and raspy voice and the long legs. I used to think that rock stars fell from the sky. In real life they probably came offstage at Top of the Pops, took their gear off and went home to watch TV like everyone else, but as far as I was concerned, they lived on Mars and came down by spaceship to perform for us. I didn’t think it was possible for anyone like me to become one. But I saw a bit of myself in Rod (no, not that bit) and I felt like I had his back from the beginning.
I was never one of the kids who preferred it if the music they liked was not successful. I wanted all my favourite songs to go to the top of the charts to show everyone how fucking good they were. I remember going up to HMV in Oxford Street to buy Rod’s 1971 album Every Picture Tells a Story as soon as it came out – before anyone else knew how big it was going to be. I was so proud of myself afterwards when it went to number one in Britain and America at the same time. I remember thinking, ‘I knew it! I fucking showed you!’
I was already convinced Rod was a star cos his previous album Gasoline Alley was so fucking good – it was almost like I worked for him. I loved First Step and Long Player, the two Faces albums that came out either side of it, too. I think there was some legal complication which meant it’s basically the Faces who play on Rod’s solo records as well, although Micky Waller is on a bunch of the drum tracks. I know the Faces got pissed off with it in the end, but the great thing about the whole arrangement from my point of view was that you got twice as many albums to listen to. If you count the third Faces LP, A Nod Is As Good As a Wink … to a Blind Horse and Rod’s next solo record, Never a Dull Moment – which I certainly did, as they were just as good – that’s five brilliant albums Rod released in the space of about two years.
Although there were a lot of things I struggled to focus on, I was very attentive to the music I liked. I would listen to it over and over again till it drove people fucking crazy, and if no one else was around I’m not ashamed to say (well, maybe a bit) that lonely teenage Steve might even be found miming to ‘Maggie May’ in the mirror, perfecting the old hairbrush microphone technique. It wasn’t that I particularly fancied the idea of myself as a singer, but you can’t really be miming guitar or drums in the mirror or you’ll look a complete tool.
The look of things always meant as much to me as the sound. I loved staring at the sleeve of Never a Dull Moment and then opening out the gatefold to all the pictures of what he was wearing. I’ve got to give Rod kudos for how obsessed I was with him as a teenager – especially as spearhead of the Faces – but the couple of times that I’ve met him in LA in recent years I didn’t really want to let on. I knew he had some idea when his daughter got him to sign a picture for me, though, because he signed it ‘To Steve Jones, you’ve got a big knob’. He’s got a funny sense of humour, Rod, plus on top of that he is very observant.
The reason I ended up bleaching my hair like Andy Mackay of Roxy Music’s was that I’d already tried and failed to make it look like Rod’s. The thick hairdresser’s fucking do that would later save me from becoming a cartoon spiky-haired punk character like Johnny or Sid (much as I wanted to be one) was never going to allow me to tease it up the way Rod did. I had to spray a gallon of Aqua Net on my head to get it to stand up even a little bit. If someone had lit a match near me I’d have gone up like a human torch. It must’ve looked fucking ridiculous.
Luckily I could do a better job with the clothes. I used to find out where Rod had got all the gear that he was wearing on the album covers, then head off up over Chelsea Bridge and nick it from the shops on the King’s Road where he’d bought it. I’d usually get the 137 bus, my getaway vehicle of choice. Take 6 was the place working-class people who were doing all right would go to buy the little slim suits with the big kipper ties like the normal cunts dancing on Top of the Pops would wear. It was called Take 6 but I always used to Take 7. Dave Brubeck would’ve stopped at 5.
That place wasn’t really flash enough for Rod. The main shops the rock stars went to were Alkasura – I saw Marc Bolan wearing something from there – and especially Granny Takes a Trip. Granny’s, as the cognoscenti called it, was a fantastic place with a Cadillac sticking out of the front window. It changed a lot over the years but it was fucking cool when I started going there. I didn’t realise it at the time but the reason you could literally walk out of there with a velvet rhinestone suit you hadn’t paid for was that the guys who were meant to be front of house were nodding out on smack out the back.
I’d go to any lengths to get the details right. There was a shop down Old Church Street called Zapata’s which I found out stocked this amazing pair of white shoes with an orange bit in the middle and a beige crepe sole that I’d seen Rod Stewart wearing. By the time I got there they only had one pair left, which were way too small for me, but I bought them anyway (obviously shoe shops aren’t great for nicking from, unless you’ve only got one leg). The only way I could wear them was to buckle my feet right over inside, which was fucking painful, but it was worth it, though I wasn’t going to be climbing the Battersea Power Station chimneys in those.
Around the peak of my Rod Stewart fixation I remember coming out of my Battersea flats and walking up the main road where the dogs’ home is. It was about five in the evening on a Sunday, so there weren’t many people about. In my own mind I would’ve been cutting a bit of a dash with my carefully tousled hair and Rod-inspired wardrobe, although I may have been hobbling slightly on account of my determination to wear the same shoes as him even though they didn’t actually fit.
Anyway, as I staggered on, I heard the roar of a powerful engine behind me. I turned round and of course there was Rod and some fucking beautiful bird driving by in a Lamborghini. At the time I didn’t even think of this as embarrassing – that’s how shameless I was. It felt more like he was showing me the missing pieces in the jigsaw; you’ve got the look, now all you need is the car and the girl. Either way, it was more like a dream than real life, but it did definitely happen.
There were also a couple of times where we saw him and Ronnie Wood in the Roebuck – one of the pubs on the King’s Road that we used to go to. I’d go all weak at those moments, because Rod in particular and the Faces in general were my idols then. I think I knew that if I was even going to begin to think about trying to get anywhere with music it would have to be as part of a group: not really being able to sing or play an instrument would definitely be a problem as far as a solo career was concerned. And there was something about the way the Faces interacted with each other – the way it all seemed to be about good times and girls and booze and football and the lads in the band – that was irresistibly attractive. They were kind of a yobs’ band, but stylish with it, wearing nice shirts and trousers, not clogs and flares and moustaches like the hippies did.
We – that’s my little crew of me and Cookie and Hayesy and Jim Macken – went to see them at the Roundhouse in the summer of 1972. It was funny that we found out, years after, that John Lydon was there too with his mates and so was Glen Matlock, even though we didn’t know who either of them were yet. Later on, when people were thinking about who influenced the Sex Pistols, they would never really say the Faces, because it wouldn’t be considered cool enough, but we took a lot from them, not just at the beginning when we were trying to find our way, but all the way through the band. Like the pace of the songs, for a start. Because me and Cookie were the ones who set the tempos, and the music we liked best was them and early Roxy Music, that’s who we tried to emulate. In my weird mind, it was almost like we were the Faces, which was the main reason we never played that fast, and also why the idea that we’d copy the Ramones is so ridiculous.
One of the most important things about the Faces was that at a time when music was getting more and more distant, they were approachable. That gig at the Roundhouse, it felt like the audience and the band were all at one big party together, where if you saw Led Zep or Pink Floyd or any of the really big bands, you couldn’t get near the stage.
I was so close to the front – down below, looking up – that when Ian McLagan threw his tambourine out into the crowd at the end of the show, it was me that caught it. Everyone else was trying to get it off me but they were never going to prise my fingers off it. I just thought, ‘No, no, I’m having this.’ When the band came back on for the encore, Ian came across to the front of the stage and said, ‘Sorry, but I need that tambourine.’ I didn’t want to give it to him, but he promised I could have it back at the end of the song, so I gave in. And the magical moment was when he found me before going offstage and handed it over. Good luck getting John Paul Jones to do that!
Looking back, it’s easy to see how things escalated in terms of me not respecting the Faces’ personal space. You can’t give me that kind of message, because I don’t have any boundaries. A few months later, when the Faces played Wembley in October 1972, I removed a door panel so a few of us could get in round the back of the Empire Pool, and we sneaked into their dressing room. We were drinking their champagne and having a chat with Ronnie Wood – it was great. I don’t think just any old fans could have waltzed in there like that and got away with it: it was all down to the fact that we looked the part in the finest stolen clobber King’s Road could offer. The security guys probably thought we were another band. Either that, or the spoiled sons of the geezer that owned Warner Brothers.
That was a great night for me for another reason, because the support act were the New York Dolls, who very few people in Britain had heard of then as it was still a year before their first album came out. The funny thing was, pretty much everyone else there seemed to hate the trashy way they looked and sounded – loads of the Faces’ fans were shouting ‘Faggots!’ and really giving them some stick. But I fucking loved them – they’d end up as one of my four biggest influences, alongside Bowie, Roxy Music and that night’s headliners.
If you’d told me then that in a couple of years’ time I’d be playing Sylvain Sylvain’s guitar in a band managed by the Dolls’ ex-manager, that would’ve probably gone beyond even my most unrealistic fantasies. Obviously that tour didn’t end too well for the Dolls themselves, as a few days after that gig their original drummer, Billy Murcia, died in a bathtub when someone tried to revive him by force-feeding him black coffee after an accidental Mandrax and champagne overdose. Don’t try that one at home, kids.
It was around this time that the four of us – me, Hayesy, Jimmy Macken and Cookie – decided that since we already looked like a band, we might as well become one. I’m not sure if we ever got as far as an actual rehearsal, let alone writing any songs, but we certainly had some fucking great-looking instruments. Jim had a job in a petrol station which he worked hard enough at to actually buy himself a Farfisa organ. He even taught himself to play a few keyboard riffs by copying Jon Lord, the geezer in Deep Purple. Stephen Hayes was going to be on bass – he had a Hofner like Paul McCartney (though that was where the resemblance ended). Cookie had got himself one of those blue sparkle Premier drum kits, and I – in theory at least – was gonna sing and play a stolen Gibson guitar. Everyone had name brand gear, none of that Chad Valley or Woolworth’s shit – only the best for the worst.
We might not have been making much headway in terms of actually playing together, but my love of music in general and the Faces in particular was giving me a new-found focus when it came to thieving. That’s how I ended up getting my hands on Ronnie Wood’s coat. Well, it turned out to be Keith Richards’ coat, but I thought it was Ronnie’s at the time. The portable TV was definitely Ron’s, though.
The Wick was a big grand house on top of Richmond Hill that once belonged to John Mills the actor (the actress Hayley was his daughter). Ronnie Wood had got it off him somehow, I don’t know if he’d bought it or rented it, but when the four of us found out that was where he lived, we were such massive fans that we would drive up there in Jimmy Macken’s Bedford van (which he’d bought for the band to go on tour in, even though we’d not done any gigs yet) and park outside his house. Sometimes he’d look out through his living room window and wave to us and we’d wave back and get all excited. We were obsessed; just like the kids that would hang around a rock star’s hotel, really, only a little more street-wise.
Of course a normal full-on fan might’ve left it there, but I couldn’t let it go. I had to push it one step further. I started going back there to lurk about on my own. A little lane went off the main road and down the side of the garden, then at the end of it there was another entrance to what I suppose now was a guest house, but at the time I just thought was part of the same property. Anyway, I figured out a way to get in there. I can’t remember if I jumped over the wall or the door was open but, either way, I sneaked in there and had a look around.
Luckily for me, no one was in, but even so I didn’t go too crazy. All I took was a little portable TV and the coat which I thought was Ronnie’s. (I later found out it was Keith Richards’, because apparently he heard about me admitting I’d nicked it and took offence.) As far as I was concerned at the time, I wasn’t doing anything that wrong. Obviously I broke in and went sneaking around the house, which I shouldn’t have done, but I was a fan who wanted something of theirs as a trophy and my only way of doing that was to thieve – just like the screaming girls trying to tear the jackets off The Beatles’ backs.
I don’t know what I did with that coat in the end – probably sold it – but I wish I still had it because it was a beautiful herringbone Crombie. Years later I saw a picture in a book of Mick Jagger wearing it, so Keith could’ve nicked it off him first, for all I know, but it’s more likely they just swapped clothes around between themselves, the way bands do.
You might think stealing something is a weird way of showing that you love someone, and I suppose in a way it is, but when you look at the background I came from, it kind’ve makes sense. My stepdad, who was meant to be looking after me, decided to fuck about with me instead as soon as my mum wasn’t around, so that was the kind of example I’d been given. Not that I ever looked at this geezer as any kind of father figure. He didn’t want me there from the beginning – I was just in the way.
The one time I remember us doing anything good together was on Christmas Day in 1972, when we went out to the boozer for a drink while my mum was cooking the dinner. I got really drunk – probably because I was so uncomfortable around the cunt – and when I got back, the room was doing that spinning-round thing when you close your eyes and you know you’re going to have to throw up. I hugged the base of the toilet for a while – happy fucking Christmas – and came downstairs to see that Top of the Pops had started. Then I got all excited because Rod Stewart was on doing ‘You Wear It Well’, and I remember drunkenly pushing my face up close to the black-and-white screen, trying to work out what colour his jacket was.