Anymore for Anymore: An Overlooked Classic Turns 50
By: Soren Rasmussen
The story of the neglected bassist is one as old as time itself. It is the thankless profession in music, forever in the shadow of the lead guitar, the sound you always feel but don’t always hear. And yet no bassist may be as unjustly neglected in the history of modern music as Ronnie Lane, whose wistful, unassuming magnum opus Anymore for Anymore celebrated its 50th anniversary this year.
Lane was a founding member of the Faces, one of the preeminent British rock bands of the 1970s, well-known for launching the careers of Rod Stewart and Rolling Stones’ guitarist Ronnie Wood. But despite the now legendary status of its two leading figures, Lane was the backbone of the group, giving the band a nostalgic, bittersweet charm that overflows in their most beloved work, songs like ‘Debris’, ‘Glad and Sorry’, and the forever timeless ‘Ooh La La’. The group was highly successful in the early 1970s, but broke up in 1973 after just four years together, as the success of Stewart’s solo career diverted his attention and Lane felt a declining role in the group.
Choosing to depart from the rock n roll lifestyle, Lane moved to the Welsh countryside and quickly formed Slim Chance, a name he originally wanted for the Faces, with the popular Scottish duo Gallagher and Lyle and several other musicians (including background vocals by a group credited as ‘The Tanners of Montgomery’, which should more than enough justification of the album’s greatness). They began recording Anymore for Anymore that same year, releasing it as their first album in 1974. Just like the band’s name, the album displays everything Lane wanted out of the Faces but didn’t get the space to express, as the greatness that audiences only gained glimpses of through his occasional speaking roles before was now revealed with nothing in the way.
The album’s first track, ‘Careless Love’, marks a stark pivot from hard rock, planting the listener somewhere between a Nashville bar show and a New Orleans street band, and from there he goes on to explore a range of sounds, styles, and influences across the album’s 11 tracks, from the bittersweet swaying tribute song ‘Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight’, to some sleazy 12-bar blues in ‘Chicken Wired’. His songwriting abilities are on full display in catchy, heartfelt tunes like ‘Don’t You Cry for Me’, a ballad with a misty air accentuated by a dreamy saxophone solo, and ‘The Poacher’, where Lane brings in strings and an oboe to build a sweet little melody in a poetic piece about an old fisherman. In ‘By and Bye (Gonna See the King)’, Lane reinvents a traditional gospel song, featuring some brilliant slide guitar that builds to a triumphant chorus of spiritual rejuvenation. And in ‘Tell Everyone’ he brings back a tune released with the Faces, only this time with full creative licence, revealing what we can only assume were his original intentions with the song. Exchanging electric for acoustic, Stewart’s voice for his own, and adding a much needed saxophone, the song finds a new magic sorely lacking before.
While the whole album displays his distinctly mellow, poetic sensibility, he achieves perfection in the two beautiful folk songs ‘Roll on Babe’ and title track ‘Anymore for Anymore’. Lane accredits the former to the banjo player Derroll Adams, but the song can hardly be called a cover. What is originally a trite banjo tune called ‘Roll on Buddy’ is thoroughly transformed through a sea of acoustic timbres into a eerie journey through a mystical fog, as Lane gently sings about the passage of time: “Roll on babe / Don’t you roll so slow / When the wheel don’t turn / You don’t roll no more”. In ‘Anymore for Anymore’, he invites us to continue on with him: “Pile up the chairs and table / and put the tinder to the timber / we’ll light the night sky, leave the ember / to fade with yesterday / We’re leaving come what may.” The track was recorded with Lane’s mobile studio on his farm in Wales, and you can hear the birds chirping, the wind against the mics as they play, and even the sounds of children playing, heightening the tune’s pastoral beauty.
This passionate informality is everywhere in the album, from Lane cheering in the background of solos to the songs frequently blending into one another. It gives the impression of a spontaneous group of friends simply going through their favourite songs rather than any calculated commercial endeavour. And this is Lane’s magic: no matter what style he and the band play, it’s difficult to imagine he’d rather be playing anything else, as the whole album gives the sense of a long awaited passion project he’d been anxious to make during his years with the Faces.
Anymore for Anymore is a softly spoken tour-de-force, displaying Lane’s unique ability to break down the rock of his day into all its distinct elements (blues, country, gospel, folk, and traditional pop), then put the pieces back together in the formation of his own distinct, homegrown sound, one that can feel of a bygone era one moment and surprisingly contemporary the next.
Ronnie Lane passed away on the 4th of June, 1997, at age 51. 50 years of Anymore for Anymore have seen him immortalised for his work with the Faces but far too often overlooked in his own regard, even after a prolific career that saw collaborations with many other legends like Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton, and Jimmy Page. Plagued with multiple sclerosis and chiefly interested in a sound that didn’t top the charts, he never found the same professional success as many of his contemporaries. Nevertheless, the music lives on. In ‘Don’t You Cry for Me’, he sings: “I hoped that time would send / All the love I’ve been awaitin’ / And free me like a bird / From this cage that I’ve been making.” And while it has not always received all the love that it deserves, Lane’s beautiful album certainly frees him from the cage of the bassist’s shadow, revealing the bottomless well of what the wonderful musician had to offer.