On this date 50 years ago, I joined LTJG Fred Palmore and his wife, Pam, to attend a concert by The Faces at the San Diego Sports Arena. I had been in the Arena only 10 days earlier for the Ali-Frazier fight and the setting/atmosphere was more than a bit different.
Previously known as “The Small Faces,” the group featured a gravel-voiced lead singer named Rod Stewart, earlier with the Jeff Beck Group, and a lead guitarist, Ronnie Wood, later of Rolling Stones fame.
Stewart, despite being “just one of the Faces,” had a rousing career going as a single artist at the same time. His breakthrough third album, Every Picture Tells A Story, which included the #1 hit Maggie May, was released only two months after this concert.
Here’s a clip (28:15) of The Faces, live on the BBC’s “Top of the Pops” program, October 1971.
I’m not going to claim I remember all sorts of stuff about the evening or the concert specifically. Were there other groups on the card? I don’t recall. And that’s because of time passed, not intoxication. I just remember feeling very happy to have been there and “had a real good time,” as another Stewart song said.
The Palmores and I attended at least one other concert together at the Sports Arena (which will be reported on in June). Fred remembers a bar that we apparently visited called “That Place Across the Street from the Sports Arena.” It was located . . . well, you know. I don’t really remember the place, though I wish I did. Researching it online, it had a lot of fans. The establishment later became “Foggy’s Notion,” which closed in 1999 after a fire.
I’m biased, but I’m a big fan of music from the ’60s and ’70s. I had seen The Rolling Stones in concert (twice!) in 1965 and frequented the Club 47 in Cambridge, Mass., while in college, where I saw a lot of folk singers from the era (Tom Rush, Judy Collins, Spider John Koerner among them). The Faces was my first concert of the ’70s and the first in as large a venue as a sports arena. Things had gotten more “produced,” but I still liked the show a lot.
As another example of time passing, Rod Stewart has since been knighted. He is officially Sir Roderick David Stewart, CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire). Whoda thunk?