First Step (Faces album)
First Step is the debut album by the British group Faces, released in early 1970. The album was released only a few months after the Faces had formed from the ashes of the Small Faces (from which Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan hailed) and The Jeff Beck Group (from which Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood hailed.) The album is credited to the Small Faces on all North American issues and reissues, while record labels for initial vinyl printings give the title as The First Step. The album cover shows Ronnie Wood holding a copy  of Geoffrey Sisley's seminal guitar tutorial "First Step: How to Play the Guitar Plectrum Style". While the album was recorded after the group's official formation and signing to Warner Bros. Records in the Autumn of 1969, the band members had been rehearsing, performing and recording together in various combinations since May of that year. At 46:22, "First Step" is the band's lengthiest original release and many modern critics regard it as promising, but sprawling and unfocused - their least cohesive and most undisciplined offering. It is however perhaps the most democratic of the Faces releases, highlighting the band 's talents as a unified whole and affording each member at least one composer credit, as opposed to the perceived dominance of Stewart and his songwriting partnership with Wood as their career progressed. On 28 August 2015, the album was reissued in a remastered and expanded form, including two previously-unreleased bonus tracks recorded shortly after the album's release, "Behind The Sun" and "Mona: The Blues" (the latter was remade and refined by Lane and Wood in 1972 for their "Mahoney's Last Stand" film soundtrack). Reception. The album reached #119 on the "Billboard" 200. Reviewing in 1970 for  Rolling Stone, Joel Selvin found the Faces to be "a fine rock band" but also "highly derivative" and who "play with more control than soul", going on to say, "They know exactly what they are doing and they do it well, as good musicians should, but the precision and purity of their sound seems a little sterile, and they lack the drive and power to make their music work without subtleties." Reviewing in "" (1981), Robert Christgau viewed the record as "one more complication in the Rod Stewart mystery", saying, "With Jeff Beck he parodies himself before he's established a  self to parody. With Lou Reizner he establishes himself as a singer-songwriter of uncommon spunk and a vocal interpreter of uncommon individuality. And here he steps into the shoes of a purveyor of Humble Pie to pose as the leader of a mediocre white r&b band. Best cut: Ronnie Lane's 'Stone.'" Track listing. All lead vocals by Rod Stewart except where indicated Side One Side Two 2015 Reissue bonus tracks