Anymore for Anymore by Ronnie Lane and Slim Chance
Written by Andy Taylor on Monday, 13 July 2009
In the spring of 1973, on yet another hugely grossing jaunt across America, the other members of The Faces noticed that Ronnie Lane had started to act a bit funny. He'd always been one of the best dressed gents in the music business but had recently acquired a new girlfriend who Ian McLagan described as "a stranger to the soap dish" and he'd started turning up to gigs dressed as a farmer.
It wasn't long before he quit the band and retreated to drizzly Wales to write a bunch of songs about rag and bone men, gypsy caravans and women in aprons. The promotional tour was a disaster (and deserves it's own story), the record label weren't interested (you'll still struggle to get hold of a copy) but somehow, despite everything, Anymore For Anymore is a masterpiece.
The album has a sound all of its own, a dreamy pastoral wash which imitators have spent fortunes trying to recapture. Mandolins and resonator guitars babble along with with rinky-dink pub pianos, woodwind and accordions, all held together by Ronnie's wise-beyond-his-years voice singing wistful songs about returning to the simple life.
"The Poacher" is a favourite of mine with it's beautiful oboe (yes!) riff- as English as Vaughan Williams and surely due to be mercilessly remixed into a dance track any day now. "Chicken Wired" features chicken pickin', chicken squarkin' and lyrics about, erm, buying a chicken. Best of all though is the title track, co-written with the aforementioned soap-dodging girlfriend which actually makes you want to buy a horse and cart and spend lazy hazy days being chased out of towns by residents committees.
And you knew he meant it too - in later years while his ex-bandmates variously went disco, joined the Stones or attempted to reform the Small Faces, Ronnie stuck to his guns and made the kind of music he damn well wanted to make. He lost a fortune in the process but (sadly posthumously) now commands the kind of respect the others will only dream of.
