RONNIE LANE BASSIST, CO-FOUNDER OF BRITISH ROCK BAND THE FACES
Associated Press

Ronnie Lane, bassist and co-founder of The Faces, the band that launched the careers of several British rock musicians, including Rod Stewart and Ron Wood, died after a two-decade fight with multiple sclerosis. He was 51.

Mr. Lane died Wednesday in Trinidad, Colo., about 200 miles south of Denver, where he and his wife, Sue, have lived for at least three years. His wife announced the death yesterday and said private services were planned.

Mr. Lane is survived by two sons and two stepdaughters.

Mr. Lane, born in East London, co-founded the Small Faces in 1965. The band identified with the "mod" scene also personified by The Who - "face" was mod slang for a fashion leader.

He co-wrote most of the band's hits with lead singer and guitarist Steve Marriott, including "Itchycoo Park," its only song to make the charts in the United States.

Marriott, a child actor, quit the band in the middle of a show on New Year's Day 1969 and formed Humble Pie with Peter Frampton later that year. He died at age 44 in April 1991 in a fire at his home in England.

After Marriott's departure, the band signed Stewart as lead singer and Wood as lead guitarist, and changed its name to The Faces.

The band gradually became little more than Stewart's backup group, and Mr. Lane quit in 1973, forming a band called Slim Chance that split up four albums and four years later.

The Faces disbanded in 1974. Wood went on to join the Rolling Stones and drummer Kenney Jones later replaced the deceased Keith Moon in The Who.

Mr. Lane's health began deteriorating in the mid-1970s after he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a debilitating nerve ailment. He was quoted as saying the condition had turned him into "a bloody useless cripple."

In the mid-1980s, Mr. Lane organized some of British rock's biggest names in the A.R.M.S. concerts to benefit multiple sclerosis research. In 1986, he played before 60,000 fans at London's Wembley Stadium, appearing on stage in a wheelchair and backed by Stewart, Wood and Stones bassist Bill Wyman.

He recently appeared in a television special with Stewart.

"Despite incredible pain, they just couldn't stop him playing the bass guitar he loved," publicist Charlie Comer told Britain's The Mirror after learning of Mr. Lane's death.

"While his body wasted away, he carried on almost as if nothing had happened. Every time he struck a chord you could see he was in torment."