4 stars
Ronnie Lane
Live in Austin
SIDEBURN
When Ronnie Lane
died in 1997 after a twenty-year battle against multiple sclerosis, he left
behind a trail not of tears but of smiles. A pint-size package of Cockney
sunshine, Lane -- in the 1960s with the Small Faces, then with the
boozy, bluesy Faces -- wrote or co-wrote such jewels of mod bounce as "Itchycoo
Park," "Lazy Sunday" and "Ooh La La." After leaving the
Faces in 1973, he spiked his East London pep with a country-folk tang -- part
Music From Big Pink, part Yorkshire village pub -- in solo treats such as
"The Poacher" and "Kuschty Rye."
Live in Austin features
unplugged-style radio shows from the late 1980s, when Lane was
living in Texas and gigging with the cream of the local players, and it is
touching proof that even in his darkening years Lane maintained a
stalwart cheer and work ethic. There are cracks of exhaustion and moments of
slippery pitch in his voice in the seafarer's memoir "Barcelona,"
written in 1976 with Eric Clapton, and in "Nowhere to Run," a song of
stoic elegance from Rough Mix, Lane's 1977 album with Pete
Townshend. The tender prayer of gratitude "Just for a Moment" is taken
from Lane's last-ever radio appearance and reveals his advancing
mortality with devastating honesty.
But Lane wasted no
time on self-pity. In the two versions here of "Ooh La La," he sings
about the high price of his raving days with a radiant fatalism. In "Rio
Grande" (titled "Bomber's Moon" when Lane sang it
on the 1983 A.R.M.S. benefit tour) and the cantina-rock arrangement of Chuck
Berry's "You Never Can Tell," you can hear Lane, clearly
invigorated by the love and chops of his young Austin musicians, freely stirring
Texas grit into his alehouse-country sound. And in his finest song, "The
Poacher," Lane states his philosophy of life with earthy,
magnetic ooh-la-la against a punchy accordion and the chipper glide of Susan
Voelz's violin: "Well, I've no use for riches/And I've no use for power/And
I've no use for a broken heart/I'll let this world roll by." The world is a
lesser place without Ronnie Lane. Do not let these
songs roll by with him.