All the Rage: A Rock 'n' Roll Odyssey Book

Ian McLagan isn't the household name that his rabble-rousing peers--Keith Moon, Keith Richards and Rod Stewart--have become, but one could hardly argue that he has languished in the obscurity of rock'n'roll. A humble organ-playing art student, Mac joined diminutive mod heart-throbs The Small Faces and shot to stardom on the back of songs like 'Here Comes The Nice', 'Itchycoo Park', 'Lazy Sunday' and copious hits of LSD and amphetamines--not to mention the odd joint rolled up in the back of their record company limo. All The Rage is infused with the permissive spirit of the Sixties. Mac has admitted that he'd "shag anything with a pulse--but the girls who hung around with us were no slouches in the pulse department!". But more endearing is the rather twee naivety of the era: a drugs bust on the Small Faces' London pad meant ransacked drawers but missed the lump of cannabis resin sitting on the mantelpiece; and the Small Faces got swindled out of thousands of pounds of royalties by their manager and future Stones svengali Andrew Loog Oldham--which culminates in Mac having to chase away the bailiffs with a full bedpan. The swinging Sixties give way to the depraved Seventies, though and, after The Small Faces dissolved, Mac formed The Faces with Rod Stewart. He developed a habit for smashing up faulty keyboards with an axe, stole Keith Moon's wife and was told--by Keith Richards, of all people--to cut down on the drugs. All The Rage is so debauched that sometimes, you wonder how they got away with it. "We'd check into Holiday Inns as Fleetwood Mac and they wouldn't bat an eyelid," explains Mac. Ah, that's how. --Louis PattisonRead More