Rod Stewart has had such a long and amazing career as a solo artist that it’s easy to forget he was once “merely” a bandmember. His first shot at fame came in the mid ‘60s as the frontman for the Jeff Beck Group, which also featured future Rolling Stones guitarist Ron Wood on bass. At the end of the decade Stewart moved on (with Wood in tow) to take Steve Marriott’s place in the Faces (originally the Small Faces). It was in this band that the leather-tonsiled Stewart was given free reign to develop his flamboyant, party-boy persona—key elements that helped drive him to superstardom in the ‘70s and ‘80s. With Rod Stewart at the mic, the Faces were a loud, often-sloppy (in a cool way), rock and roll party band. Their “rough-around-the-edges” qualities are epitomized in the band’s biggest hit, “Stay With Me,” from the 1971 album, A Nod Is as Good as a Wink…to a Blind Horse. A concert showcase if there ever was one, the song spotlights the unique abilities of each member: Stewart’s classic raspy, tongue-incheek vocal delivery, guitarist Ron Wood’s raw-crunch riffing, Ronnie Lane’s melodic “lead” bass lines, Kenney Jones’s bombastic stopand- go drumbeat, and Ian McLagan’s state-of-the-art, rock and roll Wurlitzer-piano work.

 THE TUNING
Ron Wood used open-E tuning (low-to-high: E–B–E–G#–B–E) to record both guitar parts (fretted rhythm and slide) on “Stay With Me.” Be mindful that by tuning to open-E (A and D strings up a whole step; G string up a half step), you’re putting a lot of stress on the neck of your guitar. As a precaution, you may want to slap a lighter-gauge set of strings on your axe. For instance, if you use “10s” (typically .010–.046), try a set of “9s” (.009–.042).

RONNIE’S RHYTHM
Ron Wood kicks off the tune with a raucous display of rhythm work fueled with chord partials and rhythmic fills. At first glance the transcription looks quite convoluted, but upon closer inspection it becomes apparent that it’s derived from a set of movable grips shown in Fig. 1. (Esus2/4 is an alternate name for the B7/E chord.) This isn’t to say that Wood’s intro is basic fare—far from it! But using these voicings as a guideline should help you to comprehend and master the Intro section.

On the heals of Ian McLagan’s piano fill (measures 19–20), the tempo goes to half time where Wood breaks into a rhythm part based on a root/5th–root/6th boogie pattern. (See Fig. 2 for a breakdown of the basic voicings.) Rhythmically-complex (due to a variety of syncopated, sixteenth-note inflections) and bursting with fills and nuances (check out the D-chord move just before the 1st verse; the first two measures of Verse 1; the last 2 measures of Verse 2; and measures 2–3 of the first chorus for starters), it will take some time to get it under your fingers. Work through each verse and chorus slowly (the chord structure remains consistent throughout), using the chord shapes in Fig. 2 for reference.

THE SLIDE WORK
Ron Wood’s overdubbed slide work on “Stay With Me” puts the frosting on the cake, so to speak. Entering in measure 8 of the Intro, he marks the basic structure of each chord change with chord-tone infused, doublestop figures. For example, during the E-based chord passages, he plays string pairings at the 12th fret (usually the 3rd/4th string set, but sometimes the 2nd/3rd set); for D chords he hovers around the 10th fret; A and B chords are located around the 5th and 7th frets, respectively (and sometimes an octave up at the 17th and 19th frets). Sandwiched between the double-stop maneuvers are various single-string fills that utilize surrounding notes of these one-fret “boxes.” The most obvious example appears in the first two measures of the Interlude (see Fig. 3) where the 5th-fret (A) and the 7th-fret (B) notes are used as targets for the approach notes a half-step (one fret) below. This “targeting” process also forms the basis for the licks in the Guitar Solo.

THE OUTRO
At the top of the Outro section, the song reverts back to the original tempo of 176 bpm (thus, the term “A tempo”). Basically, a recap of the intro, Ron Wood’s slidework and fretted rhythm parts are, essentially, of the same ilk. The main divergences occur in the stop-time sections where the band lays out while the featured performer does his thing. The first of these showcases the guitars and bass playing a descending A Mixolydian (A–B–C#–D–E–F#–G) melody. Here, the fretted guitar plays double stops while the slide plays a single-note melody. The second section also features the guitars, which hang their hats on a cycled A–Asus4 chordal figure. Both guitars take a backseat in the final two sections (which feature piano and drums, respectively), and close the tune with a chromatically-descending, “tagged” ensemble figure (C5–B5–B%5–A5).

Want more? Click these cool links!

• Download “Stay With Me” on 
• Check out Faces online at the-faces.com
• Listen to Faces on myspace.com

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