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Artist News Obituaries
Ian McLagan 1945-2014
By Aly Barchi | Published on Friday 5 December 2014
Ian ‘Mac’ McLagan, organist in The Small Faces and The Faces, as well as a keyboard player for the likes of The Rolling Stones, has died in his adoptive hometown of Austin, Texas, aged 69. McLagan’s official site confirms he suffered a stroke, for which he was hospitalised on Tuesday, dying the next day with his family and friends around him.
Born in London in 1945, McLagan was hired by legendary artist manager Don Arden to join the Small Faces in 1965, replacing original organist Jimmy Winston. The band released a series of acclaimed and still-iconic singles like ‘Itchycoo Park’, ‘Lazy Sunday’ and ‘Tin Soldier’, as well as psychedelic concept LP ‘Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake’, before disbanding in 1969 following the departure of founding frontman Steve Marriot.
McLagan and Small Faces bassist Ronnie Lane and drummer Kenney Jones were later joined by Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood to form The Faces, releasing their first LP, ‘First Step’, in 1970.
After The Faces finished in 1975, McLagan went on to play keyboards on The Rolling Stones’ ‘Some Girls’ hit ‘Miss You’, also working as a big-league session musician with artists like Chuck Berry, Jackson Browne, Joe Cocker, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Frank Black, Bruce Springsteen; and releasing a string of solo albums from the late 1970s onwards. He played with Billy Bragg in The Blokes in the late 1990s, co-writing Bragg et al’s 2002 LP ‘England, Half English’. He carried on collaborating and playing live right up to his death, and in fact had been billed to open for Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets at a show in Minneapolis on the day he died.
Paying tribute, McLagan’s Small Faces/Faces bandmate Kenney Jones has said: “I am completely devastated by this shocking news, and I know this goes for Ronnie and Rod also”.
Billy Bragg, meanwhile, has written a piece honouring McLagan in The Guardian. He says: “Having been a teenage Faces fan, to simply meet Ian McLagan would have been an honour. To have played with him in a band and to know him as a dear friend was an immense privilege. It was his ‘live in the moment’ attitude that helped him keep his feet on the ground through the incredible highs and the lows that he experienced in a life lived to the full. I’m glad to have known him and sorry that he’s gone”.
McLagan is survived by his son Lee, his brother Mike and a granddaughter; his wife having died in a car crash in 2006.
