After Steve stormed off the stage in 1968 which precipitated the end of the Small Faces, Ronnie and the remaining members Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones, united with Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart (both from The Jeff Beck Group) to form the Faces. For six years they toured the world, playing enormous venues and selling truckloads of records and hit songs written by Ronnie and Rod, like ‘Stay With Me’ and ‘Pool Hall Richard’. Ronnie shared primary song writing duties with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, composing, or co-composing many of their best-loved pieces and took a central role during the recording of their fourth and final album, Ooh La La, as the band’s front man Rod Stewart was focused on his own solo career.

He formed his own band, Slim Chance, in late 1973 to record the hit single “How Come” (UK No. 11) and “The Poacher” (UK No. 36), then the album Anymore For Anymore, showcasing his own blend of British rock music, folk, and country music. He moved to the Welsh-English border and made music that was ‘dug from the soil and baked in the sun’. It drew from rock’n’roll, country, folk, blues, early jazz, vaudeville and blue beat. Musicians slept at the farm, recorded in the barn, playing acoustic guitars, fiddles, squeezeboxes, mandolins and piano. As far back as Itchycoo Park and Song of a Baker, Ronnie had been in harmony with nature, but the sense of empathy comes through much stronger in his solo work. A mystical collection to the surrounding countryside were revealed in songs like The Poacher, Burnin’ Summer, Annie and Harvest Home. When his band Slim Chance hit the road Ronnie was able to combine both elements. Determined to take a Romany caravan across the English countryside, Lane rolled into towns with a rag-tag group of musicians, jugglers, fire-eaters, dancing girls and what he described as “the world’s unfunniest clowns”.

Ronnie developed a genuine interest in Eastern mysticism and studied the teachings of Indian mystic Meher Baba and shared his interest with Pete Townshend of the Who. The pair recorded a well- received album together called Rough Mix (1977), written in the spirit of Baba, which included a performance of Don Williams’s “Till The Rivers All Run Dry”.

Lane was unable to develop his musical career much further, having developed multiple sclerosis. He was first diagnosed in 1977 when he showed loss of muscle control. Kenney described how: “He seemed very forgetful, slurred his words and tripped up a lot. We accused of him of being drunk and of having a secret tipple, but he wasn’t of course.”

Lane had dreaded for some time that he might be susceptible to MS as his mother suffered from the same disease. Jones and Lane used to carry her up and down the stairs at the block of flats she lived in in the East End. Tragically Lane had to suffer for many years before he died. When Jones telephoned Lane up and told him that Marriott had died in a fire at his Essex home, in 1991, “the first thing he said was: ‘I’m jealous.’ He meant that.”