December 3 – 2014 – Ian Patrick ‘Mac’ McLagan (keyboards for the Small Faces)was born on May 12th 1945 in Hounslow, Middlesex, England.
His first professional group was with the Muleskinners, followed by the Boz People with Boz Burrell. Then in 1965, Manager Don Arden hired him for the sum of £30 a week, to join The Small Faces, (the £30 dropped to £20 after his probation period, like the other members received!).
His debut gig with them was at London’s Lyceum Theatre on November 2nd that same year and he can be heard on all of their hits including “Sha-La-La-La-Lee”, “Itchycoo Park”, “Lazy Sunday”, “All or Nothing”, and “Tin Soldier”.
In 1969, after Steve Marriott left the group and Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood joined, the band changed its name to Faces. He stayed with the Faces until they split in 1975, after which he worked as a sideman for the Rolling Stones, both in the studio and on tour as well as on various Ronnie Wood projects, including the New Barbarians.
Ian was a very much in demand session musician, and backed such artists as Chuck Berry, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Joe Cocker, Bob Dylan, Melissa Etheridge, Paul Westerberg, Izzy Stradlin, Frank Black, John Hiatt, Nikki Sudden, John Mayer, Bruce Springsteen, Tony Scalzo, Carla Olson and Mick Taylor. He also played piano on the studio side of the album The London Chuck Berry Sessions.
In the early seventies Mac, after divorcing his first wife, he hooked up with Keith Moon’s estranged wife Kim Kerrigan, a supermodel, and after Moon passed away in 1978, he married her.
For several years in the late 90s and early 2000s, Ian was a member of Billy Bragg’s band “The Blokes”, co-writing and performing on the 2002 England, Half English album and tour. Running along side his busy session work Ian also released several solo albums and from 1977 onwards he had his own Bump Band.
Since 1994 he and his wife lived in Austin, Texas where he could often be seen gigging at local clubs and bars. Ian McLagan & the Bump Band played at the 2006 Austin City Limits Music Festival, and opened for the Rolling Stones in Austin, Texas, in 2006. In 2010, he joined the Black Crowes on keyboards and vocals at Stubbs in Austin, and in 2013, he appeared with the Warren Haynes band at the Moody Theater, Austin. Early 2014 finds Ian forming a new band when a stroke kills him on Dec. 3 at age 69, following his wife Kim who had died 8 years earlier in a car crash.
