It was on that same Saturday night, which we spent in Blackpool, ready to set up for Sunday\u2019s show at the Opera House, that I should have spotted another threat to the ongoing equilibrium of the band. We were staying at the inhospitable Norbreck Castle, whose plaster turrets and crenellations were as flimsy as its aspirations to grandeur, but although we were residents, we weren\u2019t allowed to eat in the hotel\u2019s restaurant, because we didn\u2019t have ties, and it was only on the say-so of a benevolent receptionist that we were grudgingly accommodated in the less pretentious Cabaret Grill, which was where, halfway through our meal, we were joined by Ronnie Lane, his partner Kate, and their baby son Luke. Unlike the rest of the band, who were commuting to each gig from London in a private plane, Ronnie was driving from town to town with an AA road map and his Land Rover.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re going to be on the road, you might as well be on the road<\/em>,\u201d he told me later, \u201cand if you want to live at home, you might as well live at home, because if you don\u2019t totally accept that you\u2019re on the road and that\u2019s it, that\u2019s your lot, private jets back to London for a few hours a day ain\u2019t going to make it home. You\u2019re living a split, and you ain\u2019t going to get any benefit out of it at all. What\u2019s wrong with life on the road? There\u2019s nothing wrong with it if you make it a life<\/em> on the road. You say, \u2018I won\u2019t take the motorway here, I\u2019ll take the B-road, because it goes through this country and that village, and I\u2019d like to see this and I\u2019d like to see that.\u2019 You might as well enjoy it. I can\u2019t understand this rushing there and rushing back business. I ain\u2019t going to rush anywhere, not unless I absolutely have to.\u201d<\/p>\n True to his word, he would do his best not to rush on the Faces\u2019 next American tour in the spring of 1973, renting a Winnebago camper whenever time and distance allowed. Even so, somewhere between Minneapolis and New York an unarguable truth hit him: this wasn\u2019t why he\u2019d learned to play guitar, not this uninspiring, sapping routine of travel, gig, hotel, no. The equally inescapable consequence was that he would have to leave the group.<\/p>\n Once he had started thinking that way, it wasn\u2019t hard to come up with other reasons for not staying in the Faces. He was in no doubt that Rod held back his best songs, as he had most recently with \u2018True Blue\u2019, for his own records. He would not turn a blind eye to the looming shadow of Rod\u2019s solo success, which he recognized as a threat, not just to the longevity, but to the very entity of the Faces. He couldn\u2019t ignore the slow, but unstoppable spread of separate billing on posters \u2013 Rod Stewart and<\/em> the Faces \u2013 by promoters bothered more by the prospect of missing a single potential ticket sale than bruising musicians\u2019 egos. And he felt gagged as a singer, especially on stage, where his vocal role was reduced to backing harmonies and the opening verse of \u2018Maybe I\u2019m Amazed\u2019 \u2013 \u201cand not in my key either, you can guess whose key it was in.\u201d He was also frustrated by the slow progress of the Faces\u2019 follow-up to A Nod\u2019s As Good As A Wink<\/em>, especially Rod\u2019s infrequent attendance at sessions and unhelpful appraisal of tracks necessarily recorded in his absence, and, when Ooh La La<\/em> was eventually released, he was disappointed by its critical reception, and appalled by Rod\u2019s deliberate, disloyal distancing of himself from the record.<\/p>\n On 12th<\/sup> May 1973, as the Faces were waiting to go on stage at the Civic Centre in Roanoke, West Virginia, Ronnie said the words that had been used countless times by different members of the band, but until now only in fun, parodying a pop star\u2019s foot-stamping tantrum at a trivial setback, like a lukewarm cup of tea or a brandy-and-coke with no ice: \u201cI\u2019m leaving the group!\u201d He left no one in doubt that he meant it. December\u2019s high jinks were a distant memory and when, during the set, he spat an obscenity at Mac, the keyboard player caught him with a vicious kick, leaving 10,000 West Virginians wondering whether it was part of the act. There was one more US date, four nights to fulfill in London, then Ronnie Lane was gone.<\/p>\n Was Kate Lambert the Faces\u2019 Yoko Ono? Clearly she was the one who had Ronnie\u2019s ear, and he did leave the group, but that\u2019s too crude a connection. At that restaurant table in Blackpool, the most obvious sign of her influence was the way he dressed, more like a poacher than a pop star.<\/p>\n John Peel turned up at the Opera House, his second appearance already on the tour. The Faces fan had previously attended the Newcastle show, arriving early enough to join the crew in a Chinese restaurant round the corner from the City Hall. He sipped a light ale while the roadies ate, but, back at the venue, his chronic shyness got the better of him and he spent the hours that remained until show time hiding in a lavatory cubicle.<\/p>\n Newcastle was also notable for the number of apparently jobless young men hanging around the back of the City Hall, offering to lend a hand. Most left when it became clear that carrying stage cases wouldn\u2019t earn them a private audience with Rod Stewart, but one who stayed couldn\u2019t stop telling us how he was going to be a star himself. A record company was interested in his songs and any day he would be on a train to London to sign a contract. It would be serendipitous to reveal that the would-be pop star was a milkman\u2019s son called Gordon, who wore a striped black-and-yellow jumper. But this wasn\u2019t Sting and, though I kept an eye out for the young man\u2019s face, I never did see his photo on a record sleeve or in the music press. That deluded hope, doubtless recited to Led Zeppelin\u2019s crew a week before, must have been what got him through the day.<\/p>\n The second week of the tour included three London dates, the first at what was now the Brixton Academy, the other two at the Edmonton Sundown. Their d\u00e9cor identified both venues as twins of the more famous Rainbow Theatre, but, with their stalls stripped of seats, they were infinitely preferable places for a party. Especially a party with no limit on the numbers. Watching the crush that started in front of the stage, but soon spread to every corner, I wondered if anyone was counting those coming in, concluding that they couldn\u2019t be, because at Brixton the capacity must have been exceeded several times over. Even the seated balcony looked over-full and anything but sedate, its parapet bouncing like a trampoline under the fans\u2019 pounding feet, and that was before the band came on. Downstairs, meanwhile, conditions looked manifestly dangerous.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t help that the Faces were late, or that the wait sent the temperature soaring from tropical to uninhabitable rain forest, but during the show I must have pulled more than thirty girls, giddy or on the point of passing out, from the crowd and carried them to the relative cool of the stage side. It wasn\u2019t easy, because they weren\u2019t all size zero and bodies were squeezed so tight it was like drawing a cork from a bottle. To make my job harder, Rod insisted that under no circumstances was I to put myself between him and his audience, so some girl would be screaming at me that her friend had fainted, while I watched helplessly as the floppy corpse starting to sink into the sea of bodies, counting down the choruses until Ron Wood took his solo and I could mobilise myself.<\/p>\n Barely given time to get their breath back, they were offered a choice: out through the stage door, where there was unlimited fresh air, but no re-admission, or back into the crush beside the stage. Not one of them picked the first option. Waiting to re-enter the arena for the encore, casually balancing a vinyl \u2018Cindy\u2019 football on his red Anello & Davide pump, Rod grumbled that I\u2019d been conned.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re just faking it to get backstage.\u201d<\/p>\n I indicated the obvious: that there were no girls backstage, not in the area I looked after, anyway.<\/p>\n \u201cDidn\u2019t do them much good then, did it?\u201d<\/p>\n After the second night in Edmonton, a kick-about with one of the promotional plastic footballs turned into a full-blooded match, for which the carpeted expanse of stalls was almost ideal, only the slope towards the stage giving it the tilt of a Cup giant-killers\u2019 ground, although, by playing from side to side, across the auditorium, the gradient advantaged neither side. It was easy to pick out Rod\u2019s mates, because they knew how to play, but otherwise it was like a pick-up game in a primary school playground, with a mob myopically pursuing the ball and most players wanting to be in Rod\u2019s team. I was happy to pick myself against him and trade occasional nods of acknowledgement at passes successfully struck to a player in space or two-footed tackles avoided. I played in a tough Sunday morning league, so I could handle being hacked, but even so I ended up with more bruises and grazed skin that I ever collected on Hackney Marshes.<\/p>\n All too soon we were in Manchester for the last night of the tour. It was a Saturday, and I knew Rod had been to watch United. I also knew the result, so I was surprised to find him irrepressibly chirpy, considering Leeds had equalised moments before the final whistle. On the way to the stage he spiked me with an elbow.<\/p>\n \u201cGuess what I saw this afternoon?\u201d<\/p>\n I shrugged. He grinned.<\/p>\n \u201cDenis Law\u2019s knob.\u201d<\/p>\n Fast-forward to 1975. Discovering I was in LA, Rod invited me to turn out for his Coldwater Canyon Casuals one Saturday afternoon. I climbed out of my car at his house in Bel Air, carrying the trainers I\u2019d bought that morning, but he greeted me with a frown.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere\u2019s your kit?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI thought this was a proper match. I assumed it would be supplied.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShirts, not shorts or socks.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m hardly going to find a sports shop round here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, you\u2019re not playing for my team in jeans.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll watch.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFuck off, you\u2019re playing. I\u2019ll see what I can find.\u201d<\/p>\n Rod returned with socks and a pair of shorts.<\/p>\n \u201cHere, these are too big for me.\u201d<\/p>\n They might have been too big for his scrawny hips, but they were more than snug on mine. It was like pulling on a corset. I got into them, but anything more vigorous than short – and, as I was instantly aware, unintentionally mincing – steps threatened not just the seams, but the fabric stretched taught across my buttocks. I sensed these would not be my finest ninety minutes, and I was right. I hadn\u2019t performed so tentatively since reluctantly making up the numbers for an important cup-tie in the disconcerting grip of gastroenteritis. I was little more than an observer. Apart from Rod, who would have shone at any level of amateur football, the outstanding player was the Average White Band\u2019s Hamish Stewart, tall, well-built, athletic, a handful for the opposition defence.<\/p>\n After the match Rod drove me back to his place to collect my car. Mick Jagger\u2019s brother Chris, a spectator at the match, had squeezed into the back seat of Rod\u2019s Excalibur, an American millionaire\u2019s cock-eyed vision of a pre-war European sports car and a rich man\u2019s toy if ever there was one, as ostentatious as it was impractical. Rod seemed to like the looks he got driving it, though. Outside his house, he took me aside.<\/p>\n \u201cMake sure you take him with you.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked Chris where I could drop him.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere are you headed?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Ramada Inn on Sunset, then the Troubadour to see Maria Muldaur.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019ll do me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow d\u2019you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll tag along with you. They know me at the Troubadour.\u201d<\/p>\n When I went to shower, he was channel-hopping, the remote control pointed at the TV like a pistol, but by the time I re-emerged from the bathroom, he was ordering a meal on room service. He\u2019d picked up my key to read out the room number, but if he was embarrassed at being caught out, he hid it well. He cupped his hand over the phone.<\/p>\n \u201cD\u2019you want anything?\u201d<\/p>\n I only ever played once in London with Rod, in Highgate, not far from where he\u2019d been brought up. It was meant to be a friendly, but you could tell what the opposition were thinking as we lined up for kick-off. I recognised several players from Sunday morning football, in particular two brothers who took no prisoners. Watching Rod skip round and over tackles and, when he did get whacked, jump straight up and get stuck in again, I had to admire his bravery, as well as his skill. He didn\u2019t shelter in the safety of celebrity games, where who you were counted for more than how good you were, and the unspoken motto was \u201cI won\u2019t kick you, if you don\u2019t kick me.\u201d He played with his non-showbiz mates, exposing himself not only to the routine violence of metropolitan football, where former apprentices and failed professionals you\u2019ve dared to dribble the ball past gob at your feet and tell you deadpan, \u201cDo that again, and I\u2019ll break your fucking leg,\u201d but also to the special treatment reserved for those with anything to envy, and when it came to being flash, Rod ticked every box: fame, money, and all that went with them. He must have come up against opponents who figured he deserved a kicking for no other reason than his poster was on their girlfriend\u2019s wall. But he didn\u2019t hide, he took them on, earned their respect, and accepted their eager handshake at the end of the game.<\/p>\n It was after that match, in The Wrestlers pub on North Road, that he asked me where I\u2019d bought my boots. A sports shop in Battersea, I told him.<\/p>\n \u201cI need a new pair.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019d told me he was renting a flat in the West End. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with Lillywhite\u2019s?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, I\u2019d rather get them in a proper shop. I\u2019ll pop down to your place. Tell you what, name a pub and I\u2019ll pick you up there.\u201d I wrote directions to The Plough on the back of a beer mat. We picked a date and a time, two in the afternoon.<\/p>\n Rod was late, as I had expected him to be, and it was almost closing time when he turned up. Having been kept waiting and, as a consequence, having downed more pints than I\u2019d meant to, I was all for going, especially since those three o\u2019clock stragglers who weren\u2019t gawping at Rod were peering through the gaps in the etched front window at the chauffered Rolls Royce outside. But Rod insisted on a quick one, so it was well after three when we got to the shop. After my embarrassment in the pub, I was pleased that we had the place to ourselves, but disappointed when, after trying on several styles in different sizes, Rod couldn\u2019t find what he wanted. But it wasn\u2019t an entirely wasted visit, because he ordered a pair. The manager filled out a slip, but clearly felt uncomfortable having to ask Rod Stewart for a deposit.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s all right, mate, I\u2019ll pay upfront.\u201d Rod pulled out his wallet and made a show of looking inside. \u201cChange a hundred dollar bill?\u201d<\/p>\n The manager answered with an old-fashioned look, then checked his watch. \u201cYou\u2019ve missed the bank too.\u201d<\/p>\n Rod turned to me. I reached for my pocket.<\/p>\n It would offset the unavoidably mythical nature of this tale to report that a cheque dropped through my letterbox first post the following day. But it didn\u2019t. I collected Rod\u2019s boots a week or so later and, the next time I was in the West End, took them to a mansion block near Regent\u2019s Park. The concierge said he thought he\u2019d seen Mr Stewart go out, but phoned the apartment anyway, without response, so I left the parcel at the desk. I had to wait for my money until the next time Rod toured the UK.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n I don\u2019t recall exactly when Pete Buckland owned up about The Plan, but it must have been at a point in the tour when I\u2019d been accepted into the Faces family. This plan, by then aborted, had been hatched the moment Mike Gill had phoned Pete to say a New Musical Express<\/em> journalist wanted to join the road crew for their UK tour. The Faces had had a fractious relationship with the UK music press, who, like the British public, had been slower to embrace the band\u2019s brash showmanship than their American counterparts, and here was an opportunity to get their own back. This hack would be worked just as hard as anyone in the crew, and he couldn\u2019t grumble, because that\u2019s what he\u2019d volunteered for. And being more used to pushing a pen than humping gear, he\u2019d be a physical wreck by the end of the first load-in and on his way back to London with no story, certainly not one he wouldn\u2019t be embarrassed to see his byline above.<\/p>\n It was as if the band had anticipated the abrasive review of their live Coast To Coast\/Overture And Beginners<\/em> album that Charles Shaar Murray would write for the NME<\/em> thirteen months later, and resolved to get their retaliation in first. But the plan hadn\u2019t worked. They\u2019d picked the wrong guy or, rather, the wrong guy had picked them. I\u2019d handled whatever they\u2019d thrown at me, even \u2013 and I was now more convinced than ever that it hadn\u2019t been an accident \u2013 a PA cabinet. However they had tested me, I\u2019d passed. I\u2019d drunk as much as anyone, done as many drugs, chatted up more girls.<\/p>\n What surprised me was that I hadn\u2019t been aware that anything unusual had been going on, having quickly got over the laughter in Gaff Management\u2019s reception and dismissed Mike Gill\u2019s warning as spinsterly advice. Even Pete and Chuch\u2019s first night intrusion had seemed no more than what anyone ought to expect to happen on the road. Just as surprisingly, I didn\u2019t notice any difference to the way I was treated, once I had been accepted and the plan abandoned. If I hadn\u2019t felt hard done-by before, I didn\u2019t sense any soft-pedalling now, but I felt good about myself, because the roadying, which I\u2019d viewed as a means to an end, an opportunity to collect material for an unusual story, had been a real job, and I\u2019d done it.<\/p>\n That final night – December 23rd<\/sup> \u2013 was a fitting end to the tour. Roared on at Manchester\u2019s Free Trade Hall by a full-house as ecstatic as Old Trafford\u2019s Stretford End must have been when United had taken the lead that afternoon, the Faces pulled off their finest performance. At the end Rod gestured thanks, and reminded the crowd, \u201cManchester, you\u2019ve never let us down.\u201d Us. Twelve months later, he would drum a fist against his heart and repeat, \u201cMy people, my<\/em> people.\u201d<\/p>\n It was when the house lights blazed after the final encore that it struck me this was the end, not that there was time for sentiment or reflection with the last load-out to be done double-quick, if we were going to catch the band in their hotel suite for a farewell drink. As it was, when we got there, most of the bottles were empty and the Faces were ready to leave, and there was only time for Rod to lead one arm-in-arm, knees-up chorus of \u2018Auld Land Syne\u2019 before the goodbye hugs.<\/p>\n Back in London, writing up my piece, I found myself missing life on the road and questioning who I would see again, and when. Sooner than expected was the second answer, because I had a call from Pete in the first week of January, asking if I\u2019d like to help out on a gig instigated by Pete Townshend to pull Eric Clapton out of his reclusive heroin addiction: rehearsals at Ron Wood\u2019s house in Richmond, then Guildford Civic Hall, and the concert itself at the Rainbow Theatre on January 13th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n Clapton had been a hero of mine since the Yardbirds, so naturally I said yes, and wound up acting as assistant to LMS recording engineer Ron Nevison. The letters LMS stood for Lane Mobile Studio, and we towed the silver Airstream caravan from Richmond to Finsbury Park with the Land Rover Ronnie had favoured over nightly flights on the Faces tour.<\/p>\n In March, the Faces and the Who headlined a made-for-TV music festival in a massive indoor sports arena in Den Haag, Holland, and I was back on the crew for a weekend notable for a prodigious intake of amyl nitrite and amphetamine sulphate, the Eagles\u2019 first appearance outside America, and, after we\u2019d climbed the rigging to man the spotlights when the Dutch technicians insisted on taking a break just as Rory Gallagher was about to go on, a fat cash bonus from the promoter that made it the most lucrative day\u2019s work I\u2019d ever done.<\/p>\n For the Faces\u2019 end-of-year UK tour though, the crew was fully manned. I sat at my desk in Clapham, tapping typewriter keys and counting the days until Christmas Eve\u2019s closing show at the Edmonton Sundown. It was the 12th<\/sup> when Pete called to ask what was I up to? Winding down to Christmas, I told him. Why? One of the crew had got into a fight with a steward in Manchester and been beaten so badly, he was in hospital. There were three days off before the last seven dates. Could I fly up to Glasgow and join them there? I delayed my answer just long enough to make him think there were alternatives to weigh up.<\/p>\n The Faces weren\u2019t the same with Tetsu Yamauchi on bass. With Ronnie Lane\u2019s departure, the gentle working class ballads that were the yin to Stewart and Wood\u2019s boisterous yang had gone too. The Faces would carry on for two more years, but when Rod, spurred by Ron Wood\u2019s dalliance with the Stones, announced his inevitable exit, he was able to excuse himself by lamenting that when Ronnie Lane left, the heart went out of the Faces. By then, the \u2018them and us\u2019 that had once defined a disobliging outside world and a misappreciated band now signified those musicians and their allies in the crew who spent their off-stage time hell-bent on heavy drug use and those who didn\u2019t. The band was too addled, too divided, too terminally sick to continue, but none of those things meant that this wasn\u2019t true: that for a couple of years at least the Faces were the best rock and roll band in the world.<\/p>\n By then Mac and I were not only pals, but songwriting partners. A song we wrote together was covered by one of the Beatles. Okay, so it was Ringo, but a Beatle\u2019s a Beatle. My biggest thrill, though, came with a song that was never released.<\/p>\n \u2018Good Idea At The Time\u2019 was one of several songs tendered by Mac when, in 1976, he, Steve Marriott and Kenney Jones reunited as the Small Faces, with Rick Wills in for Ronnie Lane on bass. Along with several more of our songs, \u2018Good Idea At The Time\u2019 got recorded and, although Mac took the lead vocal, Steve\u2019s voice, as unmistakably his as it had been on \u2018Watcha Gonna Do About It\u2019 in 1965, came in for the chorus, as clearly as if he\u2019d elbowed Mac away from the mic: \u2018Didn\u2019t think about it\/Never stopped to doubt it\/It just seemed like a good idea at the time.\u2019<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n What did I learn on the road? That, for a sixteen-hour day, a roadie\u2019s pay was pitiful. That sleep was scarce, and regular meals and a balanced diet unimaginable. That much of the work was heavy, some of it even dangerous. That roadies were – and doubtless still are – driven by an unwavering devotion to the band they work for and a justifiable pride in their ability to construct, in a day and often against long odds, the most favourable circumstances in which their employers can perform, then to dismantle that habitat and recreate it somewhere else the following day. That the best of them are jacks-of-all-trades and masters of most: driver, engineer, electrician, labourer, bodyguard, servant, jester. That they look forward to the first gig of a tour, long for the last, then wish they were back on the road again.<\/p>\n The Faces treated their close-knit crew well. Pete, Chuch and Russ were more than workers, they were companions. When the band split, so did the crew. Pete helped Rod hand-pick a new backing band and went on the road with him; Russ had followed Ronnie Lane in 1973, his voice a fount of reason sometimes drowned by the babble of dreams; Chuch, Ron Wood\u2019s right hand, went to work for the Rolling Stones, and was still working for them when a heart attack killed him in 2002 at the age of fifty-four.<\/p>\n What I found in the Faces was family: a family that was, unlike my real family, demonstrably loving, loyal, supportive, tactile, truthful with one another and, above all, fun to be with, lots of fun. I took to them at once. By the tour\u2019s end, Pete Buckland felt more like a brother than my real brother ever did. Mac became my brother too. And brothers are what we\u2019ll always be.<\/p>\n Bound by these new ties, I rethought much of what I knew, conscious of the irony that, although I was the one who\u2019d been to university, I was learning more from them than they would ever learn from me. Unsurprisingly, one of the things I learned from them was: education was overrated. Like other musicians I admire, they could have breezed into university, had they not previously been let down by a post-war school system that noted \u2013 and vigorously punished – the disruptive influence, but failed to spot the bright spark. It was education\u2019s loss though, not theirs.<\/p>\n The Faces gave me the confidence to go my own way, and the self-belief to get to where that would take me. I learned to laugh at adversity, to celebrate success, to show those you love that you love them. I adopted the group\u2019s catchphrase of \u201cFuck the gig\u201d and found it worked in other contexts, not least \u201cFuck the bank.\u201d Because the only thing that really counted was not to fuck your family, not to fuck your friends. For pointing out which, I thank them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was on that same Saturday night, which we spent in Blackpool, ready to set up for Sunday\u2019s show at the Opera House, that I should have spotted another threat to the ongoing equilibrium of the band. We were staying at the inhospitable Norbreck Castle, whose plaster turrets and crenellations were as flimsy as its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faces"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/41"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}