Part 1 From the Beginning
The Small Faces story starts in the late fifties when the very young Steve Marriott was sent off to audition for the role of the Artful Dodger in the London stage version of "Oliver". Apparently, when Steve did the audition in front of the show's director, Lionel Hart (playing a skiffle rendition of Buddy Holly's "Oh Boy"), Hart remembered him as the little Cockney urchin who used to busk around bus queues down the East End, strumming a ukulele which his dad bought for him when we was just eight years old.
Steve fitted the Artful Dodger person perfectly. It was him down to a tee. In fact the only reason his Mum sent him to the Italia Conti Drama School in Islington, North London was for the simple fact that Steve burnt down his old school. (The Stratford Express carried the headline "Little Chicago Burns" alongside a photo of Steve in his Artful Dodger outfit) and so his Mum sent him to drama School to keep him out of trouble; though while there, Steve and several other aspiring young Cockney actors would set upon the posh kids and nick their sweets and their money!
It was while performing with "Oliver" that Steve made his vinyl debut, appearing on the stage cast, recording alongside such hammy old British actors, Ian Carmichael (who played Fagin) and Joyce Blair. Steve's voice hadn't quite broken and his vocals are pretty much unrecognisable. (Maybe the Small Faces should've done a psychedelic concept version of "Oliver")
After "Oliver" Steve joined his first band, The Moonlights, who were Shadows copyists, right down to performing the Shadows’ steps. After the Moonlights disbanded, Steve was signed to Decca Records for his first single release. Give Her My Regards appeared in the early part of 1963 and Steve hiccups his way through the song like a teenage Buddy Holly!
The single flopped but Steve had plenty of work to get on with. He appeared in two films in 1963, the first being "Heavens Above" (Rank) where he played a small part as Jack, the eldest of a bunch of kids whose family get evicted and are put up by the vicar (played by Peter Sellers) and eventually leave the church where they were staying, nicking the lead of the roof.
The film itself has been dubbed a minor classic (full of moral and satirical implications on modern society). The rest of tile cast included Eric Sykes, Irene Handl and Roy Kinnear.
Steve's second film of 1959 was one of those corny beat music movies, which were so popular during the early sixties. "Live it up" (Rank) features David Hemmings and Heinz Burt (who, as just plain Heinz scored a big hit in 1959 with his tribute to Eddie Cochrane Just Like Eddie, and also played on the Tornadoes chart-topper Telstar in 1962); who along with Steve work as messenger hoys for the Post Office. They decide to form a band and record a demo called Live it up.
The film revolves around the tape being lost and, after a series of madcap adventures, the tape is found again. Steve is featured quite heavily as the band's drummer, Ricky! Maybe this was the film that inspired Paul McCartney's 1984 movie Give my regards to Broad Street, which had a similar storyline plot. Live it up also featured Peter Glaze (later to appear in the kids' programme Crackerjack} and Ed Devereaux (Aussie actor who starred in Skippy the Bush Kangaroo) and the music was provided by rocker Gene Vincent, Kenny Ball's Jazzmen, The Saints, The Outlaws and Sounds Incorporated (later to play on the Beatles Sergeant Pepper Album). The film was produced and directed by Lance Comfort and the script by Lyn Fairhurst. The music was produced by the legendary Joe Meek.
Steve's next film "Be My Guest" (Rank 1964) was the sequel to "Live it up." The plot follows the same lines as the first film. but this time the demo they record, Be my guest is stolen. The band then enters a talent contest, which they find out is to be rigged and David Hemmings confronts the promoter with the evidence, after which the band win. The music was this time produced by Shel Talmy, who went on to produce the Who and the Yardbirds, The bands featured in the film include Jerry Lee Lewis, the Plebs, Nashville Teens, The Zephyrs, The Niteshades and Kenny and the Wranglers.
It was around this time, that Steve began to get fed up with acting. He'd had enough of standing around the sets for hours on end and decided to concentrate on his first love music. Steve got the job as harmonica player in the Andrew Oldham Orchestra. (Oldham at the time managed the Rolling Stones) and then formed his own band the Frantics (or Frantic Ones, as they were sometimes known). It was with the Frantics, that Steve started to sing the songs of his blues/soul idols. The Frantics mutated into the Moments and, towards the end of 1964, the band recorded Ray Davies’ You really got me. The record only got an American release, which was obviously an attempt to beat the Kinks to the States. Again, the single went nowhere fast and the Moments eventually split. Steve had one more stab at recording a solo single, releasing the Andrew Oldham produced Tell Me. After this effort bombed, Steve had pretty much resigned himself to the fact that he wasn't going to make it to being a Pop Star (but we know different!)
What with film work low on the ground, and his recording career grinding to a halt. Steve needed to get a job and this he did early in 1965. Steve began working Saturdays in the J60 Music Bar, an instrument shop at 445 High Street, Manor Park, London E12.
The shop was staffed by musicians, so attracted musicians from all over London looking to find an instrument shop with the staff on the same musical wavelength.
It was while working at the J60 Music Bar that fate, or call it what you will, took a turn for the better and led to the formation of one of the greatest groups of the sixties, the Small Faces.
In part two: Steve and Ronnie meet up
When Ronnie Lane walked into the J60 Music Bar he recognised the young helper, Steve Marriott from when the Outcasts (Ronnie's old group) supported Steve's group the Moments around a year earlier at a boozer in Rainham, Essex. Ronnie, accompanied by his dad Stan, pointed out the bass guitar he was after, a Harmony bass. "Good bass that mate" replied Steve hopefully and the pair hit it off straightaway, so much so, that Ronnie hung around him until Steve shut up shop and went home with him to Steve's home in Strone Road, Manor Park. Steve played his collection of R & B imports which were about as rare as they come, particularly in the land of pie and mash and jellied eels! Ronnie had never seen or heard of anything like it. What really made the pair tick together though was that they were both Mods, pre-occupied with smart clothes, American R & B records and all the paraphernalia and jingo-ism that went with it, which included dancing the night away high as a kite at West End clubs like the Scene and the Flamingo.
Another factor was their height. Both stood at around 5 foot 6 inches. Small Faces indeed!
Ronnie remembering how impressed he was by Steve's singing when the Outcasts supported the Moments, asked Steve to jam with his band the Pioneers at a resident gig they had at the British Prince in Ilford. Steve doing his best Jerry lee Lewis impersonation ended up smashing the pub piano to bits resembling firewood, while he and Ronnie got blind drunk on whiskies. "The first time I'd ever drunk the stuff," admitted Ronnie years later. The group were then thrown out of the pub by the disgruntled management.
The unruly Mr Marriott, in true Artful Dodger fashion, had lost Ronnie's group their only resident gig. But Ronnie was not too disappointed as he had a great laugh and in Steve, he saw a great singer around whom to build a group. Like all great friendships the two of them had chemistry which made them pretty inseparable.
The drummer in the Pioneers was a young sixteen year old Mod called Kenney Jones. Kenney lived on the tough Locksley Estate in Poplar and had only recently left the equally tough Stepney Green Comprehensive . Kenney came to be in Ronnie's band via Ronnie's older brother Stan who had seen him play before and recommended him. When Kenney met Steve for the first time, it shook him a great deal. the reason being that Kenney had a dream the night before and Steve was in it, singing with the Pioneers on a then very well-known sixties pop show "Thank Your Lucky Stars." Weird stuff, considering that Kenney had only seen Steve once before, a year earlier at the Rainham gig. This was one of several strange quirks of fate that brought the band together. Steve was quoted once as saying, "we were destined to be together. there was and always will be something magical about the Small Faces.
Anyway, Kenney decided to stick with Ronnie, form and group with Steve and play the music they were really into, like Booker T and the MGs, Jimmy Reed, Stax, Atlantic and so on. What was needed now was a keyboard player.
Steve knew a Mod called Jimmy Langwith (or to use his stage name, Winston). He like Steve had been to drama school spending two years at the Theatre Workshop, Stratford East, had tiny parts in two advertising commercials, in the TV film "Silent Evidence" and in the cinema film "Two Left Feet." Even though Jimmy was not too adept at playing the ivories, it was decided that he was in the group. What swung things in his favour was the fact that his parents ran the Ruskin Arms, a pub situated at the top of Steve's road. This meant plenty of free rehearsal time in the rooms at the back of the Ruskin, plus Jimmy's brother Frank owned a van they could use for getting to gigs. The group actually signed a piece of paper stating that if they ever made any money, Jimmy's brother would receive a percentage of their earnings. In 1973, Frank Langwith actually tried to take the Faces to court for allegedly breaking their contract.
The band's set in their formative period included R & B/soul standards like Jump Back, James Brown's Please Please Please, Smokey Robinson's You Really Got a Hold Of Me and Ben E king's Stand By Me, alongside two group originals, a pilled-out rave-up called Come on Children and a stunning portrait of spoilt-brat neurosis E too D, around which Steve would perform his amazing vocal gymnastics in the style of his heroes and role models, Otis Redding and Bobby Bland. Incidentally for those wondering, E too D is named after the chord structure. On US compilations albums the track is known as Running Wild.
Another step towards the group's success came when they managed to play afternoon sessions in the Starlight Room which were situated on Oxford Street. Elkie Brooks (later of Vinegar Joe and the MOR hits like Pearl's a Singer) also worked there singing and she was impressed by Steve's gruff and bluesy vocal style, so much so that she informed the Starlight's owner Maurice King.
King met the group and set out to arrange some gigs. To all intents and purposes, as far as the group was concerned he was their manager.
By now they were getting a following of loyal Mods and they had acquired the name that was to propel them to fame - The Small Faces.
In part three: The group play in Sheffield
Steve Marriott: "The term 'Face' was a top mod, a face about town, a respected chap! The name came from a girl called Annabelle I knew from Chelsea. I didn't know many from Chelsea but I knew this one! Anyway, she signed the hire purchase agreement for my amplifier. We were trying to think of a name and she said call yourselves the Small Faces 'coz she said we were all little and had little boat races. It was great for us because it fitted in with wanting to be faces anyway."
As the band were top mods and were all under average height, the name Small Faces became very apt and fitting. I say all, except for Jimmy that is, who was rather large compared with the diminutive features of Steve, Ronnie and Kenney.
Meanwhile Maurice King saw great potential in the Small Faces and went out of his way to get them gigs. King dropped an almighty large when acquiring their first gig though, when he booked the boys into a working men's club in the land of the cloth cap, Sheffield. The club was full of hard-drinking coal miners and middle-aged teddy boys waiting to be entertained by what they thought was a a cabaret circuit group singing oldies and a selection of "safe" chart material. Just what were these softy southerners playing at, sporting sculptured bouffant-styled haircuts, wearing window pane check button-down shirts, white Sta-press trousers, tonic trousers, Italian turquoise hand-made shoes and candy striped three button jackets with the waif-like teenage lead singer belting out the blues like an elderly black soul brother who had just found his way out of the Mississippi Delta?
Needless to say, the band went down about as well as a pork chop at a barmitzvha and after steaming through Jimmy Reed's Baby What You Want Me Do they had the plugs pulled out on them halfway through their faithful version of James Brown's Please Please Please. Undeterred, the boys stumbled across a club called the Mojo where the local species of mod hung out. When they arrived at the Mojo, they found that the place was packed with young hipsters dancing the night away in an amphetamine-induced heaven. Two brothers ran the club and Steve and Ronnie asked them if they could play there. The brothers gave the boys the go-ahead and the whole place went crazy.
Steve Marriott recalled the night they left the working men's club and found the Mojo: "Our stuff wasn't right for them. We were paid off after three numbers. We walked through the streets feeling utterly brought down. Then we came to the entrance of a club that looked bright and with it. We could see lots of young people going in. On the spur of the moment we went in and told the owners we would play for nothing. They agreed. We played for all we were worth, taking courage from the fact that the audience were mainly teenagers. All mods in fact. Well we went a bomb. The audience raved like mad and kep yelling for more. Although we told the owner we didn't want anything, he gave us a fiver each towards our expenses. So we went back to London happy. Or at least we started happy. What took the edge off things was that we ran out of petrol on the way back and had to wait for the filling station to open."
Kenney Jones on Sheffield: "One of our first fans was an old lady of sixty who knew all the James Brown numbers we were playing and kept asking for more. She knew 'em all."
Mods understood the Small Faces as the bands were mods themselves and seen as such. They also had a great gift for sending themselves up and, at their peak, had a lovely knack of bringing down pretentious pop stars a peg or two which gave them an approachable down-to-earth appeal without being banal. A bit like mischievous barrow boys who got lucky and were living life to the full.
It was due to their constant piss taking and leg pulling that most stars couldn't handle them! the leading mod band at the time, in the media's eyes at least, was the Who, who despite being a brilliant band with a great opo image weren't really mod at all.
They were being groomed as mods by a publicist called Pete Meaden. Now, Meaden was a mod and in the Who he saw a focal point for his movement. He needn't have looked any further than the Small Faces. Pete Townshend wrote about mods and probably the definitive mod/punk anthem My Generation. But it was the Small Faces who had their finger on the pulse because they were into the black R n B soul that their audience was into.
There's a famous photo of the late Keith Moon and Pete Townshend dancing "the block" (a mod dance step) in the Scene Club in 1965. But this was just another publicity stunt out together by Meaden to improve and reaffirm their image and status and leaders of the mod movement. The Small Faces didn't need to pull strokes like that, as they lived the lifestyle almost every night of the week.
Steve Marriott on being a mod: "Any money we got, or money we could hold onto, went on clothes. These used to be a little know of us from the East End and we would go down to Carnaby Street, which is nothing like it is now of course. It was a dowdy little street with very gloomy little shops. They were very small shops but very exclusive. They were also expensive but stylish with it."
In part four: Ronnie moves from job to job
Up until this point, the band still had daytime jobs. Kenney had a job in Selmers musical equipment factory fixing the amplification cabinets. Ronnie also worked there in quality control until Steve unwittingly got Plonk the sack. Ronnie was caught shouting "testing free PA for Marriott" everytime an amplifier he tested was passed down the conveyor belt in the factory. (Incidentally, Ronnie was a gifted cartoonist and he invented his own Cockney cartoon character Albert Frigg! When the Small Faces first broke big in 1966, he had planned to release a book based on his cartoons but this never materialised. While at Selmers, Ronnie covered the walls with drawings of Albert Frigg and other characters. These were preserved by his old work mates when the Small Faces became famous.)
Ronnie then got a job with Steve as chief washer-up at Lyons Corner House. this only lasted a few days, as our heroes were sick of their hands turning brown through washing up with bleach! This, along with Steve dropping a crateful of china plates, gave them a good enough excuse to split!
Undeterred, Plonk got a job as a messenger for the Ministry of Defence (MOD!) One day, while meeting Steve in a café in the West End, the pair of them had spilt coffee over the plans and designs for a nuclear submarine which was in a folder Ronnie was meant to deliver. They also managed a few brown sauce stains, as well as breaking the Official Secrets Act in the process.
Sick of dead end jobs that went nowhere fast, the boys decided to turn professional and really go for the big time. Steve had already decided to drop his acting career, much against his parents' wishes, to make it big in the pop world. Maurice King got the boys a resident gig at the West End's Leicester Square Cavern. With their act getting tighter and Steve becoming more proficient at lead guitar (he was still at the learning stage) word started to spread about their live performances and the band was beginning to get rave reviews.
Sonny and Cher were ever-present at these early gigs after first stumbling upon them in Sheffield.
Steve: "Sonny and Cher gave us a tremendous boost, offering advice and encouragement. We never forget that" Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were also seen checking the boys out and Radio One disc jockey Anne Nightingale once recalled Jagger telling her "if you don't like the Small Faces you must be getting old!"
The Who's manager Kit Lambert certainly did take a liking to the band and attempted to sign them. Lambert even managed to get the Scene Club's disc jockey Guy Stevens to supply the band with tapes of the latest American R 'n' B imports for them to cover in their live set. Lambert failed to get the Small Faces' signatures but Don Arden, an entrepreneur of legendary status due to the fact of his style and methods being likened to Al Capone, did managed to sign the band from under the nose of Maurice King. Arden probably used heavy tactics to steal the boys from King, all oblivious to the Small Faces.
The members of the band were young and naïve and according to Steve: "We thought we'll go with whoever offers the most dough." Arden managed to phone Steve's mum and persuade her that the boys would benefit by signing with him and recording for the Decca label. There were in good company at Decca for, after all, the Rolling Stones recorded for the label. Arden offered the boys £20 a week, which was quite a substantial wage in the mid-1960s and also offered them accounts in every clothes boutique in Carnaby Street. This was an irresistible offer for four young clothes-conscious mods. The Small Faces recalled later that they spent around twelve grand (£12,000) on clothes during 1966. What they didn't know was that the money was coming out of their earnings from the countless gigs they played up and down the country and across Europe, leaving them, apart from their weekly wage, virtually penniless from all their hard graft.
Ronnie: "We were like old women at a jumble sale. Half the stuff we got, we never even wore. We'd get home and think, 'What did I but that for?'"
In part five: Jimmy out and Mac comes in
The next step for the Small Faces was to book into a recording studio and cut a single for imminent release. Don Arden commissioned Ian Samwell to pen a number for the boys' first release. Samwell was already revered in pop circles for writing what is widely seen as the first British rock 'n' roll record, Cliff Richard's Move It back in 1958. Samwell came up with What'Cha Gonna Do About It which suited the Small Faces to a tee due to its cockiness and irreverence. The riff was blantantly lifted from Solomon Burke's Everybody Needs Somebody To Love. The fact that the public had been treated to a recent version of Everybody Needs Somebody by the Rolling Stones on their second album didn't stop the number from crashing into the British charts and peaking at number 14.
The Small Faces had put their dead end jobs behind them and had finally made it. Arden wanted another single out quickly and Steve and Ronnie came up with their own self-penned number, the brilliant and moody I've Got Mine. They even got to play the number in a film they were signed up to appear in called Dateline Diamonds. They also played I've Got Mine in the picture. Things were moving very fast for the band although problems were just around the corner. While the music press raved about I've Got Mine and wrote that the Small Faces had finally arrived, the single inexplicably failed to dent the charts. There was also a problem with Jimmy Winston.
When playing What'Cha Gonna Do About It on the pop show Thank Your Lucky Stars, Jimmy took the shine off Steve's guitar solo by swinging his arms about madly drawing attention to himself. He was trying a takeover bid for the status of band leader which just wasn't on as far as the rest of the band were concerned.
Also being much larger than the rest of the group, he wasn't exactly a "small face" and he was politely asked to leave, much to his reluctance. Apart from being bitter though, Jimmy remained friends with the band. Upon leaving the band, Jimmy formed his own group, Jimmy Winston and his Reflections, and cut a single in June 1966 called Sorry She's Mine c/w It's No What You Do before forming Winston's Fumbs.
Winston's Fumbs recorded what is now regarded as a freakbeat classic Real Crazy Apartment for RCA in 1967 after which Jimmy played the part of General Grant in the 1967 London hippie musical Hair. Jimmy played the keyboards on the track Electric Blues. Nothing has been heard of him since apart from an obscure single released in 1977 called Sun in the Morning.
With Jimmy gone, the Small Faces needed a replacement quickly. They had seen an interview in the monthly magazine Beat Instrumental which featured one Ian "Mac" McLagan. Mac was the keyboards player with Boz and the Boz People (Boz Burrell incidentally went on to form Bad Company). The band liked the look of him and had asked Arden to contact him with a view to replacing Jimmy Winston.
Son of a Scottish father and Irish mother, Mac first started playing the piano at the tender age of seven. His mum bought him an old upright and, with blocks on the pedals to enable him to reach them, he began to tinkle out little tunes. Mac's first band was the Blue Men, a school group with whom he played rhythm guitar, influenced by one of his first idols Chuck Berry at Spring Grove Grammar in Isleworth, Middlesex.
The Blue Men specialised in Lonnie Donnegan skiffle numbers like Rock Island Line. After leaving school, Mac enrolled at Twickenham Art College to study commercial design. While at college, he decided to learn the piano seriously during his spare time. He was taught by an old lady who lived near London Airport, not too far from his home. the pop world almost lost him though.
Mac: "I was going through a mad craze for snooker. I was practising shots down at the local snooker hall when I really should've been going to piano lessons. The novelty of playing the piano wore off after a while and I would've probably packed it in except me mum kept on at me and I'm glad she did or I probably wouldn't have got into showbiz."
Upon leaving college, Mac joined local R 'n' B band the Muleskinners who actually recorded a single for the Fontana label in January 1965 called Back Door Man c/w Need Your Loving. The single flopped and the band broke up soon after. It was after this split that Mac joined Boz and the Boz People who had regular gigs, often backing Kenny Lynch when not working on their own. But after several mishaps with Boz, and in particular with Boz' van which kept breaking down on the way to gigs, Mac decide that he'd had enough. Mac: "I went to Manor House to see my girlfriend and got the last train back to Hounslow on Sunday night. A bloke I knew was on that train in my carriage and he asked me how I was getting on in the Boz People. I told him I'd left and didn't know what I was going to do. he said I should join the Small Faces." By a strange twist of fate, Don Arden's secretary rang him the following day.
In part 6: Mac gets his hair cut
Ronnie: "There were some funny little things about the four of us coming together that it almost sounds fictional. I think the four of us definitely had it in our destiny, it was no accident."
What with Kenney having a dream with Steve in it the night before he met him and Mac being told by an old mate he should audition for the Small Faces the very night before the boys asked Don Arden to get in touch with him, the Small Faces story certainly has more than a touch of magic about it.
When Mac called into Don Arden's office in Carnaby Street he thought it was for a job as a session man or maybe on one of Arden's lesser-known groups like the Clayton Squares but he didn't mind as long as he was earning some money. When Arden asked him if he would like to join the Small Faces he was thunderstruck. Mo more so than Steve, Ronnie and Kenney. They knew he was a talented musician but the fact that he was as small as they were blew them away! Mac: "It was like meeting my brothers!" All Steve could do was hug him. For Steve and the others, Mac was the missing part.
Don Arden got Mac to have his hair cut like the rest of the group (Mac was not a mod before the Small Faces) and gave him some money for essential mod wear. That very same evening, Mac "performed" with the Small Faces at the Lyceum Ballroom. There was no need for rehearsal though as the group had to mime to I've Got Mine for a Radio Luxembourg live show - on the radio! As their was no organ part on the track, Mac simply mimed the part with the guitar. The next day Mac set about learning the Small Faces live act note by note for a gig they had in Swindon the very same day, 3 November. Luckily for the Small Faces, Mac had already played along to Booker T & the MGs' Green Onions LP until he had started to sound like Mr Booker T Jones himself!
Part 7: The Small Faces move in together.
Things moved dramatically for the Small Faces towards the end of 1965. Although the boys' second single I've Got Mine flopped, they were still gaining in popularity via their live gigs (they were permanently on the road by this time, sometimes performing an amazing ten gigs a week which included double-headers), the strength of their first hit What'Cha Gonna Do About It and their ever increasing appearances on TV.
The Small Faces were also becoming the new heart throbs of the ever changing pop scene. They were the perfect complement to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. They catered for the latter's fans' younger brothers and sisters. But the band didn't go a bundle on the screaming hysteria of their fans. Steve: "We became pop stars which we never really wanted to be. Not if you had integrity at all and smoked a little hash. To see all these little girls getting hurt in the crush and not being able to hear ourselves sing or play, we just wanted to go home. We got mobbed though. Too much. Sod that!" Ronnie: "You couldn't take it seriously. It's like playing in a pub and everybody's talking, only everyone was screaming! We were quite a good little band when we started out but then we didn't hear ourselves for about two years, literally! We never heard a note we played."
New band member Ian McLagan also had a gripe. But it wasn't to do with the screaming fans. Steve: "Our live gigs were our livelihood. Regardless of what the band earned from the gigs though we were still on £20 a week. When Mac joined he was on £30 a week for six weeks and he created god knows how much fuss because he wanted to have the same as the band. So his money went down to £20 a week! That's exactly what happened. He couldn't believe it. He was saying "I don't want to be on a wage, I want to feel a real part of the group". Fine, £20 a week! He was dumbstruck!"
On Boxing Day 1965, the Small Faces moved to 22 Westmoreland Terrace, a beautiful old Georgian house in an exclusive part of Pimlico in West London. All that is except for Kenney Jones who decided to stay on at his parents' flat on the Lockney Estate in Stepney.
Steve on Westmoreland Terrace: "The house was always full of mentals like Marianne Faithful, screaming and jumping about I used to have to lock myself in the toilet and write (songs) in there."
Another famous visitor to the house was the Beatles' Brian Epstein. But contrary to popular belief that he wanted to sign the band, he merely went there for some company during one of his bouts of depression.
Part 8: Back in the charts with Kenny Lynch's help.
On the 28th of January 1966, the Small Faces released their third single, Sha La La La Lee. Not wanting another Marriott-Lane composition failing to reach the charts, the band's manager Don Arden called in Kenny Lynch and Mort Shuman to pen the boys some numbers for potential singles. Out of this came Sha La La La Lee. Although the song was both lively and catchy and gave the band a top three hit, the band was not that impressed. Ronnie: "Sha La La La Lee was a good little Saturday night dance record but it wasn't what we were really about which was playing black R&B. I think the rot began to set in around that time." The band was also less than happy with Lynch's falsetto parts on the chorus on which Lynch competed with Marriott for dominance in the vocal department. A bemused Ronnie claimed at the time that it was actually him and not Lynch who sang the falsetto vocals!
With Sha La La Lee riding high in the charts, the band received a greater profile than before. Their faces beamed at you from the pop weeklies to the heart throb magazines like Jackie and Valentine and even to the daily papers. The Small Faces were being hailed as the next big thing and 1966 was going to be their year. Within the space of a week, the band promoted Sha La La La Lee on the pop shows Ready Steady Go, Five O'clock Club, Scene at 6.30 and Thank Your Lucky Stars, while still keeping ahead of their grueling concert schedules. With the Beatles and Rolling Stones gradually winding down their touring appearances, the Small Faces were fast becoming the number one live act in the country. On the 3rd of March 1966, the band telerecorded an insert for the Dick Clark show in America performing Sha La La La Lee for their US television debut.
This hectic non-schedule soon took its toll though as realised when Steve collapsed in front of the Ready, Steady Go cameras suffering from nervous exhaustion. The band were beginning to feel the downside of being pop stars which they never really adhered to in the first place. The long tours and being permanently on the road were beginning to take the fun out of things for the band and was also beginning to drive them potty! Mac: "There were a few times on long journeys when Ronnie would say something a bit weird and I'd say "what do you mean?" and he'd just say "well I'm mad, ain't I, I'm going mad." And we had a few tough times with each other then, a definite feeling that we were going round them twist."
Part 9: Small Faces is released
In May 1966, the Small Faces released their fourth single for Decca, the catchy powerhouse pop of Hey Girl. Like Sha La La La Lee, it was a song in the mainstream pop mould, far removed from their rhythm & blues beginnings. Nevertheless, it gave the Marriott/Lane songwriting team, a chance to prove that could could write their own hit singles. Released simultaneously with Hey Girl on 10 May 1966 was the band's eagerly awaited debut album called, simply enough, Small Faces. The album was hailed as one of the most exciting releases of the year and contained some great tracks, as well as showcasing Steve Marriott's gruff and soulful yearning tones to great effect. Numbers like One Night Stand and Don't Stop What You're Doing stood up well against the out and out rave-ups of Come on Children and You Need Loving. The latter song has Steve belting out "Woman...you need love" at the close and was significant in the fact that it pre-empted Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin by a good four years on Zep's Whole Lotta Love although no-one knew that at the time!
The whole sound and feel of the album was a mutant hybrid of Booker T & the MGs meets the Who, via dashes of Motown thrown in for good measure. The great British public certainly went for it and the album hoisted itself to the number three spot where it stayed for a good few weeks. On top of this, Kenney bought himself a black & white checked Mini Cooper S, which must have turned a few heads in downtown Stepney! Talking of heads, Steve was by now sporting his classic onion-shaped haircut complete with centre parting and back in 1966 you could actually buy a Steve Marriott wig, which must have been a godsend if you were a bald Mod!
The summer of 1966 was a great time to be young and about town. There were some great records in the charts like Sunny Afternoon by the Kinks; the Yardbirds' Over Under Sideways Down; and classic albums by the Beach Boys (Pet Sounds), the Rolling Stones (Aftermath) and everybody was waiting the new Beatles album to be called Revolver.
The social climate was at a peak too. There were many jobs to be found, money was easy to obtain and, above all this, England had just won the World Cup. England was top for fashion and style. Carnaby Street was the focal point of the world's media, the renowned Time magazine had just coined the term "Swinging London" and the Small Faces were so on the case it wasn't true....
Part 10: Hitting the top spot by Stuart Wright
While the Small Faces debut was peaking at No. 3 in the LP charts, the band made a cracking appearance on Germany's Beat, Beat, Beat pop show performing four numbers in late July 1966. At the start of August, the Small Faces released the irresistibly catchy and anthem-like All or Nothing. Their new single was a marked departure from their previous offerings. All or Nothing was less frenzied than, say, Hey Girl, but Steve's singing was more mature and soulful than ever before.
But when the song was previewed on David Jacobs' show Juke Box Jury it was given the thumbs down. Steve commented: "We ordered champagne when All or Nothing was voted a miss. That wasn't sour grapes on our part. It's just that we learned through experience not to put any faith in Juke Box Jury verdicts! They voted What'Cha Gonna Do About It a miss and it was a hit and I've Got Mine a hit and it was a miss" So there you go!"
A little known fact about All or Nothing is that it actually slipped through the censor's net. The song was rather risqué for its day as it was about a bloke trying to make a girl! All or Nothing went on the knock the Beatles' Yellow Submarine off the top of the UK charts to give the Small Faces their first number one and confirm their position as the country's hottest new act.
In the July/August edition of The Small Faces Fan Club newsletter, the secretary, Pauline Corcoran, reported that the band's new album and follow-up to the hugely successful Small Faces would be released in November 1966. The newsletter also reported that one of the songs on the forthcoming LP would feature an operatic intro by the band's notorious manager, Don Arden. The track in question turned out to be a cover of the Del Shannon hit Runaway, which didn't actually see the light of day until about a year later on Decca's compilation of hits and left-overs, From the Beginning.
Steve Marriott hinted at the band's new move away from rhythm & blues during an interview with Brian Matthew on the BBC radio show Saturday Club. he stated that the band was experimenting with electronic sounds. In another interview Ronnie Lane said that among the numbers the band had recorded for the new album were That Man, In My Mind's Eye and a track called (Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me? This track apparently came about when Ronnie played a track from their first album backwards, liked what he heard, and came up with the tune!
The nature of the tracks in question suggested that the Small Faces were progressing fro the R 'n' B roots towards tentative psychedelia. As Ronnie put it, "Towards the end of 1966, we were becoming more thoughtful and psychedelic! Phew! I got spiked at a party thrown by the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein. Anyway, this guy came out with a plateful of oranges which were cut into quarters. He passed them around to all guests and I thought, this is a bit weird, funny party, ain't it? So I thought I'll have a bit of this orange and I took a piece and I took it at the same time as everybody else did, y'know. But about half an hour later, things started to happen, y'know. I didn't know if I'd been given anything or what was happening. I didn't know if I was coming or going! And it was quite horrific at the time but it then turned into something that was quite beautiful!"
Ronnie was probably more influenced by the psychedelic experience than any of the other Small Faces, "Ronnie was looking for the meaning of life." Steve explained. "He wanted more purpose out of life, I suppose which is hard for anybody who's searching for something, especially when your two best mates are a pair of piss-artists like me and Mac! Ronnie had this peach and a daffodil, which he worshipped, and a scroll which was meant to be his soul. When he was out one night, Mac squashed the daffodil and I ate the peach. Then we burned the scroll! Yes, when Ronnie got meaningful, he had to be brought back down to earth!"
Part 11: The problems with stardom by Stuart Wright
In September 1966, the Small Faces were offered a plum part in a feature film to be called Two Weeks in September. Ken Harper, who was Cliff Richard's film director, was due to direct the film and the boys would have starred alongside one Ms Brigitte Bardot. But they turned it down because of the naff script. the same month saw the band being shown on a half hour TV special for Granada. The show was broadcast on Wednesday 28 September but had been recorded a fortnight earlier before an invited audience of 250 of the band's fan club. "Steve broke a string during a number and replaced it while everyone waited. No editing." explained Mac. Assistant producer Rod Taylor claimed that it was the most exciting spectacular that Granada had made since the one they recorded with Little Richard.
Around this time, the band's popularity was reaching Beatlesque proportions. Before a gig in Glasgow, Ronnie was pushed through a shop window by the sheer weight of pursuing fans trying to touch any part of his anatomy and rip off any part of his clothing as a souvenir! And Ian McLagan was locked away in a police cell for the night for his own safety!
An incident at Oldham Athletic Football Club was even more frightening. the band was paraded around the ground just before a charity soccer match. the fans started going berserk and the boys jumped into their car, which was inside the ground being driven by their chauffer. The pitch was already soggy and fans started to surround the car in their hundreds. Kids were climbing on the roof. "The ground was pretty soft and the car just wouldn't move," Mac reported, "It was right in the middle of the pitch and it just started to go down and down and down. The four of us and the driver were getting the real horrors. The kids' faces were getting mashed up against the windows and I remember seeing one little kid being pushed down and her head disappearing out of sight. We were shouting "Look out for that kid" and then the roof of the car started to bow inward under the sheer weight of the kids on top. We were holding the roof up which was really starting to cave in and there wasn't much air in the car 'cos we couldn't open the windows which really set a panic in."
"When the teams came out for the game I think they realised what was going on. Eventually they pulled the crowd away and we started to move. But they couldn't clear everyone and we accidentally drove over a kid's leg. It was horrible. When we finally managed to get out of the ground we told the driver to drive as fast as he could. He was freaked out as much as all of us. We stopped a few miles down the road and the four of us just got out of the car and ran for ages over the moors, screaming our heads off."
Part 12: US tour cancelled and disenchantment with Don Arden by Stuart Wright
When the great Otis Redding came to England in September 1966 for his only UK visit and series of shows, Steve was offered free tickets to see him. Steve, a massive Otis fan, strangely declined the offer. Steve's mum Kay explains, "Steve was a fan, but he wanted to pay for his tickets like everybody else. he didn't want preferential treatment just because he was famous. he danced in the aisles like everyone else did!"
September 1966 was a busy time for the Small Faces. The band were busy promoting All or Nothing on countless pop shows while still fitting in a hectic touring schedule. This took its toll on Steve who collapsed yet again from nervous exhaustion and had to be rested for several days before hopping back aboard the grueling routine of TV appearances, live shows and recording commitments.
Steve often stated that one of the reasons the Small Faces never toured America was because he wasn't confident enough in his guitar playing to try to break the group there. the main reason, however, was a cannabis conviction that Mac had picked up during his Muleskinners days.
The band had planned to hit the States in the autumn of 1966, and had a tour all mapped out but the US immigration laws wouldn't allow Mac into the country. It's sad they never went Stateside because I believe they would have made a big noise across the pond and might just have stuck by each other longer than they did.
It had been a year since the band first crashed on to the pop scene with What'Cha Gonna Do About It and the band's meteoric rise to the top of the pop tree was breathtaking, even by the standards of the era. But disillusionment began to take hold. Kenney explains, "It was great at first, being on Top of the Pops and seeing your first album in the shops, but after the initial euphoria, it began to roll off our backs. We were pop stars to the fans and the media, but to our friends, we were the same as always; we hadn't changed."
the fun had also gone out of the agreement they had with Don Arden, where they were given a weekly wage plus accounts in every clothes shop in Carnaby Street, which meant they could have all the latest fashions to keep up their image as super-Mods! Ronnie: "We were like old grannies at the jumble sale, rummaging through clothes in all the top shops, but when we'd get back home we'd think 'what the fuck did I buy that for?' We spent twelve grand on clothes in 1966 and half the stuff we bought we never even wore."
The band were also getting more than a bit pissed off with Don Arden! The Small Faces' parents wanted to know why the band weren't getting the money that was due to them, considering all the work they had been putting in, going on tour and appearing on television across Europe, not to mention the recording royalties. The not-so-subtle Arden was, it was alleged, having the band over for thousands, but when confronted by the Marriott's, the Lanes, the Joness and the McLagans at a meeting they had arranged, Arden said that every penny they earned was to help their habit of the needle. The Small Faces were not angles. They were into a few things but never "the needle." Though they were definitely needled after hearing this! It was, of course, a lie. the boys finally convinced their parents it was a red herring but the incident was to leave a very sour taste in their mouths.
