“Life is just a bowl of All-Bran,” sang Steve Marriott on Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake in 1968, “you wake up every morning and it’s there.” But the rambunctious Small Faces and Humble Pie star would come to discover his existential breakfast cereal had a bittersweet taste. His career progressed, the ’60s Cockney-mod hero turning into a crumpled ’70s blues rocker, yet he increasingly found himself the victim of bad luck and worse deals, culminating in a run-in with the New York Mafia in 1975 that all but ended his international career.
The result for fans of Marriott’s music – from the Small Faces’ peerless blend of R&B, folk, psychedelia and music hall, to Humble Pie’s US arena-friendly hard rock jams and beyond – is a back catalogue peppered with annoying blanks, ‘lost’ albums, quick cash-ins, imports and comps. Even some of his major works are these days hard to find even on CD, while his sporadic ’80s studio recordings are scattered across myriad releases, many post-dating his untimely death in 1991 in a fire at his Essex home.
“A transcendent white soul voice… the most charismatic and gifted of East End geezers.”
Yet most of Marriott’s Small Faces and Humble Pie output is easily accessed, and an immediate conduit to a transcendent white soul voice and superlative musicianship and songwriting – though, after laying claim to writing the majority of the Small Faces’ hits (All Or Nothing, Itchycoo Park, Tin Soldier, The Universal), his creative energies in the ’70s and ’80s became increasingly diverted into interpreting old soul numbers, reviving past glories, and playing mean blues guitar.
Marriott’s last years were happily spent in dungarees and a boozy haze performing his old repertoire to small but appreciative audiences across Europe. If he’d hung around another decade, you suspect this most charismatic and gifted of East End geezers would have become a big star again – his bowl of All-Bran tasty and plentiful once more.
10.
Marriott & Lane
Majik Mijits
NMC, 2000
The impeccable Marriott/ Lane writing team seemed broken for good when Steve punched Ronnie during early sessions for the Small Faces’ 1976 reunion album, Playmates. In 1981, when Lane was suffering from MS, Marriott sought out his old mucker and together they cut …Majik Mijits. Though both men’s stock was low, they delivered some fine songs and performances, with Marriott’s funky Lonely No More and soulful knees-up of Birthday Girl among the highlights. Apparently, Clive Davis at Arista offered to release it, but Marriott, worried Lane could never tour it, told Davis to shove it, and the LP gathered dust until the millennium.
9.
Steve Marriott
I Need Your Love…
WHAPPING WHARF, 2013
For this fascinating 2-CD set, Wapping Wharf fanzine carefully assembled rarities from the ’70s and ’80s with the singer’s earliest group recordings – unheard demos cut with The Moonlights from 1962 – plus two unheard, gutsy rockers from his last-ever session in 1991, poignantly reuniting him with his old Humble Pie foil Peter Frampton just weeks before his death. The title track, I Need Your Love (Like A Fish Needs A Raincoat), is a heartfelt, raspy piano-led home demo from 1987, while a cracking cover of Curtis Mayfield’s Gypsy Woman comes from Marriott’s last proper LP, 1989’s virtually unnoticed and synth-heavy 30 Seconds To Midnite.
Read: Faces, Rod Stewart and Ronnie Lane's Greatest Albums Ranked!
8.
Humble Pie
Town And Country
IMMEDIATE, 1969
On New Year’s Eve 1968, Marriott dramatically quit the Small Faces to join The Herd’s Peter Frampton in heavy rockers Humble Pie. While ’69s debut, As Safe As Yesterday Is saw the singer retreat into the bosom of the band’s democratic, hard-blues jamming, later that year they committed the acoustic material they opened their sets with to tape. Good job too, as Town And Country proved Marriott hadn’t entirely forsaken the art of songwriting, the story-form Southern rock of The Sad Bag Of Shakey Jake and touching Every Mother’s Son being worth the cover price alone. We also recommend getting Sanctuary’s Natural Born Bugie two-for-one release.
7.
Steve Marriott
Dingwalls 6.7.84
MAU MAU, 1991
After the singer’s first post-Pie solo album, Marriott (1976), proved uneven and seemingly owned by the Mob, he fled to the US leaving an unpaid £100,000 UK tax bill behind him. Band reunions sorted him out, but by the early ’80s he was on his uppers once again, and scratching a living playing pubs and small clubs. The live Dingwalls 6.7.84 is fairly representative of what fans got: rowdy R&B covers and originals, played with unbridled heart and soul amid Cockney banter and blues-guitar showboating. The Pie’s reunion hit, Fool For A Pretty Face, and a rough-house All Or Nothing ensured a great night.
6.
Humble Pie
Eat It
A&M, 1973
In 1973, Marriott steered the Pie back to the thing he loved most, American soul and R&B, adding female backing trio The Blackberries to their line-up. By now, the group were recording in the studio he’d built at Beehive Cottage, his rural Essex home. Though management woes, cocaine abuse and their change of musical tack meant Humble Pie were on the wane in the US, the warm funk on this studio/ live double makes it one of their best: Get Down To It, Good Booze And Bad Women and Beckton Dumps groove mightily; and the digging-deep cover of Ike & Tina Turner’s Black Coffee is legendary.
5.
Small Faces
Small Faces
IMMEDIATE, 1967
After the raw mod pop of their 1966 Small Faces debut on Decca, the group outgrew their pop packaging and found a new home with Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate label. Minds duly expanded on LSD, and with unhindered access to Olympic studios and engineer Glyn Johns, a creative bounty ensued. This 1967 LP, confusingly also called Small Faces, oozed woody, folky, hazy confidence, the joyful (Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me and clipped Get Yourself Together sitting cosily next to the Summer of Love psych of Green Circles. A stone-cold Cockney acid-mod classic, and their timeless Top 5 single Itchycoo Park followed on its heels.
4.
Humble Pie
Performance Rockin’ The Fillmore
A&M, 1971
The thought of Marriott with ’tache and greasy locks wigging out with Frampton on a 23-minute version of Walk On Gilded Splinters sent some old mods into a dark funk from which they never fully recovered. But the sheer sonic weightiness of this album, recorded at NYC’s Fillmore East during two years of relentless on-the-road grafting, is something to behold, and there’s no denying that a slinky hard rock cover of Ray Charles’ Hallelujah I Love Her So and a throat-shredding tilt at Ashford & Simpson’s I Don’t Need No Doctor possess impressive transportational powers. Frampton would leave soon after its release.
3.
Humble Pie
Smokin’
A&M, 1972
By 1972, Frampton had gone, new big-shot manager Dee Anthony was pushing Marriott to the fore, cocaine and brandy ruled, and Steve’s marriage to his muse Jenny Rylance was crumbling. Amid the chaos, saturation touring had succeeded in winning over America, and its rock audience was ready to take the tough, stripped-down Smokin’ to its heart. It was the Pie’s biggest LP, and rightly so, the mean’n’lean 30 Days In The Hole seemingly inventing AC/DC, pulsing slow-burner The Fixer testing the singer‘s larynx to the max, and You’re So Good ending in a jubilant gospel crescendo. Stephen Stills guests, on a jam of Road Runner.
2.
The Small Faces
The Autumn Stone
IMMEDIATE, 1969
It’s late 1969, the Small Faces have split and the ailing Immediate label desperately needs some hit product in the shops. The solution was this career-spanning double LP comp, enticingly peppered with tracks from the group’s autumn ’68 session for an unfinished follow-up to Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake, working title 1862. Evidence that it would have been their ultimate triumph comes in the euphoric hard rocker Wham Bam Thank You Mam, a wistful take of Tim Hardin’s Red Balloon, the cheeky, brass-flecked dancefloor groove of Wide Eyed Girl On The Wall and the elegiac, flute-adorned and crushingly beautiful The Autumn Stone.
1.
The Small Faces
Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake
IMMEDIATE, 1968
Few would argue that the concept LP the Small Faces cut in late ’67/ early ’68 is the record the group’s reputation as psych-rock Cockney hellions rests upon. Narrated by surrealist language-mangler Stanley Unwin and packaged in a groovy circular sleeve, Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake was a joy from start to finish, as the imaginary Happiness Stan goes in search of the missing half of the moon against a soundtrack of smutty musical hall (Rene), cheeky groove-rock (Rollin’ Over), rinky-dinky East End pop (Lazy Sunday), and stirring, mournful soul (Afterglow Of Your Love). One of the greatest-ever English rock records, and, in voice and song quality, Marriott’s enduring legacy.
Where Next?
Appreciation of Marriott’s musical journey will be enriched by Simon Spence’s oral history of the singer's life, All Or Nothing (Omnibus, 2019), as will issues of John Hellier’s Darlings Of Wapping Wharf Launderette’s fanzine. Eat Humble Pie’s A&M catalogue whole via Spotify, ditto the Small Faces’ Decca releases. The slew of ’80s Marriott live albums are questionable, but 2018’s Watch Your Step box set features, poignantly, four live recordings from his last-ever tour. Documentary-wise, David Peck’s All Or Nothing 1965-1968 (2010) and Gary J Katz’s Humble Pie: The Life & Times Of Steve Marriott (2000) provide commentary and context.
