Around 1964, the British music scene was buzzing with a whole army of bands purveying their take on American R&B and soul music and from out of this scene came the most sharply defined fashion and music movement ever, the Mod movement. It was the first opportunity that mainly working class kids had had to move out of the drab post-war austerity and add a splash of colour, with the sort of vivid coloured clothing that would define London and more specifically Carnaby Street as the epicentre of the fashion and the music that provided it's soundtrack.
As the movement grew, more and more bands became aligned with the Mod ideals, none moreso than The Small Faces. This band, although they'd not been together for very long, started to make an impact in the London clubs within a very short space of time, because they had a massive advantage over most of the other bands that were competing for the same attention. Their singer and guitar player was diminutive fireball, powerhouse vocalist and former child actor Steve Marriott and he had few competitors when it came to belting out the soul and R&B songs they were playing at the time. They were quickly snapped up by Don Arden and subsequently signed to Decca Records. Hit singles followed fairly swiftly and they rose up in the ranks of Britain's best bands of the time and were featured in all the magazines, displaying their Mod dandyism for all to see and for all the young girls to latch onto and in turn attend their concerts..........and scream at them!
Although the band were best described as a happy-go-lucky bunch from London's East End, who didn't appear to have a care in the world (an attitude that would cost them dearly in the end ), they did really care about getting their music across, whether it be a cover version of a great soul or R&B classic or one of their own songs from the fertile songwriting partnership of Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane and as 1966 wore on, they became fazed by the constant screaming at gigs, drowning out their music and the level of hysterical female attention that seemed to follow them wherever they went. Unhappy too with Decca Records less than snappy publicity machine and Don Arden's 'style' of management, they jumped ship and signed up with Andrew Loog Oldham and his fledgling Immediate Records and withdrew from the hectic touring schedule that they had endured up to that time.
Oldham allowed them to spend unlimited amounts of time ensconced in the studio and the sequence of singles released at the time began to show a partial change in musical style, which was influenced by the emerging psychedelic and 'flower power' scene of 1967. The second single they released on Immedediate was 'Here Comes The Nice' which charted well, despite having blatant references to the supply and use of drugs; it was packaged in such a way that the normally eagle eyed censors at the radio and tv stations missed it completely. As the middle of the year approached the band released their next single in time for the 'Summer of Love' which apparently reveled in all the current psychedelic buzzwords that had suddenly become so hip. 'Itchycoo Park' was a song with a beautiful melody and a set of lyrics that even though they looked like they were praising the whole psychedic scene, were actually poking fun at it all. Even the 'park' that's the subject of the song, was in fact an overgrown piece of waste ground by the side of a railway line in London's East End, full of stinging nettles (hence 'itchycoo') and nothing like the glamourous images conjured up by the song. An album simply entitled 'Small Faces' appeared at this time and demonstrated that the although the band still had strong ties to the Mod movement, half of the music contained within was moving towards psychedelia. After another single, which actually took a step back towards soul and R&B, the exceptional 'Tin Soldier', the band took to the studio to commence work on what would be their proper contribution to all things psyche and it went by the name of 'Ogden's Nut Gone Flake'.
The title was reference to the possibility of the legalization of cannabis in the UK and it is said that cigarette manufacturers were actually registering brand names in anticipation of this event. The band decided to have some fun with this notion and contacted the Ogden's Tobacco company and asked if they could use one of their ornate tobacco tin designs for their album cover and the company duly obliged. The design they chose was for Ogden's Nut Brown Flake and with the whole cannabis legalization scenario in mind they re-christened it Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, the 'Nut Gone' neatly referencing the 'off your head' experience one might have if such a product existed.
The album opens with 'Ogdens Nut Gone Flake', an instrumental piece with orchestral backing. The song was in fact a reworking of the band's failed second ever single release 'I Got Mine' in this guise is a fine fanfare for the rest of the album. Next up is 'Afterglow (of Your Love)' which once again harks back to the band's Mod roots, but is such a gorgeous song, with such a fine vocal and instrumental performance that it would be welcome on any album, regardless of genre. Then follows the whimsical psyche tinged 'Long Agos and World's Apart' written and sung by keyboardist Ian MacLagan, another wonderful melodic offering. 'Rene', the next song, is a rather dubious ode to a certain woman who provides certain 'favours' in certain part of East London and is sung with Marriott singing in his native Cockney tongue. 'Song of a Baker' is basically a 'rock' song, which hints at Marriott's desire to have the band taken more seriously by becoming 'heavier', something that he would achieve later in his next band, Humble Pie. The final track on the original vinyl release's side one is 'Lazy Sunday' a very funny take on life's trial and tribulations and how it's best just to 'close my eyes and drift away', again sung in an East End Cockney accent. This song was lifted from the album for a single in the UK and although a big hit, did untold damage to the band's credibility as it was regarded as a novelty song, albeit a really good one!
The second half of the album is a suite of songs that tell the story of Happiness Stan and his quest to find the other half of the moon. The piece is narrated by 'Professor Stanley Unwin' in his nonsensical 'Unwinese' language, which along with the whimsical nature of the subject matter, just adds to the feeling of the whole world going very gently mad, in the nicest way possible! The six songs contained within are 'Happiness Stan', the 'rocky' 'Rollin Over', 'The Hungry Intruder' , 'The Journey', 'Mad John' and 'Happy Days Toy Town' that take you on the mad journey that was Stan's quest, all rounded of with the sing along 'knees up' of the final number whereby you're returned to normality. You could never again make something like this, the world has moved on and innocent, humorous, 'feel good' whimsicality is just frowned upon these days, so you have to enjoy this and love it for it's sense of fun and 'devil may care' attitude.
On it's release, the album featured the altered tobacco tin artwork in a circular cover and reached the top spot on the UK album charts, but the magic was beginning to evaporate quickly. The aforementioned single release of 'Lazy Sunday' and the relative lack of success of it's follow up, 'The Universal' sounded the death knell for the band and Marriott departed to have great success with Humble Pie whilst the rest of the band looked round for his replacement, which came in the form of a young singer by the name of Rod Stewart, along with Ronnie Wood on guitar and went onto to have the worldwide success that the Small Faces were never allowed to get a taste of.
The subsequent demise of Immediate Records, coincidentally not long after the band split, possibly indicating that their success and revenue was the major means of funding the label's operations and the lack of royalty payments to the band in years that followed was as a direct result of their 'devil may care' attitude and it would take almost thirty years for the band members to get anything from the legal mire that was the aftermath of the label's collapse. The money started to appear sometime in 1997; it would have been more help to Ronnie Lane if it had begun to arrive earlier so that it could have eased the financial burden of paying for the treatment of the multiple sclerosis that dominated the last twenty years of his life. That and the tragic death of Steve Marriott in a house fire in 1991, robbed us of two great talents from the most fertile period of British musical history
The band's stature has deservedly grown over the last ten years or so, as their influence and contribution to British music still reverberates to this day. It has been said that they were the perfect pop group and if you look at the whole package, it might very well be a true statement!
Kevin Wallbank (UK)
M100 and Honeymoon On Mars
submitted: 07-18-08
