BE MY GUEST)
1. Chris Farlowe – My Way Of Giving (Immediate single, 1967) Farlowe was Steve Marriott’s favourite British singer for a spell, so it was no surprise once The Small Faces signed to Immediate that they would offer their new label mate a tune or two. Mick Jagger produces.
2. The Apostolic Intervention – (Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me (Immediate single, 1967) Andrew Loog Oldham envisioned The Small Faces (along with Jagger and Richards) as Immediate’s very own in- house songwriters after his Brill Building heroes. Like ‘My Way Of Giving’, this tune had already been recorded by the Faces at Decca and would appear on their Immediate debut.
3. Del Shannon – Home And Away (unreleased Immediate LP, 1967) Marriott contributed keyboards to the sessions for his hero’s Loog Oldham-helmed, ill-fated ’67 comeback album.
4. Traffic – Berkshire Poppies (Island LP track, 1967) Marriott’s uncredited backing vocals on this cut from Traffic’s debut, Mr Fantasy, are clearly audible – as are his asides and exclamations towards the end of the track. “Cor, dear!”
5. The Rolling Stones – In Another Land (Decca LP track, 1967) Steve and Ronnie sing backing vocals on Bill Wyman’s oft-maligned contribution to Their Satanic Majesties Request, contrived after Mick, Keef and Brian failed to turn up at the session.
6. PP Arnold – If You Think You’re Groovy (Immediate single, 1968) Tailormade for Immediate recording artist, Small Faces backing singer and Marriott’s soul mate Pat Arnold, and recorded during the sessions for Ogdens’, this folky rocker features the full band and plenty of Marriott’s customarily identifiable vocal contributions.
myriad new influences and experiences were combining to shift the group’s focus away from the sharp soulful pop of their early days to a more mature and expansive mod-psych sound, one which they believed to be a truer expression of themselves and their surroundings.
At Christmas, after a dispute over money, The Small Faces announced their departure from Don Arden’s company, Contemporary Records. They continued to fund their own recordings as ’67 dawned, while legal and managerial issues were sorted out; a complicated process that was mired in controversy, details of which are still disputed to this day. Creatively though, the group seemed unencumbered, as
ANDY MORTEN picks 10 Immediate-era extra-curricular activities
7. Billy Nicholls – Would You Believe (Immediate single/LP, 1968)
Immediate wunderkind Nicholls found himself herded into the studio with The Small Faces to knock out this, his first single. Marriott’s “backing vocals”
threaten to obliterate all around him, as does his fuzztone guitar work on ‘Girl From New York’. It’s been called “the most over-produced record of the ’60s” – I just wish they’d tuned the bass first.
8. The Easybeats – Good Times (United Artists single, 1968) Recorded during The Easybeats’ tenure in London, this killer 45 boasts what is possibly Marriott’s most celebrated guest vocal and
undoubtedly his least secretive. He
Out with the old and in with the new. Don Arden (left) and Andrew Loog Oldham (below)
the final few tracks that were put out by Decca to cash in on their erstwhile clients’ success attest. These songs, including the single ‘Patterns’, revealed a new introspective approach to lyric writing and an enthusiastic embrace of both the new studio technologies and the widening palette of pop that typified the era. Most striking of the lot was ‘Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow’, a rumination on the innocent joys of childhood and the cynicism of old age, its swirling psych sound punctuated with drowsy stabs of brass. The song appeared in May ’67 on Decca’s retrospective Small Faces album, From The Beginning, along with another lysergic outing, ‘That Man’, both sitting incongruously alongside old sing-along tunes like the group’s debut single ‘What’cha Gonna Do About It?’ and a handful of soul covers. While the band had been fuelled by marijuana and speed in the early phase of their career, the hallucinogenic properties of acid now came to the fore. “In those days, The Beatles, the Stones, everyone was doing the same thing,” remembers Jones. “There was this psychedelic sound coming out of everybody so we just
flowed in with it, in the atmosphere of the time. You
couldn’t help getting caught up in it. So that’s why the songs came out like that.”
One man willing to give The Small Faces the artistic freedom that they now craved was Andrew Loog Oldham, innovative publicist, egotistical anti- authoritarian and infamous manager of The Rolling Stones. On trips to the United States, Oldham had seen independent American record labels like Chess and Motown successfully co- exist alongside behemoths such as Columbia. Ever the enterprising rebel, Oldham decided to set up his own label in Britain, which would prioritise his artists’ creative impulses and offer the kind of indulgence unheard of in the straight-laced mainstream British record companies. He launched Immediate in August ’65, explaining its ethos to the NME: “We believe that success lies in dispensing with the accepted tradition and going against the current trend… We want to give an aura of youth. There’s no room in business for an old club atmosphere.”
Jones recalls, “[Immediate] was a new and fantastic, off-the-wall, avant-garde record company. Rather than being a part of a big corporation and all that shit, this was very family [orientated].” Label mate PP Arnold, a former backing singer for The Ike & Tina Turner Revue,
59
dominates the choruses and can be heard whoopin’ and hollerin’ through most of the track.
9. Skip Bifferty – Man In Black (RCA single, 1968) The Newcastle psych quintet, managed by The Small Faces’ former boss Don Arden, requested the help of Steve and Ronnie on this track. The pair duly obliged by arranging and producing it respectively.
10. Johnny Hallyday – Je suis né dans la rue (Philips LP, 1969) The Small Faces (with Peter Frampton on second guitar) cut a number of tracks with the French rocker for his “heavy” album and contributed three of their own songs: ‘Amen’ is a rewrite of From The Beginning highlight ‘That Man’, ‘Reclamation’ a blues-rock wig-out and ‘Regarde Pour Moi’ an early stab at ‘What You Will’ from Humble Pie’s ’69 debut.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100