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Autumn stoned: Steve, Mac, Kenney and Ronnie backstage, circa late ’67
967 had been pretty good for The Small Faces. Following an arduous twice-nightly package tour with Roy Orbison, Paul & Barry Ryan, PP Arnold and others – their third tour in six months – which had
ended early with Steve Marriott debilitated by a virus, they were finally able to extricate themselves from a creativity-stifling contract with Decca and also from a manager, Don Arden, whom they no longer trusted. The flamboyant Andrew Loog Oldham, and his Immediate Records business partner Tony Calder, enticed them with promises of unlimited studio time and more hash than four young lads could ever smoke or cook into brownies.
The Small Faces quickly repaid Oldham and Calder’s faith in them as serious musicians attuned to the changing times. Their first album for Immediate, Small Faces, played to their strengths (short and punchy pop songs that quickly lodged in your brain) but with added studio trickery as a consequence of working closely with engineer Glyn Johns. ‘Green Circles’ is the track which best exemplifies their new-found confidence – a sublime tune, gorgeously understated vocals by Marriott, lyrics that suggest England could embrace the love and peace vibe coming out of California on its own terms, a distinctive motif on what sounds like a slightly out-of-tune Joanna from an East End pub and, best of all, stomach-
pounding drum crescendos courtesy of Kenney Jones. Other notable examples of their burgeoning experimentation are the upfront brass on ‘All Our Yesterdays’, where MC Steve Marriott introduces “For your delight, the darling of Wapping Wharf Launderette, Ronald ‘Leafy’ Lane”, and ‘Eddie’s Dreaming’, which has more than a hint of Mongo Santamaria’s conga drum-driven Latin jazz and R&B about it.
“We grew naturally into more creative musicians because we were so young,” says Kenney Jones today. “You had to go that way. We were learning all the time. I was doing loads of outside sessions and big band stuff so I brought that angle to the band. I found myself
“Andrew Oldham set the cruises up. He said we needed to relax. We all went on the boat and were supposed to write songs. Not much got written though”
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