of making his mark.” Again, The Small Faces were on hand to provide the robust backing and accompanied him on a promotional jaunt to Germany. “The Small Faces were there when I did Beat Club,” he smiles today. “Just before I went on to do my bit [‘Would You Believe’], Steve said he wanted to wear my jacket. It was my favourite one, the buckskin cowboy jacket that I wore on the cover of the album. ‘What am I going to wear?’ I said. ‘You can wear mine’, and he took it off to swap. His was a white suit jacket with wide lapels, but it just didn’t fit me. I was really pissed off. You can tell I’m looking a bit glum at the beginning of the clip. I didn’t get it back for about six months and by then it was stained and shabby. I’ve still got it though.” The single went nowhere but that didn’t stop Immediate recording an album of the same name with Billy, which features Marriott and would go on to become one of the rarest and most sought-after artefacts of the era.
The arrival of Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake was presaged by the release of the single ‘Lazy Sunday’. Delivered by Marriott in a deliciously comic Cockney accent, the song’s milieu is not too dissimilar to The Kinks’ recent hit, ‘Autumn Almanac’. It revels in the minutiae of domestic life and fades out over probably the most evocative sound England has to offer – the ringing of church bells and birds singing. How exotic it must have all seemed to foreign listeners trying to make sense of Mrs Jones and her Bert’s lumbago, and sitting in the khazi, sussing out the moon.
Kenney Jones reckons there were similarities between Steve Marriott and the character he portrays in ‘Lazy Sunday’. “He was always a bit like that. He was almost like a caricature of himself sometimes. That comes from his early acting career. He went to The Italia Conti Drama School. He was the very, very first Artful Dodger. He literally was an Artful Dodger. I think we all were a little bit.”
Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake followed ‘Lazy Sunday’ in May. It’s an album of two halves, literally – side one a collection of potential singles culled from various sessions over the previous few months, and side two a fairy tale about Happiness Stan and his search for the other half of the moon. The public loved the music, Stanley Unwin’s gobbledegook narration and the innovative, if rather impractical, circular sleeve mimicking the design of Ogdens’ Nut-Brown Flake tobacco (see sidebar).
ROLLIN’ ONE UP TOSH FLOOD on Ogdens’ revolutionary packaging
Released in June 1968, The Small Faces’ most celebrated album, Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake, was recorded in a variety of studios: Olympic Sound, Trident, Pye and their old haunt IBC, where they cut ‘Rollin’ Over’ under the working title of ‘Bun In The Oven’, mixed (without credit until now) by that master of toy town psych-pop, John Pantry.
Oh Lord!: Immediate’s controversial Ogdens’ ad.
The record’s circular cover made as much of an impression as the music contained within. Ogdens’ Tobacco Company of Liverpool supplied a catalogue of old tobacco tin proofs dating back to the 19th century. While flicking through it the group stumbled on Ogdens’ Nut-Brown Flake. At Steve Marriott’s suggestion, they changed the word “Brown” to “Gone” (as in “Me nut’s gone!”). In so doing, it gave the band their most inventive album title to date. Ian McLagan found the 1lb sign utilised on the back cover. Title aside, drug references abound on the
inner sleeve artwork. Check out the SUS cigarette papers for proof (a sly nudge and a wink to those in the know).
Originally the tin was square – it was Andrew Loog Oldham who had the idea to make the sleeve circular. Mick Swan gets the
credit, but there were more people involved in the creation of the eight-sided fold-out packaging. Theatre set designer Sean Kenny was consulted on the construction of the sleeve, Ian McLagan’s old band mates from The Muleskinners, Pete Brown and Nick Tweddell, provided the trippy artwork for one of the
panels, while renowned photographer Gered Mankowitz supplied the evocative photos of the band, taken in Steve Marriott’s flat, Ronnie Lane’s flat and the Immediate offices. The banjo and
phenomenal cat both belonged to Mac. The cat was called
Rusty.
Kenney Jones recalls, “One time we were sitting in a circle learning a song and I was playing brushes on my drum stool. Glyn Johns came on the mic and said, ‘Keep playing! Keep playing!’ And that’s how on one song I’m playing on my drum stool.”
Sessions had been held sporadically over the previous six months or so, mostly at their favoured Olympic Studio in Barnes, South West London, with occasional forays into Pye and Trident in the West End. Without ever detracting from the band’s innate power, Glyn Johns was always keen to experiment in the studio, and part of the album’s success is down to his input.
Side One opens up with the title track, an instrumental that reprises the band’s ’65 single ‘I’ve Got Mine’. With its subtle use of ominous-sounding strings, it has a filmic quality – you could imagine hearing it over the opening credits of a cold war spy thriller. Although perhaps owing a slight debt to ‘I Am The Walrus’, you can in turn hear its influence on the early work of prog-rock acts like Caravan and Yes. The opening bars of ‘Afterglow (Of Your Love)’, which sound like they were grafted onto the main track, feature a crooning Lane vocal but Marriott quickly takes control. The combination of Ian McLagan’s exquisitely executed electric harpsichord trills, an enraptured lyric with not a hint of irony in sight and quite possibly Marriott’s best ever blue- eyed soul vocal, makes this a crowning achievement. Too good to languish on an album, it became a posthumous hit
67
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