On Friday, May 6th, ‘Hey Girl’ c/w ‘Almost Grown’ went into the record shops. The following week it was in the charts, eventually peaking at number twelve. The song was a jaunty sing-along, the sound of compromise between band and management. Arden had told Steve and Ronnie that he would only consider their own material if they were catchy little numbers with mass appeal. ‘Hey Girl’ was just that song.
As with ‘Grow Your Own’, the B-side to ‘Sha La La La Lee’, the band placed a vibrant instrumental on the flip side to ‘Hey Girl’, a signal to their Mod audience that they had not left them or their influences behind. ‘Almost Grown’ is distinguished by Ian McLagan’s keyboard playing, its dramatic intro and the chant the band come in with halfway through, reminding the listener of the famous Lowell Fulsom song, ‘Tramp’, covered by Otis Redding and many others.
A week later the band’s debut album appeared and reached number three in the charts. It stayed around for weeks confirming the band’s increasing popularity.
The album is short on melody and defined by its dense, wildstyle R&B music.
‘Come On Children’, ‘E Too D’, ‘You Need Loving’ and their cover of ‘Shake’ – these are the songs at the heart of the album, designed to reflect the band’s musical roots.
Their musical structure, created from lengthy jams at the Ruskin, allows for many things; Marriott to show what a great singer he was, Kenney Jones to display a playing style he has rarely been called up since to replicate. The spirit of adventure within the band was reflected by their inventive use of feedback and dissonant noises.
There are poppier songs there – ‘It’s Too Late’, ‘Sorry She’s Mine’, ‘One Night Stand’ – and they serve to balance out the album. But it is the R&B aspect of their playing which satisfies the most.
Marriott knew that, as well.
He told the New Musical Express, ‘We ourselves prefer our LP tracks. We never thought “Sha La La La Lee” would do so well and “Hey Girl” we thought would do well but not shoot up so fast.’
‘I’m not saying that the singles we have had out are exactly what we want to do,’ he told another reporter. ‘But the album is. Anyone listening to the album will know it was exactly what we wanted to do at the time.’
Actually, Marriott would have done better to point out the mixes used for the French market. Released as an EP, the record carries the best recorded versions of ‘Shake’, ‘Come On Children’, ‘Whatcha Gonna Do About It’, and ‘E Too D’.
The instrumentation has more attack and to hear Marriott scream-shouting that he can’t stop his brain running wild, going wild, can’t stop it, is absolutely electric.
It was a natural talent, his voice. It had range and soul and emotion and no one but no one could figure out how he got it so powerful. Close your eyes, like Irish Jack did at the Goldhawk, and you will hear a voice that in no way whatsoever suggests that the owner is a five foot five Cockney geezer from Manor Park. No way.
But that’s precisely what he was and in terms of talent he was the leader of the pack, a pioneer.
The art of white musicians convincingly singing R&B has since been termed ‘blue eyed Soul’. But Marriott was too powerful for that category, always has been. By using R&B as his guide, his base, he, along with his contemporaries – the ones who gathered at Westmoreland Terrace – were now making sturdy bridges, musically and otherwise.
After the success of their first album and the ‘Hey Girl’ single, an employee of Robert Stigwood’s management company decided to contact the band, see where they stood as regards management.
Don Arden heard about the call, blew up into a massive rage. He contacted four well muscled friends, took a trip to Stigwood’s London office where he barged into his office, picked up an ashtray and smashed it so hard upon the desk that the wood split into two.
He then lifted the impresario from his chair, dragged him onto a balcony and held him face down. Arden then asked his ‘friends’ out loud if he should drop the unfortunate man or not?
Drop him, came the reply. Stigwood went rigid with shock. Arden pulled him back into his office.
Don’t ever interfere with any of my bands ever again, he told Stigwood before marching off. Within days the story had done the rounds of the music industry thus cementing Arden’s tough man reputation.
‘I don’t believe this story about Stigwood getting in touch with us,’ Mac states.
Excellent manager, said Stevie Marriott, excellent.
***
Towards the end of May, the Small Faces played at the Top Rank Ballroom, Sunderland. Rave magazine asked Marriott to write about the gig and his report also appeared in Beat Instrumental. It begins with Marriott waking up early but leaving the house late.
‘We stopped off once or twice on the route,’ Marriott wrote, ‘and of course when we went into transport cafes, we got the usual wise-cracks and whistles; but we’re used to them by now. We finally arrived in Sunderland at about 6.20 pm. so we went for a quick meal and then decided to go straight on to the booking. Trouble was, we didn’t really know where it was. We looked round for someone to ask and stopped a couple of rocker types. They looked at us, then at each other, then turning back to us one of them said... well I can’t really print what they said, but it was rather rude. “Charming,” said Plonk, “but what can you expect from these Elvis Is God types. Finally a little old lady told us how to get there. Funny how we always seem to meet them.”’
Marriott now describes the dressing room before a gig.
‘This is always when the nerves start playing you up... we all show our nerves in a different way. Take Kenney for instance, he comes over all exuberant, he runs about punching people and playing on your head with his sticks. Plonk just laughs all the time, you can’t shut him up, he keeps on laughing. Mac goes very, very quiet, won’t say a word. Me? Well, I don’t know, it’s hard to tell what you’re like yourself. All I know is that I get very panicky.’
The band are taken to the venue’s revolving stage which they climb on to, waiting for the records to finish and the lights to come on.
‘At last the records stayed off and the bloke at the side of the stage gave us the thumbs up,’ he stated, ‘and round we swung into a deafening wall of shouts and screams and hundreds of people clawing the stage.
We went straight into ‘Ooh Poo Pa Doo’ and I got that great feeling that everything was just fine. The amps were giving us a beautiful sound and I was really pleased with my guitar. After ‘Ooh Poo’ we went into ‘You Need Love’ (sic) and whoops – all of a sudden the whole crowd came screaming at us. We just ran over the back of the stage, amps were going down, wires tripped us up.’
The band retreat to the dressing room whilst the stage manager and his assistants run on stage and try and hold back the screaming hordes. Eventually, after order is restored, the audience is told to sit on the floor or the band will not re-appear.
‘Surprisingly enough,’ Marriott notes, ‘they did what he said and we went back on stage. It was a scream seeing everyone on the floor but off we went again. We did a few more numbers and everyone seemed to be ok but when we got to ‘Sha La La La Lee’, they all went mad, they got up and came after us again. We finished up pretty smartish and ran off.’
The group return to the dressing room and, according to Marriott, pat each other on the back and then swig down several cokes. Nice. The girls are kept back from the band and for that Marriott is grateful. He then relates how at one gig in Warrington he came off stage, entered the dressing room and saw a girl peeping through the adjoining toilet door. When the door was opened thirty girls fell out.
‘I counted them.’ Marriott said ‘and I almost collapsed laughing.’
It was a typical scene from the concerts of that time. Band comes onstage, plays a song, the girls scream, the girls attack, chaos ensues, gig finishes, everyone home by ten.
In June, in East Kilbride, Scotland, Marriott would be knocked unconscious when fans invaded the stage. Later on, Mac and Ronnie had similar experiences. Yet there was an upturn to all this craziness. Success puts you in the driving seat.
In mid-May the band felt strong enough to turn down the popular Thank Your Lucky Stars show after being told they could only perform one song.
‘We’d been opening everything,’ Lane complained to the NME. ‘They were beginning to call us the Small Openers. We had a number in the top ten at the time.’
They even argued for a week with the prestigious Top Of The Pops show after again being asked to be show openers.
Surprisingly, they win the fight and go on to triumphantly perform ‘Hey Girl’.
***
The album is still top three. More gigs, more mayhem.
On Friday, June 10th their hectic schedule claims a victim. Steve Marriott. At the Ready Steady Go! studios the Small Faces began playing ‘Hey Girl’ for the cameras. Just as they are reaching the song’s end, Marriott moves back from the microphone in obvious distress. Sensing an upset, the director tells the camera to pull away as the band stop playing.
Their frontman had collapsed, fainted.
Major fan Marilyn Einsor was watching the show at home on television. ‘Oh I went into floods of tears when I saw Steve like that,’ she reveals. ‘I phoned Bridget straight away. I said, “Did you just see what’s happened?” She said, “I can’t talk to you I’m too upset”.’
So was Vicki Wickham, the show’s producer.
‘I did not know that he was on whatever he was on,’ she recalls, ‘but he passed out in the studio. We were all concerned, thought he had flu or something and it was only then did someone say. “Oh you know, he’s taken too much” whatever it was.’
Marriott was taken back to his Pimlico abode where he spent a couple of days recuperating. His actions had no effect as far as future appearances on the important RSG! show went.
‘I just remember him being a real sweetheart,’ Wickham says. ‘If we liked somebody we could book them whenever we wanted and the Small Faces were perfect for Ready Steady Go! They were a Mod group, they were cute, they had great music, they were right up our street.’
Marriott went back on the road.
There was Burnley, Sheffield, London, Purley, then onto Reykjavik in Iceland, back after two days, a quick BBC interview Saturday, off to Germany on Sunday, a week of gigs there and then back to England and up to Hull, back to London, onto the Isle of Man, then Maryport, Luton, Nottingham, Blackburn, London, Coventry, Plymouth and at the end of July, the Sixth National Jazz and Blues Festival held at Windsor racecourse.
‘The first time I saw the Small Faces was at the jazz festival. Everybody in the business was talking about them,’ says writer Chris Welch who would cover Marriott in Melody Maker for years to come.
‘I first met Steve at Top Of The Pops in 1966. He was just a ball of energy. I remember him being very raucous and very rude to a girl reporter from one of the music weeklies.
‘Steve and Ronnie were mercilessly taking the piss out of her and she went off in a huff. If somebody upset him, he could be really nasty. He saw himself as the Small Faces spokesman and he was never very comfortable with the other guys doing interviews. In that way he was a total control freak.’
The Small Faces’ press had been assigned to an agent named Tony Brainsby. He too had something of the Ardens about him. Welch recalls him making up all kinds of silly stories to get the band exposure.
‘I remember him announcing that the Small Faces were going to appear in a film with Brigitte Bardot. Steve read this and got quite excited about the prospect until he realised it was just a publicity prank. He was really gutted.’
When that story faded, Brainsby then announced another film project, this time starring the band and the actress, Jayne Mansfield .
‘I have never met Jayne Mansfield,’ Ian McLagan said in a press release, ‘but I’m looking forward to filming. It will be a new experience altogether.’
I’m sure it won’t be.
***
At Tony Brainsby’s office worked a young secretary, name of Jenny Rylance. She was a London University student who was friends with the young designer, Ossie Clark. Jenny was an intriguing character. She was studying philosophy, she was gorgeous and she was dating a young London singer called Rod Stewart.
In Paul Gorman’s book The Look she is described as ‘the ultimate ’60s rock chick.’
When Steve Marriott walked into Brainsby’s office and saw her for the very first time, he flipped, despite his ongoing relationship with Sue Oliver.
‘I liked him straight away,’ Jenny reveals. ‘He was very funny and we got on very well but that was all it was for quite a long time.’
That’s not surprising. Time always moves differently after you meet the woman who will be your first wife.
What a summer and what a great time to live in London. Everywhere you look, all is bright; all is energy. New shops here, new club there, all fantastic.
That’s of course if your daddy is rich, your wage packet full and you live on the King’s Road or in London’s West End.
Otherwise, much of London was not bright, was not inspiring. Notting Hill, Hoxton, Camden, if you had told their 1966 residents how desirable their property would become in the not so distant future, they would have laughed until they dropped.
In 1965, US magazine Time had dubbed the capital ‘Swinging London’ but that was only the young and the very well heeled they were describing, the elite. For a large family stuck on the top floor of a tower block in East Ham, the Sixties was a different game altogether. No room to swing a cat and mouths to feed, bills to pay and every morning waking up to another day on the sweat line.
‘The Sixties are as much a state of mind as a chronological concept. And like all states of minds they are open to many interpretations,’ writes Jonathan Green in his book All Dressed Up.
For Steve Marriott the Sixties were ‘marvellous.’ That was the word he used to describe his time there when he spoke to the NME in 1984, ‘marvellous.’
Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? He had escaped school, factory and office. He had made his life exciting for both himself and those close to him. He had pursued his yellow brick road and he hadn’t tripped up yet.
The wider euphoria of the sixties reached a fever pitch in July 1966, when England beat West Germany to win the World Cup.
A month later, the Beatles released their groundbreaking album Revolver. Again, new ideas, fresh, exciting.
But what really caught people, was that the record was the first to show off the effect of taking LSD. And in 1966, LSD was the drug everyone was talking about.
The ingredients for LSD had been accidentally discovered by one Dr. Hoffman. In the ’50s, his discovery made its way to the CIA, the American secret service, of all people, who tested it on their own people to assess its potential value for warfare.
Enthusiasts such as Dr. Timothy Leary and writer Ken Kesey latched onto LSD in the early ’60s. Their public support for the drug gave birth to the American hippie movement and switched the focus on youth away from Swinging London over to San Francisco. Now LSD was available in London. No wonder everyone was excited.
Pills and dope, that was the Small Faces at the time. But, in 1966, they would be exposed to LSD and it would markedly alter their lives, their music and their direction.
The band had been introduced to the drug by the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein. On May 11th, he and the Moody Blues drummer, Graeme Edge, turned up at the front door of the band’s Pimlico residence. The boys had met Edge at the Decca studios in West Hampstead, got on well with him and invited him to an all night rave at Westmoreland Terrace. He brought along his friend, Brian Epstein, who had with him oranges spiked with LSD. These were soon offered around on their arrival.
‘I didn’t take the stuff,’ Kenney Jones says, ‘but the others did. The only time I took it was down at Portland Studios when Marriott spiked my drink.’
In his book All The Rage Mac McLagan recalls Ronnie Lane and he wandering out to sit by the Thames whilst Marriott stayed behind at the house and began packing his bags to go to Manchester and visit Sue Oliver at her parents. When they finally return to the house, their perceptions still all at sea, they go to Marriott’s room, see how their leader is faring.
‘He was not what I’d call a particularly balanced person,’ Mac writes, ‘and he was rarely relaxed, and in the same way that acid can lead you to the heights of illumination and wonder, it can also take you down to the depths of your darkest fears.’
Marriott was not enjoying himself.
To help him through the bad trip, Mac, Ronnie and friend Mick O’Sullivan escorted Marriott to Euston railway station where he caught the train to Manchester. The boys returned to Pimlico and fell asleep.
The next day, Marriott is back in the house. He had spent the previous day arguing with Sue’s parents who demanded proof of his commitment to their daughter. In the midst of a brutal comedown, whilst still on acid, Steve Marriott finished the relationship for good.
‘He only wanted to get laid, not married,’ Mac notes.
Despite Marriott’s bad time with the drug, LSD was quickly added to the weekly shopping list.
‘We took acid very seriously,’ Ronnie Lane announced in 1993. They certainly did. The drug changed their songs, their clothes, and their characters. By 1968, the bassist would be a devotee of the mystic Meher Baba, and endlessly ruminating on life and the universe. Marriott would soon complain that his friend was fast disappearing up his own cosmos.
Ronnie had forgotten the unwritten Small Faces rule about life; everything is or can be reduced to a joke. Even mystics from India who tell you don’t worry, be happy.
***
Around this time the Small Faces added a new song to their live set, ‘Good Lovin’’ by the Young Rascals.
‘Good Lovin’’ suited the Small Faces. It was built around a ‘La Bamba’-type rhythm, enlivened by organ stabs and a suitably energetic vocal – strange they only played it once then.
But then Marriott was always more of a lover of records than a follower of groups. Music inspired him in a way people never could.
‘I get lots of ideas for songs from noises on other records,’ he told Dawn James of Rave in 1966.
‘I listen to all kinds of music, and the things I conjure up in my mind’s eye spur me on to write my own sounds about them. Music makes more music.’
Asked whether it mattered if groups were unable to reproduce their records on stage, he firmly stated, ‘I think it would matter if the group were poor musicians and played dud chords and sang flat. But to have lots of interesting mechanical sounds on records that are part of the songwriter’s theme, especially when the writer is a member of the group, doesn’t matter at all. I call that progress. Records must be made more and more interesting and you can’t allow yourself to be limited and not use the equipment and the gimmicks available.’
He didn’t have to for ‘All Or Nothing’.
It was their fifth single and, to date, their best. According to Marriott it was created in the studio. He told Richard Green as much when he was interviewed by him in early September for Record Mirror. It’s an interesting article. Green arrives at the Pimlico house where a line of girls are loyally keeping guard outside. Steve meets Green wearing nothing but shorts and a housecoat. In a separate room, Green can hear Plonk messing around on an amplified guitar. Marriott and Lane take the writer to a room upstairs, the girls briefly see them at the window, and scream. Marriott goes off, gets changed walks back into the room with Mac in tow.
Marriott then puts on a John Patton album and settles down to talk.
‘It’s great,’ he says of ‘All Or Nothing’. ‘This is the first proper record we’ve done instead of all that Mickey Mouse stuff like ‘Sha La La La Lee’.’
‘We take writing far more seriously now than we used to,’ he reveals of the single. ‘I don’t think there is anything the Small Faces could do to improve ‘All Or Nothing’. With some of the other numbers we could have done a much better job if we could spend more time on them.’
Marriott adds that the group currently work in blocks of two-hour recording sessions and these time constraints are starting to bother them. In fact, if it wasn’t for Arden visiting the studio, their new single may never have seen the light.
‘When we were doing a session, Don [Arden] came in to watch us. Don gets the hump if he doesn’t hear a hit. You can play him the melody but he can’t hear the end product right away. We could see he was fed up.
‘So I just played him an idea I had. The organ hadn’t played it, the drum hadn’t played it, the bass hadn’t played it, but I’d thought about it so I let him hear it. He liked it so we re-wrote it on the spot and it turned out to be ‘All Or Nothing’.
‘We can’t have a go at him.’ Marriott continued, ‘because he turned out to be right. The record has been accepted far more than any of the others.’
The pride in their single is obvious and justified.
For the first time they have managed to produce a record which meets everybody’s criteria – commercial enough for Arden to sell, serious and inventive enough for the boys to feel proud about.
Furthermore, ‘All Or Nothing’ displays, apart from the usual Small Faces elements – Marriott and Lane’s unquestionable talent for creating unique arrangements.
‘All Or Nothing’ begins with a loud drum roll, an idea maybe taken from the Young Rascals’ song, ‘Baby Let’s Wait’. The song then hits a tricky guitar riff which cleverly acts as if it is actually winding the song down, not introducing it. The effect is disorientating until Marriott’s vocal enters, soft, controlled.
Quickly, his voice and the music gather pace, both delighted to know that a powerful chorus awaits them. Later on, a touch of the band’s humour when the backing vocals switch to a chanting style and then are suddenly disrupted by Marriott’s voice and guitar. Heady stuff.
Marriott and Lane were a great, often sublime songwriting partnership (whatever the nature of the relationship) but their strength also lay in how they constructed their records, giving them an ever changing pattern which bestowed upon them a style of their own; no mean feat in an age dominated by song-writing talents whose work still reaches us to this day.
In all the interviews the band conducted around the single’s August 5th release, the same mantra is to be heard. We must progress, we have to change, we’re onto something now and new. Now and new, that was the ’60s for you.
Kay Marriott: ‘He wrote “All Or Nothing” for Sue Oliver.’
Jenny Rylance: ‘He told me that he wrote “All Or Nothing” as a result of my split with Rod Stewart.’
And both stories are absolutely true.
***
Work to do. Promotion. August 5th, a Friday, ‘All Or Nothing’ is released. That same day, another Ready Steady Go! show to perform on.
The next day, the Imperial Ballroom in Nelson. Then its Sunday in Blackpool, Monday in Bath, Tuesday in Southport. Wednesday, more TV. On August 10th the band record a TV special at the Granada Studios in Manchester. They play nine songs, the singles to date plus various album tracks. They also perform a version of Little Richard’s ‘Bama Lama Bama Loo’. Unfortunately, Granada decide not to transmit the show.
The group journey back to London for their eighth appearance on Top Of The Pops and on the Friday night they start a package tour alongside minor talents, such as Crispian St. Peters.
The tour begins at the Lewisham Odeon. The NME reported: ‘Certainly one of the most exciting stage acts I have ever seen was presented by the Small Faces... Steve Marriott is the vocal and focal point of the group and as such never stops his full power delivery. When he’s not actually bawling into the mike, he cavorts about the stage with his guitar, often spinning backwards on one leg like an out of control top..Hundreds of girls chanting, “We Want Steve,” held buses up for twenty minutes after the show when they blocked the road behind the theatre.’
The next week another writer for the very same paper calls the show ‘one of the most mediocre packages I have seen for a long time.’
The press, eh?
Kay Marriott attended a lot of the gigs. Had done so from the early days and was witness to the screams and the turmoil.
‘I used to get quite concerned when the bouncers were being unkind to the girls, because they were rough, you know,’ she remembers.
‘At some stage you’d see the girls being passed over their heads while they were performing, all these bodies going over. But a lot of them hadn’t passed out. Really it was just a way to get onstage. They just used to go hysterical. Stand up, scream. It was quite frightening, really. And all I could see was the veins on Steve’s neck standing out because he was giving it his all and you couldn’t hear him because of the screaming.’
The serious pop collector, Dave Fowell, tells me, ‘I was speaking to a female assistant in our local Spa shop who is 51 years old and still has a perfect c.1966 Mod/Small Faces hairstyle. She saw them live, said that they wore matching white shirts, were very good, very loud, as were the screaming girls and that the crush downstairs was so great that she and her friends had to escape upstairs to the balcony! A female friend of my wife, who at the time was living in Knutsford, Cheshire, also saw them in Manchester with her girlfriends and only remembers the screaming and crying girls.’
John Perry, who would later play guitar for the Only Ones, recalls seeing them at this time. ‘Even in a medium size provincial town like Bristol there was always a minimum three gigs a week in the mid-60s. The Who, the Creation, the Byrds, Downliners Sect, Graham Bond, Cream, Steampacket, Mayall, all were regularly playing the Locarno, Top Rank or the Corn Exchange. The thing people always seem to leave out when they talk about the Small Faces onstage is how funny they were, a bit like the Pistols when Glen was still in the band. They put a lot of energy into the show – and Marriott sung like a dream in those days before he developed that overdone “Humble Pie voice” – but they put just as much energy into trying to crack each other up. I saw Marriott and Lane reduced to hopeless giggling; it was only the volume that allowed them to ride it out. Their onstage patter was VERY funny. Dry. Spare. A matter of little knees-ups, sly glances... corner of the eye stuff that I, as a kid trying to form groups and interested in how members interacted, watched real closely. They were a riot. Later on, the Faces did a similar routine but it was more self-conscious. Great band.’
Ann Moody, now appeared on the scene, following the band all over the country with friend Rita Fox. Her devotion to the band resulted in the band nicknaming her ‘Mad Ann’. They liked her chutzpah, the strokes she pulled to get into sold out gigs and then get backstage. They liked her so much they started leaving her free tickets at every gig she came to. They even visited her in hospital after she accidentally put her hand through a glass window.
‘The gigs were just like the Beatles, it really was,’ she confirms. ‘You couldn’t hear them on stage at all for all the screaming. They could have been playing anything.’
At the end of every gig, a road crew member would come out, ignore all the waiting lovelies and give her and Rita the first backstage passes.
‘A lot of the girl fans couldn’t believe it,’ she says. ‘They were all done up beautifully and looked just like models from a fashion magazine. They were amazed that ordinary fans like myself and Rita were shown favour by the band. A lot of girls tried just about every trick in the book to reach the dressing room but very few were successful. They loved all the female attention at first, especially Steve, but it soon became a nuisance.
‘Steve was a bit of a Jack the Lad but he was lovely with the fans and always looked after them with autographs and the like. He was difficult to get close to, though. We were both the same birth signs, Aquarius, and we would fight and argue quite a lot. Nothing too serious just differences of opinions on things like music. He could also be very moody at times and I recall back then arguments with Ronnie.’
Arguments with Ronnie, they were kind of inevitable really. Marriott was strongheaded, stubborn, knew where he wanted to go and always relied on his instincts, it is what gave his music a unique flavour.
Ronnie sometimes disagreed with his views and said so as well. And that’s when the Marriott mouth would snap open and attack.
Keith Altham: ‘Steve was the boiler room of the Small Faces. He did all the hard work and although the Marriott-Lane partnership was a clever one, it was never anywhere near 50-50. It was Steve who supplied the backbone to all the hits. When he took new songs into the studio the rest of the band would chip in with ideas – even Mac and Kenney – but Steve always had the last word. Even Ronnie’s ideas would have to be bloody good for Steve to accept them.’
Yet, fights aside, the band’s personal camaraderie remained unaltered. Richard Green, again for Record Mirror, visited them backstage after a gig.
‘Steve and Plonk,’ he told his readers, ‘frequently use the word “nice” in their conversation. “This sounds nice, she’s nice” and so on. It seems to be an in word with them.’
It was. The band used it as drug slang. Good pill. Nice. Good smoke. Nice.
‘If that’s what they’re like in public,’ Green mused, ‘goodness knows what goes on in the seclusion of their house where they all live together. Must be a sort of Mod’s satirical palace.’
The Mod’s satirical palace, what a fetching phrase! Mind you, Green was not above taking liberties with the English language himself. Describing his entrance into a dressing room covered in marijuana smoke, he reports, ‘There was a very strong smell of asthma cure in their dressing room when I went in and through the fumes I could just about make out the figure of Steve Marriott sitting on the back of a chair playing a guitar...’
***
‘All Or Nothing’, it was an appropriate title for their first number one. And thanks to a change in the way the charts were compiled, the week they hit the top spot they shared it with none other than the Beatles and their flimsy single ‘Yellow Submarine’. On Top Of The Pops that week, the show blended two pictures of the bands together.
That year, Steve would add the Lennon and McCartney song ‘Paperback Writer’ to the band’s live set list and come out in defence of John Lennon after his statement that ‘the Beatles were bigger than Jesus,’ blew up in his face.
‘He was right to think it,’ Steve told Melody Maker, ‘but not to say it. Religion is dying in this country...’
To celebrate their chart topper, the band were taken to Carnaby Street and photographed sipping champagne. Mods and Moet, surely, no picture could be more appropriate.
***
Fame. It was his now. He was the centre of attention, every day, and that was good, felt great. But somehow it didn’t because Fame didn’t make him feel how he thought he would feel when he lay awake in Manor Park all those years ago and imagined himself famous.
Steve Marriott was starting to realise that Fame has many many faces and you have to be very careful which one you choose to wear. Or which chooses you. Fame was also hard work. On Thursday August 18th, the band tape a version of ‘All Or Nothing’ for Top Of The Pops and then dash up to Glasgow for two shows. After the gig, fans catch the band outside the hotel. Mac ends up in a police station for his own protection, Lane is rushed to hospital. It was his turn to be knocked unconscious by the hysterical fans. Friday, Newcastle, Saturday, Liverpool, over to Blackpool for Sunday, two shows in Manchester Monday, two in Cardiff on Tuesday, two in Exeter on Wednesday, Southampton the next night before back to London for another Ready Steady Go!
Lincolnshire on Saturday, Blackpool on Sunday, Hersham on Monday, radio on Tuesday, TV on Thursday, Northwich on Saturday, Blackpool on Sunday, two shows in Manchester on Monday, over to Cardiff for Tuesday, dash to Exeter for Wednesday night, final night of the tour in Southampton on Thursday. There he would meet a young promoter, name of Laurie O’Leary who eleven years later would become his personal manager.
‘Steve Marriott appears at the soundcheck,’ O’Leary recalls, ‘and from this little guy came the loudest voice I’d ever heard. It was so loud I asked him if he could keep it down a little and he replied, “How the fucking hell can I keep it down? I gotta hear myself sing.”
‘The gig was jam-packed, absolute chaos, a superb evening. We all made a lot of money. This young kid with the larynx like you’ve never heard in your life before made an enormous impact on me. The others in the group were good but it was this boy that done it for me.
‘His language though... we didn’t like swearing in the place but there was young Stevie breaking every rule in the book. He managed to swear often and loudly but nobody would take any notice or exception to it. It was almost like being down at Millwall.’
***
The short tempers created by their work schedule are reflected in the press.
To Rave magazine, Marriott finally lets loose.
‘Doing TV can be a real drag. If you’re not prepared for it, it can be depressing, especially when you have to hang around doing nothing. Glamour in TV? It doesn’t exist.
‘You get in about 11 am then wait around for your call – maybe for hours. Then you rehearse for about an hour, over and over again, the actual broadcast is over before you know it.
‘We were playing Leeds one night and we had to record a Simon Dee backing track in London. We flew down to London, recorded the track and were then driven back to Glasgow for the night’s performance.
‘When you’re travelling round all the time, you just lose all resistance, and you just crack up. If you can go on some kind of sporting kick then you’ll be all right.
‘You don’t get any time to sleep, except in the car, and that’s quite hard enough. Long tours are also killers. You’ve got the same thing every day, routine and all that, plus the fact that you’re travelling. It can get on top of you.’
***
In the September 10th Melody Maker, proof of the wonders of LSD as Marriott enthuses about the band’s plans to use glasses of water as rhythmic instruments for their next album, a device they discovered whilst waiting at Manchester Airport. ‘We’ve got a whole lot of confused ideas that have got to be sorted out and put into their slots and boxes,’ the band leader stated. His sergeant in arms was right behind him.
‘We’ve gotta do something different now,’ Ronnie Lane was telling Record Mirror at the same time.
‘We’d get left behind if we kept on with the same thing all the time.’
Everybody else was feeling the same way, determined to put out singles that radiated quality, ambition, newness.
That autumn alone there was ‘Sunny Afternoon’ by the Kinks, the achingly beautiful King and Goffin song ‘Goin’ Back’ performed by Dusty Springfield, Phil Spector’s last studio gamble, the titanic sound of Tina Turner on ‘River Deep, Mountain High’, and there backing them up, Brian Wilson’s ‘God Only Knows’, one of the greatest love songs ever committed to vinyl and, at the time, maybe the most revolutionary piece of music to be spilling out onto sunny London streets. In the middle of all this, the mercurial Bob Dylan ordered that ‘Everybody must get stoned’, and it seemed like the whole of London town was taking his advice.
That new music, those new drugs, no wonder Steve Marriott now began talking about getting more time in the studio and spending far less time onstage.
‘What we really want to do,’ he told Melody Maker, ‘is hire a studio and work in it night and day until everything is exactly how we wanted it.’
He had had enough of seeing his musical ambitions unrealised. ‘All Or Nothing’ had brought that frustration to the surface.
Arden was not amused by his boys’ artistic intentions. In fact, they made him very edgy. Work all day on a song? In a studio? You off your rockers?
All Arden required was the band to keep coming up with chart songs which they could then take on the road and play to their loyal and devouring fans. Records and gigs, money, money, money.
Arden believed the new drugs made the boys lazy, slowed them down. LSD didn’t propel you out into the night air, brimming with confidence. It stopped you in your tracks and then opened up another universe for you to experience. At least those French Smith Kline pills the band swallowed gave them energy, allowed Arden to work them that much harder. LSD merely gave them silly ideas about recording.
Arden knew he had to get to grips with the band’s drug use. How to do it, though? If he ordered one of his employees to guard them full time, say Mad John, it would be four against one and they would run rings around him. Who could he turn to?
He got his answer the day he got a phone call from the band’s parents requesting an interview to talk about money.
Arden saw his chance. Of course, why didn’t he think of it before? If he couldn’t get them off the drugs, then he knew some parents who could.
***
In one of the John Stephens shops in Carnaby Street, 1966, on sale, Steve Marriott wigs priced three pounds, nineteen shillings and sixpence.
‘They never seemed to have much cash but they always had new clothes,’ Fran Piller, their fan club girl recalls. ‘They always had new clothes for the concerts.’
Keith Altham: ‘Steve was a natural clothes horse, unusual for a guy of his height. Back in 1966, Steve was really up for the male modelling lark. It paid a good fee and got your face on the front cover.
‘There would be a really cool pic of Steve and down the page it would say things like, Shoes From Ravel, £19.00, Trousers From Lord John, and so on. Although it was good fun the problem was it didn’t help Steve’s desire later on to be taken seriously.’
That year, the band would proudly announce that they had spent some £12,000 on clothes alone. In 1966, that was a fortune and one of the reasons why Marriott’s friend Hugh Janes, loved visiting him. He too got to share in the bonanza.
‘Steve and the others would buy enormous amounts of clothes in Carnaby Street,’ he recalled. ‘If they liked a particular shirt he’d buy one in every colour that it came in, same for jackets, jumpers, etc. After wearing something just once he’d throw them on a pile in his bedroom and invite me to help myself. I’ve had literally dozens of shirts and some nice leather jackets from Steve in that way.
‘Ronnie was also very free with his clothes but not Kenney and Mac. They were more careful with their belongings. Steve never kept specific items of clothing for stage wear. He would go on stage in whatever he was wearing at the time. Obviously he would change after a gig as invariably his clothes would be soaking with sweat.’
That’s of course if he got to finish the show.
***
On that very same Carnaby Street, four sets of parents belonging to the band walk past the Marriott wigs and the stripey jumpers and the patterned shoes and the flashing neon lights, wincing at the loud pop music blaring out and they exit left from Planet Teenage and enter the office door numbered 52-55 Carnaby Street.
They go and sit down in front of Don Arden and they say, ‘Where’s our boys’ money? Two shows a night, album in the charts, singles in the charts and they’re still on twenty quid a week.’
And Don Arden looks at them all innocently and he says, ‘Money? Gone, they’ve spent it all on drugs.’
And in that one moment every misgiving Kay Marriott ever had about Don Arden was unforgettably crystalised; she had been right all along, the man was a wrong’un.
‘I said to him, “You took them away from home. This is what you wanted.”’
Steve’s quote to Dawn James about being too lazy to be dishonest now bears fruit. Marriott never hid his use of marijuana from his parents. Instead, he admitted to it and then argued with them over the matter.
‘When Steve first spoke about it,’ his mum remembers, ‘I was absolutely horrified and terribly upset. He said to me, “Don’t be frightened; there’s books and things. Read about it and you’ll realise that smoking cigarettes and things like that are far more addictive.” At the time it was frightening. We had never dealt with it or heard about it. So that was worrying.’
Therefore, when Arden made his move, he hadn’t counted on the Marriott’s foreknowledge of the subject.
Bill Marriott: ‘Steve had already come clean with us some time before and said he was smoking joints. We didn’t like it but he said it was a social thing. He doesn’t smoke them all the time but he goes to a party and they pass it round, so it’s a social thing. Of course, the other parents didn’t know and they were really shocked. The way Arden put it, they were on drugs. Not that they are smoking a joint which is very different. I said to Arden, “That’s alright we know.” And that shocked him then.’
One up to the Marriotts. At least Kay and Bill had that satisfaction. What made it funnier was Ronnie Lane’s later comment on the matter.
‘Well my old man smoked a bit of hashish himself so he wasn’t too worried either.’
Still, for the band’s manager to play such a trick behind his boys’ back was unforgiveable.
Don Arden’s grip on the Small Faces had just been considerably loosened.