Entertainment For Lively Minds
A singer is it?
Posted by niallb on 24 June 2011 - 1:48pm.
Sit down, son. I'll give yer fecking singer.
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A great singer
and nice to see Steve's rare Epiphone Dwight guitar there, too
Love all that old school
Love all that old school Kinks stuff. Amazing.
He sounds too histrionic in that clip for me...
but I loved him in Small Faces.
I suspect a small libation
had been taken - or possibly the entire year's output of Columbian Marching Powder! Bless him!
Pie's "Rocking The Filmore"
could have been an absolute gem of an album, if only they could have reigned it all in a bit. Steve, just like Sting, Glenn Hughes, Dave Coverdale and even Ian Gillan were prone to the endless wailing and yodelling that reduces songs to a standstill. "Doctor" would typically weigh in at 8 minutes, by which time I'd long lost interest.
Later in life, playing pubs with "Packet of Three" Steve got back to four minute songs and could still belt them out like a demon.
the bass on that album
is just so feckin' heavy man
can't get enough of it
I loved that album
Excess and all.
personally
I loved his voice but Humble Pie were waay to average to serve such an amazing vocalist...
Now that's a fecking singer and that's the ONLY fecking band to back him....
Greatest single of the 60's bar none
I agree with you about Humble Pie but the sound and sheer "hold on tight, it's getting away" exuberance of the HP video is what attracted me. There is no disputing the majesty of The Small Faces - Mac's keyboard breakdown at 1' 17" is still one of the most heart-stopping moments in music history.
Hm, Hmmmm.
What must it feel like to be young today and see something like that?
Being a boring old rock trainspotter
Being a boring old rock trainspotter, I know that the other singer in that clip is Pat Arnold.
I also feel qualified to observe that she is, to use the quaint old rock bore phrase, "right off her tits on something or other". Good old Pat. A trooper, and still going strong.
the pie- the one song that lingered for me
a slower one
A Puzzle
The Small Faces were sooooo much better than The Faces,(for our younger viewers information, Marriot left the Small Faces to form Humble Pie and was replaced by Rod Stewart AND Ron Wood, and they became The Faces) yet the latter two achieved global stardom, whilst Steve is just a footnote in musical history. To underline my point, I have just called my 31 year old son, who loves 60's stuff. He knows who Rod and The Woodser were/are, but had only vaguely heard of Steve Marriot, and has no idea who or what he was.
I bow down to no one in my love for Stewart and Wood, but plainly in this case 1>1+1.
Did Marriot have a "problem" that stymied his career?
Anybody know?
A Puzzle
The Small Faces were sooooo much better than The Faces,(for our younger viewers information, Marriot left the Small Faces to form Humble Pie and was replaced by Rod Stewart AND Ron Wood, and they became The Faces) yet the latter two achieved global stardom, whilst Steve is just a footnote in musical history. To underline my point, I have just called my 31 year old son, who loves 60's stuff. He knows who Rod and The Woodser were/are, but had only vaguely heard of Steve Marriot, and has no idea who or what he was.
I bow down to no one in my love for Stewart and Wood, but plainly in this case 1>1+1.
Did Marriot have a "problem" that stymied his career?
Anybody know?
Songs
That's the answer. Ronnie Lane (together with Rod Stewart and Ron Wood) came up with some absolutely great songs for the Faces. And their image as the archetypical boozy good time band went down big in America at a time when stadium rock was just taking off. The Faces looked great on stage, there's no getting away from it, and their ramshackle sound and laddish image (eg booting balls into the crowd) was perfect for the time.
Despite starting out strongly with a big hit single (Natural Born Bugie) Humble Pie took a few years to find their market and their first three albums for Immediate were confused folky/prog affairs.
A label change to A&M kick-started their career in America and for a few years it's fair to say the Pie were actually bigger than the Faces (in the US at least). Peter Frampton left for a solo career in 1972 to be replaced by Clem Clemson. This line-up enjoyed huge success for a time but their style of generic stadium rock has dated badly compared to The Faces' song-based material.
It's significant that following the departure of Ronnie Lane in 1973, the Faces also went into decline, with Rod creaming off the best songs for his solo LPs.
So, great frontman/vocalist though Steve Marriott was, when starved of his songwriting partnership with Ronnie Lane, he couldn't sustain the momentum Humble Pie had built up.
That
is a seriously well-considered and well-worded answer. Cheers to you, Mojo.
Thank you sir
Most kind.
I should have added that Steve Marriott bailed out of the Small Faces in 1969 just as pop was evolving into rock. Had he stuck around a little longer the band may well have escaped the package tour circuit which had trapped them since 1965 and gone on to bigger things.
But the times were changing and Marriott had grandiose plans to leave his pop roots behind and form a hard-rockin' "serious" supergroup with members of The Herd (Frampton "the face of '68") and Spooky Tooth (Greg Ridley).
On paper it looked perfect and I distinctly remember thinking at the time that Marriott would surely go on to conquer the world with Humble Pie, while the rest of the Small Faces would likely never be heard from again.
What a good thing I didn't put money on it, eh?
Wasn't there a certain lack of ambition and confidence too?
Tony Wadsworth, the ex-EMI boss on the recent podcast, made an interesting point about how, talent aside, the most crucial factor behind most major pop music success stories is fierce ambition and determination. I get the impression that Steve Marriot, as well as being a wee-bit "undisciplined", was also pretty lackadaisical; he loved singing and playing but wasn't really that fussed about whether it was at Shea Stadium or the Red Cow. I've heard it said too that the reason The Small Faces never tried to "crack" America was because Steve didn't feel confident enough about singing and playing guitar at the same time and thought the group would look a bit second-rate and amateurish compared to the American acts he loved (e.g. The Ike & Tina Turner Revue). Hence the expanded Humble Pie line-up with Peter Frampton & The Blackberries.
There certainly was
a lack of discipline there. A friend who worked at one of the guitar stores in Denmark Street circa 1974 used to tell sad stories of Marriott bringing guitars and amps in to sell for ready cash.
Then the roadies would come and quietly re-possess them the next day before the finance company found out.
it is certainly
something to ponder
Ronnie
Well, I like the Small Faces. And the Faces. And Stewart's first few solo albums, when he was Rod the Mod.
But most of all I love these three records:
"Bring me fish with eyes of jewels
And mirrors on their bodies..."
I love The Small Faces..
..but this is as good as anything they recorded.
And it namechecks ...
As does this...