Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 89

Record label: Immediate

Produced: Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane

Recorded: Olympic Studios, London; 1967

Released: June 1967

Chart peaks: 12 (UK) None (US)

Personnel: Steve Marriott (g, v); Ronnie Lane (b, v); Ian McLagan (k, v); Kenny Jones (d); Glyn Johns (e)

Track listing: (Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me; Something I Want To Tell You; Feeling Lonely; Happy Boys Happy; Things Are Going To Get Better; My Way Of Giving; Green Circles; Become Like You; Get Yourself Together; All Our Yesterdays; Talk To You; Show Me The Way; Up The Wooden Hills To Bedfordshire; Eddie’s Dreaming

Running time: 28.26

Current CD: Castle CMETD is a 3-disc boxed set of the albums from the Immediate years

Further listening: Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake (1968); posthumous compilation, The Autumn Stone (1969)

Further reading: All The Rage: A Riotous Romp Through Rock’N’Roll History (Ian McLagan, 1998); All Too beautiful – The Life And Times Of Steve Marriott (Paolo Hewitt and John Hellier, 2004); www.thesmallfaces.com (official); www.wappingwharf.com (fan site)

Download: Not currently legally available

Following their split with Decca and manager Don Arden at the end of 1966, the Small Faces signed to Immediate, an independent label run in a libertine spirit wholly in keeping with proprietor Andrew Oldham’s day job as The Rolling Stones’ manager. With virtually unlimited access to Olympic’s new 8-track facility, the Small Faces – under the auspices of virtuoso engineer Glyn Johns – began to experience a creative awakening akin to The Beatles’ in ’65, experimenting with multi-tracking and other studio trickery while expanding their minds with copious acid and ‘gear’.

The outcome was a rich, inventive and wonderfully cheery brew of folk, psychedelia, music hall, swing, soul and psychedelia, with a strong English baroque twist – McLagan often swapping his trademark Hammond for harpsichord. Congas, celeste and Mellotrons also enriched the sound, with brass (on the calypso-flavoured Eddie’s Dreaming) courtesy of Georgie Fame’s horn section.

‘We really were ahead of our time,’ says Kenny Jones. ‘We were fortunate that we had Glyn Johns; he was in our opinion the best engineer in Britain. He got us some amazing sounds and he encouraged us to be experimental.’

The contrast with the group’s first album on Decca (confusingly also titled Small Faces) – a nervy but one-dimensional R&B outing – is abundantly clear. Complementing Steve Marriott’s legendary lungs, Ronnie Lane sings on five tracks, while McLagan tackles his own utterly charming Up The Wooden Hills To Bedfordshire. Though Small Faces spawned no singles, and was soon eclipsed by the stellar success of their Summer Of Love Number 1, Itchycoo Park, it arguably captured better than any other contemporary British album the excitement, optimism and sheer fun of like-minded spirits journeying together through the acid era.