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Small Faces | Small Faces (Immediate, 1967) These days, the Small Faces are probably best remembered for the sad duality of their cheery outlook and tragic personal lives.  A band of cheeky Dickensian midgets (well, five-foot-four apiece) burdened by none of the portentous pretension of the era—a sort of anti-Doors—they lit up the sixties pop scene with some of most sparkling musical gems this side of Abbey Road Studios.  Yet the songwriting talent behind the group reached the 1980s doomed and penniless.

So let’s get the sad stuff out of the way.  The Small Faces hold the painful distinction of being the first of the classic 1960s four-pieces to lose a second member—before John Entwistle or George Harrison or John Phillips or Jim Capaldi, bass player and songwriter Ronnie Lane succumbed to pneumonia in 1997 as a result of Multiple Sclerosis.  Six years prior to that, front man and card-carrying force-of-nature Steve Marriott finally paid the price for his drug and alcohol abuse and lost his life in a house fire he may otherwise have escaped.  Neither man was especially career-minded, and their own bad judgement combined with the exploitative contracts of the day left them in poverty and receiving no royalties for their perennial hits.

Those of us lucky enough not to be Steve Marriott or Ronnie Lane, however, have been left with a small but perfectly-formed musical legacy.  Since its release and four-week stint at the top of the UK charts, their 1968 album Ogden’s Nutgone Flake—with its innovative round-sleeve, Victorian-styled artwork and nonsensical commentary from comedian Professor Stanley Unwin—has been hailed the all-time classic, but it’s the anonymous and plainer-sleeved predecessor which snuck under the radar that is the more satisfying and cogent piece of work.

If Odgen’s Nutgone Flake is the Cockney Sgt. Pepper (which it is: the retro sleeve design, the eclectic mix of musical styles, the fact that the sum of the parts is greater than the individual songs themselves), then Small Faces is the Cockney Revolver.  Fourteen perfect pop songs, each one standing on its own two feet.  None run longer than three minutes… in fact, five of them run under two minutes.  You’ll never be bored, that much is for sure!

The album kicks off with acoustic love song “(Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me.”  When I say acoustic love song, this is Marriott howling at the outside edge of his range and strumming his guitar so vigorously it threatens to snap in half.  This is passion and triumph: “Flowers are breaking through the concrete!” he cries in his best white soul voice, and you know he really means it.  Coupled with the song’s bizarre but catchy “Hyer hyer!  Hyer hyer-hyer hyer!” hook, few albums have ever opened so energetically or concisely.

Next, Ronnie Lane gasps his way through “Something I Want To Tell You,” enunciating his lines as if he’s just run up the stairs, while organist Ian McLagan does everything under the sun on his Hammond attempting to liven up the proceedings.  It borders on being a novelty song, but it does have a weirdly vulnerable charm.

Then it’s back for more Marriott acoustic power pop in “Feeling Lonely,” this one in waltz time.  A slightly ragged backing track is held together by Steve’s pleading vocals, deeper and more emotional than we’re used to, and further proof that he was head and shoulders the best British vocalist of his generation (rivalled only by the similar but much lazier Terry Reid).  Steve and Ron are also underrated lyricists, and far from churning out Spencer Davis style “nonsense for the sound of it”—read their lyrics in isolation if you don’t believe me—the Small Faces could be rich and evocative without sliding into period whimsy: “Things never change but they weaken/and I have these green memories/I have to feel your smile/I feel like I am part of a wheel.”

“Feeling Lonely” lasts only half as long as it should, quickly giving way to amiable instrumental “Happy Boys Happy,” followed by optimistic companion-piece to “Feeling Lonely,” “Things Are Going to Get Better,” another acoustic power-pop raver. Then, the not-wholly-dissimilar “My Way of Giving,” the latter marked out by its glowering mood, truly spectacular Marriott delivery and Kenney Jones’ trademark crashing drum fills.

Kenney Jones has another starring role in the next track, ambushing otherwise quiet verses with thundering drum rolls as vicious as they are fast, lending a searing juxtaposition to what is generally a measured and thoughtful song.  “Green Circles” is probably the best remembered track on Small Faces, and the surrogate title of the album for some early CD pressings, distinguishing it from the band’s also-eponymous 1966 debut.  Sounding more at home here, Ronnie Lane dips into his burgeoning spirituality to tell the tale of a wandering stranger, all woven into a beautiful descending melody.  Its title (apparently a reference to LSD use) and phased ending oversell it as one of the pinnacles of psychedelic achievement, as it is often mooted, but it is nonetheless a lovely acid-tinged pop ballad.

Side two is a distinctly funnier affair than side one, opening with a ridiculously catchy acoustic waltz called “Become Like You.”  The song is simultaneously achingly pretty and a tongue-in-cheek poke at some unnamed miscreant.  If I became like you, the song asks, “would my brains be where I sat?”  Ronnie and Steve echo each others’ lines with increasingly exaggerated Cockney accents, then apparently caught out by the coda Steve giggles incredulously, “Hello, they’re playing it again!”  That’s one of the beautiful things which sets the Small Faces apart from other bands of that (or any other) era: Steve and Ron weren’t afraid to laugh on record; even their televised performances of Odgen’s Nutgone Flake on UK TV show Colour Me Pop seemed to mainly comprise the pair chortling helplessly.

“Get Yourself Together” is now something of a pop classic among those in the know; never released as a 45, it nonetheless leaps off the record as the standout single contender with its distinctive vocal percussion, pre-empting the Zombies’ “Time of the Season” and double-time bass line pre-empting Queen/Bowie’s “Under Pressure” (or, if you’re less cool, “Ice Ice Baby”).  The equally jaunty promotional film sees Marriott being roughed up by three suspiciously short British bobbies.

The most overtly comic track on the album is “All Our Yesterdays.”  Actually a mournful ballad with a brass backing slightly reminiscent of “Got to Get You Into My Life,” the song is enlivened by the fact that vocalist Ronnie is heckled by the rest of the band throughout, yelling back “You get up here and do better!” at the fade and prompting another delightful Marriott chuckle.  Even more enjoyable is Steve’s shouted Mockney introduction:“And now for your delight, the darling of Wapping Wharf Launderette: Ronald ‘Leafy’ Lane!”, for my money beating “I am the lizard king” or anything else Jim Morrison ever had to say.

“Talk to You” is the one distinctively electric track on the album and much more redolent of the Small Faces’ tougher, more mod-oriented style of a few months previous, mainly because it’s an old b-side, that of “Here Comes the Nice,” which managed to sneak into the running order.  And very welcome it is too, with its jerky rhythm and Marriott’s full-steam-ahead delivery and Tourette yelps.  “Show Me the Way” follows, unrelated to the Peter Frampton song—a sad, sleepy Ronnie Lane vocal set against harpsichord and wobbly Leslie-filtered bass.  Fragile and plaintive in the extreme, this is another example of Ronnie’s spiritual side coming to the fore.  He would soon follow Pete Townshend into becoming a student of Indian guru Meher Baba.

Organist Ian McLagan is allowed a composing credit and lead vocal on the album with “Up the Wooden Hills to Bedfordshire” (obscure British slang for simply going to bed).  While the song is too energetic to properly evoke the hypnagogic state its author envisaged, with Steve strumming his acoustic guitar as if trying to kill it, it is nonetheless a standout track on Small Faces, richly layered and made all the more compelling by an off-rhythm ticking clock that punctuates the backing track occasionally.  Oddly, there’s a blood-curdling scream for no apparent reason right on the fade-out.

The album closes with, of all things, a Ronnie Lane calypso song, complete with flute and, like “Got to Get You Into My Life,” Georgie Fame’s brass section.  It’s a sunny, feel-good number, and at 2:50 something of an epic.  While inarguably a lot of fun, it veers off so sharply from the rest of the record that it makes a strange ending to what is a mere half an hour of Small Faces bliss, and doesn’t sit as comfortably into the set as it might.  Rumour has it that the snoring at the close of The Rolling Stones’ “In Another World” was intended for this number, but was left off due to lack of space on the four-track master; certainly Steve and Ron perform on both songs, Steve’s high vocals clearly audible in the chorus of the Bill Wyman number, if you listen carefully.

Finally, the band do a mickey-take of Sgt. Pepper, grunting and groaning for a few seconds in reference to the Beatles’ famous run-out groove.

Unlike Odgen’s Nutgone Flake, and many other albums of the psychedelic era, Small Faces is lean and mean, without an ounce of fat.  Always entertaining and crammed with musical and lyrical ideas, this is pop-rock at its best, a cheerily aggressive statement of intent from the funnest and funniest mainstream band of the era.

All that, and it would be another seven years before Ronnie Lane did his very best work.

Go to: Adam S. Leslie