Small But Mighty

The Small Faces were a group that existed from early 1965 until News year Eve 1968, racking up an impressive number of hits in England and Europe while barely denting the States. They never were able to tour America because of various drug busts and Steve Marriott's insecurities as a guitar player. Not quite breaking up, the Small Faces morphed into the Faces, which had world-wide success on the back of newly minted superstar Rod Stewart until 1975, when the group splintered. But I'm getting ahead of myself, and there are plenty of other major groups who will have a connection before this tale is over.

The Small Faces were THE mod band in England. Unlike the older Who, there was no posing; the four original members were plucked from obscurity by the nastiest promoter in all of Britain, Don Arden (father of Sharon Osbourne). Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia page on Don Arden about that meeting:

In 1965, Arden met aspiring rock band the Small Face sin his office in Carnaby Street. Half an hour later he had signed them up. Don Arden was immediately struck by the potential of Small Faces: "I thought at that time, on the first hearing, I thought it was the best band in the world." Kenney Jones, Small Faces' drummer, recalls: "He was kind of a Jewish teddy bear I suppose. You liked him immediately because he was enthusiastic and he talked about what he could do and what he couldn't do and whenever he said – 'I'll do this, I'll do that' – he did and it came true." The band's first hit was obtained by "chart-fixing", which cost Arden £12,000. Arden denied it was cheating: "I had a saying, you can't polish a turd. In other words, if the record's no good to begin with it still won't be any good after you've wasted your time and money getting it played."

Don Arden was the template for every mob connected business goon who threatened bodily harm to both his clients and anyone who tried to get close to them. Unlike the other managers. most of the stories of Don dangling clients or other managers out of third story windows while demanding concessions have been corroborated. Despite his horrid persona, he became involved, over his career, with everyone from Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent to Black Sabbath and Electric Light Orchestra.

Arden got them on the cover of every magazine and even in a movie, sure sign of managerial stewardship after Brian Epstein and the Beatles, even if the remark about just returning from America was a complete lie. The Small Faces, all of whom were five foot five inches or less, had more hits than misses under Arden, but in lieu of payment they received open lines of credit at clothing stores. Incredibly young, they never saw a penny from the Don Arden years until 2014.

Ditching their original organ player, Jimmy Winston, they hired Ian McLagan, a much better instrumentalist, who along with powerhouse drummer Kenney Jones, now gave the  band more musicality. Things were rocky with Arden, and when the group confronted him over royalty payments along with their parents (all members being under 21 at the time), he promptly told their parents that the entire band were heroin addicts. They weren't but they were hitting the lysergic pretty hard.

Going from the frying pan to the fire, they signed with another notorious manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. Loog had just jumped ship after being the manager of the Rolling Stones from 1964 to early 1967, afraid that the drug bust of Jagger and Richards was going to kill the group. He formed one of the first independent record labels and gave his groups nearly unlimited studio time. The Small Faces promptly went psychedelic in a big way, first in the whimsical style of the mid period Kinks.

The problem was that, as their music started to become more serious and move away from the hard pop style that had made them so successful, they couldn't penetrate the underground scene. The way in was the psychedelic dungeons of North America, and they couldn't go there. Instead, they did a tour of Australia with the Who (great personal friends) that ended with them being deported after a barrage of terrible headlines about their loutish behavior, mostly centering around front man Steve Marriott. Limping back to England, they recorded their psychedelic masterpiece 'Ogden's Nut Gone Flake'.

By the end of the year, Marriott was trying to force the band to accept Peter Frampton as lead guitarist. Met with resistance, he quit on stage and stormed off to form Humble Pie, a great live act that never made the studio albums to become a major band. The other three members stood around, working sessions and trying to figure out what to do while the record company released one last album. While auditioning new guitarists, they came across Ron Wood, who had a decent pedigree with the Birds, Creation, and as the bass player in the original Jeff Beck Group.

They liked Ron, but they still didn't have a singer until he brought over his buddy from the band, Rod Stewart. It seems that the Jeff Beck Group, which had been tearing it up across America for the last two years, had fallen apart, first when Jeff decided not to fulfill his contractual obligation to a little festival called Woodstock, then when Jeff crashed his hot rod and needed to have his skull restructured. When the five got together and started playing they immediately became the party band of the early 1970s, even if Rod Stewart's solo work outsold the Faces considerably.

Eventually both the Faces and Humble Pie fell apart. The Small Faces tried to get back together without Ronnie Lane, who wouldn't even consider it since he had moved into acoustic English country music, but their moment was long gone. Kenney Jones would up in the Who from 1979 until 1985. Ron Wood has been with the Rolling Stones since 1975, and during the early years of his tenure Ian McLagan was often playing the keyboards. Steve Marriott would up playing pubs in London for the last ten years of his life, finally dying in a fire he accidentally started falling asleep with a lit cigarette.

The Small Faces were a very good and important group at the center of 1960s English music, as evidenced by the posthumous careers of the members. But fast management and self doubt crippled them, so that despite an excellent recorded legacy they are still unknown in the United States. Yet you have heard these guys play, at least in other bands. They have remained invisible yet influential and are definitely worth checking out. These guys never did anything better in their lives.