When HUB Met... The Small Faces

HUB recently took time out at the invitation of Acid Jazz Records main man and true Harlow and Essex boy, Eddie Piller and local Saffron Walden based designer Paul McEvoy (Bold Graphic Design) to meet up with the pair at a nearby hostelry, knock back a Bloody Mary or three and discuss some of the Essex/Uttlesford connections within Acid Jazz’s new and latest publication, a revised and updated reissue of their fêted and sold out 1995 Paolo Hewitt penned book, The Small Faces - The Young Mods’ Forgotten Story.

HUB - Why contact the Hub about a legendary 1960s pop band guys?

PAUL - Well, Hub is a Saffron Walden based magazine, catering for all things Essex based, concentrating on the artsy side of things and the story of the Small Faces strikes some resonant chords within that context that not too many people are aware of. I work out of Walden in Market Hill and I had already finished designing the book when I told Ed about your mag, and immediately his interest was piqued and he suggested we all get together for a chat about the Essex connections with the most mod, most fashionable and one of the most talented ’60s ‘supergroups’.  And speaking of Essex connections, the book launch party was in London last week, right by Liverpool Street station; which was a cunning ploy as most of the people who turned up were actually from Essex! They strolled across the road from the station, had a drink and a boogie and simply rolled back across the road to catch a train home. How's that for planning?

HUB - So, the book has just been launched and is now on sale. Where can interested Hub readers get a copy?

EDDIE - HMV is the place. Actually its selling like hotcakes right now, and the HMV boys and girls are doing a great job, really getting behind it, so get one while they’re still warm, HUB readers!

HUB - What’s the story with The Small Faces and Essex?

EDDIE - Its a convoluted tale, and it’ll detract from the book if I go into too much detail, but essentially Steve Marriott, the former child actor and brilliant singer and guitarist in the band, always loved Essex. I suppose it was a post-war hangover from more austere times, when every East End lad had a hankering desire to escape the inner city deprivation and the bombsites and breathe the fresh air of the countryside beyond the green belt that was so tantalisingly close, but yet so far; something a lot of Eastenders aspired to after the war, and still do, even today.

Marriott moved to Moreton first of all, near the end of the Small Faces time together, just as they were making a bit of money after years of rip-offs. He and Ronnie Lane, the Small Faces’ bass player and Marriott’s songwriting partner, got together to buy a lovely house called Beehive Cottage and Marriott loved it there, living with his wife, Jenny Rylance and their dogs, surrounded by trees and fields. Ronnie and his wife Sue lived in the cottage’s converted stables. Even after the band split, Ronnie still laid his hat at Beehive Cottage, for a short while, until it all got too much, the friction, so he and Sue moved out. And anyway Ronnie's next project, The Faces, was getting underway about then too.

Steve built a recording studio in the barn called Clear Sounds, and did a lot of recording there with his next band, Humble Pie. Part of the reason the Small Faces split up was Steve’s desire to expand their sound and introduce another lead guitarist in the shape of a young mod called Peter Frampton, but this didn’t go down well with the other guys in the band, so Steve walked in on the middle of a New Year’s Eve gig at Alexandra Palace in 1969, basically said ‘Up yours’, a cardinal sin, leaving the band aghast and floundering mid-gig, trying to finish a show without a guitarist and he subsequently formed Humble Pie straight after, with Frampton in mind. It was a new sound and direction, with Frampton acting as the perfect foil to his own guitar skills.

Marriott and Humble Pie got down to serious work at Clear Sounds, and all was very successful for a while. The place was rocking; Humble Pie tracks were going great guns and the studio was in demand with a lot of Marriott’s circle of ’60s musos and East End mates, like Joe Brown. But, alas, in the end, Steve’s vices got the better of him. He spent more time ‘recording’ than on his marriage, so divorce was inevitable. Years later, after many more management rip-offs, bad career decisions and dangerous brushes with mafia crime figures his finances were in total chaos. The house and the studio sadly slipped from his hands and went the way of the taxman’s coffers. To pay his dues he simply had to get shot of the place.

After that, and despite living out of a suitcase in the States while on endless tours with Humble Pie's various line ups, Steve always came back like a homing pigeon to Essex. Mainly when things went wrong. Latterly, he ended up in a lovely little village called Arkesden, just up the road from Saffron Walden, which is where he met his tragic end in a house fire in 1991. Doubly tragic because Steve and his erstwhile Humble Pie band-mate Peter Frampton were now reconciled and friendly again, and were about to go into the studio to record new material. Things were looking up for him but, alas, it was not to be.

Marriott was a regular at the Axe and Compasses pub in Arkesden and a noted character in the village. He made quite a lot of friends there it seems, and a few old East End fellas live round that way and drink in that pub, so no doubt he felt at home. They should put up a blue plaque in the bar. Why not, eh? At his funeral service, there were lots of noted musicians, grief-stricken fans and hordes of mods who had travelled up to pay their last respects; there were rows of scooters outside Saffron Walden Cemetary. As his final swansong they played the band’s only number one hit, ‘All Or Nothing’. Poignant. Later on, Steve’s mum and dad donated a bench to the cemetary with a little inscription plate on it. A nice gesture. It still sits in the grounds.

HUB - What is your connection with the Small Faces?

EDDIE - My connection to the Small Faces goes back to my mum. She lived in Manor Park in East London, and basically grew up with the boys. They were the local band, were truly talented and doing well, with a hectic live schedule and their first single ‘What’cha Gonna Do About It’ due out, so of course she was a huge fan. Ultimately she became their Fan Club organiser, and a bit later when she stopped doing that, and had me and my sister, she still stayed in contact with the band. I have memories of being a nipper and seeing Kenney Jones and Steve Marriott round our house. I didn’t know who they were of course, but I connected them with the pictures my mum had around the place. As I grew up to appreciate the Small Faces music for myself, some of those memories came back and I recognised their faces. They used to play with me and my sister,  kicking a ball around the garden and stuff like that. Having memories like that is pure gold for me. Plus, I love looking through what survives of all the ephemera and photos they gave to my mum and the Small Faces stuff she collected from all over the place way back. Fantastic pictures were given to her by great photographers, loads of magazines and posters, wonderfully colourful, visual stuff and much of it was put to good use by Paul when he redesigned the book.

HUB - Why revamp and republish the book after 16 years?

EDDIE - When I first published the book in 1995, the author Paolo Hewitt and I had no idea how successful it would be. It quickly sold out all its print runs; we couldn’t keep up with demand. After a while we decided it should just lapse on a high, much like the band itself and we deleted it. We let it go out of print, and it was declared no longer available. An original book is now worth a few quid; even today copies in average condition fetch quite hefty sums on eBay. For years after I was plagued by people constantly pestering me about the possibility of a new print run. Initially I refused but eventually I gave in to pressure, caved in and considered the prospect. It struck me that enough time had passed for a whole new generation to become interested in the band and a redesigned, updated and revised edition, with lots of pictures that we didn't use last time, together with some new conclusions drawn by Paolo, would be a definite must-have and welcome addition to any young music fan’s bookshelf. After all, the book has been out of print and unavailable for many years, in effect it would be like having a pristine, first edition all over again.  It really is like a different book and even people who bought the original first time round are buying this one and rediscovering the band all over again, plus, it’s now a truly beautiful thing to look at; visually lush, with knockout pictures and graphics on every page.

HUB - Are the band and the book still relevant today?

EDDIE - This book is solid gold Rock and Roll history! Stroll on! Yes! The book and the band are definitely still relevant, and what’s more, they are still current. The band have been so influential since their demise its untrue. They get a deserved nod from everybody, from ’60s contemporaries like Led Zeppelin and The Stones to über fans like Paul Weller and The Jam through to Blur, Oasis and bands like Ride, Primal Scream, The Stone Roses and Supergrass, literally countless others, even Lemmy from Motorhead cited Marriott as his all time favourite vocalist! They all owe the Small Faces a huge, huge debt.

HUB - Are you still as passionate about the Small Faces as you were 16 years ago?

PAUL laughs - I’ll chip in here. Well, as we all know Ed is supremely passionate about the band, so don’t even question that! As for me - absolutely, personally speaking this book was a labour of love. I’ve always been a Small Faces fan, right from schooldays. East Ham friends and neighbours, some of them original ’60s mods, actually knew the boys back in the day and I’d always heard and enquired about their stories and recollections of the band and that always fired my imagination. They were local East Ham / Manor Park / Plaistow legends. I was born and grew up in East Ham, went to school and worked while an East Ham College art student there, and I was a young 1979 revival mod too. For a while I even had my hair a bit like Steve Marriott circa 1966, though not a quarter as good of course; a girlfriend’s attempted DIY centre part and backcomb job - not Vidal Sassoon - not on my Saturday kid wages! Money always went on second hand clothes and music, live bands and old records. I nearly always spent my Sundays, and what was left of my meagre part time earnings, getting an early morning - forget the hangover - and the ‘up with the sparrows’ city-bound bus from the Barking Rd with a few pals and we’d go to off-the-beaten-track street markets to dig out as many original Small Faces mod style shirts and jackets as we could possibly afford and get our hands on - usually in shabby and dodgy bric-a-brac markets like Brick Lane or the end of Petticoat Lane, and sometimes father afield like the Portobello Road or Bermondsey. Great times though, when no matter what the weather or how skint you were, your day was absolutely made up if you dodged the ubiquitous and ever present throng of bored, loitering skinheads and took home an old Ben Sherman, an American Brooks Bros Ivy league button-down or maybe a 3 button checked blazer or Lord John Madras jacket… for something like 30p! Silly money! And all so we could look just a little bit like the Small Faces or The Who. Which was exactly how Paul Weller looked at the time, ’cos we were all big Jam fans too, so the look and the music was a natural progression from liking the Small Faces really. Imitation? Certainly…  but it’s the sincerest form of flattery too, so they say.

HUB - So how did you feel redesigning what many regard as a classic book?

PAUL - I was very familiar with Paolo’s original book, absolutely loved it and bought it twice in fact. But as a graphic designer I'd always felt the larger format and general lack of colour let the whole thing down a little bit. So, when offered the chance by Eddie and Paolo to ‘put things right’ so to speak, I was so chuffed to be given the opportunity that I grabbed it with both hands and got straight to redesigning it from scratch, to put it together my way, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself in the process. Even just sorting through all the ephemera and pictures was a pure joy for me. Fantastic. Plus, knowing the whole back story, the history involved and the locations in the book intimately, it actually felt a bit like growing up all over again. Yeah, it was strangely quite emotional and even a bit cathartic. I don't know how Paolo felt, revisiting the ghosts in the book, but for me, as well as enjoying the experience, reading it afresh did affect me a little - the sad way the Small Faces ended, with Marriott cutting himself out of the frame, long friendships and once solid bonds fracturing.

EDDIE - And of course the tragic consequences later with Steve Marriott's awful death in the Arkesden house fire and Ronnie Lane finally succumbing to MS - God

PAUL - Amen. Ed, wanna give Paolo a bell and ask him for his thoughts? You might have an exclusive here for Hub!

EDDIE - Save it for another time! Don’t think we should say too much more right now or we’ll be giving it all away! Seriously though, there’s lots of connections with this part of the world in the Small Faces story and the best thing you can do is nip out to HMV and buy a copy; it really is a great read, fabulous stuff, and a real treat for the eyes. However, as a bonus we do have a couple of pristine, fresh off the press copies here to give away to two lucky HUB readers, but only if they can answer one simple Small Faces question correctly…