The five best Steve Marriott albums
While enjoying less icon status or lauded deification than his 1960s peers, Steve Marriott‘s name will forever crop up when exploring the UK psychedelic pop and later classic rock story. Founding mod outfit, Small Faces in 1965 and establishing his hefty guitar attack style from the word go, their early beat offerings would evolve into the thoroughly English variant of psychedelia alongside The Beatles’ or The Zombies’ surreal Anglo-nostalgia works. Marriott then jumped to heavy blues outfit Humble Pie with Peter Frampton, lending his arresting fretwork to the world of hard rock.
He was a London boy through and through. Born in 1947, in East Ham, his father owned a genuine jellied-eels stall called ‘Bill’s Eels’ outside the Ruskins Arms pub and hotel, as well as a brief dabble in pie and mash. While a love of 1950s rock ‘n’ roll struck the young Marriott, an early foray into West End roles—playing Fagin’s various cockney urchins in the Oliver! production—and an enrollment in the prestigious Italia Conti Academy resulted in a steady stream of film, TV and radio work, including an uncredited role in the Peter Sellers starter Heavens Above!.
Music was his ultimate love, however. Slogging it through the London music industry as a budding songwriter and crossing paths with likewise eager hopefuls, David Bowie and Robert Plant, long before fame beckoned any, his formation of Small Faces and Humble Pie thrust Marriott as a perennial secondary character in the classic rock world. From guitar parts for The Rolling Stones, offering the services of his dog to Pink Floyd, to contributing piano and harmonica on Johnny Thunders’ ‘Daddy Rollin’ Stone’, no album or band is ever too many degrees of separation away from the child-star turned guitar virtuoso.
Such a celebrated career was unfortunately bogged down by substance abuse, dodgy management, bad financial deals, and even an alleged run-in with New York’s Genovese crime family. What followed was a slow retreat from the industry alongside various reunions and half-hearted band projects. Nonetheless, Marriott was still playing the pub circuit regularly, had become something of a cherished eccentricity in the Essex village of Arkesden, where he lived til his death in a house fire in 1991.
From one of the leading figures of ‘Swinging London’ to a boozy villager in dungarees on music’s fringes, Marriott may well have lost sight of just how loved and influential he was, credited with pioneering the mod subculture and paving the way for Britpop. With such a chequered legacy, we take a look at choice cuts of his discography.
Far Out’s list of the best Steve Marriott albums:
Marriott’s definitive album: ‘Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake’
Release Date: May 1968 | Producer: Ronnie Lane and Steve Marriott | Label: Immediate
While America’s West Coast was embracing the day’s lysergic trends with freak-out acid rock, psychedelia adopted a more eccentric flavour in the UK. Anchored in the unmistakable English heritage and culture, Marriott’s Boomer generation inherited and grew up on. From its original far-out tobacco tin packaging to comedian Stanley Unwin’s gobbledygook narration, Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake endures as one of the standout documents of the swinging pop era.
Embracing the emerging album medium’s expanded conceptual boundaries, Small Faces follows protagonist Happiness Stan and his quest to find the missing half of the moon. Scoring this surrealist fable, Marriott embraces everything from cockney music hall, soulful balladry, and flanged-out garage rock throughout its gripping kaleidoscopic journey, and showcases his effortless musical dexterity. Like a perfect marriage between his West End roots and the love of popular music, Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake truly transports to a strange ether, both far-flung and fantastical, while also utterly familiar to anyone steeped in English tradition and customs.
Defining track: ‘Lazy Sunday’
Marriott’s most hard-rock album: ‘Smokin’
Release Date: March 1972 | Producer: Humble Pie | Label: A&M
As Humble Pie hurtled toward their fifth LP, surrounding turmoil began to seriously encroach on the band’s unity. Frampton had departed for a solo career, cocaine and alcohol were a perennial presence, and Marriott’s marriage to Jenny Rylance was disintegrating. Despite this, a heavy touring schedule had well and truly helped crack into America, and the growing hard rock scene around them brought a willing audience eager to witness Humble Pie letting it all hang out.
Pushed behind the mic for the entire record by their manager—bar Clem Clempson’s take on the traditional ‘Old Time Feelin’—Smokin’ captures Marriott’s vocals at their most throat-shredding raw. Riding high on the roots rock still enjoying its heyday, Eddie Cochran covers and stompers such as ’30 Days in the Hole’ all strut with weathered pomp. Pouring all his energy into the record, including handling production, Marriott collapsed from exhaustion during the sessions, a level of physiological intensity felt through its nine cuts.
Defining track: ‘30 Days in the Hole’
Marriott’s best document of his 1980s pub sets: ‘Dingwalls 6.7.84’
Release Date: 1991 | Label: Mau Mau Records
Following rumours of murky mob dallying with 1976’s Marriott LP and a crippling tax bill to the tune of £100,000, Marriott jumped ship to the States and kept himself afloat with a run of band reunions and guest album spots. As the 1980s arrived, drugs crept back into his life and he was eking a modest but slapdash living playing the small club and pub circuit across the decade.
Only available seven years later, Marriott’s 1984 performance at Camden‘s Dingwalls captures the moment in his life in all its rough and ready character. Bluesy jams, East End comedy numbers, and a soulful bellow that’s been dragged through life’s mileage are all archived on the essential live album. Throughout, Marriott sounds like he’s in his element, and the crowd never lacks for adoration and triumphant cheers.
Defining track: ‘The Fixer’
Marriott’s most mod album: ‘Small Faces’
Release Date: May 1966 | Producer: Small Faces and Ian Samwell | Label: Decca
Landing in London’s swinging peak with a fresh and youthful vigour, Small Faces’ eponymous debut pushed aside any competition as the era’s defining mod poster boys. Packed with a love for R&B, soul and garage rock, Marriott’s powerhouse voice bristles with raucous fire even at the tender age of 19. With the psychedelic effects of LSD yet to colour their work, Small Faces is a firm mainstay in the beat clubs and dance halls that shaped their urgent sound.
Mining their record collection for covers across Sam Cooke and Willie Dixon, it’s Marriott and Ronnie Lane’s original numbers that leap out of the speakers with zest. Winning their first Top 20 hit with ‘Whatcha Gonna Do About It’, ‘You Need Loving’ would rear its head years later for Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’ rework.
Defining track: ‘Whatcha Gonna Do About It’
Marriott’s most pastoral album: ‘Town and Country’
Release Date: November 1969 | Producer: Andy Johns | Label: Immediate
Taking a gentler detour from the hard blues front of As Safe as Yesterday Is, Humble Pie conceived their sophomore LP over a shared love of country, folk, and acoustic balladry at Marriott’s 16th-century cottage in Essex. Cutting as much as three albums’ worth of material during the recording sessions, Town and Country boasts some of the tightest interplay between Marriott and Frampton, boasting inspired instruments from the Spanish guitar to a hammer and nail brandy bottle.
While ‘Down Home Again’ treads into familiar roots rock territory, cuts like ‘Every Mother’s Son’ see Humble Pie reach into the deepest traditions of Americana‘s founding music art forms. Featuring compositions from each member, Town and Country marks the best example of Marriott and the band at their most loose and intimate.
Defining track: ‘Take Me Back’
