lutzka blog

  
“It’s pop, it’s rock, it’s soulful, it’s mod. It’s different. It was music of the times really – but it seems to last.” So says Ian McLagan when asked to describe for those who haven't heard it the music of the Small Faces, the band for whom he played keyboards from 1965 to 1969. The question is largely irrelevant in the Small Faces’ native UK where the band racked up half a dozen top ten hits – including ‘Sha La La La Lee’, ‘All or Nothing’ and ‘Lazy Sunday’ - and are staples of oldie radio stations. In the States, however, the band’s eclectic sound (about which many would add ‘psychedelic’ and ‘vaudevillian’ to McLagan’s adjectives) is less familiar: they made only two minor entries on the Billboard chart with the quasi-novelty ‘Ithcycoo Park’ and the fiery, stylish ‘Tin Soldier’. Nonetheless, the band have a cult following in America, partly because of their discernibly large influence on musicians like Paul Weller, Oasis, Blur, Quiet Riot and even the Sex Pistols (who performed a live version of their first single, ‘Whatcha Gonna Do About It’). As if to prove McLagan’s assertion of imperishability, he and fellow surviving Small Faces member drummer Kenney Jones are currently promoting ‘Ultimate Collection’ a TV-advertised, two-CD package from Britain’s Sanctuary label released on May 26th. It is the first Small Faces collection to both have the band’s official seal of approval and to gather together tracks from their two separate, distinctive career halves: their time spent making blue-eyed soul for the Decca label and the period spent with Andrew Loog Oldham’s independent Immediate in which they embraced the weird and wonderful modes of the late ’Sixties (and anticipated some of them: the narrative suite on side two of their 1968 album ‘Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake’ predated all other rock operas). There is no similar package available in the American market, something which saddens the pair, as does most of the activity of Charly Records, owner of the band’s catalogue in all territories outside the British Isles. The Small Faces were rarely treated well by any label that released their music. As a consequence, neither the band’s gravel-throated vocalist/guitarist Steve Marriott (who died in a fire in 1991) or his songwriting partner and Small Faces bassist Ronnie Lane (a 1997 casualty of MS) ever saw a penny in royalties in their lifetimes from the millions of units the band shifted. Only the work of a no-win, no-fee lawyer appointed by Jones has subsequently secured the release of performance royalties.