The Steve Marriott Interview
Art Connor talks with the legendary leader of the Small Faces and Humble Pie.Rock and Roll Timepiece: Steve Marriott Remembered
By Art Connor
Backstage at The Spectrum in Philadelphia – April 16th, 1976
AC: Were you satisfied with the way the show turned out tonight?
SM: Oh yeah sure, this was the first time we’ve all played together in front of an audience. And it’s gonna get better. We had to rehearse very quickly and we went on today not knowing what we would sound like, but we did quite well. This band is quite good and it will just get better and better and better — mark my words. You’ve got to understand the cat that was mixing us tonight has never worked with us, ever. He’s never even seen us.
AC: Plus he was Lynyrd Skynyrd’s man.
SM: That’s right. So you know man, he’s not gonna put out for us. Yeah, but I’m all set. All I need now is to arrange the set a little, change a few things here and there. And I have to get a permanent sound man to mix us. One who knows when the chicks come in and when they come out. Like tonight, when the ladies were singing, they were singing their asses off and you just couldn’t hear them — that’s upsetting!
AC: Allstars is an appropriate name — you have Greg Ridley on bass, Clem Clempson on guitar, (both were in Humble Pie with Steve) and Ian Wallace on drums. He played with King Crimson right?
SM: Yeah man, Ian’s a good drummer. We’re starting to pull it together.
AC: With the different R&B music you are doing, people are saying it’s the “new” Steve, but you were doing material like that on the Eat It album with Humble Pie.
SM: That’s right, people don’t know that. A lot of people don’t know that. It’s better stuff actually. Like the song we did tonight, “Louisiana,” that’s a really beautiful number.
(Note – I actually heard Steve and his back-up singers rehearsing this song a capella in their dressing room backstage earlier in the day. It was quite moving.)
AC: People were still yelling out for Humble Pie numbers.
SM: Oh no, I’m not going to do any Humble Pie numbers. I do one; “Hallelujah I Love Her So,” because it’s part of my heritage. But I’m not on a nostalgia trip. I just can’t keep singing “I Don’t Need No Doctor” forever man, even though it’s a great song.
AC: You did do “I’m Ready” tonight… (Gingerly reminding Steve of this.)
SM: Oh yeah, that was a Pie number wasn’t it? I don’t even think of it as a Pie song anymore, because we’re doing it so differently now. I just think of it as good opening number.
AC: Is it true you’re going to do a reunion tour with the Small Faces? You actually do an old Small Faces number on your new album, Wham Bam Thank You Mam.
SM: That is true. We’re gonna do that about the end of July. That’s right man, it’s a great song! Ronnie Lane and I wrote that ages ago. There are a lot of rumors, but we’ll be out here with Ian McLagan, Ronnie Lane, Kenny Jones and myself.
(Note: The Small Faces reunion actually took place a year later in 1977 with Rick Wills replacing the then ailing Ronnie Lane on bass and the late Jimmy McCulloch of Thunderclap Newman and later with Paul McCartney and Wings fame on lead guitar.)
AC: Did you like The Faces with Rod Stewart?
SM: I thought they were great, they were totally different. You know you can’t slight them, you can’t take away that they are all good musicians. The Small Faces were great.
AC: Are you happy with how your new solo album turned out? You have an English side and an American side, if you had your choice of musicians, who would you play with and what do you think the differences are between the two?
SM: Oh yeah, I think it’s quite good. I prefer using English cats — definitely English. The energy levels are much higher.
AC: So you used the Americans just for songs you wanted to sound “American”?
SM: No, my band hadn’t come in. They couldn’t come into the states for a month, so I said to myself, “I’m not sitting on my ass in L.A. doing nothing for all this time!” So we got some people together, cut a few songs, and it sounded great. And that’s where the idea of the concept came of an English rock side and an American kind of funky laid back side. Then the band came in and we just laid down some rock and roll.
AC: After all of these years of headlining major venues around the world, how does it feel to be a support act again?
SM: I love it! Yeah, I have no pressures on me. Let’s face it, I’m a born headliner, but I don’t want to force the issue. Like if we do this spot nice and support people, that’s fine. We’re gonna headline a few places here and there, but next tour we’ll come across and be top bill. But I’m not one of those people that’s gonna say I MUST HEADLINE! Man, I don’t care if I open the show, I know how good I am or how bad I am, as long as I can play. I was away from the road for six months you see, because my wife and I had a baby boy. Yeah that was great.
AC: You think he was born with a guitar in his hands?
SM: I hope so. I hope he doesn’t want to be a fucking accountant! (This reply did bring some laughter from the other musicians who were standing close by)
(Note: Steve’s son Toby, who is now forty-one years old, was born on February 20th, 1976. He did not grow up to be an accountant, he actually grew up to be a musician himself. Following in his father’s footsteps, he has been the lead singer and guitarist for the bands — The Strays and later with Black Drummer.)
AC: Steve, you have been in bands for the past eleven years, what is Steve Marriott going to be doing five years from now?
SM: I’ll probably be running the road man, it’s in my blood!
And with that final statement, the interview ended with a rousing cheer from the rest of the band!
Marriott’s career never really did get back on track after Humble Pie broke up. The stories of how his managers with their alleged links to the Mafia and people who were supposed to look after him had robbed him blind and the record royalties which were never paid to him are just an outrage. In very sad hindsight, the release of his solo album and The Allstars tour was actually the beginning of a long downward spiral for him both personally and professionally, that would come to such a sad and tragic ending in that horrific house fire he would later perish in.
Steve Marriott was one of my all time Rock and Roll heroes and he brings back many fond memories of growing up in the ’70s for those of us who are now truly “sixty something.” FM rock radio was still young and back then for under six dollars you could see three bands like Humble Pie, The J.Geils Band and King Crimson at the Spectrum all in one night. It wasn’t exactly the “Wonder Years,” but it was loud, it was hot and it was a lot of fun.
I was very young when I interviewed Steve back in 1976, not even out of my teens, and on the inside I was scared to death! But listening to the recording of my interview with him after all of these years, I really didn’t do all that bad for a novice. Though it wasn’t an in-depth or lengthy or ground breaking piece, it was my very first one with a bona fide rock legend and it did open the doors for me to be able to write future articles and interview other famous musicians over the years. But this little interview will always be a special and sentimental one for me. You never forget your “first time”…
Thanks for all of the good times and great music Steve — Rock On and sleep well.
If you would like to know more about the life of Steve Marriott and his career, I highly recommend you read these two books, Steve Marriott – All Too Beautiful which is an excellent biography written by Paolo Hewitt and John Heller. Also check out Best Seat in the House, written by Steve’s former band mate and friend, drummer Jerry Shirley.
There are also some wonderful Steve Marriott and Humble Pie Facebook pages which have many articles and pictures that help to keep his memory and music alive.
Rock and Roll Timepiece: Steve Marriott Remembered, ©1976, 1991 and 2017 Art Connor. All rights reserved.
ART CONNOR COMMENTS
This past April marked the sad anniversary of the passing of one of rock music’s favorite sons — guitarist and vocalist extraordinaire Steve Marriott. He died tragically twenty six years ago at the age of forty-four, when his house caught fire due to him falling asleep while smoking in bed after a few long days of traveling and a lot of heavy drinking and partying which he was famous for.
Steve’s career spanned over three decades. Beginning as a child actor in 1960, he played the part of the Artful Dodger in the London production of Oliver!, performing in the musical for over a year. The producers were so impressed with him, it’s his voice you hear on the official album released for the stage show.
As with most young men growing up in Great Britain during the early sixties, rock music beckoned, and Marriott picked up the guitar and formed the Small Faces with bassist Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan on keyboards and Kenny Jones on drums. Success came quickly for the Small Faces, having a string of hit singles that included their big number #1 hit “All or Nothing,” “Tin Solider” and the hazy, phazy, and very psychedelic Summer of Love sing-a-long anthem — “Itchycoo Park.” They soon became one of England’s best loved mod bands, yet live on stage their sound was anything but small, they were powerhouse rockers!
By 1968 the rules of the music game were radically changing, and the Small Faces as a group had unfortunately played out their hand. Marriott, who was being influenced by the progressive music of the day, hooked up with Peter Frampton, who was another teen idol looking to expand his musical horizons. Together with ex-Spooky Tooth bassist Greg Ridley and drummer Jerry Shirley they formed Humble Pie.
After a very shaky start with their first record label, Immediate Records, a company that literally went out of business right from under them and almost caused the band to call it quits, the Pie finally clicked in 1971 with the now famous and heavily Marriott influenced live album, Performance: Rockin’ the Fillmore. Killer tracks such as “I Don’t Need No Doctor,” “Four Day Creep” and “Rollin’ Stone” became FM radio staples. With some over the top promotion from their new label, A&M Records, the Pie went on to become one of the premier hard rocking bands of the early seventies, making such veteran acts like Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones sit up and take notice of them.
Ironically, the more melodic Frampton, who was sensing the wind of change, quite suddenly turned over the reins to Marriott and opted to leave the band just as they exploded into the American arenas. By 1975 the combination of hard rock, soul and funk music that Steve had led the band to play and perform and a lack of solid new material had now worn down a once very talented and proud band. By the year’s end, having completed what was to be their farewell tour, the mighty Humble Pie disbanded.
In 1976, still convinced that his talents and voice were more suited for R&B music, Marriott released a solo album and formed the Allstars, a blue-eyed soul review which was met with lukewarm response from both the fans and critics. 1977 saw a disastrous attempt by Marriott at reuniting the Small Faces minus bassist Ronnie Lane, who was by then suffering from Multiple Sclerosis.
With his fortunes waning and at the very height of the post-Punk/New Wave movement of 1980, Steve and Jerry Shirley re-formed Humble Pie with ex-Jeff Beck vocalist and guitarist, Bobby Tench. They released two moderately successful AOR albums — On to Victory and Go for the Throat. Success seemed to be within their grasp again but a series of medical problems sidelined Marriott, and a proper tour never really got off the ground.
Not much was heard from Steve throughout the 1980s. He was most noticeably missing from the ARMS concerts put together by ex-bandmate Ronnie Lane to benefit MS and the Live Aid concerts, which did much to revive the careers of a few ’70s groups that appeared on the bill. He did continue to perform and tour under the Humble Pie banner, mostly with journeyman musicians, but was relegated to playing only the bar and club circuit. By the end of the decade, he decided he had enough of the U.S. and returned home to England, dejected and pretty much penniless.
Late in 1990, we saw the unlikely and unexpected pairing once again of Steve and Peter Frampton, who at that point in time was also looking to jump start and revitalize his once very promising solo career. They had actually started working on new material together and there was talk of making it an actual bona-fide Humble Pie reunion. Unfortunately in the era of mega-reunions and rock comebacks, Marriott’s untimely death brought everything to a screeching halt.
Back in April of 1976, I had the opportunity to interview Steve Marriott for my college newspaper — The Student Vanguard. The interview took place backstage at the old Philadelphia Spectrum during the ill-fated All-Stars tour. The band was opening for Lynyrd Skynyrd, who were embarking on their first major tour as headliners. Marriott was suffering from a combination of opening night jitters and a big hunk of frustration caused in part by some of his band members not arriving in the U.S. until the day before the tour was to start, a set whose sound was poorly mixed by Skynyrd’s audio team, and a Philly crowd who was confused and a little unreceptive of Steve’s new musical direction.
However, being the proper British gentleman, he was kind enough to speak with me, and I found him quite cordial and humorous even with the tension and everything that was going on backstage after he and the band finished their set. We talked for a few minutes about his then new solo album and the show that evening. So let’s step into the way-back machine and travel back in time some 41 years ago, and relive another golden rock memory.