Plenty of other tales on the shelves, but Long Agos and Worlds Apart: The Definitive Small Faces Biography by Sean Egan should be worth checking out.
The book is published in a few days and as such, I haven’t seen a copy as yet. But initial reviews seem positive and at 294 pages, it should be a fairly detailed read. Also, the author is a seasoned pro when it comes to biographies, and particularly music biographies. You might recall his book on The Creation some years back.
A similar era but a different band. And although you would think there have been a few Small Faces biographies, there haven’t really been that many. Books on the individual members have been and gone, but nothing detailed about the band as a whole.
Published by Equinox, the promo blurb is as follows…
The Small Faces epitomised the maxim, “Never mind the width, feel the quality.” In their brief original lifespan, they released just three official albums and a dozen-and-a-half authorised non-album singles and B-sides. Yet more than five decades after the London quartet’s split the phenomenal quality of that compact body of work has ensured a continuing and unassailable musical esteem bordering on legend.
Gut-bucket vocalist Steve Marriott brought a bluesy grit to both compositions of gravitas and effervescent pop numbers. Bassist Ronnie Lane collaborated with him to form one of the most formidable songwriting partnerships of the era. Ian McLagan was an exhilaratingly blurred-fingered keyboardist. Kenney Jones brought up the rear with blistering drum patterns, with his rolls often used to provide an explosive fanfare to Small Faces singles.
Such a talent-oozing line-up was virtually predestined to conjure excellence. ‘Tin Soldier’, their exquisitely sophisticated psychedelic-soul release of 1967, regularly appears in polls to decide history’s greatest singles.
However, the band are just as much loved for rip-roaring power-pop like ‘Sha-La-La- La-Lee’ and ‘All or Nothing’ and storming instrumental B-sides such as ‘Grow Your Own’ and ‘Almost Grown’. Their acknowledged masterpiece is Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake (1968), an album that was not only artistically superb but boasted a second-side narrative suite that paved the way for rock operas such as the Pretty Things’ SF Sorrow and the Who’s Tommy.
Regardless of style, quality and innovativeness, the Small Faces’ music was characterised by a life-affirming joyousness. All this explains why their catalogue is endlessly recycled and why their oeuvre has been disproportionately inspirational.
Long Agos and Worlds Apart covers the Small Faces’ full, tumultuous story. Drawing on lengthy new interviews, it is a revealing, impartial, exhaustive and definitive exploration of the corpus and career of a truly great band.
If you want to pre-order the hardback, you can do just that ahead of the 15th September release date. It will cost you £26.95.
Find out more at the Amazon website
