Small Faces. Big Sound. There were but four Small Faces. First they were the sharp little Mod fourpiece of the 'All Or Nothing' Decca years, Carnaby Street, Ready Steady Go! and Rave magazine. Then they were the irreverent Freakbeat experimentalists of the Immediate years, with 'Tin Soldier', 'Lazy Sunday' and classic album Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake. An arc of hits praised, covered and imitated by subsequent Rock musicians such as Paul Weller and Noel Gallagher. When The Small Faces split, they became Humble Pie with Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton, and a different batch of musicians became The Faces with the addition of future Rolling Stone Ron Wood, and vocalist Rod Stewart, to become one of the biggest rock bands of the seventies. When those bands came to a natural end, and with 'Itchycoo Park' returned to the Top Ten, The Small Faces reformed for two more albums ? ill-advised maybe, or possibly ripe for re-evaluation? The evidence is laid out here. For this is the full story, track-by-track, song-by-song, from the very start, to the final end? AUTHOR: Andrew Darlington is a hack writer, a self-educated acrobat juggling words. Jefferson Airplane musician Grace Slick once politely declined his offer of marriage. His latest poetry collection is Tweak Vision: The Word-Play Solution To Modern-Angst Confusion and his Science Fiction Novel In The Time Of The Breaking are both from Alien Buddha Press, USA. He's also written a biography of Beatles PR Derek Taylor called For Your Radioactive Children: Days In The Life Of The Beatles Spin-Doctor, published by SonicBond, who also publish his 2021 book The Hollies On Track. His writing can be found at Eight Miles Higher: http://andrewdarlington.blogspot.co.uk
