The Small Faces - 1862 (1969)

The Small Faces released their third UK studio album, Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, in May 1968 through Immediate Records. It was divided between a first side of short, poppy songs, and a sidelong suite narrated by comedian Stanley Unwin, about a man named Stan and his fairytale-like journey to find the other side of the moon. Needless to say, this record was heavily informed by the psychedelic craze and the Summer of Love, and was critically successful, showing that the Small Faces could adapt their Rn'B sound to the swinging sixties vogue and create their first consistently great album. The album also spawned a hit, the cockney "Lazy Sunday", another in a line of smashes for the band which had already given us "Itchycoo Park" and "Tin Soldier". But all was not well: the impossibility of playing the new Happiness Stan suite live frustrated the band, especially lead singer and guitarist Steve Marriott. They'd created their magnum opus, but simply couldn't perform it live in 1968. They did play it all the way through once, for the BBC's Colour Me Pop program, but the fact that they couldn't use this ambitious piece of music to break out of their pop image toward a more "serious" one, as the Who would later do with Tommy, weighed heavily on their minds. Disillusioned but still soldiering on, in mid-1968 they started recording a new album on and off, this time with no concept attached. It was given the working title of 1862, part of Steve's then-current address, and they'd recorded a couple of songs.

By late 1968 however, the band was closer and closer to breaking up. Coming to the fore were creative differences between Marriott (who wanted the band to play in a heavier style) and the rest of the band, who wanted to keep things as they were. Issues were further aggravated by Marriott's desire to expand the band's lineup into a five-piece with guitarist Peter Frampton from the Herd, which the others were against, once more wanting to keep things as they were. Serving as the soundtrack to all this turmoil was the non-album single of "The Universal", a stopgap release to appease record buyers until their new album was finished, but which wasn't as successful as the singles that came before it. Still, they carried on, touring the UK and mainland Europe right around the time of New Year's Eve, and contributing to French singer Johnny Halliday's Riviere... Ouvre Ton Lit album, writing him three songs (translated into French, of course) and backing him in the studio with the aid of Frampton and producer Glyn Johns, who invited them to play in this project in the first place. It was during this stay in continental Europe that the Small Faces broke up, with the 1862 album left unfinished, and the Autumn Stone compilation released in its place. Marriott formed Humble Pie with Frampton, recycling some unreleased Small Faces material for their debut, while the others joined Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, becoming simply the Faces. But what if the Small Faces had managed to finish this final album?

This reconstruction is an upgrade to my 1862 album by the Small Faces from February 2018. Here, we will try to create a version that's more faithful to what could have been released in 1969, thanks to some new information and brand new additions (and exclusions!) to my running order. Thankfully, there's a vast amount of material to choose from, so we will be worrying not about what to include, but about what to leave out of the album. "The Universal" and "Donkey Rides, a Penny, a Glass" are great songs, but since the band had the habit of releasing non-album singles, I figured they wouldn't include this pairing on the album, especially when we have so many good songs to choose from. Also excluded is "Call it Something Nice", which hails from an early 1967 session, nearly two years removed from the main 1862 sessions. With so much good material to choose from, why bother resurrecting an outtake that old? The same goes for "Picanniny", "Don't Burst My Bubble", "Every Little Bit Hurts", and any other outtake from their previous albums that have been mentioned as being in the running. We will try to keep our choices as current to the album's sessions as possible. Recordings by Humble Pie or the Faces are fair game, so long as we can prove that the songs were meant for the 1862 album or they are reworkings of older Small Faces songs. Besides that, we will be trying to include as much from the late 1968 sessions as possible. With that out of the way, here's what the album looks like:

Wide-Eyed Girl on the Wall (The Autumn Stone)

Bang! (As Safe as Yesterday Is)

Red Balloon (The Autumn Stone)

What You Will (As Safe as Yesterday Is)

The War of the Worlds (The Autumn Stone)

Wham Bam Thank You, Ma'am (The Autumn Stone)

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Buttermilk Boy (As Safe as Yesterday Is)

Evolution (Who Came First)

Growing Closer (As Safe as Yesterday Is)

Wrist Job (As Safe as Yesterday Is)

Collibosher (The Autumn Stone)

The Autumn Stone (The Autumn Stone)

Download link:

The Small Faces - 1862 (1969)

McLagan, Marriott, Jones, and Lane play one of their final gigs, January 1969.

Now that we have figured out what won't make the album, we need to figure out what will. "Wrist Job", recorded as the instrumental "The Pig Trotters" by the Small Faces, was finally recorded with lyrics for Humble Pie's debut album, making for an easy replacement. Recorded at virtually the same time as "The Pig Trotters", "The War of the Worlds" unfortunately was never recorded with lyrics, being left as an unfinished instrumental. Though our album is already quite heavy on the instrumentals, I figure it needed to make the album, as it's running short on actual Small Faces recordings. French versions of "Bang!" and "What You Will", credited as being written by Marriott/Lane, were recorded by singer Johnny Halliday in January 1969. He had the backing of the Small Faces plus Peter Frampton on guitar, in their final recording sessions as a band. Finally, Steve Marriott's son Toby has mentioned in the past that he has a song list written by his father for the 1862 album, and that supposedly includes the songs "Buttermilk Boy", "Growing Closer" and "Evolution", by Humble Pie and Ronnie Lane, respectively. We don't know how trustworthy that is, but we will take him at his word and include both songs in our version of 1862. We add to that the obvious inclusions of "Wide Eyed Girl in the Wall", "Red Balloon", "Wham Bam Thank You, Ma'am", "Collibosher" and "The Autumn Stone", all from The Autumn Stone and all dating from the main late 1968 album sessions, and we have ourselves a record!

Now, all that's left for us to do is to turn that list of songs into an album. We selected twelve songs, the same amount as in most Small Faces records, so that already goes a long way in helping us. We start off with an instrumental, "Wide Eyed Girl on the Wall", mimicking their previous record, and end on the strongest song of the bunch, Marriott's beautiful "The Autumn Stone". As was common practice back then, we have the lead single as the last song on side one, "Wham Bam Thank You, Ma'am". Other than that, we'll be sequencing this by mostly trying to avoid having two Humble Pie songs in a row, as there are a lot of them. If they stick too closely together, you might end up thinking you're listening to As Safe as Yesterday Is! We'll also be trying to keep the three instrumental tracks as far apart from each other as we can, so that it doesn't seem as if there are that many of them. Then again, apparently all three of them were unfinished backing tracks and not intentionally instrumental, meaning that if 1862 was released, they'd be fully-fledged songs, solving this problem altogether. Highlights include their cover of Tim Hardin's "Red Balloon', which was often partnered by a great live cover of "If I Were a Carpenter" that unfortunately never made it to the studio, the 3-minute edit of "Evolution" released in a Meher Baba tribute, and Ian McLagan's "Growing Closer", released by Humble Pie as he had rehearsed for a couple of weeks with the band before changing his mind and returning to the Faces.

As an album, 1862 makes for a fitting Small Faces record, showing how far they'd come from their early days and how they could adapt to the looming 1970s. The songs here are as good as the ones on Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, and with its focus on individual songs, makes for a nice transitional album that never was. It features a heavier, boogie-based sound instead of its predecessors' more folkier, psychedelic sound. Because of that, the Humble Pie songs don't even sound that off-place, being a close representation of what a heavier Small Faces with Peter Frampton would probably sound like. Of course, it would take them a few months to record (with Frampton) all the new songs and additions needed to finish this album, meaning it would come out sometime in mid-1969, being delayed by a couple of months. With side one clocking in at 20 minutes and the longer side two at 23, "Wham Bam Thank You, Ma'am" backed with "The Autumn Stone" would be the record's lead single, as originally planned before the band's breakup. The cover I've used in this upgrade was borrowed from a different blog, for variety's sake, and honestly fits with this version of the album pretty well! Quite paradoxically, Lane, Jones, and McLagan protested the band's change of style to a heavier sound only to immediately start playing just that when they became the Faces, showing us that the differences that kept them apart weren't that great after all. It's simply a shame we never got to see their evolution.

Sources:

- The Small Faces - The Autumn Stone

- Humble Pie - As Safe as Yesterday Is

- Pete Townshend - Who Came First