He advised us that we should cut out the softer stuff and play our heads off instead. “When Dee Anthony took us over,” Marriott once told a reporter, “he looked at our act objectively and as a result gave us a good boot from behind. Not until Humble Pie had switched to a new label, A&M, and taken on a new manager, Dee Anthony, did the band conquer its indecision and take a firm stand. It was that very same confusion that plagued the group’s two albums on the English Immediate Records label, “As Safe as Yesterday Is” and “Town and Country” (recently made available in America as a double-album, “Lost and Found”). We couldn’t, no way, it was a practical impossibility so we ended very confused.” What we wanted to do was go from acoustical numbers to jazzier things to electrical numbers and back again. It was a major move and an event the overzealous English rock press heralded as “the emergence of a new supergroup.” While headlines blared and articles predicted imminent brilliancy, Marriott is the first to admit that the four musicians had drawn a blank as to their format or direction. The formation of Humble Pie in April ’69 centered around Marriott and Peter Frampton, another well-known vocalist-guitarist refugee from the then-popular Herd, who had joined forces with knock-around drummer Jerry Shirley and former Spooky Tooth bassist Greg Ridley. “The way I look at it,” Steve muses, “if I hadn’t left the group, they wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing now and I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now. The rest for them, as they say, is history. The much publicized split was amicable and the Small Face went on to fill the gaping void with the addition of guitarist Ron Wood and singer Rod Stewart, as well as shorten their name to simply Faces. We were all frustrated, but I just felt I had to do something about it.” After a while we found people were expecting the novelty-type records from us, and in actuality we weren’t anything like that. “I left the band,” recalls Marriott, “when I realized the gimmickry album tracks we were making and the record company was releasing as singles, like ‘Itchycoo Park’ and ‘Lazy Sunday,’ were doing much better than the things we really dug. Immediately thrust to the forefront of the British pop scene, Steve remained in the band close to four years as their fan focal point until eventually conceding to his dissatisfaction in early 1969. Such diversity stylized groups as the Mississippi Five, The Coronation Kids, the Wheels, the Frantics, the Moonights and Steve Marriott and the Moments served as educating self-investments until the summer of 1965 when Marriott joined the Small Faces. Once a child actor, in his years before forming the Pie, Marriott journeyed through the usual myriad small and big-time bands that most any ultimately successful musician does. His slight frame reclining comfortably in his Beverly Hills hotel suite, Marriott, 26, on the eve of Humble Pie’s sold-out engagement at the cavernous Inglewood Forum Saturday night can blithely reflect on a long struggle toward the almost unattainable union of both personal artistic satisfaction and the mass acceptance he now relishes. With Humble Pie’s eight album “Eat It” riding high on international charts and its current worldwide tour doing SRO business every stop, Steve Marriott, the spirited English rock ‘n’ roll band’s lead-signer, song writer, guitarist and mastermind, is a man content. No Upper-Crust Pretensions for Humble Pie’s Steve Marriott
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