Small Faces formed in East London in 1965 and quickly became one of the central British mod groups. Steve Marriott’s lead voice and guitar, Ronnie Lane’s bass and contrasting vocal character, Kenney Jones’s drums and Ian McLagan’s keyboards made a self-contained quartet whose records could move from American R&B models to distinctly English psychedelic pop without changing personnel.
The catalogue falls into two short but different label periods. Decca issued the early singles and 1966 debut; after the group signed with Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate label in February 1967, studio production, songwriting and arrangement expanded rapidly. The result was not a rejection of the early band but a denser use of the same four players.
Small Faces in a 1967 Immediate Records publicity photograph.Photo: Immediate Records / Wikimedia Commons · Licensed under Public domain. Converted to WebP for this page.
Formation & History
Marriott, Lane, Jones and original keyboard player Jimmy Winston assembled the group in 1965; McLagan replaced Winston after the first hit, “Whatcha Gonna Do About It”. “All or Nothing” reached number one in Britain in 1966. Frustration with manager Don Arden and the Decca contract led the quartet to Immediate in February 1967, although Decca continued issuing existing material, including the compilation From the Beginning, after the move.
Immediate released a new British album titled Small Faces in June 1967, followed by the singles “Itchycoo Park” and “Tin Soldier”. Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake arrived on 24 May 1968 and spent six weeks at number one. Its layered studio design was difficult to present as a conventional concert set. On 31 December 1968 Marriott walked offstage at Alexandra Palace and announced his departure; he formed Humble Pie in 1969. Lane, McLagan and Jones then joined Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart in Faces. A 1970s Small Faces reunion produced Playmates and 78 in the Shade, with Rick Wills replacing Lane after the latter withdrew for health reasons.
Sound & Style
The Decca records depend on compression and ensemble attack: Jones keeps fills short, Lane’s bass locks closely to the kick drum, McLagan’s Hammond organ thickens the middle register and Marriott sings above the group without losing rhythmic bite. That economy remains audible after the move to Immediate, even as acoustic guitar, layered backing voices, Mellotron and studio processing enter the arrangements.
“Itchycoo Park” uses a pronounced phasing effect developed at Olympic Studios by engineer George Chkiantz and applied with Glyn Johns; the effect changes the texture of the bridge without replacing the song’s direct chorus. “Tin Soldier” contrasts close, tense verses with explosive ensemble responses and backing vocals from P. P. Arnold. On Ogdens, the first side moves among compact Marriott–Lane songs, while Stanley Unwin’s invented “Unwinese” narration links the six-part Happiness Stan story on side two.
Essential Albums
1968
Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake
Immediate · Original 1968 release
The Immediate album uses its two sides differently. The first collects six independent songs, from Lane’s compact “Song of a Baker” to Marriott’s reluctant hit “Lazy Sunday” and the extended closing build of “Afterglow”. Side two becomes the Happiness Stan sequence: six linked tracks interrupted and connected by Stanley Unwin’s narration. The original circular tobacco-tin sleeve makes the physical edition part of the album’s design rather than incidental packaging.
Key tracks: Lazy Sunday · Song of a Baker · Happiness Stan
The first Immediate LP is a new British studio album, not the 1966 Decca record with the same title. “Talk to You” retains the quartet’s hard R&B attack, “My Way of Giving” opens space around Lane’s melodic writing, and “Green Circles” uses shifting studio colour without abandoning a compact structure. Later singles such as “Tin Soldier” do not belong to the original British track list.
Key tracks: Talk to You · My Way of Giving · Green Circles
This is the American Immediate configuration, not a separately recorded follow-up to the British Small Faces. It combines selected tracks from that 1967 LP with non-album singles including “Here Come the Nice”, “Itchycoo Park” and “Tin Soldier”. Heard on its own terms, the sequence gives the US market a concentrated view of the group’s transition from mod pop to studio psychedelia; used as discographical evidence, it must not be confused with the original UK album.
Key tracks: Itchycoo Park · Here Come the Nice · Tin Soldier
The 1966 Decca Small Faces documents the McLagan-era quartet before Immediate, while From the Beginning mixes singles, covers and previously unreleased material assembled by Decca after the band had changed labels. They are related records but not interchangeable accounts of one album session.
The Autumn Stone was compiled by Immediate after the group had split and combines Immediate singles, Decca material, unfinished or late studio recordings and concert performances. Its title track and “Wham Bam Thank You Mam” extend the story beyond Ogdens, but the double LP is an archival construction rather than a final studio album approved by the quartet.
Small Faces compress a large stylistic change into less than four years. The same quartet that cut “All or Nothing” could make “Itchycoo Park”, “Tin Soldier” and Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake without surrendering the rhythmic discipline learned from R&B. Their psychedelic work therefore sounds like an expansion of band practice rather than studio decoration placed over anonymous backing.
Their legacy also runs through two successor histories: Marriott’s heavier Humble Pie and the Lane–McLagan–Jones foundation of Faces. The Small Faces/Faces membership was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, while the original group’s 1996 Ivor Novello award recognised its contribution to British music. Those later honours do not resolve the difficult contracts and incomplete releases, but they help keep the short original catalogue distinct from the bands that followed it.
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