Long Agos and Worlds Apart

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. The book draws on lengthy new interviews, including
ones with Jones, Lane’s close friend Pete Townshend and original
Small Faces member Jimmy Winston. It features contributions from many
associates and intimates, including managers, agents, publicists,
songwriters, auxiliary musicians, fan-club personnel, recording
engineers, journalists, friends and wives. It also draws on numerous
interviews the author conducted down the years with both Jones and
McLagan, much of which material is previously unpublished.

It
is a revealing, impartial, exhaustive and definitive exploration of
the corpus and career of a truly great band.

Author Biography

Sean Egan is an author, journalist, editor and television screenwriter.