THE SMALL FACES - “All Or Nothing”
(#223, 17th September 1966)
You can still hear records that sound like this in the charts occasionally, because the big late-90s Britrock boom was built on this template and some of that generation of bands have lingered. It seems to be a model that guys like Richard Ashcroft, who take themselves and their music pretty seriously, reach for, and I can understand why.
The Small Faces have picked up an expressive vocabulary from soul, with lots of stock interjections and hints of call-and-response, even if there’s no actual response. It’s a music that values noise and technique (though not yet to the point where they become a priority) and I don’t know where that came from, maybe just from in-circuit cockfighting among the newer groups. And then you’ve got some vestiges of pop songwriting or reflex: those “ba-ba-ba-das”, for instance, and the dynamics - tantrum swings of aggression and volume - might be half-borrowings from the foghorn pop of Cilla, too. But it’s not as disciplined as pop has been - even if it’s only three minutes long it feels longer, feels like the band are giving themselves space and time to preen a bit.
This all combines into a sound I recognise as “rock” - whether it rocks or not - and react against, even though it’s interesting seeing it develop here. It’s deeply unfair to blame the Small Faces for the iniquities of their descendents, but I find “All Or Nothing” charmless anyway. I think the bullish interruptions - “Come on children!” “Mmm yeah” “You know what I mean!” and the familiar rest - strip out the vulnerability the song needs to be sympathetic, and leaves it red-faced, self-satisfied, even bullying.4
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Anonymous on January 10th, 2006
appropriately enough (for a song that exists somewhere between rock and soul), the track has been covered by both X and Jimmy G & The Tackheads (Jimmy G being George Clinton’s younger brother)…
-henry s
Anonymous on January 10th, 2006
It’s probably fair to say that most bands hadn’t hit the heady heights of The Beatles at thois time and you only hav=e to look at The Troggs’ ” Girl Like You ” and The Faces’ ” All or Nothing” to see where most of them were.
I think that ” Eleanor Rigby ” is one of the worst Beatle songs as it is Mac & Martin in the studio and it has nothing to do with the Beatles. A load of wank, really.
At least the 2 other songs mentioned are attempts to keep things real and if The Faces sound bullying it;s no more so than The Sex Pistols when everything around them was too fuckin’ nice for rock ‘n’ roll.
Brian in Canada
Rosie on January 10th, 2006
It’s a strange thing about logging number ones - it’s a good overall snapshot but it’s unkind to bands like the Small Faces, whose only Number One was one of their least memorable hits. This happened to the Hollies too - bands which seemed to have much more presence at the time than their representation in this exercise.
And of course The Who, whose influnce can’t be overestimated, won’t be troubling us at all, I think.
This division between Rock and Soul - I never really understood that there should be a real distinction (obviously not as the Small Faces did drop right in the gap). I knew vaguely, as a teenager, that you weren’t supposed to like The Who and The Stones at the same time, but you did. I was never really into the tribal thing.
There was a sequel - in the late 70s, when I was teaching in Hull, the kids I taught were Northern Soulers. They wanted nothing to do with punk at all - yet it’s punk that seems to dominate the history of the time.
Sorry, I’m wibbling - maybe it’s just the indifferent song, a weed amongst so many roses in 1966
Anonymous on January 10th, 2006
All or Nothing is the Small Faces’ With A Girl Like You, really - a great band turning the heat down a little in order to score a hit. Not their best by any means, but I still like it, Steve Marriot throws himself into it with teenage moddish abandon - right now he’s telling it like his life depends on her love, but deep down he knows that come Friday, he’ll be swaggering round in his tonic suit, gobbling down blues and strutting like a young peacock - it’s the youngster’s narcisistic joy in thinking you’ve felt real pain for the first time and thinkign ‘heavy, man…’
That’s what I think anyway.
Tommy Mack
Anonymous on January 11th, 2006
Having spent the entire 60s stateside, I’ve no personal recollections about this one–though I’ve heard it numerous times subsequently. The only hit the Small Faces had here was “Itchycoo Park,” quite unlike “All or Nothing.”
Surely “All or Nothing” is not their best work–which is so often the case, as other have observed, with artists who have otherwise done some absolutely superb work. Rosie is quite right to mention the Hollies. One could say the same for Dusty Springfield (I believe I already have) and Sandie Shaw (whose biggest and worst hit is coming soon). It could also be part of the public taste loves banality and mediocrity and shies away from artists’ best work. Let us not forget what records remained at #1 for the longest number of weeks back in ‘65-’67. (Some of those “gems” are also coming soon.)
The Small Faces’ recordings I know best–the aforementioned “Itchycoo Park,” “Lazy Sunday,” “Whatcha Gonna Do About It,” “In My Mind’s Eye”–don’t display what’s so irritating here. It’s that “bullishness” Tom mentioned. I’ve heard it elsewhere in the SFs’ cover of “Every Little Bit Hurts,” which, by focusing exclusively on the “Hurts,” loses the depth and real emotion of Brenda Holloway’s original.
In retrospect, Steve Marriott’s “bullishness” was turned loose once he left the band. To the best of my recollection, wailing and shouting was what Humble Pie was all about. Yet, back then, what with all the clouds of marijuana smoke drifting around, one could almost imagine that HP was actually saying something.
Anonymous on January 11th, 2006
Doctor Mod said:
Sorry–it’s late and I forgot to sign the above post. It’s mine and mine alone.
Tom on January 11th, 2006
Brian in Canada - the Pistols are more taunting than bullying, unless you’re talking about the Frigging in the Rigging era Pistols.
Yes this is unfair on the Small Faces as a whole - I was in the pub last night and “Itchycoo Park” was on in the toilets as if to chasten me, and “Lazy Sunday” is a lot more fun too. I was trying to explain my low opinion to Martin and hit on “it’s a nasty combination of “Hear me roar!” and “Feel my pain!”"
p^nk s on January 11th, 2006
those toilets were reading our brane and playin it back at us!! it was very odd
the point i wz makin in the pub to tom and martin is interestingly borne out by tommy mack re this SF song (which i barely know) (telling in itself surely) — that on the whole what i like abt the younger steve marriott is his market-stall cockney front, ie the yell has a kind of “we all know this is bullshit but it’s win-win fun cz i’m such a cheeky chappie” jollity to it, which is possibly fairly new to pop (and quite easily lost: i’m not sure anyone in britpop attempted anything so subtle)
it is about playful but blatant dishonesy, in other words — the all-veg slicer-dicer you buy from his stall will in fact BREAK when you first use it and he knows it and you knoty and you both know the other one knows it, but you enjoy his patter enough to give it a whirl anyway, and he knows THAT and in a way your exasperation w,the rubbish he is selling you is the price you pay for the zing you get from pure blarney of the sell in the first place
(phew)
anyway, my guess is that there is not enough of this in this particular song, which is why i can’t recall it
Anonymous on January 11th, 2006
Lazy Sunday is fun, but I can’t help but feel that it’s almost single-handedly responsible for the ‘Britpop knees-up subgenre’ to which an earlier commenter refers. And that has to be a bad thing.
TM
Anonymous on January 11th, 2006
Lazy Sunday is fun, but I can’t help but feel that it’s almost single-handedly responsible for the ‘Britpop knees-up subgenre’ to which an earlier commenter refers. And that has to be a bad thing.
TM
Frank Kogan on January 11th, 2006
But Tom, Steve Marriott is a teenybopper!, and if you don’t believe this merely on the trivial ground that I have never heard this song and may never have heard any performance by Steve Marriott other than “Itchycoo Park,” I present the following conclusive evidence:
Early 1974, Connecticut, USA, 10 PM
Phone caller (me) to DJ at WDRC: “I’m amazed that you played ‘Rock and Roll’ by the Velvet Underground. Could you play something by the New York Dolls or Slade?!?”
DJ: “Well, Frank, I’ll be honest with you. That stuff is teenybopper music, punk rock. It all sounds the same, the New York Dolls, Slade, Humble Pie. In the evening we get adults listening.”
(Emphasis added.)(Next song he played was by Elton John.)
Anonymous on January 11th, 2006
Tom - think that’s the 1st time I’ve been thought of in a UK loo. Or least where somone admitted it.
Anyway - we skip ahead and note that the Small Faces in a later form , backing Rod Stewart, were loved for that sloppy , in your face, FTW , boozy , ballsy attitude. ANd certainly Marriott got that with Humble Pie ( “I Don’t Need No Doctor ” )….
But I actually agree with you. Most bands of the era were not up to The creative ” diversity” of the Beatles. And there was still that whole ” blue eyed ” soul thing coming along.
Here in Canada , we were in different camps. Thoise who listed the soul ( and usually drank ) were ” greasers “. Those who listened to rock ( and usually smoked ) were ” heads “. And somewhere in the middle were ” Mods ” who drank, smoked and listened to both.
It’s a little known that fact that there were actually pitched and running battles in Toronto’s Yorkville between these rival equivalents if Mods & Rockers.
All I can say was the pot smokers were real easy to catch.
Brian in Canada
rjm on January 12th, 2006
As everyone has already said, not one of their better songs. But I’ve always thought of it as transitional, trying to make a step up from the pure pop of Sha La La La Lee to something more soulful and thoughtful. I think it also marks the band’s transition from mod amphetimines to hippie psychedlics (wasn’t the next single My Mind’s Eye?)
I can’t stand Marriot’s boorishness, either, I prefer his professional theatrical cockney (he did play the Artful Dodger in Oliver! after all).
I do love, however, the idea of this replacing Eleanor Rigby at Number 1. We had something of the same thing in the US when Strangers in the Night and Paperback Writer (which had been trading off at Number 1) were replaced by Hanky Panky and Wild Thing). The pop audience can only stand quality and originality for so long.
Anonymous on January 12th, 2006
“The pop audience can only stand quality and origniality so long”
Or maybe they just thought that records about young love/lust/loss with savage guitars and excited teenagers are better for dancing to than pseudo-sophisticated string-quartet milksoppery?
TM
Tom on January 12th, 2006
That would make sense if “All Or Nothing” was danceable. Or sounded excited.
Anonymous on January 12th, 2006
I was talking about Wild Thing! And…er…Hanky Panky…
Anonymous on January 12th, 2006
pseudo-sophisticated string-quartet milksoppery…
That deserves to be repeated.
rjjm on January 13th, 2006
I think I had some cereal like that once.
Marcello on January 15th, 2006
This post has been removed by the author.
PJ Miller on February 2nd, 2006
I think it’s a good record. I don’t hear any bullying or boorishness.
Anonymous on February 7th, 2006
What Marcello said.9
Mark Grout
Jay Banerjee on July 22nd, 2006
To the point, “All or Nothing” is one of my ten favo(u)rite singles of all time. I suppose it’s one of those disarmingly straight-forward rock ballads you either swear by or sniff at, much like The Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks”, my all-time favo(u)rite. Explaining its appeal to someone who doesn’t “get it” is as futile an exercise as explaining its appeal to a deafmute.
Look, Steve Marriott was a soulman, and if you want to fault the song for interjections of “My my my!” and “Hear my children sing!”, you may as well toss every ’60s soul record ever cut. Not that this is a soul record per se, but a record cut by a rock band with a soul singer, so classify it as you will. Steve was working within his idiom. Why not just attack their “bullish” use of guitars instead of bassoons?
“The pop audience can only stand quality and originality for so long.”
A comment even colder than that heartless review! I won’t waste my time arguing with you people. Some people don’t care for sunshine, some people don’t care flowers, some people don’t care “All or Nothing”. Don’t even bother trying to convert them.
10.