THE SMALL FACES – "All Or Nothing"

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

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

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.

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!””

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

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.)

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.

That would make sense if “All Or Nothing” was danceable. Or sounded excited.

pseudo-sophisticated string-quartet milksoppery…

That deserves to be repeated.

This post has been removed by the author.

What Marcello said.9

Mark Grout

The lyric is, at least I’ve always thought, about wanting to get past second base: “You know I would, if I only could.” Y’know, “the other half of you”? Or do I just have a gutter for a mind? There’s no mention of another boy in the lyric. So, yes, it’s bullying, but no less of a classic teen statement for it (see also umpteen Stones songs, the Troggs’ I Can’t Control Myself, or the ludicrous machismo of the Chocolate Watch Band’s Let’s Talk About Girls).

This would explain the strained politeness of the verse vocal and the explosive chorus, with Steve in a similar state of agitation to Billy Fisher sitting in the graveyard with his chaste girlfriend. All Or Nothing is a more obvious hit title than You And Your Bloody Oranges, granted.

As for the nutty, Artful Dodger-meets-lollipop lady line “come on children!”, Marriott uses it on virtually every song on their first album, most notably on a track called Come On Children.

Itchycoo Park aside, I’m not sure which Small Faces songs people are referring to that are so clearly superior to All Or Nothing (Sha La La La Lee? Lazy Sunday? My Mind’s Eye? Here Come The Nice?). Tin Soldier and Afterglow Of Your Love are both comparable but feature hammier soul stylings. Also, their second single I’ve Got Mine had a similar brooding menace and bombed completely, so this certainly wasn’t the way to a surefire hit; I think that’s just the wisdom of hindsight.

Can’t remember at this late stage!

Nice to see the troll a couple of posts back who wouldn’t waste his time arguing with us but spent five paragraphs doing so.

From time to time, generally when my years of experience in the computer industry get passed over, I find myself asking myself what a thirty-year-old knows that I don’t. One very plausible answer to this question is that I don’t know what it’s like to be thirty in a world where the Beatles have always been part of the furniture, like an old chintz sofa. Yes, the Beatles are very much of their time, but that’s because in many very important ways they are their time. Like Hamlet, they seem full of clichés but those clichés were once fresh and startlingly new.

I’ve been loving your revivals and comments on these threads Matthew but I think you’ve got a bit of a bee in your bonnet about my overrating the Beatles!

Their run of scores on Popular goes: 7-8-7-6-8-8-7-7-9-10-5-6-8-4-5-4. I think I like “Paperback Writer” and “Lady Madonna” a lot more than most crits do, but then I like “Hey Jude” and “I Feel Fine” less, and I agree there’s a marked decline (though I place it a bit later than you seem to).

(For comparison, the Stones get: 7-6-6-9-9-9-9-6.)

What fascinates me about this period in pop history is the vast difference between how music looked and sounded in 1962 (the year I was born) and 1969/70 – from an era where Cliff and Frank Ifield were dominant to the time of Woodstock, Hendrix and heavy rock. How did we get from A to B and how influential were the Beatles in that progression? It’s not quite accurate to say, as I read somewhere, that the Beatles were ahead of their peers at every step, but their achievements must have opened the door for others – would the Kinks and the Who have found such a big audience if the Beatles hadn’t broken through a year or two earlier? (And the Stones’ second single was a Lennon-McCartney song.) Couple that with transatlantic influences such as Dylan and the Beach Boys, and of course the drugs, and you get more adventurous music being made and consumed year on year. That’s a fairly simplistic summary of a process that has been the subject of entire books, but that’s why the 60s intrigue me more than any other decade.

And Matthew, a fair shake of the stick for records history hasn’t smiled on is one of the essential things about Popular. Some of the “classic canon” tracks get far from an easy ride, and others that have often been dismissed get a good reappraisal. We might not agree with everything Tom and the comments crew say, but it sure makes you think. Stick around.

i think the beatles were very consciously competitive from a very strong position — which would have been fun at first for their rivals, and annoying later (when it became obvious how enormous the advantage was, of concetnrated time in the studio — everyone else had snatched moments between tours; the beatles went in, as their dayjob, every day for several years)

touring wasn’t always especially lucrative in itself, more a necessary chore for less established bands to promote the work that made the money (singles and later LP sales); the beatles had simply carved themselves a total (and at the time totally unique) permanent holiday from this, and used it to concentrate on R&D (as opposed to retiring entirely and forever to yachts in the med, which they could well have done, if they didn’t enjoy being “toppermost of the poppermost” so much)

re the bitterness: i’m serious about this — the glue of early counterculture was the good feel vibe of the beatles, the sense of shared joy, and the group that did most to present this as a vast public communal option smashed it in a tantrum — i doubt the bitterness was worse than in eg cream, but the effect on the kids was just ugely more widespread; it cast a pall over the whole of pop culture, where any other group break-up just cast a pall over the relevant fans

apologies for all the typos, my keyboard is sticking a lot this morning

Do they? I think (on Tuesdays and alternate Thursdays) that Let it Be is their best record! Partly due to misunderstanding The Story, so I thought the garbled, audibly bored* mess of Abbey Road was the one that they decided they couldn’t release, and so John Paul George and Ringo went back into the studio and as if by magic, they were the Beatles again, and laid down a fine final chapter.

*This opinion is probably dependent on me never seeing them being visibly bored in Let It Be the film.

I have always loved “All or Nothing” and do not regard it at all as a weak part of their portfolio as has been suggested. It is, however, nowhere near their best track or even single, which for me is clearly obvious. A short while ago on the Ken Bruce show, a fellow won through on a round of “Popmaster”, which got him onto the supplementary quiz where one is required to name three chart hits in ten seconds by a named act. Bruce paused, as is his wont, before shouting out “The Small Faces!!” The contestant immediately named “Itchycoo Park” and then floundered, eventually mentioning “the one about the noisy neighbours” as Bruce sympathtically counted him out. Ken then told the guy that he had actually missed out the group’s only number one and also “the brilliant ‘Tin Soldier'”. I couldn’t agree more with this, as I have no hesitation in naming “Tin Soldier” as one of the best records of the sixties. Paul Weller, for what it’s worth, thought so too, the track popping up as his first “Desert Island Disc” when he had the pleasure of being marooned by that ravashing creature Kirsty Young a little while back. If I ever got an invite for that show, I’d have to nominate Kirsty as my luxuary. Doubt if she’d allow it, alas. I’d probably have to make do with an unlimited supply of Chateau Lafite ’61. What a drag!

I like this, although not as much as some of their other songs. For the rest, the Stones were, to me, already the Beatles equals (not yet as consistent, it’s true, and lacking George Martin’s finishing touches, but with the Brian Jones magic and, at their best, some of the sharpest lyrics of the time) while remember that across the channel the likes of Serge Gainsbourg, Francoise Hardy, Jacques Dutronc and Michel Polnareff were making music every bit the equal of what was coming out of London.

seeing as this thread has been revived… 60s/70s nostalgia-cliche alert; for me its a record I can’t separate from a crappy Dansette and a small pile of singles mostly picked up, fairly indiscriminately, by my dad at jumble sales. In that context, aged 8ish, I never heard it as bullying or boorish – I think because what really registered and what I never really got past was the tone and the insistent fourths of the intro, which do still, to me, sound vulnerable/resigned/slightly mournful, whatever happens in the rest of the song. Especially as they struggled to be heard through scratched vinyl and a well-worn needle (sorry, but I did warn you)

TOTPWatch: The Small Faces performed All Or Nothing on Top Of The Pops on four occasions;

11 August 1966. Also in the studio that week were; Billy Fury, David & Jonathan and The Alan Price Set. David Jacobs was the host.

1 September 1966. Also in the studio that week were; The Seekers and Sandie Shaw, plus The Go Jo’s interpretation of ‘Working In A Coalmine’. Alan Freeman was the host.

9 September 1966. Also in the studio that week were; David & Jonathan, The Fortunes and The Searchers. David Jacobs was the host.

27 December 1966. Also in the studio that holiday were; Chris Farlowe and Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames, plus The Go Jo’s interpretation of ‘Good Vibrations’. Alan Freeman and Simon Dee were the hosts.

None of these editions survive.

The shambolic and timid nature of the surviving sixties TOTP footage suggests that probably not much of value was erased. I’m relieved that most of it no longer exists since the illusion of greatness is always more comfortable than the letdown reality of seeing it.