Rhino Factoids: The Small Faces Split, Faces Form

46 years ago today, The Small Faces officially lost Steve Marriott, setting into motion a series of events which would eventually also lead to them to lose “The Small,” too.

For as great as the ‘60s had been for The Small Faces, Marriott was finding the experience of being in a band to be a little too confining for his musical purposes. As he told none other than Cameron Crowe in a 1973 interview for the L.A. Times, “I left the band 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. After a while we found people were expecting the novelty-type records from us, and in actuality we weren’t anything like that. We were all frustrated, but I just felt I had to do something about it.”

“I wish we had been a little bit more grown up at the time,” drummer Kenney Jones told John Hellier in 2001. “If we had played Ogdens’ live, it would have boosted our confidence so much. We were labelled as a pop band, which definitely got up Steve’s nose more than we realised. I wish we had been more like The Who in the fact that when they have problems they stick together until they’ve overcome them. Steve just thought, ‘Well, how do we top Ogdens’?” And he was off. Ogdens’ was a masterpiece. If we had played it live, we would have gone on to even greater things.”

As it was, they still went on to some pretty great things: in the wake of Marriott’s departure, Jones and Ian McLagan soon joined forces with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, changed their name to Faces (even though the label really, really wanted them to keep the old name), and made some seriously fantastic rock ‘n’ roll.

“The way I look at it, 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,” Marriott told Crowe. “We’re all very happy . . . and good friends.”

An actual happy ending? Wow, you don’t get those every day in rock ‘n’ roll…