Original subtitles

He had a tone that cut through the

guitars. He was like a lead guitarist

the way he sang and uh with a passion

and a fury that I've never heard anybody

get to this day.

He never sang flat. His pitching was

always spot on. And he could reach notes

that would have dogs sitting up on their

high

legs. And it's all the people who work

on tours and who go to a lot of

concerts. They know whether you are

hitting it or you're not. And uh he

always hit it. And that's what I really

respect the most.

Ste Steve Marriott's um career in show

business, if you like to call it that,

actually goes way back to 1960 when he

appeared in the original London stage

production of Oliver. Um, Steve was in

the show for something like 18 months

and um, he was also a member of the

Italia Conte Stage School which was

probably the stage school to sort of

belong to in those days.

You are

a dream passing by in the sky.

He was in in Oliver for good two to

three years. It was a long while, I

think. Steve went on to do lots of child

acting. He appeared in several films,

including Heavens Above with Peter Cers.

You know, I was so surprised when he

suddenly come home and said he was um

giving it all up. I'm going to be a pop

star. But within a little while of him

saying that, he was. It was amazing

really.

In 1963,

Steve cut his very first solo single for

Deca track called Give My Regards. Steve

actually penned the B-side himself, a

track called Imaginary

Love. Uh Steve went on to sort of form a

band called The Frantics. And after that

band called Steve Marriott's Moments. In

1964, Steve and his band Steve

Marriott's Moments actually cut a

version of the King song Really Got Me.

It was for the US market only and um

didn't sell particularly well at the

time, although these days it's very very

collectible. Um the moments broke up in

sort of early early 65 and Steve was

really sort of you know without a job

for a while and he took a a temporary

job in a local music shop near where he

lived the J60 music bar in Mana Park

East London and it was while working in

the J60 that um he first met Ronnie and

Kenny. Ronnie Ronnie came in to buy a

guitar and um struck up quite a

friendship with Steve. Steve invited him

back to his house to listen to his

record collection and um yeah, the rest

is history really.

When I sing any

song to

you, I just want some reaction, someone

to give me satisfaction. All I want to

do is sit with you, cuz I love you.

Who could it be but the small

faces

over to

rest in shades of

green to Ichu Park?

What did you do there? I got high. What

did you feel? Well, I cried. Why the

tears? Tell you

why. It's all too

beautiful. It's all too

beautiful. It's all too

beautiful. It's all too

beautiful. I feel inclined to blow my

mind.

Feed the ducks with a

bun. They all come out to groove about

nice and fun

and I tell you what I'll do.

I'd like to go there now with

you. You can miss our school. What? Why

go to learn the words of What will we do

there? We'll get high. What will we

touch there? We touch the sky. That's

why the tea is there. I'll tell you

why. It's all too

beautiful. It's all too

beautiful. It's all too

beautiful. It's all too beautiful.

I feel inclined to blow my mind. Get

hung up. Feed the ducks with a

bun. They all come out to groove about

nice and have fun in the sun.

It's all too

beautiful. It's all too

beautiful. It's all too beautiful.

It's all too

beautiful. It's all too beautiful.

You going to book me? I got a mug. Is

that gorgeous or what? And I believe I

can run a decent marathon. Thank you

very much. Download VI now. I mainly

remember Steve Marriott for having a an

incredible

um well his vocal talents a legend but a

real energy you know when he got on

stage it was a real dynamite to watch

this guy and uh I mean I'm talking about

the small faces of course and you knew

why they were called the small faces

because I mean I was probably a head

head higher than all of the guys in the

band.

There she is. Come on up. Hello. What's

your name? Kathy Boseman. Kathy, look

over there. There we are. Hello. Good.

And Kathy, hustag on. Steve, come on

over, Steve. Hello. Hello. Say hello.

What do you want to ask him? I'd like to

know how long that their group has been

together. And how they got together?

Vupent Steve. Um, well, we've been

together for one year now. Exactly one

year. And we all got together in a

pub.

Wouldn't it be

nice? But they make it very clear

they've got no room

for me.

Uh when I was about 14. Um

when I first saw the Small Faces and

there was a tremendous reinvention of

rock really with the the mod culture.

There was the Who and the Small Faces.

They were the two biggest mod bands

from 65 to 67. But they were really the

these sort of motto icons of the era.

Steve Marriott in particular. I mean,

Steve Marriott really was probably the

most copied sort of pop star of the day.

He was he was that big an influence.

There was there was thousands of Steve

Marriott walking around on the street at

that time. I mean, I I myself remember

having my hair straightened out and

parted down the middle just to look like

Steve Marriott. We were in a package

tour and the the bill was uh free, The

Crazy World of Arthur

Brown, Joe Cocker, The Small Faces, and

The Who. And that was all on one on one

bill, great bill. And we went all over

the country. Anyway, the first show we

was in Bristol. We were driving up the

motorway and in our little van and about

halfway up we heard this big honking

hooting and it was a small faces in

their Bentley and there were five pairs

of bums hanging out the window. They

were mooning us.

Yeah, we did an immediate tour um all

over Europe with Small Faces, PPO, Twice

as Nice, Us, and um it was to promote

immediate records. And we we went into

Paris in a hotel in Paris and uh we were

up in the rooms there having a drink

with the boys and Stevie said to the

roadies, "Go and get the guitars and the

amplifiers out." So I went downstairs

and brought all the amplifiers up and

they started playing an impromptu thing.

But inside the hotel room and the noise,

I mean you could hear it like all over

the place. So all of a sudden the

management of the hotel came up and

said, "You've got to stop immediately."

You know, but Stevie wouldn't do that,

you know. He he was one of those

characters on Londoner and he was bit

flash you know and he was going like

screw you we're going to start

rehearsing and they had to call the

police in to sort it all out you know

and uh he was very nearly arrested for

uh making a but they stopped him at the

In the deepest dungeons of my

I the shadows trying to

find a

mess of

it in

during the the uh summer vacation um

when I was 16 17 that that area uh

that's when the herd asked me to come

and play rhythm guitar as a standin. in

for the summer holiday, no summer

vacation. So I did that and at the end

of the year they asked me to

join Small Faces got asked by Johnny

Halliday, who's like the French Elvis,

um, and he's still going strong. Glenn

John's was the producer

engineer and, um, who I'd known for

years. And, uh, he was asked to bring

either Eric Clapton, Jeff Beg, or Jimmy

Hendris, you know, to be the added

guitarist with the Small Faces. So Glenn

said, "Well, they're all a little busy.

Um, how about you take Pete Frampton?"

So, thank you, Glenn. Um, I ended up,

um, my dream was to play with the Small

Faces. Here I am, a week's worth of

sessions in France, and I'm playing

league guitar with the small faces. So,

it was great.

At that point, Steve uh I believe

brought it up to the the band that maybe

I should join.

They um weren't too thrilled about the

idea and Steve was feeling that he he

couldn't get anywhere further with the

small faces.

We had no money at all at the end of the

small places and we had to really scrape

the money together to buy Beehive

Cottage which was not expensive.

Andrew Olden has made the Rolling Stones

an established group. They can afford to

take longer holidays than the small

faces, a group who've recently risen to

the top and now have to work long hours

to stay there. Don Arden, their manager,

has yet to achieve the Oldm Empire. If

I've ever exploited anybody, it's for

their own benefit because they want to

be exploited. I never exploit anybody

that doesn't want to be exploited.

There's no point to it.

[Music]

Hey,

Take me back where

I feel.

Formation of humble pie started in the

summer of 68. At the time I was playing

with a band in Cambridge that included

Rick Wills on bass who went on to play

with Foreigner and Tim Renick on guitar

who went on to play second guitar for

Pink Floyd and Elton John and all kinds

of people. And Steve had met Peter

Frampton and got to know him. And at

that time the general public only knew

Peter as a pretty boy face of 68 teeny

bopper. Steve being the

genius he was for spotting good talent.

Um in meeting Peter realized what a

great guitar player he was. So Steve

called me uh again in the summer of 68

and said I've got this friend of mine

who needs a drama. Um his name's Peter

Frampton.

He invited me down to his cottage to

meet Peter and I heard firsthand through

them just jamming what an absolutely

sensational guitar player Peter was. And

um the next step was for Peter to come

and see me play. Um which he did. A

couple of days later he came to

Cambridge and saw my band play.

and he pretty much right there and then

said, "Yeah, I want to use you to form

this band of mine." So, originally it

was Peter's band and I was the first

recruit. So, it was our band. And

between the summer and the end of that

year, we were having trouble finding

other people. And on New Year's Eve

night of

6869, I had just gotten home from our my

band's uh New Year's Eve gig and the

phone rings and it's Steve Mariam and he

says, "How would you like me to join

your and Peter's band?" Then he said,

"By the way, I have a bass player who

wants to come with me, Greg Ridley from

Spooky, who at that time was the most

respected uh rightfully so, bass players

in England." And I said, "That sounds

like the plan to me, sir." And he then

called Peter and asked Peter what he

thought. And I was at Glenn John's house

just socializing. We just come back from

the Paris sessions and Glenn was playing

me this album of this new band that he

thought was really good and probably

would be very successful. And we were

halfway through listening to Led

Zeppelin one, which he just told me he'd

recorded and mixed in 10 days. And my

jaw was on the floor at this point, you

know, and the phone rings and it's Steve

calling from somewhere in London. and

they just played a a small faces had

just played a show and he said I've left

and he said can I join your band so I

said yeah of course you

can take

But yeah,

probably wanted his

soul. All he gave

them was smile.

There she is again, stepping out of her

limb, looking like a

of a $20

magazine.

Yeah, she's got it where you find it. If

you know what I mean. Yeah, you

do. She's

a naturalb born

woman. Natural born

woman. Natural born woman.

There she is again. Watch us stop the

rain

tracks looking like green hair hanging

down the

bank. I said don't look too long. You

make your glasses

clear. She's

a natural born

woman. Natural

woman. Natural

woman. Get off.

Come on.

Natural born woman.

She's a naturalb born woman.

natural woman.

When I'm sweating and I'm shaking and

I'm bringing

you my new

sway

people. Come on now. Come on now. Yeah.

Yeah.

woman. She's a natural woman. She does

it everywhere.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Be a sweetheart Susie. Together we

can lose control.

That's your woman.

She's natural

woman. That's your

woman.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Natural love

woman. Natural love

woman. Natural love woman.

Yep.

Alabama 69.

Experimentation was everything. you

know, we were doing lots of um different

things as as per recording outside and

we were using um and Andy John's Glenn

John's

brother. Um we were recording during the

day and then he was doing Jack Jack

Bruce's songs for Taylor at night, you

know, that's the period basically. It

was like we were all finding our way at

that at that time and and really

learning. I was learning a lot from from

obviously Andy John's and Steve who'd

had a lot more experience recording than

I had. And

uh anything went, you know, if Jerry

wanted to play piano, he played piano.

If Steve wanted to play drums, he played

Dr. whatever, you know, it didn't

matter. We were just doing whatever we

wanted to do. And if Jerry wrote a song,

we recorded that. If Greg wrote a song,

we record it. Wasn't there was no there

was no like, okay, this is what we're

going to do. It was like whatever

anybody wants to do, this is the band,

you know. It was very democratic.

He ain't just like you.

Alabama 69 was Steve's um song about how

freedom from slavery and emancipation in

general still wasn't nearly as far down

the road as it should be. Um, and in

terms of how we recorded it, we recorded

it the back track in fact and some of

the vocal I believe in a field behind

Magdalene Labour Village Hall where we

used to rehearse.

I recorded

that. I had a Reox, a Studa Reox, and uh

we were all outside this we used to

rehearse at this local hall down uh in

Essex in the country near where Steve uh

lived and um it was during the summer

and we were at we decided to go outside.

Jerry brought um a snare and a bass drum

I think or a high hat outside and we

positioned ourselves. We balanced

ourselves um by how far we were away

from the mic, sort of how they used to

do it when it was just one room. And so

that was actually recorded outside. Um

and u I think you can hear like if you

listen closely you can hear cows in the

background.

Um, as a guitar player when I heard

Frampton play and as a singer when I

heard Steve sing I mean the first time I

heard his voice I remember Scott Mun he

was like and now we have Steve Marriott

from Humble Pie you know that that good

deep voice and you know they played uh

maybe it was Live at the Fillmore or or

Shaky Jake or something from you know an

earlier album Safe as Yesterday

something like that. I just, you know, I

mean, the way I I I um choose what I

love is the hair goes up on my arms, you

know, and for certain people like Otis

Reading or Al Green, you know, Steve

Marriott, that happens to this day.

Will we be free?

When will we be free?

Where will we be

[Music]

free?

Where will we be

free? When will we

be free?

He could play the harmonica like, you

know, like Alexis Corner, like the real

grits. I mean, he was a really gifted

musician. He could play the Hammond

organ like nobody else. People just look

at him as a as a little guy with a huge

voice, you know, but he was

multi-talented, you know, tremendous

personality.

When I was just a kid back in

a gun for my own sake, shot a man down.

When I was just 18 from that day, they

call me Shaky Jake. Shake it. Boy, what

you going to do?

Princess you the price you pay for one

mistake get off the streets it's shaking

jail I was born on the bad side but I

was looking for the chance to make a

Take it. I cut my teeth on a brand. I'm

a devil's own son. I'm shake it. I say I

shake it shake. Boy, what you going to

do? Texas strangers coming after

you pray for one mistake. Get off the

streets. It's shake and

shake. I keep on the

road. I travel by

none. I don't need

anyone's going to see me

right about 6t

deep to

take flowers and nobody's going to

we outlaw shake shake shake boy what you

going to do that's the strangers coming

after you. Here's a price. You pray for

one mistake. Get off the streets. It's

shaking. J

Oh, hey.

Shake it shake boy. What you going to

do? That's the strangers coming after

you. Here's the fight. Pray for one last

mistake.

And all the seasons change.

we were as acoustic

um as we were electric. We we all love

playing acoustic stuff. We decided that

the way this was the introductory tour

first of all in England and then in

America um I came on first did a song

called Take Me Back just one acoustic

then um I believe Greg came on we did a

number together. Jerry did a number, uh,

sang a number, uh, and then Steve came

on and we did For You Love.

That went down like a lead balloon in

America in 1969 where everything was

rock till you

drop

for you.

things right.

It was basically um the old Yog Birds

song which we loved. Um and we did an

acoustic version of it that went on for

days

literally and um sometimes it was short

and sometimes it was long but usually it

was very long. So um we weren't uh as

well known obviously in the states at

that time. So to do this was a little

bit self-indulgent.

Unfortunately, by the time we got to

America, Andrew's woes with immediate

record,

uh, the business problems were in full

swing and it was a sinking ship in terms

of the label, which we were blissfully

unaware of until we got home from the

first tour of America. America to find

out that Amelia had just gone

bankrupt. We ran out of money in LA and

I came back from lunch one day and found

my suitcase outside the door. My door

was locked. The hotel the Ramada in and

um that was it. We barely had enough

money to get our tickets and go back

home. That was when Immediate Records

went

bust. Andrew, by his own admission, will

tell you back then he was horrible at

business. He tried his best. But what he

did for us was he forewarned us that the

bankruptcy was about to go down and that

that technically speaking put us in a

mode of

freedom and he said here's a number call

this guy Jerry Moss cuz he wants the

bandai was a very very important uh

signing for&m

um not wanting to get too technical

about all this, but uh we had

established a company in England in

1969 and prior to that time all the

English repertoire we released

um in America pretty much came from a

couple of

sources. The offers started uh quite

reasonable and then I realized I was in

some sort of a bidding war with uh uh

Atlantic and Ahmed Erdigan and uh of

course we had to keep going higher and

higher and

higher that

will

love your love.

Uh years later, uh Ahmed at some party

said to me, "Uh, how much do you end up

paying for humble pie?" this was, you

know, 25 years afterwards. He says, "I

had that deal for $25,000 and before I

knew it, it was whatever it was." And I

I remembered it was something close to

about a $400,000 uh investment, which

was a lot of money for us at the time,

but I really uh wanted this band and I

was thrilled to have.

We were then appointed to Dean as a

manager and Frank Barcelona as an agent

because they had a and fearsome

reputation in terms of their ability to

break British acts in America.

I'm going to bring you down.

At that point in his life, Steve was at

his absolute best in terms of his

internal personality.

and his generosity to other

musicians. And he wanted to not be the

front man. He wanted the group to have

three frontmen being himself, Greg, and

Peter. And he respected the fact that

after all, it was originally Peter's

band. I was frustrated. Um, and you know

when a band works that closely together,

I don't care how good friends you are,

you start getting on each other's

nerves. D could see the power that Steve

had as a front man. Slowly but surely it

evolved to where Steve became more of

the front man and we were getting

harder, tougher, more blues oriented and

Peter was getting a little frustrated by

this. Not that he didn't like that, but

Peter was the melodic side of the band,

the sweeter side of the band. We were

very successful now and um you know, no

one wanted to to rock the boat.

Whilst the live album was being mixed

and getting ready for release, Peter

made his decision to leave the band.

[Music]

We mixed it one time on our own in

Olympic Studios in London and D came to

hear it and we thought we'd done a great

job and the heard it and he was kind of

solemnfaced and we looked and said,

"What's wrong?" He said, "Where's the

audience? You forgot the audience." So,

and he was right. The atmosphere we'd

mixed out. We'd forgotten the ambient

mics. So, we took it to New York City

and remixed it in Electric Ladyland

Studios with Eddie Kramer and we brought

up the audience mics and all this

beautiful ambience came into play and um

the rest is rock and roll history. It

sold a lot of records.

That's it.

All right. All right. All

right. When I realized that Coliseum was

in its death rows and I I'd heard on the

great line that Humble P were looking

for a new guitar player to replace

Peter. So, I gave Steve a ring and he

invited me out to his house later that

day

and I went out and had a great evening

with him just jamming, playing through

some stuff and talking and he invited me

to a band rehearsal couple of days later

in London. And when I turned up for the

rehearsal,

uh, most of the British music press were

there and it seemed to have already been

decided that I was going to be joining

the band.

All right. I don't need no doctor

now cuz I know

what I do.

I don't need a

doctor. I need my

baby and I know I'm in

misery. I don't need no

doctor to be

no doctor. I don't need no doctor. I

don't need no

doctor. My prescription.

I don't need no doctor. I don't need no

doctor. I need my bra in my

window. You are all

my

no I need

[Music]

rest out of home. All I need is my

baby's sweet

chated lotion. He

put

my

no

[Music]

sing.

Heat. Heat.

Don't need no doctor. I don't need no

doctor. I don't need no

doctor. Don't need no doctor.

I

don't know.

No doctor, please

don't. No doctor.

70s Steve Marriott he was there was

Steve Marriott Ron Stewart Roger Daltry

these guys were rock stars and Steve

Marriott was a I mean it it wasn't

called that at the time but he was a

heavy metal rock star I mean the guy was

distorted guitar and a screaming and

whailing voice playing those big arena

rock type songs. You know, Stone Cold

Fever, the Fixer, you know, all that

stuff.

We were due to go and do our first

headline tour of America promoting the

live album, which we did actually with

Clen because Peter had already gone.

Immediately after that, um, we went into

the studio to start rehearsing and

recording Smoking. So, there was a lot

of freshness and more bluesy feel to the

band. Steve played a lot of Hammered

organ on on on there. There was some

great guest appearances by people like

Steve Stills and others. Um, and it just

turned out to

be certainly all pound-for-pound I guess

our best record. The very first time I

ever met Steve was uh Olympic Studios in

Barnes in West London and I'd gone with

Jerry Shirley, Humble Prize drummer to a

session for I think it was Smoking the

album that they were making at the time.

And uh remember being in the room, Jerry

was sitting at the piano and Steve

walked in these huge doors and I just

remember thinking the first my first

impression was how small he was cuz he

was I guess not much more than 5'2, 53.

It still amazes me that that voice would

come out of this little person who had

this just such vibrancy. I think it was

well he was incredibly special.

Hot and nasty started as most of our

co-written songs did as a jam in the

studio. Steve was at the hammered organ

and I'd started to hit a a beat along

with the lick he was playing was

like and that was like a Yeah. And Greg

joined in with that classic baseline of

his Clem joined in with a lovely guitar

line and we got it I think in the first

take or at least the second take the

backtrack. Later on that evening, Steve

Stills showed up and we got everything

done except in we didn't have an actual

vocal hook and between Steve Stills and

Steve Marriott, they came up with the do

you get the

message except it took them 48 hours and

four fifths of Jack Daniels and God

knows how much Peruvian loved us to do

it. But it was a great session.

I did go to a lot of those sessions on

quite a lot of occasions in the evenings

and just to sit around and just watch

them perform the tracks. And I actually

did get a credit on the album

eventually. I think it says thanks to

Steven Stills and Ricky Wills. But all I

ever did was roll joints.

Actually know if you're allowed to say

that, but that's what I was there

primarily to do. Keep the boys grinning.

Steve always had this

um idea if you like working with black

colored black colored singers and um he

he produced three excellent singers from

from Mike and Tina Turner's Iets and Ray

Charles Rlets and um they become the

Blackberries and Steve took them out on

the road with in in 73

when we recorded that album.

Steve's personal life that had become a

mess. He was about to lose the one true

love of his life being Jenny Marriott.

When we split up when I couldn't, it was

sink or swim for me in the end. And uh

it was devastating, but I had to get up

because it was madness.

The loss of Jenny Marriott absolutely

devastated Steve and in some ways he was

never quite the same after that. And we

recorded that album right in the middle

of that breakup.

Steve had uh his own little studio

situation at his house in

Essex when I joined the band, but it was

just a very basic home recording setup

with a couple of

reboxes. When the money started to come

in from the success of Smoking and the

American

tours, Steve decided that he would like

to put the real stuff in there so that

we could actually record there for real.

Black.

The room allowed you to put lots of bass

on and it sounded great in there. You

took it out and it was so swamped with

bass frequency that it was very

difficult to cut onto

vinyl. And unfortunately,

um, Eat It suffered, uh, as a result of

that.

That was the point where the freedom

that we had at that point being

given was starting to be questioned by

the Jerry Mosses of the world because

the expectations of that record did not

meet up. You know, it didn't do what we

had hoped it was going to do. That was

going to be our kudra. That was going to

be the big one. And instead of it being

that, we literally did eat it.

Jerry and myself particularly

um felt that we needed to try to get

Steve away from his own studio at that

stage just because things were getting a

bit crazy. Um Steve had an incredible

amount of energy and he found it very

difficult to switch off and walk away

from it and the band were becoming more

and

more disheartened by the

financial state of affairs. We started

to see that we had signed this bizarre

piece of paper that had taken all of the

financial control out of our hands.

By sort of 1974 or late 1974, Humble Pie

was starting to disintegrate in the same

way really that Small Faces had done

sort of 5 years earlier.

We were up at privates and um this

guitar was given to me by uh this is a a

Tokai guitar I think it was by this

lovely little Japanese girl who wanted

me to use Tokai guitars. She she gave me

the guitar and Steve took this picture

took the guitar from me and smashed it

into about 30 pieces. And I was like

Steve what are you doing? I was like oh

come on man it's just rock and roll man.

We'll get you another one. Don't worry

about it baby. you know, I mean, you

couldn't yell at him. It It was Steve,

you

know. I mean, immediately this the

Humble Pie thing finished, Steve began

rehearsing a new band called Steve

Merritt's Allstars, which also featured

Greg from from Humble

Pie. In

1975, Ichu Park was reissued and very

unexpectedly charted in the UK and um

there was pressure then on Steve to get

the boys back together again to do some

promotional work for for

TV. I was fast asleep one night about

4:30 in the morning. The phone rang

and lo and behold, it was the one and

only Marriott down the other end of the

line going, "Ah, Rick." I said, "Hi,

Steve." He said, "What are you doing?" I

said, "I'm asleep." He said, "No, man.

Get up." He said, "We're in the studio.

You got to come and join us." I said,

"Why?" He said, "Well, we've just fallen

out of Ronny." In fact, I think I just

whacked him. He said in his run off down

the road. He said, "You've got to come

and join us." I said, "Well, what are

you doing?" He said, "Well, we've got

the Small Faces back together." He said,

"I'm here with Kenny and Mac and we want

you to come and play with us."

the Small Faces Mark 2 as as fans tend

to remember it. It ended in failure

really. It it they never got the same

sort of atmosphere and and I think in

hindsight the band members look looking

at it now would say perhaps we shouldn't

have done it.

Soon after the split of the Small Faces

Mark I Steve

moved out to America moved to Atlanta,

Georgia with his wife at the time Pam

who was came from Atlanta, Georgia.

David Krebs had asked us to try and put

Humble Pie back together. Steve had come

to New York and David Krebs put us to a

test. He said, "Right, I want you to go

to the country where I lived at the time

and write me a hit record and come back

on Monday morning 9:00 and record it."

It was played to Doug Morris, who was at

the time the head of Atco Records. And

there was a line in it that Steve stole

from I think again Hank Williams and

Doug

Morris signed us on the strength of a

that line and b the fact that his

16-year-old daughter heard it being

played and loved

it. We recorded two albums for Atco. The

first one with Fall for a Pretty Face on

it did fairly well. The second one uh

didn't do well at all. We had a release

party for the album and uh unbeknownst

to us, this guy from uh ATCO comes into

the dressing

room, introduces himself and says, "I'm

the head of something or other atco

promotions, I think." And so Steve looks

at him and says, "Well, what the are you

doing here? You should be out there

promoting it." Now off threw the guy out

of the dressing room. The following

Monday morning, there's a de There's a

memo goes around Atco Records apparently

saying, "Do not work this record." And

so that's what happened to Go for the

Throat, the second uh record for Atco.

And not many months after that, Lib

Krebs quite rightly pulled the financial

plug on us and we had no choice but to

disband. During Steve's stay in America,

he was in America for approximately 4

years. I mean, he really um his world

really come crashing down. I mean, his

his marriage broke up.

bigger

throughout the 80s with various lineups.

The packag of three, there was the

official receivers, Steve Marriott and

the DTS. Steve Marriott's next band. And

they they they just toured and gigg all

the time, not non non-stop throughout

the

1980s. The last pack of the three lineup

featuring Jim Leon. Jim was Jim was

there all the way along really except

for when Steve had a spell with DTS. Jim

was in all the other

lineups. The at the time we actually got

together. He was in a band called the

Official

Receivers.

Um, and then he went from that to Steve

with the DTS and then from that to the

next band and from the next band back to

a packet of free. Ste Steve got a call

in early 91 from from Peter Frampton of

all people. Steve hadn't had any contact

with Peter for years. I didn't really I

wasn't in in the mood to to do a Peter

Frampton record at this point and

thought this would be a great time to go

and do something else. So I tried to

think first of all I I said well I'm

going to put a band together. I'll do a

band you know get some other people

together and um do something just

completely

different co-rite with everybody and and

do that. So I was auditioning all these

people and I was looking for Steve

Merritt for obvious reasons and um funny

thing was I couldn't find him um not in

somebody else anyway. So that's when I

decided to call up Steve and said, you

know, what are you up to? You fancy

writing a couple of songs and see if we

can still still do it. So he thought

about it for a minute and he said, well,

I'm pretty happy doing what I'm doing. I

said, well, all right. Okay. Well, but

if you want to come over,

that's okay.

I I felt the juices flowing again. We um

he he decided that he was going to come

out uh get a place in Santa Monica. I

had a little studio down in the in the

valley in Los Angeles and um we're going

to write, do some demos, put a band

together, which we did. We started

seeing record companies, uh publishing

company, you know, we started doing the

whole rounds again and um it looked like

things were going really well. And um at

the time when everything seemed to be

coming to the point

where like um some of the big labels

were really interested,

um Steve decided that he was just going

to go home. That was it. Uh we was just

really glad to be going home. Steve's

mate picked us up at the airport um and

he dropped us off home. We had a bit of

a brow, made it up, decided to go out

for something to eat at his favorite

restaurant.

He'd gone out for a meal with some

friends at the Straw Hat restaurant in

SWorth during the evening. I think I

think they had a had a good meal. Had

quite a bit to drink and um they went

back to a friend's house to stay the

evening. Um a friend actually put Steve

and his wife, tucked them up, I think,

in bed. And uh basically that was going

to be that. Steve had decided for some

reason that um he wanted to go home to

his own place. And at about half 1 in

the morning, he phoned for a taxi and

went home alone. 4 hours later, a

passing motorist um seen seen the house

a light and phoned the fire brigade from

a telephone box just outside Steve's

house and um the rest we all know about.

Unfortunately, Steve Steve was found

um dead in a in an airing cupboard. I

understand that um either side of

Steve's bed there was a door. One was a

door to the landing and one was the door

to a cupboard. And unfortunately in all

the panic Steve had taken the wrong

door. I'd like to think that we would

have finished it. Um but it wasn't to

be.

typical. I went with Ronny Wood to the

funeral and we got late because, you

know, trying to get Ronnie anywhere on

time is like impossible. And we got

there and it was pouring with rain. And

we got there and the grave had just been

filled in the flowers and everyone had

gone.

So it was just me and Woody, you know,

like

paying final

respect. You got your weak in the news.

season.

I just remember like there was like a

blurb on MTV like that like there was

like a thing about the new kids on the

block and then oh yeah this guy who was

in this band passed away and I was like

man

that's you know I mean that that right

there showed me how like silly things

like MTV All right.