The Small Faces - 1862 - Non-Album Tracks (1968)

The Small Faces released their album "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" in mid-1968. Bands often put out two albums in a year in those days, and right as the record was released, they returned to the studio to record their next album. This album was going to be called "1862," named after a metal plaque on a chapel that lead singer Steve Marriott owned and where the band practiced. Unfortunately, the album was never finished, and the band broke up at the end of 1968. It remains one of the better known "lost albums" from the 1960s. Many others have tried to piece the album together. This is my attempt.

In making this, I relied heavily on the effort of soniclovenoize at his blog Albums That Never Were. He made a version in April 2020, which you can find here:

http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/2020/04/small-faces-1862.html

Although I got a lot of info from him, this is different because I had a somewhat different goal. Yes, I wanted to recreate the "lost album," but at the same time, I wanted to use all the 1968 studio recordings the band did. So there are a few differences between my version of his. For instance, I've included the covers "Every Little Bit Hurts" and "If I Were a Carpenter" even though they probably wouldn't have been used on the album, because otherwise they would fall through the cracks and not appear on any of the Small Faces stray tracks albums I've posted here.

One very interesting thing I learned from the "Albums That Never Were" blog is that Steve Marriott's son Toby once published a proposed song list for the album. It included a lot of the expected songs, but also two from Steve Marriott's next band, Humble Pie. I wanted to minimize the inclusion of any non-Small Faces performances, but I included those two since they were on that list.

I included one more non-Small Faces song, "Evolution." This Ronnie Lane song would be released several times, and later versions would be called "Stone," so I've included that name in the song subtitle. I've included this for a couple of reasons. One, apparently it was written around the time of the 1862 recording sessions. This particular version comes from a various artists album dedicated to a religious guru that was put together by Pete Townsend and was released in 1970. An edited version of this performance that's a couple minutes shorter was included on a better known various artists album for the same guru. 

The second reason I've included it is because Ronnie Lane was a key singer as well as songwriter for the Small Faces, and usually sang lead vocals for at least one song per album. Without this song, pretty much all the vocals would have just been by Steve Marriott.

Another tricky issue here has to do with a couple of songs that were never finished, due to the band falling apart. One is called "Wide Eyed Girl on the Wall" and the other is called "Jack (The War of the Worlds)." (For the latter, the real name was "Jack," but "The War of the Worlds" was used for a later compilation, to the total bafflement of the members of the band, who have no idea where that name comes from.) The problem is these songs were just backing tracks, and lead vocals were meant to be added later. As a result, they get boring and repetitive, with no soloing to spice things up. Because of this, I drastically cut both songs by about half. I noticed that soniclovenoize at his blog Albums That Never Were did the exact same thing. But I made my own judgment calls on how much to cut without listening to his versions.

"Collibosher" is also an instrumental, but it was planned to be an instrumental all along, so it didn't have the same problem and I didn't make any edits to it.

One more little issue. According to the liner notes to the Small Faces box set "Here Comes the Nice," the song "Wham Bam, Thank You Man" was supposed to be titled just that. But on many archival releases, it's called "Wham Bam, Thank You Ma'am" instead. It's a better rhyme, and we're probably more familiar with that phrase due to David Bowie using it in his classic song "Suffragette City." But I decided to stick with the correct spelling. Oh, and "The Autumn Stone" was originally titled "Jenny's Song," and some versions of it (for instance on the "Here Comes the Nice" box set still call it that. So I've put the alternate title in there too.

Overall, I think this a strong album, especially since it includes the classics "The Autumn Stone" and "The Universal." This is pretty close to what the "lost album" was, but not all the way there, due to uncertainty over the song list and songs that didn't get finished and so forth. Supposedly, there is an official mini-box set of the band's 1968 material planned, but it's been in "development hell" for many years, so who knows if or when it'll ever come out. Maybe when it does we'll get even closer.

UPDATE: On March 16, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file. I added one song as a bonus track, "Afterglow of Your Love." This song appeared on the band's 1968 album "Odgen's Nut Gone Flake" under the name "Afterglow." In 1969, after the band broke up, the song was released under the new name, and became a minor hit single. I've included it as a bonus track because the single version is significantly different, with the intro removed, the outro extended, and the whole thing sped up.

01 The Autumn Stone [Jenny's Song] (Small Faces)
02 Red Balloon (Small Faces)
03 Evolution [Stone] [Complete Version] (Ronnie Lane)
04 Wide Eyed Girl on the Wall [Instrumental] [Edit] (Small Faces)
05 The Universal (Small Faces)
06 Donkey Rides, a Penny a Glass (Small Faces)
07 Wham Bam, Thank You Man (Small Faces)
08 Collibosher [Instrumental] (Small Faces)
09 Every Little Bit Hurts (Small Faces)
10 Buttermilk Boy (Humble Pie)
11 Jack [The War of the Worlds] [Instrumental] [Edit] (Small Faces)
12 If I Were a Carpenter [Edit] (Small Faces)
13 Wrist Job (Humble Pie)

Afterglow of Your Love (Small Faces)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701084/TSMALLFCS1968-1969_186Two_atse.zip.html

As I mentioned above, this album was going to be called "1862," named after a metal plaque on a chapel that lead singer Steve Marriott owned and where the band practiced. I have no idea what the band planned for the album cover, if they even got that far, but it gave me an idea to use a tombstone with that year featured prominently on it. I looked through some pictures of 1862 tombstones and decided all the usual names and dates and other info was distracting. So I found that year written in stone, and I found a photo of a tombstone in the ground, and I used Photoshop to edit them together. 

I'm happy how this turned out because the 1969 album "The Autumn Stone," where many of these songs first appeared, prominently featured autumn leaves on it, due to the title song name. So this cover is reminiscent of that.