The 25 Best Live Rock Recordings - No. 23: Performance: Rockin’ The Fillmore
No. 23 - Humble Pie - Performance: Rockin’ The Fillmore (A&M Records, 1971)
Sometimes it begins with a voice: one that is distinctive as it is vital, perfectly placed within the context of the music being made. Stephen Peter Marriott was just such a voice. Marriott possessed a potent high tenor voice that was as soulful and earthy. Marriott was a musically precocious child who in 1959, formed his first band at twelve years old. For the next six years, Marriott bounced around garage bands, dabbled in acting, and wrote some songs that generated little interest.
In 1964, between bands, Marriott met bassist Ronnie Lane and drummer Kenny Jones who eventually formed a band, first with keyboardist Jimmy Winston, who was quickly replaced by Ian McLagan, who became the Small Faces.
Do you see where this is going?
After releasing several respectable albums, the Small Faces would reach their zenith with the concept album Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake (Immediate, 1968). Eventually, frustrated with a perceived failure of the band to evolve from their pop image into something more sophisticated, Marriott left the Small Faces to form a new band with guitarist Peter Frampton, Humble Pie. So, there!
It bears mentioning what became of Lane, Jones, and McLagan after Marriott’s exit. The three remaining members merged with two former members of The Jeff Beck Group, (who had released Truth (Epic, 1968) and Beck-Ola (Epic 1969)), vocalist Rod Stewart, and bassist (and guitarist) Ron Wood. Hoping to capitalize on the Small Faces name, Warner Bros. wanted the band to keep the old name, something the new band was opposed to, all agreeing on the more concise Faces.
Before any releases by the new Faces line-up could occur, Wood and McLagan appeared on Stewart's first solo album in 1969, An Old Raincoat Won't Ever Let You Down (Mercury) (later known as The Rod Stewart Album in the US). And, that was that.
Marriott and Frampton’s new band, formed with bassist Greg Ridley (from Spooky Tooth) and drummer Jerry Shirley, was something different from the Small Faces - something very different. Marriott was well-versed in American R&B and Soul music from which he honed his voice into a solid instrument (Jimmy Page had considered Marriott for the lead vocals role in Led Zeppelin before settling on Robert Plant). The music had a soul center with a hard blues edge.
Between 1969 and 1971, the band released Safe As Yesterday Is (Immediate, 1969), Town And County (Immediate, 1969), Humble Pie (A&M, 1970), and Rock On (A&M, 1970), the latter two recordings contributing half of the concert setlist that would become Performance: Rockin’ The Fillmore. Recorded at New York City’s Fillmore East Auditorium during four shows performed May 28-29, 1971, yielded a sprawling double LP consisting of seven lengthy songs, a short setlist that was comparable to that of the Allman Brothers Band Fillmore recordings made just two months before Humble Pie’s performances.
The band that took the stage that Spring weekend was a very LOUD dual-guitar quartet. Marriott, Frampton, and Ridley handled lead vocals duties, with Marriott owning the lion’s share. Both Marriott and Frampton are accomplished lead guitarists, providing the band an added contrapuntal depth not possible with a lead guitar-rhythm guitar format. Marriott and Frampton seamlessly bounced off of one another providing a steel filigree with which to share their molten soul dream.
The album opener, “Four Day Creep” was tacitly credited to Ida Cox who released a song with this same title written by her accompanying pianist Jesse Crump on Paramount Records 12488-A in July 1927. Humble Pie’s version bears no similarity with the original, not even in an opium dream. That is no matter, the radioactive riff that opens the song is a shot over the bow of lesser performances from the period. Marriott and Frampton immediately begin their lesson in rock counterpoint, propelling the song forward for Greg Ridley’s vocal opening to throw open the door on a historic performance
Frampton sings the second verse, scarcely recognizable with what, a short five years later would be his seismic break into international stardom with Frampton (A&M, 1975) and Frampton Comes Alive (A&M, 1976). A spoiler alert here, Frampton Comes Alive will not be included in this list. Finally, the voice emerges from the diminutive frame of Steve Marriott. He sings with the force and conviction of a Cockney Otis Redding pitched up two steps. This is how to open a rock show.
The band follows with an adaptation of Willie Dixon’s “I’m Ready” (first recorded by Muddy Waters in 1954) from the Humble Pie album. Marriott warms up his voice, proceeding to riff and vamp well beyond good taste as was the fashion of the early 1970s. But he also lets his guitar sing with another potent blues-rock figure that Frampton segues into, creating a boogie juggernaut. “Stone Cold Fever” from Rock On continues the momentum propelling the show into its centerpiece, a mammoth 24-minute treatment of Mack Rebenack’s (Dr. John) “I Walk On Gilded Splinters.”
“Gilded Splinters” allows Marriott and Frampton an expansive palette to experiment with their psycho-Bach counterpoint interplay. Fifty years later, the song is the perfect poster child for the self-indulgent excess that became a point of pride in rock performance (also think of Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed And Confused” or The Allman Brothers Band “Mountain Jam”). A deep dive into these length performances can reward the listener with exceptional music, but often at the expense of having to hear twice the amount of mundane noodling. This observation is not so far from Gioachino Rossini’s observation that Richard Wagner’s operas often had, “... great moments, but some pretty awful half-hours.” “Gilded Splinters” fares better than most.
The band begins the final section of the concert with Marriott’s adaptation of Muddy Water’s “Rolling Stone.” What starts as an oversung snooze evolves into an electric version that musically stands up to Water’s 1950 original. Marriott shows off his soul acumen by inserting a quotation of Chuck Willis’s “What Am I Living For” just before changing direction with a boogie coda. Ray Charles’ “Hallelujah I Love Her So” follows with Marriott’s and Frampton’s most satisfying guitar interplay. Marriott again meets his soul challenge by quoting Gus Cannon and the Jug Stomper’s 1929 “Walk Right In.” Marriott sounds perfectly at home in this idiom and it is easy to see how this music influenced that which was to come in the future.
The concert closes with an incendiary performance of Ashford and Simpson’s “I Don’t Need No Doctor” which Marriott claims as his own. Performance: Rocking The Fillmore is an imperfect perfection, a display of early 1970s swagger and attitude more often given the Rolling Stones but is rightly shared equally between Humble Pie, the Rolling Stones, and Faces, all of whom have a historic dog in the hunt.