Sunday, November 20, 2011

Steve Marriott: All or Nothing



Last week's Sunday music video got a comment from the artist herself - Janis Ian. Sadly that cannot happen this week because this performance, recorded in 1991, took place only a few weeks before Steve Marriott died.

As some commenters on Youtube note, he looks remarkably well, especially considering his widely publicised problems with drink and drugs. And it is a really good performance.

We have seen Marriott in one of the great sixties groups the Small Faces and later he was to form Humble Pie with Peter Frampton.

But Marriott was well known before the Small Faces. He played the Artful Dodger in Lionel Bart's Oliver! in the West End - hear him singing Consider Yourself - and then attended the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts. Readers of this blog may recall seeing him in on the drums in Live It Up - other band members here include Heinz and David Hemmings.

Steve Marriott was undoubtedly one of the great talents of sixties British music, but maybe a little bit of the stage-school brat always clung. Or maybe he just feared that it did.

Incidentally, though Marriott cannot leave a comment I did once get one from Peter Asher.

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