How Small Faces Hit Was ‘Nail in the Coffin’
Small Faces drummer Kenney Jones recalled how the success of their hit single “Lazy Sunday” contributed directly to the band’s demise, calling it a “nail in the coffin.”
The song was released in 1968 without their knowledge – in fact, Jones said frontman Steve Marriott only discovered it had been released when he saw chart listings in a music paper. The group felt it misrepresented what it had just achieved with its new LP Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake.
“We wanted to make heavier stuff, and we’d made this great album and then we had this rinky-dink thing in the charts,” Jones told Uncut in the current issue. “Do I like that song? No, I can’t fucking stand it. Well, I have to like it because it is part of the Small Faces’ history.”
He described "Lazy Sunday" as one of “a few songs that we were getting out of our system,” adding that manager Andrew Loog Oldham had a “habit of going into Olympic [Studios] when we were away,” and making his own decisions about what should be done with the material they’d been recording.
Marriott left the band after a short tour in March 1969, and went on to form Humble Pie. Jones said the single release had been partly responsible for Marriott's departure. “It was a nail in the coffin, because we were desperately trying to lose that image," he said.
"We were aware of what the Beatles were doing and we left that songs like ‘Lazy Sunday’ pushed us backwards. It got to Steve more than the others. We didn’t realize that this was getting to him so much, he was putting another band together. He felt he’d never get away from this image unless he got away from the band.”