A promising new start, death throes and fine moments and a stirring reminder of how Britain’s finest soul-rock band sounded when they hit the top of their game.  Steve Marriott’s final Humble Pie years get the Cherry Red boxset treatment.

Release Date: 28^th February 2025

Label: HNE Recordings (a Cherry Red label)

Formats: 5 x CD Boxset

A SHATTERING LIVE EXPERIENCE

In their pomp – and especially their ‘live’ pomp – there were few bands could hold a candle to Humble Pie.  Formed in 1969, the band’s original lineup featured ex-Small Face Steve Marriott (guitar and lead vocals), Peter Frampton, formerly teen-idol frontman of The Herd on guitar, former Spooky Tooth bassist Greg Ridley and Marriott mentee Jerry Shirley on drums.  They attracted the ‘Supergroup’ tag and had early UK singles chart success with their 1969  Immediate label debut single, Natural Born Bugie.

But, arguably, it was 1971 before Humble Pie really hit their stride when their explosive double live album Performance – Rockin’ The Fillmore – made rock audiences on both sides of the Atlantic sit up and take notice.  Deep, soulful, sometimes lengthy, treatments of songs like Willie Dixon’s I’m Ready and Dr John’s I Walk on Gilded Splinters sit comfortably alongside the heavy rock bombast of Four Day Creep and I Don’t Need No Doctor and the rocky gospel of Hallelujah (I Love Her So) on what remains one of the most invigorating live albums of all time.

GLORY DAYS

By the time Performance… hit the racks, Frampton had left Humble Pie, shortly to Come Alive as a world-conquering superstar but, on Planet Humble Pie, things were about to get even better, despite Frampton’s departure . Frampton was replaced by Clem Clempson, formerly guitarist with Colloseum and Bakerloo Blues Line, and, in March 1972, Humble Pie released Smokin’, their most commercially successful album.  Smokin’ majored on hard-rocking tracks like The Fixer, Hot ‘n’ Nasty, Sweet Peace and Time and the glorious 30 Days in the Hole, but it also had its softer moments with songs such as the bluesy Old Time Feelin’ and the tender You’re So Good to Me and, with their next album, Humble Pie broadened their remit still further.

Marriott is surely, along with Steve Winwood, one of the finest white, male soul singers ever to have walked this earth and that’s a talent that he exploited to the full, on Pie’s 1973 double album, Eat It.  Humble Pie had enlisted the services of The Blackberries – soul vocalists Venetta Fields, Clydie King and Sherlie Matthews to provide soul-authentic backing vocals on the R&B covers – including Ike & Tina Turner’s Black Coffee and Ray Charles’ I Believe to My Soul – that occupied Side 2 of the album and The Blackberries became a popular feature of Humble Pie’s live shows.

HOT ‘N’ NASTY – ROCKIN’ THE WINTERLAND

And those live shows were really, really something.  It’s no exaggeration to suggest that, during 1972-1974, Humble Pie delivered some of the finest live performances on Earth.  Their shows were easily a match for anything that other noted live acts of the time – The Who and Led Zeppelin included – could come up with.  Trust me, I was there.  And the point of telling this story?  Well – the jewel in this 5-CD package from our friends at Cherry Red is Hot ‘N’ Nasty: Rockin’ The Winterland, a 1973 recording of Humble Pie’s show at the famed 5,400-capacity San Francisco venue.

Originally released in 1996 as King Biscuit Hour Presents – Humble Pie in Concert, the album features Messrs Marriott, Clempson, Ridley and Shirley performing at the very top of their game.  Recorded at the end of the American tour on which Humble Pie promoted Eat It, the setlist is a blend of old favourites, newish songs and imaginatively-arranged cover versions.

LET IT BLOW!

Four Day Creep, Stone Cold Fever, Hallelujah (I Love Her So) and I Don’t Need No Doctor all hark back to the Performance… album, new songs like Up Our Sleeve and Hot ‘n’ Nasty are fully bedded in and the covers of C’Mon Everybody, Honky Tonk Women and Jr. Walker’s Road Runner are breathtaking.  The Blackberries are here and in great voice and the sound is exactly as aged Pie-eaters will recall from their own, fond, concert experiences.  Turn the stereo up to 11 and let it blow!

DEATH AND RESURRECTION

It’s probably true to say that, after Eat It, Humble Pie’s star started to fade.  1974 album, Thunderbox, was enjoyable enough but, with songs like I Can’t Stand the Rain, Anna (Go to Him) and No Money Down within the tracklisting, perhaps relied rather too heavily on cover versions and the album’s commercial performance suffered accordingly.  Then, after 1975’s disappointing Street Rats, Humble Pie disbanded and Phase One of the band’s life was complete.

But the story of Humble Pie still had a few more chapters to run…

By 1979, drummer Jerry Shirley had moved to the USA and was working with a band called Magnet.  That particular project started to flounder and, in late 1979, Jerry was delighted to receive a phone call from Steve Marriott, his erstwhile Humble Pie bandmate. 

Jerry takes up the story: “Steve called me and asked: ‘What are you doing?’  His idea originally was to just get together and do some gigs, because he was in bad shape.  He had no money.  A lot of people had been living off him in California.  He had a band that wasn’t working, but he was having to pay for their upkeep, so he got himself into a bit of a mess.  My management said: ‘Why don’t you two get together and see if you could put Humble Pie back together?’  [Manager] David Krebs loved Steve Marriott and thought he could do a good job for him.  He felt he could finish a job that had not been finished, getting [Steve] back to where he should be.”

HUMBLE PIE Mk.2

And, so it was that, one cold, early morning in December 1979, Steve Marriott and Jerry Shirley, along with bassist Anthony “Sooty” Jones and super-guitarist Bobby Tench entered a New York recording studio to lay down Fool For a Pretty Face, a Marriott/Shirley song that would kick-start the career of Humble Pie Mk.2.

Fool For a Pretty Face came out well and enticed Atlantic Records to take a punt on the remade/remodeled Humble Pie, and the four – Marriott, Shirley, Jones and Tench assembled at Villa Recorders in Modesto, California, in early 1980, to record a new Humble Pie album, On To Victory – the album which now forms Disc One to this boxset.

ON TO VICTORY

It’s a creditable rebirth, definitely closer to Smokin’ in terms of quality and commitment, than it is to Street Rats.  Opening track, Fool For a Pretty Face is classic Humble Pie, a chunk of strutting, funky rock and Steve delivers a vintage Marriott vocal.  The wittily-titled You Soppy Pratt is slower and has bags of presence and Take It From Here is earthy, with some great Bobby Tench guitar fills. 

Elsewhere, there’s more classic Humble Pie with the funky Savin’ It and some great sax licks, too; Get It in the End is a slow-starter that springs wonderfully to life and Further Down the Road is a slice of the straight-ahead rock that Humble Pie always did so well.  But, perhaps, the pick of the bunch is the interpretation of Otis Redding’s My Lover’s Prayer, a song on which Steve Marriott gives another object lesson in how to sing soul.

MOVING FORWARD

On To Victory was well-received, reaching the Top 60 in the USA album chart and, following the album’s release, Humble Pie embarked on a lengthy US tour, aptly titled The Rock & Roll Marathon, along with Mahogany Rush, Angel and Mother’s Finest.  They were well-received and had a great time on the road and, following the tour, decided to return to the studio to record a follow-up album.

GOING FOR THE THROAT

That follow-up, Going For The Throat, appeared in June 1981.  The sleeve art might be pretty dreadful, but Going For The Throat is another album that shows that there was still plenty of fuel in the Humble Pie tank.  Two songs, Chip Away and the excellent Restless Blood were donated by Aerosmith associate Richie Supa and both provide an opportunity for Marriott to demonstrate his capability to stand alongside the emerging rock titans of the 1980s. 

Steve is also on top form as he delivers a clean, tight, hard rock interpretation of Elvis’s All Shook Up, the album’s opening track and he relives – to the full – his role as Small Faces frontman for a stunning remake of Tin Soldier, a version that also features some delightful, swirling, Ian McLagan-inspired organ.  Other highlights include Keep It on the Island, a chunk of swaggering cock-rock and teenage Anxiety, Steve’s impassioned, soulful ballad, inspired by the assassination of John Lennon.

IMPETUS LOST

The promotion of Going For The Throat was impacted by accidents and health issues and, sadly, the impetus of the Humble Pie rebirth was lost.  Humble Pie Mk.2 ran aground in the summer of 1981.  There would be further attempts to resurrect the name – Steve Marriott convened a new lineup in 1982 and Jerry Shirley continues to carry the standard for the band but, for the sake of this review, we’ll conclude our story here. 

STUDIO SESSIONS AND ANOTHER LIVE RECORDING

This boxset, Hallelujah: 1973-1983 contains two further discs – Pyramid Eye Chattanooga, TN, 1982 (Disc 3), and Live at Annie’s Club Cincinnati, OH, 1983 (Disc 4).  The former is a collection of studio tracks that Steve, along with a group of local musicians, laid down at Pyramid Eye Studios, in which Steve returns to his blues and soul roots.  The latter is another live set in which Steve and his band, this time featuring Dave Hewitt on bass, Phil Dix an guitar and Fallon Williams III on drums, perform a set that digs back into the Humble Pie and Small Faces catalogues as well as featuring versions of some of Steve’s favourite R&B numbers.

Hallelujah: 1973-1983 is an interesting set.  It’s nice to rediscover the two early 1980s studio albums and find that, yes, there was still plenty of life in the old dog.  But, surely, the highlight of this set is that 1973 San Francisco live album – that’s when Humble Pie could take on the world, and win.

Watch Humble Pie – with The Blackberries – perform 30 Days in the Hole in 1973, below:

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