Steve Marriott: All Too Beautiful [Paperback]

While Steve Marriott was an icon for his generation, and the subsequent generation to some extent, and produced many memorable songs, his story is very sad. His life was ruined by drink and drugs and he took on a schizophrenic personality that detroyed his three marriages and, ultimately, contributed to his early death in 1991. Despite his undoubted talent, he never received the rewards he earned but he did not look for the fame so many of his contemporaries enjoyed. Despite that, he envied or even resented the lesser talents who did "cash in."

This is a very well-written book that goes further into the Marriott legend than anything else I have read. Even the keenest Small Faces fans will find something new here. It has been well-researched with many interviews that span the course of his life. The conclusion seems to be that everyone loved and respected Marriott but his schizophrenia and hyperative behaviour made him very difficult to live with.

A superb read and an eye-opener in many ways.

Hot off the presses, Paolo Hewitt and John Hellier's All Too Beautiful...(327 pages) may be viewed as a companion piece to Ian McLagan's All The Rage, and Dan Muise's excellent Gallagher Marriott Derringer & Trower, in that it helps to add further pieces to the puzzle of Marriott's life already tackled in those two publications. This book adds its own overview of a life both stellar and troubled. The polarity of Marriott's forty-four years is never in doubt, and opinions on him are divided.

Only this week, in a review of The Faces' Five Guys Walk Into A Bar, Mac is quoted as follows: "After Steve Marriott left the Small Faces we never wanted to employ a lead singer again." To which an informed retort might well be: Listen pal, without Steve Marriott, no one would ever have heard of you.

Marriott was, of course, much more than singer and front man for the Small Faces. In him my generation had managed to capture lightning in a bottle. He was a unique individual, and - as this book helps to make clear - to a large extent he WAS the Small Faces; the life and soul of the group were in his hands. Furthermore, we are correctly reminded, not only was he possessed of one of the great voices of the age, but he was a songwriter of extraordinary insight and sensitivity, and a multi-instrumentalist of considerable talent. He was 60's mod personified. Gifted with killer cheekbones and perfect hairstyle, his clothes captured the moment just so, and always looked great on him. His image was one hundred percent spot-on, and the rest of us could only look on in wonder.

This is an easy book to read. The narrative style, with its tendency to veer between the cheerful gorblimey and the didactic, is well suited to its subject matter, and the authors' love of Marriott is obvious. Events are dealt with in strict chronological order, and numerous black and white photographs support the text. Most of the book rings true, and few punches are pulled. The musical and social zeitgeist of the era has been admirably captured, and the text is beefed up with hearsay and anecdotal material from numerous family, friends and fellow musicians.
With the benefit of judicious editing some of the irritating glitches of punctuation and syntax could have been avoided, and fine-tuning might have taken up some of the slack (do we really need to be told David Essex's real name?). There are one or two more glaring errors, and it is of little credit to the authors that lyrics to All Or Nothing (p 292) and Here Come The Nice (p149) are misquoted.

Ultimately Steve Marriott was very fortunate in being given two bites of the musical cherry, and this book cannot be faulted in its assertion that - though Humble Pie rose to the very top of the rock tree, and were an awesome live experience, Marriott never again wrote a song as exquisite as All Or Nothing or Tin Soldier. He may have come close, but - with ex-wife Jenny's absence from his life - that particular muse had vanished.

It is tempting to view the latter part of Marriott's life as a maelstrom of ever- diminishing returns; The Man hostage to a capricious personality and harnessed to a debilitating booze and drug habit. As with all things Marriott, however, this is too simplistic. He lived his life the way he chose, and he never sold out (Are you listening Rod Stewart??). And, despite it all, to the end of his life Steve Marriott remained a riveting presence on stage.

To paraphrase a quote from the book, and this is Steve speaking to his mother Kay, "No mangers, no record companies, total control... I can work when I want to and where I want to. I much prefer it this way. No big money means no hassles."

An interesting and informative read? Yes. A riveting read? Almost.

James Norrish