Small Faces – Song Of A Baker 

Another band this week that didn’t break America but should have.

A great pop song by The Small Faces with Ronnie Lane on the lead vocal. Ronnie Lane was inspired to write this song by a book of Sufi wisdom given to him by Pete Townshend. The song was credited to Ronnie Lane and Steve Marriott. The Small Faces

In 1966-67 Ronnie Lane and Steve Marriott moved into a Westminster apartment, and a new drug entered their orbit that expanded their artistic vision almost beyond all recognition… LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide).

Small Faces - Ogden's Nut Gone Flake

This song came off of their best-known album, Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake. In its initial release, the album was packaged in a mock tobacco tin that was a circular metal container with oversized folded paper as one finds in a pipe tobacco tin. It proved to be too expensive and impractical, so later releases were packaged in conventional cardboard album covers. A compact disc reissue also was marketed in a mock Ogdens tin.

Ogden’s Nut-brown Flake was a tobacco brand produced in Liverpool from 1899 onwards by Thomas Ogden.

The album was a psychedelic concept album. It was one of rock’s first concept albums coming before The Who’s Tommy. Side two follows a boy named Happiness Stan who is trying to find the missing half of the moon. The story was thought of on a boating trip to teh river Thames.

Ian McLagan on touring Australia and New Zealand: “[The Australian press] gave me hell from the very beginning, because I’d just been busted, I was on my way to Athens for a holiday but never got further than Heathrow. As I was showing my passport they smelt the hash on me, searched and busted me. As soon as we landed in Australia we had a press conference, so we’re all lined up in front of the television cameras and the first guy goes: ‘Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones, Ian McLagan… you’re the drug addict right?’”

 “On our way to New Zealand we had to stop off in Sydney. You couldn’t drink on internal flights back then, but one of Paul Jones’ Australian backing band passed a bottle around and the police were called. We weren’t even drinking but they arrested and held us in the first-class lounge where a waitress came straight up to us and said: ‘What would you like to drink?’  “So we drank. The police arrested us as soon as we arrived in New Zealand, but we ended up having a great time. Steve had his 21st birthday party; Keith [Moon] wrecked his room; it was business as usual.” 

Kenney Jones: “The lyrics came from Ronnie’s Sufi investigations, with the importance of the ‘wheat in the field’ and all that, I love his melodic bass playing on it. He used to think like he was playing lead guitar and that mentally fused into his bass playing.”

Ian McLagan: “It was weird that they allowed Here Comes The Nice to come out at all, we were dabbling in all kinds of chemicals and Methedrine was one of them. We were wrong to have written about a speed dealer. They weren’t the nicest people. The guy you bought your hash from was usually just a head, but a speed dealer – like a coke or heroin dealer – was only interested in getting your money. It was quite different. They weren’t your friends.”

Son Of A Baker

There’s wheat in the field
And water in the stream
And salt in the mine
And an aching in me

I can no longer stand and wonder
Cause I’m driven by this hunger
So I’ll jug some water
Bake some flour
Store some salt and wait the hour

While I’m thinking of love
Love is thinking for me
And the baker will come
And the baker I’ll be

I am depending on my labor
The texture and the flavor

…

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

34 thoughts on “Small Faces – Song Of A Baker ”

    1. The problem is the records kept rolling off the shelf LOL…really. At least that is what I heard of some complaints.

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      1. I’d like to snag one of those tins. Great tune. Max, would you agree that this song is leaning more towards hard rock than pop? I know the lines get blurred on tags. I guess it swims in both pools for me.

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      2. Yes I would…it sounds more like the future with all of the members…The Faces mixed with a little Humble Pie. You could tell Steve wanted to let loose.

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    1. Glad you liked it Lisa…I really love this band. One of the few that Steve Marriott didn’t sing. Now that you have said something…I can hear that as well.

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  10. They rocked hard, for sure. As it happens last night I was watching YT ‘reactions to’ and Tin Soldier’ was up. Marriott belting it out and P P Arnold adding her voice. Rather well received by the kids/listeners of today. ‘Here Comes The Nice’ needed no explanation at all. Even this naive school-kid could understand what it was about, and I definitely wasn’t the one who paid attention in class; least of all in Chemistry class.

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    1. Glad you brought up P P Arnold. I read she had an album out now and I would like to hear more from her.
      I know that song…yea it doesn’t take a PHD to figure that one out….love it though. I was talking to CB and you could hear the future in this song of the two bands this band spawned into.

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      1. ‘Nice’ has that perfect down down down beat ending. P P Arnold was where I first heard ‘First Cut Is The Deepest.’ It’s very 60s compared to Rod’s 70s sounding one. Both very good but Rod’s did get thrashed a bit here which dulls the lustre a little. Shame because it is a great song.

        Hope all the hard work and heavy lifting is finally done and dusted?

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      2. I just listened to that version….she did really well on First Cut Is The Deepest.
        We have to go back Atlanta in two weeks but this time no heavy lifting.

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  13. I’ve never heard this before, I don’t think. Very heavy for its time! Time to listen to that album in full. One song I know from it is ‘Rene’ (the dockers’ delight…) which is saucy fun.

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