I'm Happy Just To Be With You

I had an urge the other day to hear a song by The Small Faces- it was almost overpowering, like the cravings I still very occasionally get for a cigarette (it's now five and a half years since I last had a ciggie, as you're asking). And it was a very specific craving- it had to be the 1968-period, Ogden's era Small Faces, when they'd loosened up and gone a little hippie around their mod edges, Steve Marriott's soulful voice, Ronnie's distinctive bass playing, the wheezy organ, Kenny's thumpy drums. Song Of A Baker would have done perfectly. Or Tin Soldier. Or this...

Afterglow (Of Your Love)

This is the version from Ogden's Classic Nut Gone Flake, not the single version Andrew Loog Oldham put out after the group had split in 1969. The album version has the acoustic intro that was removed from the single release- I'm not that fussy, both versions are great. Loog Oldham sped it up slightly for the 45 and extended the end section. Both are stunning but I guess this one is the one the group recorded initially and wanted. Marriott's lyrics were written for his wife, Jenny Rylance, a song that according to his drummer in Humble Pie Jerry Shirley only Marriott could have written, 'a beautiful love song about what it feels like to have a fag after sex'.

And while I'm here, double bubble two-fer-one, one of the greatest clips in the history of music television, The Small Faces and PP Arnold destroying hearts on French TV in 1968.