![]() The album opener, a cover of John Kay/ Steppenwolf’s ‘Desperation’ is a pretty heavy way to make your presence felt. Rolling Stone magazine used the term ‘heavy metal’ to describe this brutal introduction, but just as crushing rock riffs abound, so doers a lush form of English folk, blues and pop. Rolling Stones Svengali Andrew Loog Oldham managed them for a while and signed the group to his Immediate label and got them cracking on the debut album As Safe As Yesterday Is a typical Marriott conundrum. Frampton needed more persuasion, but Ridley was ready to throw in his lot with the king of the mods. For Shirley, who was drumming with the Apostolic Intervention, it was a no-brainer. ![]() I’ll skip off school and we’ll go and make a million dollars. Tell you what I’ll do, Steve Marriott told Ridley, Shirley and Frampton. The great if ironic thing about Humble Pie is that they slipped off the radar, which means they are ripe for rediscovery now. They could play too, each man was a virtuoso on his chosen instrument and when Frampton quit to pursue the little matter of a solo career that gave the world the Frampton Comes Alive album, new recruit Clem Clempson slotted in seamlessly. Their legacy lies in providing an organic, unpretentious blend of rock with Marriott’s throaty boy soul vocals fronting the package. Their biggest single hit was actually their first release, the epic ‘Natural Born Bugie’ (1969) though the US market made FM hits out of ‘I Don’t Need No Doctor’ and ‘Hot’n’Nasty’. They were perhaps taken for granted by their British fans – in the way that knew them, loved them and didn’t want to wave bye-bye. Despite their sales, the tickets they shifted disastrous management problems beset the Pie and so while fame and success did indeed arrive as Steve had promised, the money that usually accompanies those twin impostors never followed. In fact, Humble Pie made their name in America with this double dose of hard rock, blues and then upped their game on smash albums Smokin’ and Eat It. We recommend that you investigate these and we also offer the classic live album Performance Rockin’ The Fillmore, where the band’s majestic stagecraft is captured to thrilling effect. Marriott would boss ten studio albums with the Pie before his tragic death in a house fire in 1991. Former Small Faces leader Steve Marriott, fellow guitarist and vocalist Peter Frampton (ex-Herd), Spooky Tooth bassist Greg Ridley and the mighty teenage drummer Jerry Shirley convened at Steve’s Essex home in 1969 while the Small Faces were still operating, but since his heart was no longer in the repetition of his extraordinary pop hits and hadn’t a desire to turn it up, rock a new metal brew, he had no difficulty in persuading his newfound accomplices that fame and success were there for the taking. One of the first and most loved of the supergroups from Britain, Humble Pie established their sound from the off.
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