Today, the word ‘rockstar’ is undoubtedly worn, trite, and lacking in any real substance. However, it is still applicable to the classic rock generation who established the archetype by reaching God-like heights seldom seen in the contemporary era.
The tag doesn’t just appeal to creating legendary music. It also necessitates a high degree of hellraising, as the stories of figures such as John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Janis Joplin attest to. Theirs was the era of sex, drugs, and of course, rock ‘n’ roll, and in reality, it is their extra-musical stories that have bolstered the iconic sounds they captured in the studio.
Another influential figure who left a lasting mark on culture – and partook in his fair share of hard-living – was the late Steve Marriott. He was a leading force in the rock boom of the 1960s, finding fame as the leader of Small Faces, a band that traversed mod, proto-punk, psychedelia and pop.
Like any undisputed tastemaker, Marriott eventually grew tired of the ‘Itchycoo Park’ outfit, and after just four years, was looking to his future without them. After acrimoniously storming off stage during their 1968 New Year’s Eve show at Alexandra Palace, he immediately set the wheels in motion to form his ensuing outfit, Humble Pie. The supergroup featured a young Peter Frampton alongside Spooky Tooth bassist Greg Ridley, and 17-year-old drummer Jerry Shirley, whom he recruited from cult psych-rockers, The Apostolic Intervention.
Despite the fraught departure from Small Faces, an outfit that many diehard Marriott fans deem his finest, Humble Pie saw him go from strength to strength artistically and gave him a refreshed platform to continue developing his sonic prowess.
Marriott was always an artist who poured himself into his music in Small Faces, and this wouldn’t change with his hip new band. Classics he penned for them that he is inextricable from include ‘Natural Born Bugie’ – their debut single – and ‘30 Days in the Hole’, a paean to rock ‘n’ roll excess, which guitarist Clem Clempson has dubbed “a waste of time” playing following Marriott’s tragic 1991 death, as it embodied what he was about, musically and as a rockstar.
Like his peers in Lennon and Jagger, Marriott also developed an all-encompassing drug habit in the 1960s, and it would become a key sticking point between him and Frampton in Humble Pie.
Although he wasn’t embroiled in an actual police drug bust like the aforementioned couple, drugs affected his life and the world around him so much that they fittingly inspired one of his most lauded tracks, ‘30 Days in the Hole’, the highlight of 1972’s Smokin’.
Written about being busted for drugs and getting sent to the slammer, Marriott reportedly got the idea after Humble Pie played in Kentucky, where he was informed that being caught in possession would land you with 30 days in jail. Adding another realistic layer to the song, Marriott was also partially inspired by one of his friends who was given jail time for smoking a joint.
Marriott would later reveal that the title for the track came from an unspecified Humphrey Bogart movie he watched on television, where Bogart plays a prisoner who is sentenced to “30 Days in the hole”.
In the song, and crystallising his nature as a rockstar in the most typical sense, Marriott relays a story where he is arrested for possession of small amounts of illicit substances including cocaine, Durban poison – a strong strain of marijuana – and two types of hashish. It also includes a reference to “New Castle Brown”, and he didn’t mean the famous ale from the North East. This was a stark reminder of heroin’s increased prevalence and that the upbeat drug experimentation of the 1960s had morphed into something much more severe, with heroin now all the rage, ruining people’s lives, showing what addiction really meant.
Editors’ Picks
- 1970s Music
- 30 Days in the Hole
- Classic Rock
- Drug Culture
- Humble Pie
- Peter Frampton
- Rock History
- Rock Legends
- Small Faces
- Steve Marriott
