Song Analysis - The "I'm In Love With That Song" Podcast - Music Commentary, Song Analysis & Rock History

Small Faces are one of the all-time great British bands from the 1960’s but they never got the attention, success or respect they deserved. (Some of that was due to self-inflicted damage, but still…) Their biggest hit was “Itchycoo Park“, 2:45 of psychedelic pop perfection. All 4 members of the band shine, and engineer Glyn Johns gets to introduce the world to the sound of flanging. Feel inclined to blow your mind? Check out this episode.

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome, everyone, to the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast, part of the Pantheon family of podcasts. I’m your host, Brad Page, and each episode, I pick one of my favorite songs, and we listen to it together, uncovering all the little moments, those special touches that make it a great song. You don’t need to be a musical expert here, we don’t get too technical. All you need is a love for music, and you’ll fit right in here.

On this episode, we are revisiting the Small Faces, because I really do love this band, and I think they’re criminally underrated, certainly here in the US.

The mid 1960’s were an amazing time for music: lots of change, experimentation, and invention. The psychedelic sounds of this era are this perfect blend of adventure, exploration, and naivete. There’s an “Alice in Wonderland” feel to all of it. And one of the best examples of this is “Itchycoo Park” by Small Faces.

We talked about the Small Faces before on this podcast, back on episode #54, and their song “Tin Soldier”, so I won’t rehash their biography again. You can go back and listen to that episode.

But for a quick refresher, Small Faces was formed in 1965 by guitarist/vocalist Steve Marriott and bass player Ronnie Lane, with Kenny Jones on drums and Ian McLagan on keyboards. Like other British bands of the era, The Who, for example, they started by playing covers of American blues and R&B artists. But by 1966, they were writing their own songs, primarily composed by Marriott and Lane. “Itchycoo Park” was their 10th single overall, but only their second single for their new record label, Immediate Records, who allowed them a lot more freedom in the studio to experiment.

The song was released in August 1967, the height of the “Summer of Love”, and it reached number 3 on the UK charts, number 16 in the US and number 1 in Canada.

The song was written by Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane. It all started with an idea from Ronnie Lane, inspired by Oxford, England, and a park near where Marriott and Lane lived. Exactly which park is a question, because both Lane and Marriott referred to different parks over time. According to Lane, the initial musical idea came from a hymn called “God Be In My Head”.

See if you can catch how that melody influenced this song.

They structured “Itchycoo Park” as a dialogue between a normal average “straight” person and someone who was “tuned-in” and enlightened. That’s pretty much the psychedelic sixties in a nutshell.

Marriott and Lane are credited as producers on the track, with Glenn Johns as the engineer.

The song begins with an acoustic guitar in the left channel. Pretty quickly after that, Ronnie Lane’s bass joins in on the right channel, followed by the drums also on the right and the organ on the left. I think there’s a piano in there as well, but it’s pretty low in the mix. And that’s it for the intro– pretty short. The vocals come in right there.

Steve Marriott is one of the all-time great soulful belters, just one of the ballsiest singers. He influenced generations of vocalists, from Robert Plant and Paul Rogers right up through Chris Robinson of the Black Crows and beyond. He’s on my list of the all-time greatest singers. I just love his voice. But, you know, he could also hold back and sing more gently, as he does here.

A couple of other things I want to point out before we move on: Let’s remove the vocals and listen to just the backing track here. You can hear Ian McLagan’s organ part a lot clearer and especially listen to the bass. Ronnie Lane had this really unique loping style of playing that’s really on display here.

All right, let’s get to the second part of the verse. This is the part where the dialogue between the two characters comes in, as we mentioned before, with the backing vocals from Ronnie Lane; Ronnie Lane playing the part of the straight man and Steve Marriott being, well, Steve Marriott.

That’s more of the classic Marriott vocal there. This leads us into the chorus. “It’s all too beautiful”– the ultimate vision of the sixties if only that were.

There’s this little descending keyboard lick that’s kind of central to that whole chorus.

Now this brings us to the bridge. This was Steve Marriott’s biggest writing contribution to the song. He wrote this part, but what really makes it interesting is the way it was recorded. This was one of the very first records to use the effect that would become known as “flanging”. You can hear it on the vocal and the drum track.

A recording engineer named George Chkiantz is generally credited with inventing this flanging technique. He showed it to Glyn Johns, who used it on this recording. Eventually, they developed a way to do this electronically. And of course, now, like everything, you can do it digitally. I’m using a software plugin to do it to my voice right now. But back in 1967, the only way to do this was manually. Two tape machines were synchronized together, playing the same song. And by slightly slowing down one of the tapes, usually by placing your thumb on the flange of one of the tape reels, hence the name flanging, you would get this effect, which would then be recorded onto a third tape machine. There was a lot of work required to get this sound.

So we’ve been listening to the stereo version of this song because I think the stereo version provides a little better differentiation on the individual parts. But on the original mono mix of this track, I think the flanging is a little more obvious. So let’s just hear this chorus from the mono mix.

Let’s go back to the stereo version and hear the second verse. This features more of the back and forth between the lead and the backing vocals.

Let’s listen to just the vocal track.

The BBC initially banned this song because they were concerned that “I get high” was a drug reference. But the band said, “Oh, no, this song, it’s about a park. Of course, we’re talking about swinging on a swing. You know, when you’re swinging, you try to get higher and higher. That’s what we meant.” They were shocked – shocked – that you would think this song was about drugs. And the BBC bought that story.

Here’s the second time around for the bridge, and this time I think the flanging is even more prominent.

That “Ha” that Marriott puts in there. From here, they repeat the chorus until the song fades out, and they apply the flanging effect to it as well. Steve Marriott, as he always does, sounds great here.

Small Faces – “Itchycoo Park”

The small faces recorded dozens of songs that I think stand up to the best British bands of that decade. The Beatles, Stones, The Who, The Kinks… The Small Faces released stuff that was just as good, in some cases even better.

But fate just didn’t really go their way and to be honest, they never really got their act together. There was a self-destructive streak there, especially with Steve Marriott, which would only get worse throughout his life. As we’ve discussed on this podcast before, Steve Marriott died in a house fire in 1991. He was 44. Ronnie Lane was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and died in 1997, age 51. Keyboard player Ian McLagan had a long career as an in-demand session musician and sideman until he died of a stroke in 2014. Drummer Kenny Jones went on to play with The Who, and at the time of this recording, he’s still with us and continues to oversee the legacy of the Small Faces.

If you’d like to explore more Small Faces, there’s a ton of compilation albums out there. Some are better than others. My favorite is one called “The Autumn Stone”. I would start there. There’s also one called “The Ultimate Collection”. That one’s pretty good, too.

Thanks for hanging out here on this edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. As you probably know by now, new episodes of this show come out twice a month, so I’ll be back in about two weeks with a brandy new episode. If you can’t bear to wait for the next episode, you can catch up on all of our previous shows on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com or just look for us in your favorite podcast app.

And if that’s not enough, there are plenty more music-related shows that you should check out right here on the Pantheon Podcast Network. We’d love it if you’d leave a review of the show wherever it is that you listen, just post a comment there. You can also find us on Facebook, just search for the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast, you’ll find our page.

And the most important thing you can do if you’d like to support the show is to just recommend the show to your friends, because your word-of-mouth carries a lot more weight than any promotion I can do. So, as always, thanks for that.

And thanks for listening to this episode on “Itchycoo Park” by Small Faces.

Before there was Ziggy Stardust, there was Arnold Corns…

Thanks to a legendary performance on Top Of The Pops 50 years ago, “Starman” became Bowie’s first hit since “Space Oddity” and proved he wasn’t a one-hit wonder. In this episode, we dig into the history of this song and the origin of Ziggy Stardust.

Here’s a few more Bowie episodes for your listening pleasure:

David Bowie – “Space Oddity”

David Bowie – “Station To Station”

David Bowie – “Time”

TRANSCRIPT:

Are you freaked out in a moon age daydream? Well, you better hang on to yourself, because here comes another episode of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast on the Pantheon Podcast Network. I’m your host, Brad Page, and on this show, I pick one of my favorite songs and we listen to it together to discover all of the nuances and elements, those special moments that make the song work.

David Bowie is one of our favorite subjects here on this show, because he’s one of my favorite artists. This month marks the 50th anniversary of the song that introduced Ziggy Stardust to the world, and launched David Bowie into stardom. So let’s celebrate the release of that iconic single from April 28, 1970, 250 years ago. This is David Bowie with “Starman”.

By 1971, David Bowie had been making records for eight years. But critical acclaim eluded him. He had tried being a blues singer. He had tried being a folky. He finally had a taste of real success with “Space Oddity” in 1969, but he was on the verge of being a one hit wonder.

As a teenager, he worked for an advertising agency in London. He only lasted there a year, but he was there long enough to pick up some basic advertising and marketing skills that he would later put to good use. He knew how to present an image, and he believed he had finally landed on the right product: the ultimate rock star. He just needed to do some market testing.

In 1971, along with his own recording contract, he was also working as a songwriter for a publisher, trying to write hit songs for other people. He had recorded a couple of demos that he wanted to release, but because he was under contract to a different record label, he couldn’t release the songs under his own name. So, he invented a character and a band to go along with it. But it’s not who you think.

The name of this band was Arnold Corns, and their lead singer was named Rudy Valentino. Neither Arnold Corns nor Rudy Valentino really existed. Bowie had met a 19-year-old fashion designer named Freddie Burretti. Bowie thought Freddie had the look of a rock star and would be the perfect guinea pig and front man for this new fake band. The fact that Freddie couldn’t sing, that was no problem– Bowie would provide the voice.

So David gave Freddie the stage name of “Rudy Valentino” and created the fake band Arnold Corns to back him up. Bowie hyped them up in the press, saying that the Rolling Stones are finished and Rudy would be the next Mick Jagger. So Arnold Korns released two singles. One of them was “Moonage Daydream”, backed with “Hang On To Yourself”. Here’s a little bit of Arnold Korn’s version of “Moonage Daydream”.

And here’s some of the Arnold Korn’s version of “Hang On To Yourself”.

You can really hear the Lou Reed influence in that version. Well, fortunately for the Rolling Stones, Arnold Corns was no threat. Both singles flopped and sunk without a trace.

This experiment was not a success, but Bowie would learn from it and revisit it later. In the meantime, Bowie released the “Hunky Dory” album in December 1971. Still, I think one of his best albums, “Hunky Dory”, was a leap forward in his songwriting and another rung up the ladder of success. But Bowie still had bigger ambitions. He revisited his concept of the ultimate rock star and drew inspiration from Elvis Presley to Howard Hughes, from the legendary Stardust Cowboy to the self-destruction of Hendrix and Joplin, and from novels from Van Daniken’s “Chariots of the Gods” to “I Am Still The Greatest, Says John Angelo” by Nick Cohn.

He wrote new songs and resurrected old ones like “Moonage Daydream” and “Hang On To Yourself” to create the album that would finally make David Bowie a legend, “The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”.

The Ziggy Stardust album has been called a “concept album”. Fair enough… It has a concept, but not much of a coherent story. Essentially, it’s the ascent and decline of a rock star who may or may not be an alien. Bowie, of course, plays Ziggy Stardust, and in doing so, he’s commenting on the role of the rock star in our culture and challenging the ideas of authenticity.

The album was released in June 1972. Before the album was released, “Starman” was issued as a single on April 28, 1972. “Starman” was the introduction of Ziggy Stardust to the world.

“Starman” was one of the last songs written for the album. It’s a classic example of a record label executive saying “I don’t hear a hit” and forcing the artist to go back and write something new for a single. Luckily, Bowie delivered.

It’s possible Bowie might have been inspired by science fiction author Robert Heinlein’s book “Starman Jones”. Bowie’s real name, after all, was David Jones. Musically, he drew inspiration from a few sources, and we’ll explore those. “Starman” features the Spiders from Mars, Trevor Boulder on bass, Woody Woodmansey on drums, and the great Mick Ronson, one of my real guitar heroes, on guitar and backing vocals; David Bowie played acoustic guitar as well as lead vocal, and Mick Ronson also played mellotron and wrote the string arrangement. The song was produced by David Bowie and Ken Scott.

The song opens with Bowie’s twelve string guitar.

All right, let’s get into it. David’s twelve string guitar is in the right channel. There’s also a keyboard, probably that Mellotron holding a single note, one bass guitar note, a single strum of another guitar and guitar and bass again. David is singing there, but it’s just nonsense syllables. Though he did take the time to overdub a harmony on the first one. Then Woody Woodmansey’s drum fill kicks off the first verse.

Listen to how dry that drum sound is. No reverb on that at all. The instrumentation is pretty spare on the verse, just bass, drums and two acoustic guitars panned left and right.

Woody Woodmancy is laying down a nice groove on the drums. Let’s check that out.

I guarantee you David Bowie did not talk like that in real life. He’s channeling a character here.

Now, at this point, there’s a short transitional piece of music that links the verse to the chorus. Sounds like Morse code, or an old telegraph. It evokes the idea of messages being beamed through space. Could be the Starman letting us know he’s here. It paints an audio picture. Bowie actually got the idea from another song, “You Keep Me Hanging On” by The Supremes. Here it is.

Now let’s go back to “Starman” and hear how this section joins the verse and the chorus together.

That one, no DJ. That was high as it cosmic time.

Mick Ronson and David are singing the harmonies. The instrumentation is still just bass, drums and acoustic guitar, but the string section is added on the chorus and it’s filling in a lot of empty space.

“Let the children boogie”. Around this time, Mark Bolan and T Rex were probably the hottest act in the UK. T Rex were known for playing their own brand of boogie rock. Bolan was definitely bigger than Bowie at this point. They were friends, but they were also competitors, and Bowie clearly had Bolan in his sights when he made this album. After Bowie says “let the children boogie”, the band goes into a riff that would have been right at home on a T Rex record. It’s a nod, a tip of the hat to Mark Bolan, but it’s also a little bit mocking and somewhat ironic too, as “Starman” marks Bowie’s ascent, the point where Bolan had plateaued and Bowie was about to eclipse him.

Notice the hand claps after the guitar boogie section, we have the second verse. The electric guitars disappear. It’s just the acoustics again. And Bowie turns in a restrained, almost delicate vocal as compared to the chorus. Where he’s really belting it out.

Trevor Boulder plays a nice bass part during the verse, so pay some attention to that.

The chorus begins with some vocal gymnastics by Bowie. From the word “star”, his voice leaps a full octave to the word “man”. Generations of songwriters have used that technique, as it immediately adds a sense of drama, both a literal and a figurative rise in the song. And Bowie was particularly inspired here by this classic song, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, performed by Judy Garland and written by Harold Arlin and Edgar Harburg for “The Wizard of Oz”. I mean, it’s one of the greatest songs ever written. Of course, Bowie as a songwriter would be inspired by that. Here’s that same octave leap again.

Now, you might think that this is all speculation and that Bowie could have come up with it on his own, or he borrowed it from somewhere else. But listen to this version of Bowie performing “Starman” live at the Rainbow Theater in August 1972.

So there you go. In fact, you could add Judy Garland to the list of those who inspired the creation of Ziggy Stardust, another star whose rise and fall mirrors that of Ziggy. Judy Garland died of an overdose in 1969, less than three years before “Starman” was written.

They repeat the chorus here.

The boogie section is the only time electric guitars are featured in the song. There are two electric guitars here, the solo and the rhythm part in the left channel. And there’s still one acoustic guitar on the right.

Here’s where everybody gets to sing along, where the listener becomes part of the experience.

Mick Ronson plays some lead guitar in the background and we begin a long fade out, which makes it feel like this sing along could go on forever.

In July 1972, Bowie appeared on the British tv show “Top of the Pops” to perform “Starman”. It was a watershed moment. Watching it now, it all seems so tame, but at the time it was almost revolutionary. Bowie, dressed in a multicolored outfit and that flaming red hairdo that is so identified with Ziggy now, but that was a brand new ‘do at the time. He never mugs for the camera in this performance, but he smirks and grins and just looks like he’s having a great time. When Mick Ronson approaches to share the mic with him, Bowie throws his arm around Mick and pulls him close. And that one move sent a shockwave across England. It seems so innocent now. It’s hard to believe something like that could ever be controversial, but for parents across the UK, the gay subtext was just too much. They were shocked. But for millions of kids watching at home, they saw something liberating. They saw freedom.

When he sings that line in the second verse, “I had to phone someone so I picked on you”, he points into the camera, and all those kids watching at home felt like he was singing directly to them. Robert Smith of the Cure, Bono, Gary Newman, Siouxie Sioux, Mick Jones of the Clash, Boy George. Adam Ant, Noel Gallagher of Oasis, Johnny Marr… seems like everybody who formed a band in England remember seeing Bowie on “Top of the Pops” and consider this a pivotal moment in their lives. If you’ve never seen this clip from “Top of the Pops”, go watch it now. Bowie is absolutely magnetic in this performance. He’s every bit the ultimate rock star.

Thanks for listening and for being a part of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. You can continue the discussion on our Facebook page. Just search for the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast and you’ll find us.

You can listen to our previous episodes on David Bowie, as well as the dozens of other songs and artists we’ve discussed on this show, on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com. And there are plenty of other great music related podcasts on the Pantheon Podcast Network, so check those out too.

We’ll be back in two weeks with another show. Thanks for joining us for this episode on David Bowie and “Starman”. And remember to support the music you love by downloading it, streaming it, or buying it from wherever you find great music.

REFERENCES:

David Bowie
https://www.davidbowie.com/

Hunky Dory album
https://www.davidbowie.com/album/hunky-dory

Space Oddity
https://www.davidbowie.com/track/space-oddity-0

Robert Heinlein
https://www.heinleinsociety.org/

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars album
https://www.davidbowie.com/album/the-rise-and-fall-of-ziggy-stardust-and-the-spiders-from-mars

Chariots of the Gods by Erich Von Daniken
https://www.erichvondaniken.com/en/

Judy Garland
https://www.judygarlandmuseum.com/

Top of the Pops
http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp

You Keep Me Hanging On” by The Supremes
https://www.motownmuseum.org/legacy/the-supremes/

Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by Judy Garland
https://www.judygarlandmuseum.com/

Tag: Song Analysis

Small Faces – “Itchycoo Park”

David Bowie – “Starman”