Legendary Small Faces, and The Who drummer Kenney Jones talks sex, drums and rock ‘n’ roll with as he celebrates the 50th anniversary of the world’s first concept album

IT WAS the year Britain went decimal and a Boeing 747 jet flew to Washington for the first time. People were also flocking to the cinema back in 1968 to watch sci-fi epics like Planet Of The Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Meanwhile, British band the Small Faces were changing music by bringing out the world’s first concept album – Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake.

The psychedelic masterpiece has gone on to inspire generations of music lovers, including the likes of Paul Weller, who said: “They were the most complete pop group for me. They had everything – they were amazing players that all had the same influences. The image, the haircuts, blimey they were even all the same height. A kinda dream band everyone would want to be in.”

The groundbreaking album has been newly mastered and reissued in all formats to mark the 50th anniversary... with original Small Faces drummer Kenney Jones giving his approval.

The original release pushed the boundaries of the album format. At the time an LP generally just a collection of an artist’s singles, perhaps with the odd filler number.

The Small Faces fourth album saw them push beyond that to offer a record with a psychedelic theme.

The unusual circular packaging was inspired by Ogden’s Nut Brown Flake, a brand of tobacco once produced in Liverpool. The music was equally clever. Side A had mod classics like the flower power knees up Lazy Sunday, hard rocking Song Of A Baker and soulful Afterglow Of Your Love.

Side B took the unusual step of linking the tracks with a single theme, an original ‘fairytale’ about a character called Happiness Stan who goes on a quest to find the missing half of the moon. His adventures were narrated between the songs by comic Stanley Unwin in his ‘Unwinese’ – an amusing torrent of half intelligible gobbledygook.

The end result is an evergreen 60s curio that balances the era’s childlike optimism and artistic expression with winning pop tunes.

“It’s certainly stood the test of time,” Kenney chuckles. “Everything happened so quickly for us. We formed the band and I think we had our first hit when I was 15. The first TV programme we did was Thank Your Lucky Stars and Joe Brown was also on the bill.

“It was recorded and it was the first time I had ever seen myself on TV. I couldn’t believe it was me. I was like ‘Do I look like that?’.

“On Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake you can still hear it’s a real band firing on

McMULLEN

MARION