Kenney Jones / The SDE Interview

Small Faces drummer on ‘The Autumn Stone’ reissue (with reissue producer Rob Caiger)

This year is the 60th anniversary of Immediate Records, the iconic label started in 1965 by Rolling Stones manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, and his business partner, Tony Calder. To kick off the celebrations, there’s a new version of the Small Faces’ final album, The Autumn Stone, from 1969, available as either a 3LP box set or a 3CD edition.

Curated by the band’s drummer, Kenney Jones, who also played with the Faces and The Who, both formats include unreleased tracks newly mixed from Olympic Studios session tapes. The new version has been significantly expanded from the unfinished, error-strewn original ‘best of’ LP – there were numerous technical issues and the band’s name was left off the front cover – which was rush-released by Immediate more than six months after the Small Faces band members had gone their separate ways, splitting into the Faces and Humble Pie.

SDE spoke to Jones, the only surviving member of the Small Faces, and Rob Caiger, Immediate’s archivist / reissues producer, about the idea behind the box set, the challenges involved putting it together, and what other releases they’ve got planned around the 60th anniversary of the label.

SDE: When The Autumn Stone was released in late 1969, the Small Faces had split up. Other than Steve Marriott, the band members didn’t know anything about the album coming out until it was released…

Kenney Jones: I didn’t know a damn thing about it – I just thought it was Andrew Oldham and Tony Calder trying to cash in.

How did you feel about it at the time?

Kenney: I didn’t feel anything – I didn’t really give it much thought.

But Steve Marriott had been paid by Immediate to remix some of the tracks…

Kenney: I only found that out recently. The best thing is that with myself and Rob [Caiger] now contributing to it, it’s out there now as it should be, so it’s nice to feel a part of it, even though it’s many years later. That’s what really matters to me. 

I’ve had a lot of input and, along with Rob and Nigel [Adams – co-owner of Jones’ label Nice Records], I’m proud that we’re making sure whatever we release goes to the fans and they enjoy it now that they’ve got value for money.

And, more than 55 years later, you’ve finally got the band’s name on the front cover…

Kenney: [laughs] I know…

Original Small Faces photographer, Gered Mankowitz, has been closely involved with the new artwork, hasn’t he?

Kenney: That’s right – he’s done a great job. 

How has it been revisiting the album and hearing the songs again? Has it been a nice experience?

Kenney: It’s been a lonely one, but I’ve got the boys with me… I feel their presence and them looking down on me, saying, ‘Good on yer, Ken…’

[To Rob Caiger]: What was the starting point for the box set?

Rob Caiger: We discussed it, but I don’t think we can ever do a Small Faces career-retrospective box set as such, because they were only recording for Decca and Immediate for about three years – there’s not a massive wealth of material recorded, lost or otherwise – so The Autumn Stone seemed to fit. As we went on, we found more and more things and it just built…

We started it a long time ago. You know the history of Immediate… [the label ceased operating in 1970 due to financial problems]. After years of preparing and trying to find things, it’s only taken us about three months to put the box set together.

I’ve got to say that credit must be given to Andrew [Loog Oldham] – more so than Tony [Calder]… Andrew was 23 years old [in 1967] and the guys were younger than him – no one knew what they were doing, but they should’ve known what they were doing on the business side…

Kenney: I care about it now, but I didn’t when I was younger… 

Rob: No, because you were in it, and you were creating stuff… We’ve been going back 25 years and starting to find tapes… Immediate fell apart and Andrew had to put it into liquidation… He was removed from it and other corporations came in, including the liquidator. Things were disposed of, things were lost, and things were stolen. At one point, the liquidator ordered a load of master tapes to be destroyed because they couldn’t work out who the actual owners were. So, for me to start recovering the tapes, and especially the session multi-tracks… 

You find the tapes in all sorts of strange places – especially with Immediate… Thank God for private collectors who had kept stuff, like engineers, and Kenney himself, who had stored them in their tape boxes. There’s a discipline that certain musicians, like Kenney, have. 

The Autumn Stone was [originally] going to be part of the series that we did with Charly [Records]. We had it all done as a 2LP back in 2015.  Prior to that, I had a chat with Kenney and Mac [Ian McLagan – Small Faces keyboard player who died in 2014] and that’s when I found out that the album wasn’t finished – two of the sides are only 10 minutes. 

I’ve had Kenny involved, suggesting other tracks [to include] that they all enjoyed working on together, so we’ve added them, and we’ve changed the flow of it, and we’ve got two new acoustic mixes [‘The Autumn Stone’ and ‘Red Balloon’], and the acoustic mixes that were on the [Here Comes The Nice] CD box set – that will never be released again, because it was a Kenney and Mac project – but I wanted to put some of them on vinyl, which is what we’ve done. The album has a flow to it now, which the original didn’t have. 

Were there technical issues with the live recordings you’ve included? Did you have to correct the speed and pitch?

Rob: On the original version of The Autumn Stone there were technical errors, but to give credit to Tony Calder, it was the first time a greatest hits compilation had been done with another record label [Decca – as well as Immediate] – that was quite revolutionary. There were technical imperfections… The Decca tracks had been messed around with – they had fake stereo phasing sprayed all over them and the live tracks had the wrong pitch and speed and had a load of screaming [from the audience] added. We found an earlier tape with less of the screaming and everything is at the right speed now. 

There were some technical issues with ‘Afterglow’ – the stereo version was included, but, towards the end, the tape was damaged, and it was repaired with a mono tape, so it suddenly switches from stereo to mono… All the technical imperfections have now been fixed – and they’re all from the master tapes. I was really pleased that we could find the tapes, and we also found an unreleased jam…

That track is an instrumental called ‘Olympic Jam’, and it’s a funky and dirty, boogie-woogie groove that was recorded with producer and engineer, Eddie Kramer, at Olympic Studios. Where did you find that?

Rob: It was on the end of a tape reel by The Apostolic Intervention, who were Jerry Shirley’s group on Immediate – they were doing a session that Steve [Marriott] was producing, maybe with Ronnie [Lane], with Eddie, and they were covering ‘Green Circles’ [by the Small Faces], which has never come out.

Spliced on the end of it, not credited, was an unfinished track by the Small Faces. We took the four tracks and mixed it as it was, and it had a lovely little vibe to it, so it definitely needed a place on the box set.

‘Green Circles’ by the Small Faces is also on the box set – Kenney, that was one of the songs you chose to include, because you and the band really enjoyed recording it… It was one of your earliest psychedelic songs… 

Kenney: Yes – it’s one of my favourites because I like the drumming on it. 

Rob: It’s proper percussion…

‘Wham, Bam, Thank You, Mam’, which is on the box set, has a heavier rock and roll sound, and ‘The Autumn Stone’ is folky and soulful… Do you think those tracks are representative of what the proper follow-up album to Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake could’ve sounded like if the Small Faces had got round to finishing it?

Kenney: ‘Wham, Bam, Thank You, Mam’ is one of my favourite tracks – it’s the nearest we got to playing rock and roll. 

Rob: If ‘The Autumn Stone’ had been a single, as was originally intended, with ‘Wham, Bam, Thank You, Mam’ on the other side, you would’ve had the whole breadth of what the band could do, just on one single. If you look at the album that could’ve come out of that, there’s such a wide range, but Steve said he couldn’t achieve it with the Small Faces, so he went on to do it [with Humble Pie], with a mix of folk and rock.

The Small Faces could do it much better because there was a democracy there. But, in Humble Pie, it was ruled by Steve – you had one person pushing everything. Mac said to me that was when Steve stopped singing and started shouting.

‘Collibosher’, which is on The Autumn Stone, is an instrumental backing track which was left over from the Odgens’ sessions… 

Kenney: That’s right – we did a lot of instrumentals, and I think we might’ve come up with a few more gems somewhere along the line… 

Rob: There’s another version of ‘Collibosher’, which is much longer and heavier, and guitar-led, and without the brass. All of the instrumentals, like ‘Collibosher’ and ‘Wide Eyed Girl On The Wall’, were meant to have vocals on them, because, on all the eight-track session tapes, the eighth track was left spare for a lead vocal, so who knows what could’ve been… 

[To Kenney]: It’s well documented that the Small Faces were ripped off back in the day – by both their manager, Don Arden, and Immediate. As the last member of the band left alive, it must be important for you to address any issues with royalties regarding the back catalogue for yourself and the families of the other guys…

Kenney: I’m very pleased to be a part of it. All I can say is thank God for Rob Caiger – he put it all together for us and he’s done a lot of research into finding the tapes and going through the archives. 

Rob: Always running in tandem with that is looking at where the royalties are – where they’ve gone… There are still things to be uncovered. You’re never going to get back the stuff from the past, but when Immediate went into liquidation, the biggest loser was Andrew – £250,000 of his own money, which is over £2 million today. 

The guys [in the Small Faces] lost royalties, and there are some things which we are trying to address that we can’t talk about at the minute. It goes on, but the more we have the product out there and Kenney’s doing interviews and is visible, the more we can draw attention to it. The Small Faces are still loved and there’s still a fan base, let’s do right by them. Sadly, three of them aren’t with us, so let’s do right by the families.

So, there aren’t really any other Small Faces rarities left to uncover?

Kenney: No doubt we’ll uncover something…

Rob: As soon as we say there’s nothing, a load of tapes will turn up… 

What plans do you have for releasing material by other artists from the Immediate archives as part of the label’s 60^th anniversary?​

Rob: There’s a load of great material that never came out that we’ve managed to assemble. We’re sitting on the assets. A lot of it, with a few exceptions, has been passed on from the Abbey Road archive, because EMI was the original manufacturer and distributor of Immediate, and it was pretty good at archiving stuff – not everything, but they’ve got most of it. 

I’ve recovered stuff from all round the world, so, between us, we’ve got an Immediate archive. Charly has a whole load of multi-tracks that I’ve been through, and BMG, who is the UK rights holder that we license from, has specific tapes of Humble Pie that have never been released – I know Jerry Shirley has been through them. Kenny is leading it – it will be artist-led, which is the only way these projects can be done.

Kenney: It’s very important that it’s artist-led.

Rob: So, yes, there are plans – all the things that you could wish for coming out… if there’s an audience for it – as you know, vinyl isn’t cheap… it’s insanely expensive –  and there’s support, with great initiatives like SDE that bring it directly to the fans that want it… We want to get it to the fans first rather than it go out to retail, because straight away you lose 40%, which is fair, but I’d rather the money went to the bands and the artists, which is why it has to be artist-led. 

It’s about having quality control, which you only get if the artist has a voice. Certain labels, from majors to independents, still don’t give the artist a voice. If there’s a fan base out there, and we can get the records to them, what do they want? They want the artist involved.

We know what we want to do, but it’s the business side… we need to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. It makes you wish for the days when Immediate used to do things and then apologise later – they got the things out there… Ogdens’ in a round sleeve… who’d have thought? But we’re in 2025 now… 

We’ve got plans for a Small Faces documentary focused on ‘All or Nothing’ being number one in 1966, and the Small Faces stereo LPs have never been available since they were originally issued, so that would make a nice little compact box set and I could put In Memoriam in there as well. 

I’m just going through a Vashti Bunyan session – I’ve found a multi-track with Jimmy Page and Big Jim Sullivan on, and a Rod Stewart session that he did with Mike d’Abo. It’s just Rod’s voice and piano – he was such a great singer.

What about anything by Billy Nicholls, who made the great ‘lost’ Immediate album Would You Believe?

Rob: It’s the English Pet Sounds as far as I’m concerned… Kenney has been instrumental in talking to Billy, who wants to work on it. He’s got loads of stuff that never made it onto the original album – we could very easily turn it into a box set. 

[To Kenney]: How does it feel to be talking about 60 years of Immediate?

Kenney: Oh, God. If only I could rely on my memory, it would be great! 

What was it like being on Immediate at the time and how do you feel about it now in retrospect?

Kenney: It was stunning to be with a company that saw our talent and wanted to work with us – they gave us a lot of studio time. We had to pay for it in the end, but we didn’t realise that at the time. Andrew was very wise – he knew the only way to get the Small Faces to be creative was to put us in a creative place, which was the studio, where we recorded those wonderful songs.

Do you have any regrets on how the Small Faces ended? You got back together in the mid-late ‘70s, which didn’t work out. How do you feel about that now?

Kenney: Terrible. I wish I hadn’t been part of it – it was round about the punk time, and Steve was gobbing everywhere and swearing. I just wanted the stage to open up and swallow me. It was a great idea at the time, but I should’ve realised when we first got back together with the original band, including Ronnie Lane… Ronnie and Steve had a bit of a tiff, so Ronnie went off… I should’ve gone off then as well.

What’s going on with the Faces now? Any plans to do anything with Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart?

Kenney: We’re sort of doing an album, but very quietly… We’ve done a few nice tracks and we’re still working on it together – there’s no rush, but we’re trying to fit it in between everyone’s fucking tours! You just get going and then the Stones do something… Ronnie said, ‘I’m off now for three months – see you later.’ And then Rod said, ‘While he’s doing that, I might as well do something myself…’

Rob: You’re dealing with musicians who, growing up, have always had a work ethic, and they’ve not changed. It’s bloody annoying, but you can’t argue with ‘em.

Thanks to Kenney Jones and Rob Caiger, who were talking to Sean Hannam for SDE. The Autumn Stonebox set is available now exclusively via The Small Faces website.

• Order the 3LP vinyl or 3CD box set of The Autumn Stone from the Small Faces website

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