1966 Small Faces: All Or Nothing

There's a great generosity about these mid sixties number ones listings. Away from the dominant axis of The Beatles and The Stones, there's a sense of fair play in that most of the major British names that made the decade swing all have at least one entry recorded for posterity. The Hollies, The Kinks, The Troggs, Dusty Springfield, The Tremoloes, Procul Harum, Manfred Mann, The Searchers, The Dave Clark Five et al all have (or will) pop up on these lists to help define the era that's collectively known as 'The Sixties'. Fair, but it has to be said that the tracks that did make the top were not always the artist's best or most representative work, an observation that's highly applicable to uber mods The Small Faces.

'All Or Nothing' is a song of promise that ultimately fails to deliver. "I thought you'd listen to my reason, but now I see you don't hear a thing. Got to make you see how it's got to be" lead Small Face Steve Mariott lays down the law to an errant girlfriend over an opening guitar motif that dwindles like a coda but builds into something more raucous as soon as he runs out of things to say. Which unfortunately comes at around the 1:40 mark where a "ba ba ba" middle eight gives way repetitions of the title that veer from threatening ("I ain't telling you no lie girl, so don't just sit there and cry girl") to something bordering on self pity ("All or nothing ...... For me, for me, for me....we're not children"). A drunkard ranting at his girlfriend outside the pub for flirting with the barman, it's neither pleasant nor sympathetic and it wears itself out long before the song limps to a close. 'All Or Nothing' sounds half finished, an initial idea that went nowhere but was stitched up into a single anyway. It gave them their sole number one, and by definition their 'Greatest Hit', but even so it's always a bit part player on any 'Best Of'.