‘Lazy Sunday’: the Small Faces’ inadvertent parody of 1960s hippie culture

Posted On December 27, 2024December 27, 2024

Throughout musical history, some of the most enduring songs have arisen from mistakes, experiments, and seemingly superfluous jokes. Particularly during the 1960s, an era during which anything went, musicians were playing around with the inherent conventions of pop music, creating entirely new sounds and hit songs in the process. That was certainly true of the Small Faces, a rag-tag gang of young mods who helped to define the soundtrack to London’s swinging sixties era—simply by having a laugh.

Originally formed in 1965 as disciples of the soul and R&B music that was dominating mod dancehalls and all-nighters at the time, the Small Faces reflected the voice of Britain’s raucous post-war youth. Behind all of it, though, the group contained some of the nation’s greatest musicians and songwriters, penning a variety of the decade’s most iconic and influential tracks, such as ‘Tin Soldier’ or ‘Itchycoo Park’.

Moreover, their stunning 1968 concept album Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake marked one of the most profound reinventions of the album format since The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds two years prior. But at their heart, they were working-class lads, and they retained a slat-of-the-earth spirit while many of their peers were pushing in a more metaphysical direction—a direction ripe with standard tropes fit for parodying.

Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake channelled a lot of these in charmingly wry ways. That album contained some of the band’s finest efforts, including the guitar-led mastery of ‘Song of a Baker’ and the trailblazing hard rock psychedelia of ‘Afterglow of Your Love’. With each song adding to the overarching narrative of the LP, the record is undoubtedly the magnum opus of Small Faces. Nevertheless, one of the most popular songs contained on Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake started out life as little more than a joke song created by the band on a whim.

Released as a single prior to the album’s release – despite the wishes of the bandmembers themselves – ‘Lazy Sunday’ reached number two in the UK singles chart upon its release. Reportedly inspired by Steve Marriott’s arguments with his neighbours, the song uses comedy cockney accents and sounds akin to old-school East End music hall. Despite the song’s colossal success, the Small Faces themselves never took it too seriously. “When we first cut the record, everyone thought it was a laugh,” keyboardist Ian McLagan told the New Musical Express in 1968.

Recalling how the song came together, McLagan continued, “Steve [Marriott] started singing it in the recording studio and began to laugh at the song. Then, we all began laughing at it. It was really quite a straight song to begin with until Steve began chucking in ‘Inky Pinky Poos’ for a giggle.” The keyboardist also added, “When we finished it, we all thought it was very funny. But we had no intention of releasing it.” However, this was the lexicon of the age and it steadily became clear that it could well be a hit.

Seemingly, it was the heads of Immediate – a new label founded by Andrew Loog Oldham and Tony Calder to expose the world to London’s blossoming blues and R&B scene – who pushed for the song’s release. “None of us wanted to release this record at first,” McLagan explained. “Humour is such a strange thing. You never know whether other people will see it the same way, and we felt that ‘Tin Solider’ was much more the kind of thing we wanted to do.”

“It was really the enthusiasm of people like Andrew and Tony, Michael d’Abo [of Manfred Mann] and yourself which won us round,” he continued, “and we began to think, well, maybe everyone else will see it as a giggle too.” Luckily, the Immediate gang were correct in their assumptions that the song would be a hit, providing The Small Faces with one of their all-time most successful anthems.

It might not have been as profound or diverse as some of the other efforts encased on Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake, ‘Lazy Sunday’ is one of the most enduring tracks from that period in British musical history. In fact, it inadvertently captures the era. Its humour and whimsy still resonate with audiences well over five decades after its initial release, despite the doubts of McLagan and the band that nobody else would see the humour in its cockneyisms.

Related Topics