Humble Pie’s Sunset Boulevard 1969 Revives a Lost Live Classic from the Whisky A-Go Go
Humble Pie were undertaking their first ever US tour at the time, a two month outing that climaxed in mid-December on Sunset Strip, at the Whisky A-Go Go, and Marriott remembered the shows there as a fantastic experience for band and audience alike.
Plans to release the Whisky tapes as Humble Pie’s third album went unfulfilled, however, as Immediate Records disintegrated in early 1970. In fact, it would be 30 years before the tapes finally surfaced, but immediately they were acclaimed a true classic – and yes, superior even to the legendary Fillmore set.
And on November 21, Sunset Boulevard 1969 not only reappears in best-ever sonic quality, but also for the first time on vinyl; and truly, neither band nor performance have ever sounded better.
Marriott recalled the tour very much as “make or break” for the band. Although they had built a strong reputation in the UK and Europe, he was still recovering from the collapse of his last group, The Small Faces; still trying to regain his personal equilibrium.
America offered him the incentive he needed. “As soon as I began to rouse audiences a bit, [my old drive] began to slowly come back and I realized what we had to do and how we could do it. It was lovely, a good feeling. When we first formed, I was much more in the background and quiet. It was suddenly like I’d taken over the whole stage, which was something I couldn’t help but do, because when my confidence came back, it came back with an almighty bang.”
That bang reverberates across the album, through epic versions of The Yardbirds’ “For Your Love” and Johnny Kidd’s “Shakin’ All Over”; a short sharp take on Marriott’s own “The Sad Bag of Shakey Jake”; a positively Behemothic “I Walk On Gilded Splinters” and, released today as the band’s latest single, Ray Charles’s “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” – one of the most beloved, and certainly most dynamic performances in the band’s entire catalog.
There are a lot of Humble Pie live albums available today, dating back as far as the early 1970s and forward to the last gigs the band ever played, in the US in the early 1980s. And all of them capture the sheer brilliance of frontman Marriott, as a singer, a songwriter, an interpreter, a guitar player.
But Sunset Boulevard 1969 is something else entirely… not just a great show by a great band, but a 50 minute immersion in everything that truly great rock’n’roll music should encapsulate – light and shade, wildness and restraint, mood, magic and mayhem. And one of the most phenomenal vocalists we’ve ever heard.
What more could you possibly need to know?
Track listing
- For Your Love
- Shakin’ All Over
- Hallelujah I Love Her So
- The Sad Bag of Shaky Jake
- I Walk On Gilded Splinters
