Humble Pie - On To Victory

 

This is the first "reunion" record for the Pie, featuring just Marriott and Shirley with the addition of Bobby Tench on guitar (formerly with Jeff Beck) and bassist Anthony "Sooty" Jones. After Steve and Jerry demo'd the opening "Fool For A Pretty Face", a strong Humble Pie-styled blues rocker, they received an offer from Atco to record this album. Unfortunately, as with all of the post Small Faces reunions, this did not receive a big response, despite having some favorable performances.

As I said, this opens with a first-rate piece of Pie in "Fool For a Pretty Face" - great groove, nice arrangement and a memorable melody - this definitely should have done better than it did (although the "hurt by love" lifts might have been too obvious and taken away some of the original appeal). The funnily titled "You Soppy Pratt" continues with a Marriott, soulful Pie-groove, led by layers of keyboards mixed with the guitar, "Infatuation" is a cool blues-riff-rocker with a hot sax solo, while "Take It From Here" is a ponderously slow'n'heavy, hard rock stomper, and "Savin' It" is a bit syncopated'n'jerky in a pseudo-reggae kinda way (sorta/kinda), which keeps it from being completely successful (to me, anyway).

Steve goes back to his R'n'B/Mod roots in "Baby Don't You Do It", the Holland/Dozier/Holland number that was oft-covered back in the day, which is fine, but not as great as I would expect out of Steve. "Get It In The End" is good, mid-tempo heavy soul, but ultimately not overly memorable, while Otis Redding's "My Lover's Prayer" has an open, kinda bluesy arrangement but again, kinda misses the mark and I think Mr. Marriott could have done more with it. We return to bluesy riff-rock for "Further Down the Road", which is also laudable, but doesn't stand out, nor does the somewhat meandering "Over You".

Not a bad record by any means, but it is also understandable that this did not return them to their previous glories.