Small Faces - Tin Soldier

All I need is your whispered hello.

Album: Tin Soldier EP [debut album]
Recorded: London, England
Genre: Mod, British Rhythm & Blues
Album Release: 1968
Single Release: December 2nd 1967
Length: 3:25
Producer: Steve Marriott & Ronnie Lane
Vocalist: Steve Marriott
Label: Immediate Records

Audio


Live in 1968 [probably miming]

Charts, Streams & Sales

Australia (singles): #3
New Zealand (singles): #3
UK (singles): #9
West Germany (singles): #7
Spotify: 5,400,000 +
YouTube Music: 22,000,000 +
Mojo Magazines Best Singles of All Time (1997): #10

Credits

Bass, drums, guitar, keyboard, organ

Details

• The song was written as a serenade and was so sultry it was initially banned by the BBC, a decision which was later overturned when it became clear the song was about romance instead of sex. Steve Marriott wrote the song for model Jenny Rylance who was in a relationship with someone else at the time, with lyrics like "I am a little tin soldier, that wants to jump into your fire" it's clear he was infatuated with the girl. Marriott and Rylance got married in 1968, only a year after the release of the song and they stayed together for five more.
  
  "The meaning of the song is about getting into somebody's mind, not their body. It refers to a girl I used to talk to all the time and she really gave me a buzz. The single was to give her a buzz in return and maybe other people as well. I dig it. There's no great message really and no physical scenes"
  
  

  

  Marriott strumming for Rylance
  

  
  
• Small Faces were a key band in the mod youth culture. By the late-sixties mods had gone from suits and jazz into cashmere jumpers and rhythm and blues. They rode moped scooters and had running clashes with the rockers who rode motorbikes and wore leather.
  
  The mods were from big cities and influenced by the windrush generation of immigrants who moved to Britain from the Caribbean. The newcomers initially gathered in the larger settlements. The rockers were centred in smaller towns and championed traditional masculinity and Britishness. The mods thought the rockers to be out of touch simpletons while the rockers saw the mods as effeminate Nancy boys with their bob haircuts and poncy waistcoasts. The clashes between the two groups were sensationalised in the media and had largely come to an end as the seventies beckoned.
  
  'Tin Soldier' features the black singer P.P. Arnold on backing vocals during a time when racism was rampant and her inclusion on the record is evidence of the difference in outlook between the Mods and the Rockers. Small Faces didn't care if some people disapproved of white and black people sharing a stage. White and black people making music together represented the forward thinking attitude of the Mods in multicultural sixties London.
  
  

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