What Happened To Steve Marriott?

What Happened To Steve Marriott?

Waking up in a house engulfed by flames, Steve Marriott crawled between his bed and the wall to protect himself. That’s where firefighters found his body, but the tragedy didn’t end there. As a member of countless bands throughout his life, Steve had a passion for music that just wouldn’t go away, even despite an endless list of failures and heartaches. In the end, he realized that no amount of fame was worth the pain and disappointment of the music industry. So, he finally decided to take his career into his own hands. Unfortunately, that was when disaster struck. His early years were no picnic, either, especially since he came into the world a little worse for wear. Born in January 1947 in Essex, he was 3 weeks premature, which only made it easier for him to contract jaundice, forcing him to spend his first 4 weeks of life in hospital. As Steve grew up, he surprised his parents, who found that their sickly baby had turned into an almost unrecognizable ball of energy with a tendency to get up to no good. Mischief wasn’t the only thing Steve took an interest in. He developed a love for music through watching his father, Bill, play piano in various pubs. After teaching himself to play the ukulele and the harmonica, Steve took every chance he could to perform for an audience. With two of his friends from school, the 12-year-old started his first band, initially calling themselves the Wheels.

Growing up in 1950s England, Steve had his fair share of great musicians to look up to, but his favorite was from across the pond, taking great inspiration from the iconic Buddy Holly. Steve even went so far as to steal parts of his look by wearing large-rimmed glasses without lenses. He emulated the singer so well that his bandmates started calling him Buddy. Only a year after he formed The Wheels, Steve’s father saw a casting call for the role of the Artful Dodger in the West End musical Oliver and signed Steve up without asking him first. Steve reportedly wowed the musical’s creator Lionel Bart. He joined the cast for the next year, during which he managed to make some money for himself as the job paid £8 per week. Steve’s parents urged him to pursue acting full-time. At only 14, he enrolled at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts. However, because his family couldn’t afford the cost, any fees would come out of whatever acting work Steve found while attending. Throughout the early 1960s, Steve proved that he had the talent to sustain himself as an actor and not just in live theater. Although his debut in Oliver caused him to get typecast as other similar Cockney child characters, he expanded into other media including radio, film, and television. As the 1960s progressed, he realized that acting had never been his true passion and decided to pursue music again. His parents didn’t support this move and tried to convince him to continue acting, but the resulting conflict only prompted him to leave home. Steve had already started another band in 1963, The Frantics.

The band tried to get the attention of several major record labels, but nobody was biting. Steve and his bandmates decided to rename the group, calling themselves The Moments or sometimes even Marriott and His moment. After making no progress, the band kicked Steve out in 1964, believing he was too young to sing lead. Working at a music store to pay the bills, Steve happened to encounter musician Ronnie Lane when he walked in to buy a new bass. Steve and Ronnie immediately hit it off, so much so that Steve invited him over to listen to records. Ronnie was a big fan of R&B, and as fate would have it, Steve owned a collection of rare American R&B imports. After getting to know Ronnie’s friend Kenny Jones as well, Steve was eager to perform with the two musicians, who invited him to join their band for a gig. However, the evening descended into disaster as the three of them drank excessively and culminated with Steve destroying the piano he was playing. Despite still being in the early phase of his career, Steve had the chance to collaborate with someone who would become one of the greatest musicians in history. As another singer who loved R&B just as much as Steve, David Bowie invited him to form an R&B duo under the name David and Goliath. It was a tempting offer, but Ronnie and Kenny’s band had just split up, so Steve agreed to form a new group with them instead. Bringing along a friend of his named Jimmy Winston, Steve, Ronnie, and Kenny formed their new band, but still needed a name. One of Steve’s friends, Annabelle, gave them an idea when she joked that they all had small faces. As it happened, David Bowie wasn’t the only budding rock star Steve encountered since Small Faces began gaining a decent following in the English music scene. One of their biggest fans was future Led Zeppelin lead singer Robert Plant, who even ran errands for Steve and his bandmates. Small Faces signed with manager Don Arden, who put them up in a swanky house in 1965. Still, they mostly saw this as a place to throw as many parties as possible, often with more big-name musicians in attendance, such as Marianne Faithfull and Pete Townshend. Don Arden was a titan in music management during this time, but was definitely more notorious than beloved due to his questionable practices and unpleasant personality. It was only a matter of time before his contract with Small Faces fell apart, and in 1967, he sold the band to Immediate Records after they fought him over unpaid royalties. Among all the new people Steve met at parties and performances, one stood out. From the moment he laid eyes on her in 1966, a model named Jenny Rylance. Although he couldn’t stop thinking about her, she was dating a young Rod Stewart at the time. Steve would go on to write the song Tin Soldier about her. Small Faces released Tin Soldier to great acclaim, but that wasn’t all that came of it. As Steve discovered, Jenny had feelings for him, too, and the song helped bring them together.

They married in the spring of 1968. With the 1968 release of Small Faces concept album Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, the band gained another success, but not everyone was entirely happy. In the wake of the album’s release, Steve began to feel like the group’s creativity was stagnating and tried to introduce some new ideas, only for his bandmates to shoot them down. Steve also had come to prefer the company of musicians Greg Ridley and Peter Frampton. During a performance with Small Faces on New Year’s Eve, 1968, Steve stormed out in the middle of the set, announcing his departure in no uncertain terms. Steve would likely have been more hesitant to quit Small Faces if he didn’t have something else already lined up. Joining Peter Frampton and Greg Ridley’s new band, Humble Pie, Steve immediately felt more appreciated and excited as his new bandmates granted him the creative freedom he’d been missing. He gained more recognition for his powerful vocals and the band’s manager urged him to be front and center during performances. As the band’s new focus, Steve Marriott spent the next few years as the face of Humble Pie as they toured the US. While on tour, he started experimenting with hard drugs, which according to his friends and family, turned him into a completely different person. For 5 years, Jenny had stuck by Steve, but she could no longer sit by and watch him destroy himself through drink and drugs. She eventually divorced him in 1973. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the wake-up call he desperately needed. If his drug use hadn’t changed him enough, the failure of his marriage pushed Steve to the point where his bandmates couldn’t stand to be around him any more than they had to. His role in the band seemed to go to his head, with him becoming unnecessarily hostile and almost tyrannical. Unsurprisingly, this caused a major rift in the group and Humble Pie officially split up in 1975. By this time, Steve was ready to open himself up to another relationship, and he didn’t have to search for too long. His relationship with air hostess Pam Stephens moved quickly. A year after they met, she gave birth to their son, Toby, and the couple married shortly after. By the late 1970s, any money Steve had received from his time in Humble Pie had dwindled, leaving him so desperate that he resorted to stealing vegetables from his neighbor’s field just to survive. So, when he received an offer to reunite Humble Pie in exchange for a substantial sum of money, he couldn’t refuse. In 1981, he broke his wrist by slamming it in a door, and the new version of Humble Pie quickly fell apart without him.

Once again, without a band, Steve found himself looking back at his mistakes, which made him long for one of his first truly close friends, Ronnie Lane. Although he hadn’t told Steve initially, Ronnie had received a multiple sclerosis diagnosis back in the Small Faces days, and was in a wheelchair by the time they met again in 1981. Amid tears and apologies, Steve invited Ronnie to perform with him again, to which Ronnie agreed. As their idea for a new project came together, Steve and Ronnie were ecstatic to start working on it, and recruited five other musicians to help create what eventually became the album Magic Midgets. Unfortunately, this was as far as their collaboration went, as Ronnie’s condition prevented him from joining the others on tour. Steve Marriott and his wife, Pam, had been distant for the past few years, but when it came to light that he was having an affair with another woman, who was also pregnant with his child, this was the final straw. Pam became the second woman to divorce him. Steve moved in with his sister, Kay. He wanted to have another shot at forming a band, putting together a group called Packet of Three. Although down on his luck, Steve wouldn’t give up on trying to carve out his own version of happiness. And this time with someone more familiar. Reaching out to his long-time friend, Manon Piercy, she helped him overcome some of his more destructive habits, and they even welcomed a daughter in 1985. Sadly, this relationship would be even more fleeting than his others. As in the same year of their daughter’s birth, he began seeing another woman named Tony Poulton. Meeting her at one of his gigs, he wasted no time in moving in with her and later marrying in 1989. Moving to the quaint village of Arkesden, Steve seemed to prefer the quieter life to that of a famous rock star. He was happy to remain relatively small-time with Packet of Three. However, his bandmates didn’t feel the same way.

So, when he began declining major record deals, they realized he was only weighing them down. Steve continued to work on other projects for years, including an album with Peter Frampton in 1991. Behind the scenes, though, his relationship with Tony wasn’t going so well, as was evident on the flight back from his time in America with Peter Frampton. Drinking the entire time, Steve spent the flight picking fights with his wife. Arriving back in the UK, the couple agreed to meet a friend for dinner that night. They returned to their friend’s house and chose to stay the night, but went right back to fighting while in bed. When Tony woke up after a couple of hours, she realized that Steve had gone home in a cab while she was asleep. This had been a disastrous decision. At around 6:30 in the morning, a passerby alerted the authorities to a fire at Steve and Tony’s cottage. Firefighters arrived on the scene and eventually managed to put out the blaze, but it was too late for Steve. They discovered his body in his bedroom on the floor between the wall and his bed. According to investigators, he likely woke up to the fire, but was far too out of it to know which direction led to the exit. They also concluded that the likeliest cause of the fire was Steve falling asleep after lighting a cigarette. Growing up with a dream of becoming a rock star, Steve Marriott achieved what he believed he wanted, only to learn that the reality was very different. Disillusioned by the industry and all the strings that came with fame, he preferred to fall into relative obscurity. While he may not have the same legacy as other big names, he left his mark on history. If you enjoyed this Factinate video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe for more incredible stories. Your support means everything to us. If you want to say in who we cover next, join our membership program through the link in the description for exclusive perks, and check out the videos on screen for more amazing Factinate stories.