Kenney Jones in E7 - Now and Then!

Kenney Jones, one- time drummer of The Small Faces, The Faces and The Who, last week returned to his east end roots and performed at the Wanstead Tap, where he discussed his autobiography, Let The Good Times Roll, with rock journalist Paolo Hewitt, in one of the Tap's great book collaborations with the Newham Bookshop. A most enjoyable evening, it was, too.

Above - the book.
Below - the signing

Kenney was born in Stepney, a couple of months after the NHS was established, and has come a long way since. His career as a rock musician, had Mod written through it, in much the same way as seaside rock has the name of the resort through it.

He  now owns  a Surrey polo club, hob-nobbing with the likes of Prince Charles on the pitch, and has swapped the Lambrettas for the  Lambourghinis.

Kenney playing polo with his new mate
Prince Charles at his Hurtwood Park
polo club, in Surrey

His story - as told in his book, and elsewhere - is a fascinating one and owes some huge debts to Forest Gate. What follows is a recollection of some of those, and a consideration of his life and times in music and beyond.

Kenney - the second "e" was added to distinguish him from other entertainers with similar names in the 60's - is a self described "Stepney Herbert", who was gripped by music in his early teens, and ventured over to Forest Gate:

Local dance clubs offered another opportunity to hear great music. At weekends we would queue for venues such as the Lotus in Forest Gate (ed: Kenny Johnson's venue - see footnote) , which initially, played dance records before it began hosting bands.

While in the area, he came across the J60 Music Bar at 445 High Street North, Manor Park - long gone (see photo below, today). It was, in Jones' words "an Aladdin's cave" and was there he bought his first drum kit, aged 13.

He soon met Stan Lane, who introduced him to his brother, the later bassist, Ronnie, and in no time Kenney was dragging his drums from Stepney to Ronnie's house, at 385 Romford Road to practice, as they began to put a band together.

Kenney links up with Ronnie Lane and starts jamming at his house,

                                     385 Romford Road

It wasn't long before the pair of them were back at the J60 to get a guitar for Ronnie (as he had switched from lead to bass) and ended up jamming in the shop with the Saturday boy, who turned out to be Steve Marriott - to the annoyance of the owner, who soon sacked Marriott for selling the bass to Lane at a cut price.

Ronnie and Kenney meet Steve Marriott (above), the Saturday boy at the J60 Music Bar (recent photo of its later reincarnation), 445 High Street North - and The Small Faces are born

Marriott had been brought up about half way between the J60 and Ronnie Lane's house, at 308  Strone Road. His dad, among other things, had a shell fish stall outside the Ruskin Arms - also on High Street North. The emerging musical trio linked up with the son of the pub's landlord - Jimmy Winston (aka Longwith) - who joined in, on keyboards, but more importantly offered practice space at the back room of the pub for the boys.

Left - 308 Strone Road, where Marriott
was brought up, right The Ruskin Arms,
where the Small Faces began practising seriously

The band gradually emerged and called themselves The Small Faces, because - well, they were all small - around 5'5" each. Winston was soon dropped and replaced by Ian McLagan - and the band took off, locally around 1965.

The opening of the Upper Cut club, on Woodgrange Road was a big occasion for Kenney Jones, both personally and professionally. He tells the story in the book:

My introduction to session work came about as a direct result of meeting Jan Osborne on 21 December 1966, following The Who's performance at the opening night of heavyweight boxer Billy Walker's The Upper Cut Club in Forest Gate, East London. My cousin, Roy, and I attended the gig, after which we met up back stage with Adrienne Posta and her friend Jan.

Jan later became his wife, for about a decade, and they had two children. Her father, Tony, also had a significant influence on the young Kenney. He was a prominent band leader of the day and taught Kenney how to read music, which became an intro for the young drummer to session music. He played this in parallel with his time with the bands. It extended his talents,  repertoire and contacts greatly - and made not a little money on the side for him.

Small Faces - Kenney Jones in front, with the
big checks - just the way he liked it!

The Small Faces were by now making a considerable name for themselves locally and nationally and made a big impact on the Upper Cut within a couple of weeks of it opening - and on a second occasion during the club's year long existence (see press cuttings for the story).

Above - adverts for the Small Faces gigs at the Upper Cut, 6 January 1967 and 8 July, the same year.  Below Stratford Express coverage of their gigs

The autobiography, itself, is Kenney's own slant on the familiar rock star tale of sex, drugs and rock and roll, complete with the touring excesses of scandalous bad boy behaviour.  All the staple elements are there: bands breaking up over "musical differences", bands being ripped off by devious managers/agents/promoters, and the double standards of rockers who toured and played away, but who objected to their WAGS staying at home and playing away.

Kenney Jones performed for the three of the biggest bands of the 60's and 70's - The Small Faces, The Faces and The Who and has lived to tell the tale.

Familiar themes recur in his story. His attitude to money - let's call it careful. His relationship with lead singers (Marriott, Stewart and Daltry) - let's call it feisty. And his attitude to authority - let's call it challenging. Perhaps they are connected and help define the man.

Kenney - far right, with The Faces

He has looked after himself. As his book tells us, and he probably had cause to remind many, he was a distant relation of the Kary twins. He is also a survivor, probably because his excesses were less extreme than many of his contemporaries. 

So, he has outlived the other members of the Small Faces (Steve Marriott died aged 44 in 1991, Ronnie Lane aged 51 in 1997 and Ian McLagan aged 69 in 2014).

Kenney in The Who, second right
and keeping close tabs on Roger Daltrey

He has also survived life as a drummer, an instrument notorious for the self-destruction of its musicians. Keith Moon, of The Who,  died aged 32 in 1978 - to be replaced by Jones. John Bonham of Led Zepplin also died aged 32, in 1980. Cozy Powell of the Jeff Beck Group, Rainbow and Black Sabbath survived until 1998, when he died, aged 51 and Mitch Mitchell who played with the Jimi Hendrix Experience and with Georgie Fame went, aged 62 in 2008.

A Faces reunion in 1993, as a fund raiser for
Ronnie Lane (with stick, in centre) suffering from MS

Kenney Jones' survivor capacity extends beyond the music industry. He is a prostate cancer survivor and a keen supporter of charities associated with it.

He has enjoyed the good life outside of music, too. A helicopter and a fleet of smart cars is never far away from his Surrey polo club, which he admits is proving a drain on his £20m net worth. This, of course,  enables him to mix within circles undreamed of in his Stepney roots. But he has never deserted or disowned them, and was happy to reminisce about his early life and times,  at the Tap.

A recent photo, with ex Faces Ronnie
Wood and Rod Stewart at a fund raiser
for Protate Cancer research, at Kenney
Jones' Guildford polo club

So - a most enjoyable night was had at the 75 people lucky enough to be there (tickets sold out within 2 hours) on an occasion put on by the great local double act of Newham Bookshop and the Wanstead Tap - the entertainment highlight of E7 - now.

Kenney (right), a man at ease talking
about his East End roots to journalist Paolo
Hewitt, at the Wanstead Tap in July 2018

Kenney - left - having a drink
 after his E7 show at the Tap

Footnotes:

1. Let The Good Times Roll, by Kenney Jones is published by Blink Publishing and retails at £20. Copies (some signed) can be obtained from Newham Bookshop - tel: , 745-747 Barking Road, or via their website: www.newhambooks.co.uk  

2. Readers of this article may be interested in the following articles on this site, featuring themes mentioned in it:

The Newham Bookshop History

The Life and Times of Ronnie Lane

Kenny Johnson and the Lotus Club

Small Faces at the Upper Cut Club (1)

Small Faces at the Upper Cut Club (2)

Billy Walker recalls the Upper Cut club

He's one of our own - Ronnie Lane

This post is published to celebrate what would have been Ronnie Lane's 70th birthday - on 1 April.

Forest Gate youngster, Ronnie Lane's life (1 April 1946 - 4 June 1997) was perhaps best summed up by one of his greatest hits, penned with Steve Marriott:  All or Nothing.

Ronnie, as a
 mod, with the
 Small Faces

Ronnie was a key figure in two of Britain's most influential bands in the 1960's and 70's (The Small Faces and The Faces), yet died in poverty and obscurity aged only 51 in a remote town in the American Rockies.  This is his story.

Ronnie was the son of a Forest Gate lorry driver, Stan, and his wife Elsie, and spent his childhood at 385 Romford Road - see photo. Stan was the main influence on his early life and took responsibility for raising Ronnie and his older brother, Stan junior, as his mother began to suffer from the same debilitating disease - Multiple Sclerosis - that was to end Ronnie's life, prematurely.

385 Romford Road, today

Brother Stan referred to their mum as a "cold fish", and Ronnie always spoke of his dad in revered terms, barely mentioning his mother, in later years.

Encouraged by his dad, Ronnie picked up a guitar for the first time aged 14.

Soon after he left school (which he detested) he signed up to an art course at what was later to become Lister school. He subsequently drifted around a series of mundane jobs (electrician's mate, pipefitter's mate, scooter messenger, fairground worker etc) until he got his first musical break, as a guitar tester for Selmer's.

Looking to form a band, c 1964

He soon got the music bug and was quickly putting up adverts in local shop windows (see photo of an example)looking to recruit band members. This lead to the foundation of his first band, The Outcasts, with local drummer Kenny (later Kenney, of Who fame) Jones.

The band quickly fell apart, however, but the pair of them teamed up with fellow local boy Steve Marriott (brought up at 26 Strone Road, Manor Park, opposite the Ruskin Arms), and Jimmy Winston on keyboards. Ronnie switched from playing lead guitar, to bass and Marriott gave him the nickname, Plonk, as a result.

Ronnie recording, and in his element

The four of them were snapped up by Don Arden, the notoriously aggressive manager, who promoted them as a band to appeal to Mods.

Ronnie was a friend of Kenny Johnson, who later went on to run the Lotus Club on Woodgrange Road. Kenny had the band playing at the club a few times and arranged for them to rehearse in his brother, Eddie's, Stratford pub, The Two Puddings.  See here.

The Small Faces, as they were to be called - they were all under 5' 5" tall - had their first hit: Whatcha Gonna Do About It - in October 1965.

They were widely seen as being cheap imitations of The Who, at first. They rapidly ditched Jimmy Winston and replaced him with a Ronnie Lane -look-alike, Ian McLagan, on keyboards.

The Marriott/Lane song writing duo penned a dozen hits for the band over the next three years, including All or Nothing, a number 1 in September 1966.

They played twice at Billy Walker's Upper Cut Club, on Woodgrange Road (see below for the adverts and the Stratford Express report).

Advert for the first
 Upper Cut gig,
 January 1967

Stratford Express,
 6 Jan 1967

Add caption

Stratford Express 13 Jan 1967

The controversial Arden had the band on wages, without passing on the royalties for their songs, claiming that they were " too high on alcohol and drugs the whole time" to be able to handle more money.

Second Upper Cut gig, July 1967

... and the trouble that followed

The band eventually disentangled themselves from his clutches, and from the Decca label they recorded on.  They then teamed up with Andrew Loog Oldham - then manager of the Rolling Stones - and signed up to a new record label, Immediate, that he launched in 1967.

A stream of hits followed, including Itchycoo Park. The location of the park has been one of pop music's long running obsessions, but in the autumn of 1967, Ronnie called it "A place we used to go to in Ilford years ago (a bombsite, next to a railway line, according to Kenny Jones). Some bloke we know suggested it to us because it was full of nettles and you keep scratching".

Press profile (Valentine's magazine)
 of Ronnie in 1967

Other successes followed, like Lazy Sunday Afternoon and the seminal Ogden's Nut Gone Flake album, which topped the charts for six weeks.

Ronnie (centre) at recording of
Ogden's Nut Gone Flake album

Then - the almost inevitable, for the time:  members of the band turned to LSD and Indian mysticism and tensions mounted over "musical differences"; Marriott left and went on to form Humble Pie; the Immediate label went broke - and it took over two decades for the band members to get their royalties from the remnants of the company.

Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, both formerly of the Jeff Beck Group joined the rump of the Small Faces, and because these new pair weren't particularly short, the "Small" in the band's name was dropped - to become The Faces.

Stewart was to prove to be another Marriott, as far as Lane was concerned - more interested in going his own way.  He soon had huge hits with Maggie May and the Every Picture Tells a Story album, as a solo performer; so Ronnie dropped out of The Faces, in protest, in 1973.

It was to be largely downhill, in music, health and money terms for Ronnie Lane from now.

He had an unsuccessful spell at running a sheep farm in Fishpool, in Wales - he was no farmer. He put together another band, perhaps by way of prediction, known as Slim Chance, which had a spectacularly badly managed and financially disastrous tour, and bankrupted Ronnie.

By this time, his health was starting to deteriorate. At first he put the clumsiness he was developing down to the long-term effects of drink and drug abuse. Slowly the realisation dawned, however, he was struck by the same debilitating MS that was to kill his mother.

Around this time he developed close friendships with both Eric Clapton and Pete Townsend (of The Who), both of whom were later to help him financially, in trying to treat his disease.

Ronnie went to Florida in the early 80's and in desperation began experimenting with some quack remedies to address his MS. 

His musical allies (Pete Townsend, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Steve Winwood, Kenney Jones, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, Andy Fairweather-Low etc) rallied and helped support his charity ARMS (Action Research into Multiple Sclerosis) and raised over $1m. in benefit concerts for the cause.

A branch of the charity was set up in the USA, but 90% of the proceeds were frittered away in "administrative costs", with long-standing litigious repercussions.

Ronnie relocated to Austin, Texas in 1987, where he met his third wife, Susan Gallegos, of  Hispanic/North American heritage (her father had been an Apache chief). As his condition deteriorated, he began to withdraw socially.

Ronnie in Austin c 1987

In 1994 the couple moved to the relatively remote settlement of Trinidad in the Colorado Rockies (pop 5,000). By now Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood were beginning to take care of his medical bills, and royalties from the music he had created over two decades earlier began to trickle in.

Ronnie with stick at Faces benefit
 reunion for MTV, with Bill Wyman,
 far left, deputising for him for the gig

His mobility and speech rapidly deteriorated and he died of the same disease that killed his mother, in 1997. He was buried in a private ceremony, just hours afterwards.

The inscription on his grave indicates that in his later years he turned his back on his rock 'n roll hell-raising, and in his final interviews denounced the use and effects of alcohol and drug abuse.

Ronnie's grave - Trinidad, Colorado (1)

Ronnie's grave, Trinidad, Colorado (2)

His memory lives on, but not just through his music.

In a rare moment of wry humour, Newham Council recognised him around the turn of what would have been his 55th birthday by naming a road after him in Manor Park (see photo).

Newham's tribute: Ronnie Lane, Manor Park.
 Was it wit, or co-incidence that the choice of
location is one of the shortest streets in the borough?

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.

A tribute to the Small Faces, All or Nothing,  has recently been put together by former East End Actress, Carol Harrison, and it runs at the Vaults Theatre, Waterloo until 30 April this year.

Footnote: We are indebted to Mojo Magazine for an article authored by Wayne Penne on Ronnie Lane, in September 1997 for much of the material and insight in the above post.