At the end of 1983 Steve
returned to London bringing Jim Leverton (a Londoner anyway) and
Fallon with him. Regular work awaited on the pub circuit
and it was there, in London’s Dingwalls, that Steve was able to
record another live album of his current stage set, unspectacular but
well played indeed. The band was now called ‘The Packet
Of Three’. Steve built up a modest but stable reputation
and, in time for festival gigs on the Continent and Japan, was joined
by Pie drummer Jerry Shirley.
1987 saw another
excellent band ‘The Official Receivers’. Many fans
thought that this was Steve’s best live band ever, but after
recording just four numbers he left them to join Birmingham’s
‘DTs’ a solid R & B band which nevertheless couldn’t touch
the Receivers.
1989 started with the
‘Next Band’, Jim Leverton back on bass, harmonica player Simon
Hickling from the DT’s and young Kofi Baker - Ginger Baker’s son -
on drums, back on form with inventive and fun to watch gigs.
A reluctant Steve would even record again. Producer Steve
Parsons had developed a rapport that enabled Steve, members of his
recent bands and guests to drop in at their leisure. The
result was ‘30 Seconds To Midnight’, a collection of mostly covers
and an excellent return to the studio. The album was
not well promoted but the fans had a real treat to start the nineties.
Steve Marriott had only
just completed one of his regular German tours and it was back to
‘Packet of Three’ with Jim Leverton and ‘Sticky’ Wickett,
Steve Gibbons old drummer. He had also begun to work with
Peter Frampton again after almost twenty years. The two
wanted to put an album out together, Frampton had even tried to
persuade him to re-incarnate Humble Pie. It wasn’t to be
and the day after he returned from the States he was to die tragically
in a fire at his home in Arkesden, Essex.
When I asked Bob Tench in
1983, in London, whether Steve Marriott was still around, he replied
that; ‘He definitely is, and always will be,’ I think Bob has it
just right.
