Smokin'
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Album Summary
Recorded and released in 1972 on A&M Records, 'Smokin'' stands as the moment Humble Pie stopped knocking on the door and kicked it clean off the hinges. The band — anchored by the volcanic Steve Marriott and the gifted Peter Frampton — produced the album themselves, channeling every ounce of the ferocious live energy they had been building night after night on the road. These sessions didn't just capture a band playing in a studio; they captured a band on fire, laying down a blues-soaked hard rock record that felt like it was recorded with the house lights up and the crowd going absolutely wild. This was Humble Pie at full throttle, and the world was about to find out.
Reception
- The album achieved significant commercial success in the United States, climbing into the Top 10 on the Billboard 200 and becoming one of the band's highest-charting releases on American soil.
- Critics took notice of the album's tight, powerful musicianship and the sheer force of Steve Marriott's vocal performances, cementing Humble Pie's reputation as one of the most serious and commanding hard rock acts of the early 1970s.
- The album's success transformed Humble Pie into arena rock headliners, with tracks from the record becoming fixtures on rock radio and in the band's celebrated live sets.
Significance
- 'Smokin'' is a defining artifact of the British hard rock movement of the early 1970s — a record that took the blues-based rawness of their roots and supercharged it into something heavier, meaner, and utterly irresistible, with '30 Days In The Hole' becoming one of the era's most indelible rock statements.
- The album represents the full flowering of Humble Pie's creative identity, marking their decisive evolution away from psychedelic and mod influences toward a guitar-driven, groove-heavy rock sound that helped lay the groundwork for the hard rock and proto-metal movements that followed.
- Steve Marriott's soulful, ferocious vocal delivery throughout the record — matched by Peter Frampton's expressive and muscular guitar work — demonstrated that British rock could carry the full emotional weight of American blues while still sounding like nothing else on earth.
Samples
- "30 Days In The Hole" — one of the most recognized tracks in the Humble Pie catalog, it has been sampled and interpolated across multiple hip-hop and rock productions over the decades, with its iconic riff and Marriott's gritty vocal hook proving irresistible to producers mining the classic rock era.
- "Hot 'N' Nasty" — the album's hard-driving opener has been sampled by hip-hop producers drawn to its punishing groove and raw guitar attack, making it one of the more frequently mined tracks from the record.
- "C'mon Everybody" — the band's electrifying cover has attracted sampling attention, with its high-energy rhythm section and Marriott's explosive vocal performance lending themselves to reuse in hip-hop and funk-influenced productions.
Tracklist
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A1 Hot 'N' Nasty 131
3:22
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A2 The Fixer 114
5:00
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A3 You're So Good To Me —
3:53
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A4 C'mon Everybody 119
5:11
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A5 Old Time Feelin' 187
5:05
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B1 30 Days In The Hole 117
3:58
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B2a Road Runner 169
3:42
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B2b Road Runners 'G' Jam —
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B3 I Wonder 115
8:53
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B4 Sweet Peace And Time 170
5:49
Artist Details
Humble Pie was a hard rock and blues-rock powerhouse that came together in England in 1969, born from the raw talent of former Small Faces frontman Steve Marriott and a young Peter Frampton, cooking up a sound so heavy and soulful it could shake the walls of any arena they stepped foot in. They carved out a righteous place in rock history as one of the pioneering forces of hard rock and early heavy metal, their live album Performance: Rockin' the Fillmore becoming a testament to just how fierce and unbridled rock and roll could be in the early seventies. Humble Pie never quite got the mainstream recognition they deserved, but among the faithful who knew their music, they were nothing short of a religion — a gritty, sweaty, beautiful religion.
