As Safe As Yesterday Is
View on Discogs
View on Wikipedia
Album Summary
As Safe As Yesterday Is came roaring out of the gate in December 1969 on Andrew Loog Oldham's Immediate Records label, and baby, it announced something special to anyone paying attention. This was the debut long-player from Humble Pie — a band forged from the fire of Steve Marriott walking away from The Small Faces and linking up with the young and gifted Peter Frampton, fresh out of The Herd. The sessions went down at the legendary Olympic Studios in London, with the masterful Glyn Johns at the production helm — a man who knew how to capture raw, honest rock and roll on tape better than just about anybody breathing at the time. What emerged was a record that wore its blues-rock soul on its sleeve, a debut that laid down the foundation for one of the hardest-working, hardest-rocking outfits the early seventies would ever know.
Reception
- The album saw modest movement on the UK charts but fell short of cracking the top 40, a commercial reality that did not reflect the genuine heat the band was generating.
- Critical reception at the time of release was a mixed bag — some ears caught the raw electricity right away, while others found the songwriting and production uneven for a debut outing.
- As Humble Pie's star rose through the early seventies, As Safe As Yesterday Is earned the deeper appreciation it always deserved, with retrospective listeners recognizing it as the spark that lit a very long fuse.
Significance
- This album established the essential Humble Pie blueprint — that glorious collision of blues-rock grit, soul warmth, and hard rock muscle that would course through everything the band touched going forward.
- Tracks like Desperation, Alabama '69, and Bang? put the world on notice that the Marriott and Frampton songwriting partnership was a genuine creative force, two distinct voices finding a common and powerful language.
- Released right at the seam between the psychedelic era and the emerging hard rock movement, As Safe As Yesterday Is stands as a vital transitional document — a record that had one foot in yesterday and both eyes locked on where rock and roll was headed.
Tracklist
-
A1 Desperation 144
-
A2 Stick Shift 126
-
A3 Butter Milk Boy —
-
A4 Natural Born Woman —
-
A5 As Safe As Yesterday Is —
-
B1 Bang? 116
-
B2 Alabama '69 143
-
B3 I'll Go Alone 162
-
B4 A Nifty Little Number Like You 136
-
B5 What You Will 130
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.
