Itchycoo Park

Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane of Small Faces wrote this song, which is about skipping school to hang out at a park. Of course, with the lyrics, "What did you do there? I got high," it was fairly obvious that they were doing in the park, although the band denied that it was about drugs, kind of like John Lennon did with "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," which was released the same year. Marriott told Creem in 1975: "The thing about 'Itchycoo Park' was that the era was wrong, and the word 'high' freaked everybody out. All the radio stations. But that song was real. Ronnie Lane and I used to go to a park called Itchycoo Park. I swear to God. We used to bunk off school and groove there. We got high, but we didn't smoke. We just got high from not going to school."

"Itchycoo Park" is the nickname of Little Ilford Park in London. An "Itchycoo" is slang for a flower found in the park called a "Stinging Nettle," which can burn the skin if touched. Said Lane: "It's a place we used to go to in Ilford years ago. Some bloke we know suggested it to us because it's full of nettles and you keep scratching."

This was the biggest American hit Small Faces ever had (they were much more popular in England), but according to Ronnie Lane, they considered it a joke when they recorded it; the band would screw around in the studio to get a laugh out of their manager Andrew Oldham. The song came out sounding so good that they started to take it seriously.