Humble Pie: Life and Times of Steve Marriott Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		2.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Humble Pie: Life and Times of Steve Marriott Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 11, 2019

Humble Pie is one of those bands that some fans might rightly think of as being a so-called “supergroup”, but which maybe surprisingly didn’t ever make that much of a dent on the singles charts on this side of the pond. Maybe even more surprisingly, Humble Pie did even less well in terms of its singles activity on the charts in the United Kingdom. Arguably best remembered (in the United States at least) for its series of albums that came out on A&M between 1970 and 1975, the band had a venerable lineage in terms of players who had already made their mark in the English music industry, including memorable if probably under recognized lead singer and guitarist Steve Marriott. This interesting release from Cleopatra aggregates a documentary about Marriott with a CD of a 1973 performance recorded at Winterland in San Francisco which offers what some would probably think of as the “classic” band at the height of its initial United States popularity.

The main documentary takes a resolutely chronological trip through Marriott’s life and career, and provides a lot of fantastic archival material, including stills of him in the Original London Cast of Oliver! (which means two future rock icons were in that cast). There is of course quite a bit of time given over to Small Faces in addition to Humble Pie, and the piece includes a number of heartfelt interviews, including with members of Marriott’s family.

Humble Pie: Life and Times of Steve Marriott Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Life and Times of Steve Marriott is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cleopatra with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer kinda sorta in 1.78:1 but for all intents and purposes in 1.33:1 in terms of the "important part" of the frame (as can be gleaned from the screenshots accompanying this review, there's a "full frame" inset which is surrounded either by slightly out of focus "echoes" of the edges of the inset frame running down the side where one might expect black bars, or more playful elements like film sprockets and the like, but one way or the other the entire 1.78:1 frame does contain some kind of content). That's just one oddity in this release, which the IMDb lists as having come out in 2015, while the credits list the more believable 2000, as based on the video quality here and the fact that all of the closing credits cite "DVD" this and "DVD" that. This does in fact look awfully like an upscale a lot of the time, with clear signs of stairstepping and the like. Archival video can also show signs of haloing and ghosting at times. Still photographs (of which there are plenty) tend to make it through the gauntlet best a lot of the time, and can offer decent amounts of detail.

Humble Pie: Life and Times of Steve Marriott Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Cleopatra has evidently yet to clue in on the fact that many Blu-ray consumers want lossless audio on their discs, especially when those discs are concerned at least in essence with music. This is therefore another Cleopatra release with only lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 and 5.1 mixes, though Cleopatra does provide a second Dolby Digital 2.0 track that has an isolated music score. That track sounded a bit hotter and significantly wetter (i.e., more reverb) to my ears than the "main" soundtrack. Both of the Dolby tracks offer okay fidelity, but the musical elements in particular certainly could have benefited from a lossless presentation. A few of the interviews can sound slightly muffled, but I suspect that was part of the original recording process.

Humble Pie: Life and Times of Steve Marriott Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Press Conference (1080i; 58:58) features longer interview segments with many of the talking heads seen in the main feature.


• Film Trailer (1080i; 1:24) can be found under the Chapters Menu.


• A Few Words With Steve (1080i; 1:01:58) is actually quite an in depth interview and can be found under the Chapters Menu.

The back cover of this release touts other special features, including supposed easter eggs, that I simply could not find. Additionally, a Bonus CD featuring the complete Winterland show from 1973 is included. One of the cool things about this performance that captured my ear is how Marriott actually sings his patter between songs a lot of the time, including some of his crowd work. It's a lot of fun to listen to. There's a really funny anecdote about this relayed by Kevin Dubrow in the extended interviews offered as a supplement to the main documentary.

Humble Pie: Life and Times of Steve Marriott Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is one of those rare releases where technical merits aren't all that hot and yet I can still see a number of fans wanting to check out the release. Those who love/d Small Faces and/or Humble Pie will almost certainly find a lot to like here despite some inadequacies in both the video and audio presentation, and the bonus CD offers a really fun, high energy performance.