(Credits: Bent Rej)
Sun 15 March 2026 13:00, UK
“What did you do there? I got high,” was a famous refrain of the pre-chorus and Small Faces’ 1967 track ‘Itchycoo Park’ that was swiftly banned from the radio.
The song was released during a time of rising tension between rock musicians and the authorities. The United States had already experienced this earlier. In 1947, the government launched the case known as The United States of America versus Billie Holiday as part of the so-called “war on drugs”, which heavily targeted Black blues and jazz artists. Later, attention shifted toward rock and roll, with figures like Elvis Presley being pushed into army conscription as a way of taming the rebellious image surrounding the music.
In the UK, the height of that tension came in late 1967. The turning point arrived in February, when police raided Keith Richards’ home at Redlands, arresting members of the Rolling Stones and spreading particularly cruel and unfounded rumours about Marianne Faithfull. It was widely seen as an attempt to clamp down on the band and silence Faithfull, as all of them had become highly visible symbols of the counterculture.
So, a few months down the line, when Small Faces tried to outright sing about getting high, the powers that be were having none of it, and in August 1967, the song was released and then quickly banned.
The track is incredible, though. In the studio, the band were really onto something as they used a technique called flanging, which uses electro-mechanical processes to alter the sounds. At the time, it was new and experimental, leading to a piece unlike anything people had heard before. Pair that with the catchy lyrics and boisterous chorus, and they were undeniably onto a winner.
It was a winner around the world as it charted in the US and even reached number one in Canada, but in the UK, it was taken out of the running as the BBC banned the song, stunting its potential.
In an attempt to save it, the band shared a sweet story about its origins – talking about Little Ilford Park and singer Steve Marriott’s childhood running around the place, getting accidentally stung by stinging nettles. They said ‘Itchycoo’ was the nickname the place was given by the kids, as they’d itch and scratch where they were stung.
However, is that the truth? “We scammed the story together, we told the BBC that ‘Itchycoo Park’ was a piece of waste ground in the East End that the band had played on as kids,” Marriott later admitted about the track, adding, “We put the story out at ten and by lunchtime we were told the ban was off.”
Knowing they needed to sweeten things up and erase some of the drug influence, the singer claims they completely fictionalised the tale about his childhood park and that, actually, it was inspired by a tourism leaflet Ronnie Lane picked up in Oxford, which mentioned the Bridge of Sighs and “dreaming spires”, which are both in the lyrics.
Lane later cleared it all up, though, as really, the origin was a bit of all of the above. But at the end of the day, there was a spot in Ilford, as he concluded, “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, actually.”