(Credits: Far Out / Album Covert / Premier Talent Associates)
Sat 8 November 2025 23:00, UK
While Steve Marriott isn’t always top of everyone’s list when it comes to naming some of the greatest songwriters to have emerged during the 1960s, there’s a seriously solid case to be made that he’s one of the decade’s biggest unsung heroes.
From his work as the frontman with the Small Faces to his brief stint leading the supergroup Humble Pie, there are plenty of reasons to admire what he did as a songwriter, and the fact that he was almost recruited to join Crosby, Stills and Nash instead of Neil Young ought to be an indication that others believed he was a superstar. His posthumous induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is perhaps only a small saving grace, but there’s every reason to believe that Marriott ought to have been a much bigger name than he is.
However, one of the trappings that comes with being a rockstar is the temptation to involve yourself in a life of hedonism, and on top of being a successful musician, there are plenty of tales that the biggest names will be able to tell of sex and drugs. Marriott is no exception to this rule, and one of the best-known songs of his career with Humble Pie has a backstory that relates to the consequences of excessive substance abuse.
‘30 Days in the Hole’ is taken from the band’s fifth studio album, Smokin’, and while it was only a minor hit at the time, it would eventually pick up a following through airplay on classic rock radio stations, and received several cover versions from other rock acts in subsequent years. The hole in question in the song’s title refers to jail, with the 30 days being the amount of time served for carrying any illicit substances in parts of America.
The original inspiration for the song stemmed from Humble Pie’s experience of touring in the US, and discovering that there would be a harsh punishment for carrying any small amount of a substance in the state of Kentucky.
On top of this, Marriott took a small amount of truth from a personal friend’s experience, who was arrested and incarcerated for being caught smoking cannabis, along with stealing the title from a line in a film – although the origin is disputed as to whether it was from the Humphrey Bogart classic Angels With Dirty Faces, or the Paul Newman film Somebody Up There Likes Me.
Despite the theme of the song arising from Marriott’s friends rather than his own personal experiences with a drug bust, he used his creative licence to spin a tale where he was the centre of such a scandal where he gets arrested for possessing cocaine, marijuana, hash and heroin, although he wasn’t ever trying to glamourise the use of any of these drugs.
In fact, he was actively trying to warn people of how chasing these highs can ruin lives, as it had done for many people around him, and if anything, ‘30 Days in the Hole’ is meant to be a cautionary tale of drug use, rather than a raucous celebration of it.
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