In the summer of 1969, Humble Pie kicked the door down with As Safe As Yesterday Is, a debut that mashed up heavy blues, pastoral folk, and proto-hard rock into something entirely its own. Fronted by Small Faces firebrand Steve Marriott and guitar golden boy Peter Frampton, with Jerry Shirley pounding the kit and Greg Ridley holding down the low end, the band felt like a supergroup without the ego, just swagger, chops, and a knack for songs that could move from tender to thunder in a heartbeat.
But here’s the rub: the album you have been listening to for decades has never sounded right. The original master tape vanished between Olympic Studios in London and the mastering suite in New York, leaving Immediate Records to press LPs from a worn “listening copy.” The result was a flat, muffled shadow of the record the band made. “We were horrified,” Jerry Shirley remembers. Immediate was broke, and within a year the label collapsed. For decades, every reissue came from vinyl sources, their flaws baked in.
That changes this August. For Immediate’s 60th anniversary, Kenney Jones (Small Faces, Faces, The Who) and his Nice Records label are releasing As Safe As Yesterday Is from the correct tape, a safety master tracked down during a global archive search. Mastering wizard Nick Robbins handled the restoration, with lacquers cut at AIR Studios, and surviving members Frampton and Shirley personally overseeing the project.
Frampton’s verdict: “Thanks for the care you are giving these old chestnuts.” Shirley’s: “It sounds fabulous! Everything is in its place and where it should be. I couldn’t be happier.”
The reissue comes in multiple formats:
- Expanded CD with six bonus cuts, including four unreleased outtakes from the original Morgan and Olympic sessions.
- Standard black vinyl LP and 1,000 numbered gold vinyl LPs (exclusively via Nice Records), both with Gered Mankowitz’s original sleeve art, lyric bag, and new Jerry Shirley commentary.
The band have also fixed another long-standing gripe. The debut hit single “Natural Born Bugie” finally sits where it always belonged in the UK album sequence. Add in deep-cut gems like “Growing Closer” and the rollicking B-side “Wrist Job,” and you have the definitive As Safe As Yesterday Is, the one Humble Pie wanted you to hear in 1969.
