HUMBLE PIE’S DEBUT album as it was MEANT TO SOUND!

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, ‘AS SAFE AS YESTERDAY IS’ HAS BEEN CUT FROM THE CORRECT MASTER TAPE FOR IMMEDIATE RECORDS’ 60th ANNIVERSARY

EXPANDED EDITION CD FORMAT FEATURES SIX EXTRA TRACKS (INCLUDING FOUR OUTTAKES FROM RECORDING SESSIONS AT MORGAN & OLYMPIC STUDIOS)

CURATED BY SURVIVING HUMBLE PIE MEMBERS PETER FRAMPTON & JERRY SHIRLEY

SPECIAL IMMEDIATE RECORDS 60th ANNIVERSARY FORMATS INCLUDE 1,000 NUMBERED LIMITED EDITION GOLD VINYL LPs EXCLUSIVELY FROM NICE RECORDS WEBSITE www.nicerecords.co.uk OUT 29th AUGUST 2025

 

“Thanks for the care you are giving these old chestnuts.” Peter Frampton, July 2025

“It sounds like it should sound. It sounds a lot cleaner. Everything is in its place and where it should be. It sounds fabulous! You should be very proud of yourselves. I know I couldn’t be happier with it all.” Jerry Shirley, July 2025

 

Nice Records owner Kenney Jones (Small Faces/Faces/The Who) is very pleased to announce the next in his series of very special archive releases in celebration of Immediate Records’ 60th anniversary.

Set for release via Kenney’s own Nice Records on 29th August , almost sixty years after its original issue by Immediate, Humble Pie’s ground-breaking debut album ‘As Safe As Yesterday Is’ has been mastered from the correct tape for the first time ever by Nick Robbins (with lacquers cut at London’s AIR Studios).

This fully mastered Immediate Records 60th anniversary version of ‘As Safe As Yesterday Is’ has been lovingly curated and overseen by surviving Humble Pie members Peter Frampton & Jerry Shirley.

New LP formats feature a facsimile of Gered Mankowitz’s original LP sleeve and inner lyric bag plus a fully-illustrated 4-panel insert. The newly expanded CD comes with a 24-page booklet. Both LP and CD formats include a new commentary by Jerry Shirley.

Formed in January 1969, Humble Pie soon became one of the best-loved, hardest-rocking live acts of the 1970s. In Steve Marriott, the one-time Small Faces frontman, ‘The Pie’ had the best showman & biggest voice in the business. Peter Frampton, the ‘Face of ‘68’ with The Herd had a new role – guitar hero extraordinaire. And with hard-hitting powerhouse drummer Jerry Shirley & ex-Spooky Tooth bassist supreme Greg Ridley, Humble Pie quickly developed into a sophisticated studio unit where tough riffs, rustic rock & bursts of blissed-out psychedelia earned the band instant chart success & critical acclaim.

‘As Safe As Yesterday Is’ was Humble Pie’s debut album for Immediate Records, originally released on 1 August 1969 and reaching No.32 in the UK charts. Recorded at Olympic & Morgan Studios with top engineer Andy Johns, the album featured a blend of heavy blues, hard rock, pastoral folk & acoustic songs, all superbly produced.

Unknown at the time was the controversy surrounding the disappearance of the master tape enroute from Olympic Studios in London to the mastering studio in New York. Panicked phone calls for a replacement only yielded a much-played listening copy, not intended for production & certainly not to the quality needed to cut an LP. The band were horrified when they heard the finished LP with its flat, muffled sound. Despite Immediate label boss Andrew Loog Oldham’s wholehearted support of Humble Pie above the other artists on his label, Immediate Records were in financial difficulties and could not afford to withdraw the LP. By March 1970, Immediate Records were in liquidation, with its master tapes either lost or stolen. Immediate LPs soon disappeared from record store racks, including ‘As Safe As Yesterday Is’ – its master tape never found. Later CD & LP reissues were all copied from old vinyl, with labels seemingly not realising (or not caring) that the sound quality was poor. Until now that is…

For many years, Nice Records owner Kenney Jones along with Immediate Records reissue producer Rob Caiger had searched archives around the world for missing Immediate tapes for the Small Faces. As part of that global search, tapes for a number of Kenney’s fellow Immediate artists have been found, including a safety master for Humble Pie.

Now, almost sixty years later, ‘As Safe As Yesterday Is’ can finally be heard as it should have been experienced in 1969 – and now with even more power & clarity!

Peter Frampton and Jerry Shirley have also restored Humble Pie’s debut hit single ‘Natural Born Bugie’ to where it should have been on the original UK LP. The newly remastered CD adds UK LP track ‘Growing Closer,’ four outtakes from Olympic & Morgan Studios recorded during June & July 1969 and B-side ‘Wrist Job’, one of the last tracks to be recorded alongside ‘Natural Born Bugie’ in sessions for the first album during spring 1969.

All newly mastered vinyl LP & CD formats will be released via Kenney Jones’ Nice Records on 29th August, including a standard black vinyl LP, CD (now expanded to 70 minutes and including six bonus tracks) plus a gold vinyl LP edition, limited to 1,000 individually numbered copies and exclusively available via  www.nicerecords.co.uk

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HUMBLE PIE – ‘AS SAFE AS YESTERDAY IS’

IMMEDIATE RECORDS 2025 EDITION

FORMATS & TRACKLISTINGS

Curated by PETER FRAMPTON & JERRY SHIRLEY

Released worldwide by NICE RECORDS

 

VINYL LP

1LP 180-gram Black Vinyl (Worldwide Retail) cat no IMSP025BLK 5060915240163

1LP 180-gram Gold Vinyl (Nice Records Web Exclusive) cat no IMSP025G 5060915240156

SIDE 1

Desperation

Stick Shift

Buttermilk Boy

Natural Born Bugie

As Safe As Yesterday Is

SIDE 2

Bang!

Alabama ‘69

I’ll Go Alone

A Nifty Little Number Like You

What You Will

 

CD

1CD Expanded Edition (Worldwide Retail) cat no IMCD025 5060915240170

Desperation

Stick Shift

Buttermilk Boy

Natural Born Bugie

As Safe As Yesterday Is

Bang!

Alabama ‘69

I’ll Go Alone

A Nifty Little Number Like You

What You Will

Bonus tracks:

Growing Closer

Road To Ride

Leave No Turn Unstoned (Just A Riff)

Hello Grass (No Regrets)

Zeptoe Through The Tulips

Wrist Job (mono)

EDITORS’ NOTES

KENNEY JONES, along with manager NIGEL ADAMS, have relaunched NICE RECORDS to release a series of deluxe box-sets, facsimile LP & limited editions for IMMEDIATE RECORDS 60th Anniversary during 2025.

A licensing deal negotiated by ADAMS’ with BMG (rights-holders for Immediate Records in the UK) & Charly Records (rights-holders for the world excluding the UK) gives Nice Records exclusive rights to release artist-led projects in newly remastered formats with deluxe packaging.

All IMMEDIATE releases will be newly mastered from original tape sources, many from JONES’ & fellow IMMEDIATE artists’ personal archives. Since 2005, JONES with reissue producer ROB CAIGER, has searched archives across the world for missing IMMEDIATE tapes, photos, memorabilia & artwork for the SMALL FACES. As part of that search, tapes for other IMMEDIATE artists have been found, including many session tapes containing a wealth of previously unreleased material.

The Immediate 60th Anniversary series will feature vinyl LPs in facsimile sleeves, in-depth sleeve-notes & artist interviews, all newly mastered from tape sources by veteran SMALL FACES reissue engineer NICK ROBBINS in London. ROBBINS will also be responsible for remastering to CD & streaming formats. Lacquers are cut at the legendary AIR STUDIOS in London while manufacturing & product development will be managed by BARRY HURLEY at the PACKAGED SOUNDS GROUP in High Wycombe.

A deluxe expanded box-set edition of SMALL FACES’ ‘THE AUTUMN STONE’ was NICE RECORDS’ first IMMEDIATE release (in April 2025) – it received outstanding reviews, including multiple Reissue Of The Month accolades.

Forthcoming NICE RECORDS IMMEDIATE 60th ANNIVERSARY projects include:

BILLY NICHOLLS CD box-set plus ‘WOULD YOU BELIEVE – THE DEFINITIVE VERSION’ LP.
HUMBLE PIE ‘TOWN AND COUNTRY’ remastered LP & expanded CD editions.
‘TAKE ME BACK: HUMBLE PIE ON IMMEDIATE RECORDS’ 6CD boxset plus best of LP
SMALL FACES ‘YESTERDAY, TODAY & TOMORROW’ the LP originally intended to be the band’s Immediate debut
‘IN THE STUDIO WITH IMMEDIATE RECORDS’ 10-inch LP series featuring previously unreleased recording sessions & master recordings from FLEETWOOD MAC; THE NICE; SMALL FACES; ROD STEWART; VASHTI BUNYAN; DUNCAN BROWNE; BILLY NICHOLLS & more.