Steve Marriott was born in London, England. Music was in his blood and the young Steve started to earn cash by busking around the bus queues of Stepney with his ukelele. He worked as a juvenile actor in his youth; he appeared in an early London stage production of Oliver! with Ian Carmichael, and featured in two British films in his early teens, including one starring Peter Sellers. Despite his small stature and slight build, Marriott possessed a thrilling and powerful voice; he was (and remains) widely admired as one of the best British rock and soul singers of his generation. He was also an accomplished songwriter. The Small Faces, along with The Who, were the most respected mod band, highly regarded by the youth cult's followers. Marriott was one of many influences on the formation and musical style of premier British hard rock group Led Zeppelin. Marriott is also reputed to have been Jimmy Page's benchmark when selecting a lead singer for Led Zeppelin (the other being another rowdy-voiced Brit, Terry Reid), and there are unmistakeable stylistic and timbral similarities between the voices of Marriott and Led Zeppelin's lead singer Robert Plant. The legend goes that Marriott's crime-connected manager Don Arden threatened Page with broken fingers if he tried to steal Marriott away, leading to one of the great "what-ifs" of rock. The Small Faces were one of Britain's most successful and popular groups of the late Sixties, and Marriott wrote or co-wrote (with bassist Ronnie Lane) almost all of the Small Faces' most successful songs including "All Or Nothing", "Itchycoo Park", "Lazy Sunday", and "Tin Soldier". Marriott quit abruptly at the end of 1969, frustrated by the group's inability to break out of their teen-pop image and their failure to achieve major success in the lucrative American market. Their failure to "break" America in spite of "Itchycoo Park" being a massive hit during the Summer of Love was most likely due to their failure to tour there. Marriott died in a house fire in his home on April 20, 1991. The accident was caused by his falling asleep while intoxicated and leaving a cigarette burning, after arriving home jet-lagged from an overseas trip. Just prior to his death, Marriott and Peter Frampton had begun writing songs together again, but the project was never completed.