The first sound you hear is not a chord but a defiant squall of feedback, a raw electric gasp that tears through the silence like a razor blade. It lasts barely a heartbeat before the bass and drums kick in, but in that instant, everything changes. This is “What’Cha Gonna Do About It” by the Small Faces, a two-minute blast that still feels like an open challenge. Released in August 1965, it was never meant to be polite. It was a declaration of war, issued from a sweaty club in London’s East End, and it has never stopped sounding urgent.
The band behind that noise was a quartet of teenagers who looked like they had stepped out of a tailor’s window and played like their lives depended on it. Steve Marriott handled vocals and guitar, Ronnie Lane played bass, Kenney Jones pounded the drums, and Jimmy Winston added organ. Together they created a sound that borrowed the soul of American R&B and injected it with the frantic pulse of Mod London. Their debut single, released on Decca Records, peaked in the UK Top 20, but its real impact was cultural. It announced that a new kind of British rock had arrived, one that refused to be polite.
The track’s core riff, a descending two-note figure, was openly lifted from Solomon Burke’s “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”—but the Small Faces twisted it into something entirely their own. Where Burke offered gospel-tinged longing, Marriott and company offered a threat. The production, overseen by Ian Samwell, captured the band’s live ferocity without polishing it into submission. The result was a song that felt less like a recording and more like a riot in a bottle.
This is the sound of ambition running on pure adrenaline and youthful, untamed talent.
Listen closely and the economy of the arrangement becomes a masterclass. Marriott’s opening feedback was reportedly an accident, but the band kept it in, a perfect symbol of their embrace of chaos. Ronnie Lane’s bassline is a relentless motor, never decorative, always driving. Kenney Jones’s snare hits are machine-gun sharp. The organ, played by Winston, adds thickness without ever taking a solo. Every instrument serves the same purpose: to push the song forward at breakneck speed. And Marriott’s vocal, a cracked and straining shout, turns the lyric “I want you to know that I love you, baby” into something closer to a threat. He doesn’t sing—he yells, and the microphone distorts under the pressure.
That raw energy transcends its era. Play this track on a modern streaming subscription or through premium audio headphones, and it cuts through everything else in your playlist. It sounds current because it never aimed for polish. It aimed for impact. For any musician taking guitar lessons, this track is a short course in how to make every note count. Forget lengthy solos—study the two-minute sprint and learn how to capture a generation in 120 seconds.
The Small Faces would go on to a brief but brilliant career, a perfect mirror of the Mod movement itself: intense, volatile, and hugely influential. “What’Cha Gonna Do About It” later appeared on their 1966 self-titled debut album, but it remains their purest statement of intent. It is the sound of four short kids who believed they were the toughest band in town and played like the rent was due in two minutes.
If you want to follow that thread of youthful defiance, these tracks offer similar jolts of energy:
The Who – “My Generation” (1965): Another definitive Mod anthem with the same bass-driven urgency and anti-establishment fire.
The Kinks – “You Really Got Me” (1964): A raw distorted guitar riff drives this track with the same bare-knuckle directness.
The Action – “Land of a Thousand Dances” (1966): British Mod soul at its finest, showcasing vocal power and tight R&B musicianship.
The Spencer Davis Group – “Keep On Running” (1965): Gritty, high-energy British R&B with Steve Winwood’s soulful powerhouse vocals.
The Yardbirds – “For Your Love” (1965): Captures the raw intensity and innovative instrumental use of the early British R&B scene.
The Animals – “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” (1965): Features the same life-or-death vocal urgency and working-class lyrical themes.
More than half a century later, “What’Cha Gonna Do About It” remains a flashpoint in British rock history. It is a song that never lost its power to startle, a perfect opening statement from a band that would rewrite the rules of the game. Put it on, turn it up, and let those two minutes remind you what passion sounds like.