Tuesday, March 05, 2024

Derek and the Dominos - One More Chance (1971)


Derek and the Dominos released their first album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, in November 1970 through Polydor Records. The band had formed after lead guitarist, vocalist and main composer Eric Clapton met keyboardist and vocalist Bobby Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon while on tour with Delanie and Bonnie, and decided to form a group with those three, having just quit his last group, Blind Faith. The group's first recordings were made in May 1970, as a backing band to George Harrison in his triple All Things Must Pass album, with Phil Spector as the producer. From there, the band recorded their first single, with Spector as the producer (the single, "Tell the Truth" b/w "Roll it Over", ended up being canceled before release), played their first gigs, and stayed at Clapton's house to write the material for their first record. Once they'd gathered up some material, the band went to Miami's Criteria Studios, met guitarist Duane Allman, and well, the rest is history. What we got was one of the best double albums in the history of rock and roll, and probably Clapton's finest hour as a singer, guitarist, and composer. Following a tour (without Allman, who decided to stay with the Allman Brothers) that dragged on until December 1970, the band was looking forward to recording a follow-up to the Layla album, and cementing their reputation as one of the best live acts around.

However, not everything was roses within the band. All four of them were dealing with substance abuse issues and addiction, while drummer Jim Gordon was especially hard to deal with, mostly due to his then-undiagnosed schizophrenia in addition to his drug issues. There were also some creative issues at stake, more notably because Gordon wanted to write some of the band's repertoire, an idea that wasn't well-received by Whitlock and Clapton. It was with such tension and fracture that they entered Olympic Studios in London, in March of 1971, to record what would be the follow-up to Layla, and what we know now as the band's final recording sessions. They managed to record some 14 backing tracks, some of them with promise, others just meandering jams, and six more-or-less finished songs: "One More Chance", "Snake Lake Blues", "High", "Evil" (a Willie Dixon cover), "Mean Old Frisco" (also a cover, by Arthur Crudup) and the best of the bunch, "Got to Get Better in a Little While", which they'd also debuted live back in October 1970. However, the band's issues got the best of them, leaving all of this material unfinished and breaking up the band by that July. After the sessions inevitably broke down, the band splintered, with Gordon going on to tour with Traffic, Radle going back to being a session musician, Whitlock releasing solo albums, and Eric more or less going into hiding until 1974.

But what if Derek and the Dominos had finished their second album? Luckily for us, the Crossroads box set of 1988 already features a side's worth of material that comes from the 1971 Olympic sessions, five songs that give us a blueprint as to what that album would sound like. With that, all we have left to do is to assemble a second side, giving us a roughly ten-song-long album. When it comes to what can be included, it's ok to include solo Clapton or Whitlock songs, but they have to have a clear connection to the band and not simply feature other members of the Dominos, as many solo Bobby Whitlock songs did. Layla outtakes are fair game as well, so long as they too have a clear connection to the second album or were still performed live after the album was released. "Devil Road", a Renée Armand song with the foursome as her backing band, will not be included here, as it wouldn't really make sense to have a solo spot by someone outside the band on their album, even though this is quite a riveting performance of the song. Also, none of the very unfinished instrumentals from the sessions that can be found in bootlegs such as Substance will be considered, as they're nowhere near the level we'd expect from a Derek and the Dominos album, sounding much more like meandering jams than the finished songs we found on Layla. With that out of the way, here's what our album looks like:

Got to Get Better in a Little While (Crossroads)
Evil (Crossroads)
One More Chance (Crossroads)
Mean Old Frisco (Crossroads)
Snake Lake Blues (Crossroads)
-
High (There's One in Every Crowd)
Mean Old World (Crossroads)
Country Life (Bobby Whitlock)
Roll it Over (Crossroads)
Motherless Children (Crossroads)

Download link:

Clapton during rehearsals for the Concert for Bangladesh, August 1971.

Side one, as presented here, was issued in that very same order in the Crossroads box set in 1988, comprising the only five completed masters from the March/April 1971 Olympic Studios sessions. With two blues covers, an instrumental, and two new songs, it's certainly not much to write home about, but it has its moments. With this side of music already put together for us, we are halfway there to getting a second Derek and the Dominos record. But the second half will be a lot more difficult, as we've just about run out of completed studio tracks. Our first inclusion for side two will be one of the easiest, "High" from There's One in Every Crowd. It was first recorded during the '71 Olympic sessions as an instrumental backing track, and resurrected by Clapton for his third solo album in a version with vocals. Since we already have an instrumental on the album, I'll be including the vocal version of the song, even though it only features Clapton and Radle of the Dominos. Another song that later made a Clapton solo album, but had its origins within the Dominos was his cover of the Blind Willie Johnson song "Motherless Children", a staple of the Dominos' late 1970 gigs. Unfortunately, no good quality live recordings exist of the band performing the song, so we will have to substitute the solo Clapton version, which uses the exact same arrangement but again only features him and bassist Radle of the band.

Since keyboard player Bobby Whitlock co-wrote more than half of the Layla album, and had a solo lead vocal on "Thorn Tree in the Garden", it's only fair that he be awarded the same opportunity here. So filling his lead vocal quota is "Country Life", a song he recorded for his first solo album in early 1971 with Domino Carl Radle on bass. It was one of the few new songs the Dominos played live in their final tours of late 1970, which makes me think it would have been a contender for their second album, given the little material they had. The same opportunity will not be extended to drummer Jim Gordon, who recorded several demos in 1971 with songs such as "It's Hard to Find a Friend" and "Till I See You Again". Even though he contributed the famous piano coda to "Layla", none of that material comes even remotely close to the level of that piano part, and since he didn't write any songs on their first album, I doubt he'd get any on this second album as well. By now, we're scraping the bottom of the barrel, and we'll take Layla outtakes "Roll it Over" and "Mean Old World", and make them part of the record as well. Our reasoning is again taken from their live repertoire, as by late 1970 they were still strongly featured in their setlists, which leads me to believe Clapton hadn't given up on the two yet.

Clocking in at 41 minutes with two roughly twenty-minute long sides, One More Chance is a clear step down from the heights of the Layla album, but is nonetheless a strong record that actually points the way quite clearly to Clapton's solo career in its mix of laid back originals and choice cover cuts. And given that Eric spent 1972 and 1973 as a recluse who barely even touched a guitar, getting this album instead would have been a great thing, its actual quality notwithstanding. As for a lead single, the obvious and easy choice is "Got to Get Better in a Little While", by far the greatest of the finished songs, and already a live staple by the time it made it to the studio. I can see it getting quite a lot of airplay on FM radio in the 1970s, and pushing the album towards some pretty respectable sales. The artwork is another painting by the same artist who provided the Layla artwork, painter Fradsen de Shomberg. Instead of a lovely blonde girl, the artwork here has some darker undertones, to reflect Clapton's downward spiral toward heroin addiction and the intra-band conflicts that had become commonplace by then. It's a shame Clapton's greatest band only lasted for an album and a half before collapsing in a haze of drugs and in-fighting, as given the level of their live performance and the greatness of the Layla album, the Dominos certainly deserved at least one more chance.

Sources:
- Eric Clapton - Crossroads [Box Set]
- Eric Clapton - There's One in Every Crowd
- Bobby Whitlock - Bobby Whitlock

Friday, February 23, 2024

The Beach Boys - Do It Again (1968)


The Beach Boys released Friends, their 14th studio album, on June 24, 1968 through Capitol Records. A slow seller, it became their worst selling album ever up to that point, which came as a disappointment to the band. And in a year with releases as dark as Beggars Banquet and the White Album, and as politically charged as 1968, the relaxing and amicable vibes of the Friends album stuck out as a sore thumb, which certainly couldn't have helped sales or critical reception. However, it has since emerged as the cult classic it's always deserved to become, adored by many Beach Boys fans as one of the highlights of their post-Pet Sounds career and one of the best records of the 1960s. However, since they still needed to bounce back commercially from the album's failure, chief songwriter Brian Wilson and Mike Love wrote and recorded "Do It Again", a throwback to their earlier surf rock sound with a nostalgic theme, in May 1968. From there, it was quickly released as a single and proved to be their first hit in quite some time, a relief for the band but not for Brian, who was hurt by the fact that their only recent hit was a reworking of their old formula, and whose mental health continued the slow deterioration that had begun in 1966. Still, between May and June 1968, Brian wrote and produced music as he had done for Friends, recording such originals as "All I Wanna Do", "Sail Plane Song" and "I Went to Sleep", and covers of songs such as "Old Man River" and "Walk on By".

Brian then spent most of July 1968 trying to finish "Can't Wait Too Long", an ambitious song which he'd been playing around with since the Wild Honey sessions. A big production which harkened back to the Smile days, Wilson once again was unable to finish the song even after spending countless sessions trying to perfect it. By this time, the fact that Brian was clearly unwell became quite clear to the rest of the group, and he admitted to having suicidal urges. And so with their support, it was decided that he would be institutionalised in a psychiatric hospital. Once he returns, he is unable to either finish what he'd started in the previous months or recording any new material, and with that the band (now led by his brother Carl) are forced to take Smile outtakes "Cabin Essence" and "Our Prayer" to pad out the album. Most of what he recorded before his institutionalisation remains unfinished, and he only manages to arrange a cover of Leadbelly's "Cotton Fields", which was suggested by Al Jardine. Because of that, for the first time ever a Beach Boys album was primarily written, produced and sung by members of the band other than Brian, and the album's uneven quality and disjointed nature shows. It was once again a commercial disappointment, even while featuring a hit single, and began a period of non-involvement from Brian which would only be broken by the Brian is Back campaign and the 15 Big Ones album. But what if Brian had managed to finish his follow up to Friends?

In this reconstruction, we will be trying to piece together the album Brian Wilson was working on in mid-1968, before his mental health deteriorated further and he was institutionalized. This record would be the lost third part of a trilogy with Wild Honey and Friends, the last Beach Boys album to feature Brian at the helm until Love You in 1977. Much like those two, the album would feature eleven or twelve songs, and not be over thirty minutes in length, continuing the subdued, lo-fi sound of its two predecessors. As with Friends, this album would be mostly written and produced by Brian, but with one or two songs by the other band members, such as "Be Still" and "Little Bird", showing their growth as songwriters and Brian's slow distancing from the producer role. Only songs recorded before Brian's institutionalization will be considered, meaning we will have to cull our album from the May 1968 to July 1968 sessions. Of course, there will be one exception to that rule, which we will explain later. Likewise, nothing from before this batch of sessions will be considered, meaning things like Friends outtakes or "Time to Get Alone" can't be a part of the album, for better or worse. There really isn't much wiggle room with this material, so we'll be cutting really close to the bone, and making some pretty controversial decisions along the way, but that's the only way we can make something good out of this. All of that being said, here's what our lost 1968 Beach Boys album looks like:

Do It Again (20/20)
Sail Plane Song (I Can Hear Music)
We're Together Again (Made in California)
All I Wanna Do (I Can Hear Music)
Walkin' (I Can Hear Music)
The Nearest Faraway Place (20/20)
-
Old Man River (I Can Hear Music)
I Went to Sleep (20/20)
Mona Kana (I Can Hear Music)
Walk on By (I Can Hear Music)
Can't Wait Too Long (I Can Hear Music)

Download link:

Carl, engineer Stephen Desper, and Brian in the studio, sometime in 1968.

With that out of the way, all we need to do is take everything recorded between May and July 1968 and try to turn it into an album. We can start with the only two Brian Wilson productions from the Summer of 1968 that made the 20/20 album: the hit "Do It Again" and "I Went to Sleep". Along with those, Bruce Johnston's instrumental "The Nearest Faraway Place" features no involvement from Brian, but was recorded concurrently with most of this material, meaning it makes the album. Next, we have the most finished sounding outtakes of this era, those being "Walkin'" and "Sail Plane Song", from the I Can Hear Music box set, and "We're Together Again", from Made in California. While probably not release-ready yet, those songs were pretty far along and would take minimal overdubs to get released. Going into the more unfinished material, we have an edit of "Can't Wait Too Long", courtesy of Three Score and Five,  that collects exclusively the sections recorded in July 1968 for a possible single release. Clocking in at three and a half minutes, it's a reasonable length and is as close as we have to a finished version of the song, as it could have sounded like when included on the 20/20 album. We also have an edit of "All I Wanna Do", which puts together the June 1968 backing track of the song with the 1969 lead vocals of the finished Sunflower version. Again, this version was made by the great Three Score and Five, helping us get as close as possible to a finished version of it, as you'd hear in 1968.

Controversially, next we have AI-enhanced versions of "Walk on By" and the "Old Man River"/"The Old Folks at Home" medley, two unfinished covers from these sessions. While I have many ethical reservations towards the use of Artificial Intelligence, this was very tastefully done by the great Dae Lims, who has previously used this technology to create a custom mix of Smile. Besides, this sounds amazing and helps us get much closer to the album we're trying to piece together than would otherwise be possible. However, I understand if this is not something you are comfortable with, and if that's the case, feel free to replace them with their unfinished versions, as found on the I Can Hear Music box set. Finally, this version of "Mona Kana" was recorded in November 1968, which is out of the limits of our reconstruction. However, that same song was demoed by Dennis during the "Can't Wait Too Long" sessions in July, which in my mind makes it fair game as it at least dates to the Summer of '68, and gives us the eleventh song we needed to stretch this out to album length. With that, all that's left to do is to sequence the album. I took some cues from 20/20, such as starting the album with the single "Do it Again", finishing side one with Bruce's song, and having "I Went to Sleep" early on side two. Other than that, I figured that as the album's magnum opus, "Can't Wait Too Long" has a deserved spot as the album closer, while the others were just distributed based on where I thought they'd flow the best.

Since "Do It Again" was the band's first hit single in ages, I figured it would make sense to turn it into the title track of the album. Sure, it's not very representative of the rest of the album's sound, but Capitol would certainly consider it a good idea. "Can't Wait Too Long" b/w "I Went to Sleep" would probably be the second single, as that was Brian's intention while working on the former in July 1968. The cover is something I found on the internet, courtesy of u/skullman4289 on Reddit. It features a photo from the 20/20 shoot, which of course doesn't feature Brian. Now, normally this would have been a problem, since Brian is the main creative force behind the record, but given that photos of all six Beach Boys in 1968 are nigh-on impossible to find, it will be allowed. It clocks in at 29 minutes, with a slightly longer side one because of the extra song it features, another short album from the Beach Boys. While this is certainly a weaker album than Wild Honey and Friends, it's superior in almost every way to 20/20, a hodgepodge of songs by the other members of the Beach Boys and of earlier outtakes. This album actually feels like the logical step forward from Friends, and has the consistency to prove it. Given Brian's mental state at the time, the fact that he made as good as this is a testament to his talent as a songwriter and producer. It's just a great pity that the final Beach Boys album with Brian Wilson as the main creative force couldn't be finished, and we had to wait almost ten years for him to do it again.

Sources:

Wednesday, February 07, 2024

Bruce Springsteen - Light of Day (1984)


Bruce Springsteen released his sixth studio album, Nebraska, on September 30, 1982 through Columbia Records. A batch of acoustic demos recorded between December 1981 and January 1982, it came out after Bruce shelved an entire electric album, deciding the demo tape better captured what those songs should sound like and where his head was at at that moment. Once the album was out, he decided not to tour in support of it, deciding to promote the album as little as possible. Instead, he spent his time hanging around the Jersey shore and appearing randomly at bars to sing oldies with bar bands. The shelving of the Murder Incorporated album also had other ramifications, with guitarist Steve Van Zandt deciding to leave the E Street Band and pursue a solo career. For the moment, his vacancy was unfilled, as the band had already recorded an album's worth of material and were on hiatus for the time being, but the departure of one of Bruce's best friends and confidantes was sure to be felt. As soon as he left, he formed the Disciples of Soul and released a very successful solo album, while still remaining in touch with Bruce and keeping their friendship alive. It was at this point that Bruce, having long struggled with his mental health and used his work as a form of escape, entered into a major depressive episode that culminated with him going into psychotherapy for the first time in his life, which he still frequents to this day, and moving out from his New Jersey home to the West Coast. 

Once living in Los Angeles, the first thing he did was install a home studio in his garage, which was ready by January 1983 and became the hub of most of Bruce's recording early in the year. He recorded roughly twenty songs there, tracking them completely alone with a drum machine. The material he recorded was of some quality, so much so that at some point he even considered releasing them as the followup to Nebraska, another solo acoustic record. However, he was quickly dissuaded from that and instead focused on another round of E Street Band sessions, trying to strengthen what he'd recorded with them the previous year, recording another album's worth of songs at New York's Hit Factory that May. Still paralysed by his indecision, he couldn't decide what to release or if to release anything at all, and by July 1983 he had put together a new album sequence, only to once more shelve it and carry on recording. By the time February 1984 rolled around, even manager Jon Landau had put together a tracklist, eighty songs had been recorded, and Bruce was still dissatisfied and looking for the lead single for the album. At the eleventh hour, Bruce recorded "Dancing in the Dark", which seemed to be the hit he was looking for, finally allowing him to put together an album and release it in June 1984. With only four songs in it coming from after May 1982, and all four being absolute highlights of the album, it makes you wonder if the Hit Factory sessions don't deserve an album of their own.

But what if Bruce Springsteen made an album out of the songs he recorded between 1983 and 1984? This reconstruction is a sequel to the second half of my Murder Incorporated post, much in the same way my Unsatisfied Heart album was a sequel to Nebraska. It will be roughly twelve songs long, and feature the highlights of the sessions that immediately followed the shelving of the 1982 recordings, building an album around them for the very first time. Because of that, songs that were only meant to embellish the main BITUSA sessions now will become their own thing, a new Springsteen record that could've been released in 1984. Only songs known to have been recorded during the May 1983 to February 1984 sessions at the Hit Factory in New York will be considered, which means that songs such as "Seeds", written in November 1984 during the BITUSA tour and debuted live in 1985, won't qualify for this album. If a song was recorded as part of the 1983 solo demos and later re-recorded in the studio, it's fair play for inclusion, as long as the said re-recording is available to us. The two songs this applies to, "Cynthia" and "My Hometown", were part of my Unsatisfied Heart reconstruction, which I've since updated and which no longer features the two tracks. We will be basing ourselves on which songs Bruce felt were the best of the sessions instead of our own personal tastes, as it will create the most realistic album. With that out of the way, here's what our new album looks like:

Light of Day (Live 1987)
Cynthia (Tracks)
None But the Brave (Unsatisfied Heart)
Drop on Down and Cover Me (Unsatisfied Heart)
Man at the Top (Tracks)
Stand on It (Tracks)
-
No Surrender (Born in the USA)
Bobby Jean (Born in the USA)
Pink Cadillac (Tracks)
My Hometown (Born in the USA)
Dancing in the Dark (Born in the USA)
Janey Don't You Lose Heart (Unsatisfied Heart)

Bonus tracks:
Car Wash (Tracks)
TV Movie (Tracks)
Brothers Under the Bridges (Tracks)
Rockaway the Days (Tracks)

Download link:

Springsteen performing live during the Born in the USA tour, 1984.

Our first inclusions are relatively easy, all four songs from the 1983-84 Hit Factory sessions songs that made the BITUSA album: "No Surrender", "Bobby Jean", "Dancing in the Dark" and "My Hometown". All four are absolute highlights of the record, and cornerstones of our reconstruction. Following those, come the songs that made it to the 1983 preliminary tracklist but not the album itself: "Cynthia", "None But the Brave", "Drop on Down and Cover Me" and "Janey Don't You Lose Heart". Even though they lingered in the vaults, these are pretty good songs, and both "None But the Brave" and "Janey Don't You Lose Heart" would have been within the best songs on the album, so the fact that at one point Bruce thought these songs were good enough for the album makes them worthy of inclusion. Following those are the 1984/5 b-sides, as chosen by Bruce himself: "Stand on It" and "Pink Cadillac". The fact that he chose those two out of the nearly one hundred songs he'd recorded for the album tells us that he saw something in them, and we'll respect that by including them on the album. Most remaining songs from the 1983/84 period that made it to Tracks are fun, but inessential, certainly not good enough to stand with the other songs. So they become b-sides, those being "Car Wash", "TV Movie", "Brothers Under the Bridges", and "Rockaway the Days", helping us to present a full picture of the Hit Factory sessions and giving the fans who bought singles more value for their money. 

With that, we have ten album songs and five b-sides, leaving us with two vacancies on the album. How will we fill that? Luckily for us, two songs from the Hit Factory sessions were later performed live by Bruce during the 1980s: "Man at the Top" and "Light of Day". The first of those is relatively straightforward, a song recorded in January 1984 and performed live twice during the BITUSA tour to commemorate the album reaching #1, "Man at the Top". A good song that seems to be pretty dear to Bruce, given the circumstances. The other was "Light of Day", written in 1983 for filmmaker Paul Schrader, who used it as the title song to the 1987 movie of the same name. It was a hit single for Joan Jett and Michael J. Fox, the two stars of the film. By the time of the Tunnel of Love tour in 1988, it had taken the spot of "Rosalita" as the show closer for Bruce shows, where it would stay until 2002. If anything, that goes to show how much Bruce liked the track, and had it not been for the fact that he had already stolen the "Born in the USA" title from a Schrader script, he might've kept that one for himself too. Because of that, not only does it make the album, but it becomes the title track, in "Born in the USA"'s absence. Now, a studio recording of it has yet to surface, so for now a live version from a gig in Asbury Park in 1987 with the whole E Street Band will have to do. Does it sound out of place? Absolutely, but there's no way that song wouldn't make the record, so that's what we'll do.

The sequencing for this will be a mix of the final Born in the USA sequence, the lost 1983 album, and some guesswork, with our first guess being the new title track "Light of Day" in the lead-off spot. With that, all songs from the BITUSA album are on side two, making it insanely strong and featuring the best songs Bruce wrote in this period, and side one is mostly stuff that didn't make it to an album, while still being strong nonetheless. "Dancing in the Dark", "No Surrender", "My Hometown" and "Light of Day" would be the aforementioned five singles off the album, all with the capacity of becoming massive hits. As an album, Light of Day is a much poppier and lighter album than the original record, fusing the energy of The River's happier moments with the 1982 Murder Incorporated sound and rockabilly influences, making for a worthwhile successor to the aforementioned albums, and a nice companion to Unsatisfied Heart. With the album clocking in at more than 50 minutes, side one is much too long to fit on an album as it is, but counting on the fact that the studio version of "Light of Day" would be about a minute shorter, giving us a 49-minute record. The cover is a photo of Bruce in 1984, taken by Annie Leibovitz, the same photographer of the BITUSA cover, to which I superimposed the album title. It's quite interesting to hear the songs Bruce was writing during this strange period in his life, going through many changes and transformations before finally becoming the man at the top.

Sources:
- Clinton Heylin - E Street Shuffle

Sunday, January 21, 2024

The Rolling Stones - Tattoo You Too (1982)


The Rolling Stones released Emotional Rescue, their 15th UK studio album, on 23 June 1980. A very inconsistent album, it nevertheless featured two major hits: "She's So Cold" and the title track. Coming on the heels of their comeback album Some Girls, it was considered a disappointment, but not enough to ground the momentum the band had gotten from that return to form. It came on a period of relative sobriety from guitarist Keith Richards, who sought to regain the control over the band he'd lost during his years of substance abuse. This led to a lot of conflict with singer Mick Jagger, with the two generally not getting along and butting heads over musical direction. As a result, the band didn't tour to promote Emotional Rescue, their first record since It's Only Rock and Roll not to have a tour in its support. However, despite their differences, Mick and Keith still wanted to tour and enjoy the critical and commercial renaissance the band was experiencing from '78 onwards, so a major tour was booked for 1981 in the US and for 1982 in the UK and Europe. With that, it became obvious that a new album was needed, as by the time the European tour rolled around, Emotional Rescue would be a whole two years old. However, the creative rift between Mick and Keith was still very much alive, and they didn't have enough time or patience to record a new LP from scratch. What to do now? Thankfully for us, band engineer Chris Kinsey suggested taking a look at the vaults, saying there were enough good outtakes for a new record. Mick agreed, and so they set out to look for possible release candidates.

Kinsey and Jagger spent the Winter of 1980 in Paris, listening to outtakes, bookmarking the ones they found release-worthy, and recording overdubs on them. The material was mostly culled from that year's Emotional Rescue sessions, but spanning all the way back to Goat's Head Soup, with the two selecting eleven songs out of the nearly a hundred outtakes. The overdubbing process got even more interesting when Mick spotted jazz great Sonny Rollins performing in a Parisian nightclub, and invited him to play on the record, where he appears on three songs and greatly defines the sound of the album. Upon release, the album became an unexpected commercial success, with Some Girls outtake "Start Me Up" turning into a massive hit in mid-1981. The album is also a critical success, hailed as a return to form and as the great follow-up to Some Girls, all while being a measly collection of outtakes, which goes to show the sheer quality of the Stones' vault. They go on an American tour that year and a European tour the next, riding high on the album's success. Tattoo You has since gone on to become the gold standard, the measure used to evaluate new Stones music to this day. But those eleven songs were only the tip of the iceberg, the cream of the crop of the hundreds of songs the Rolling Stones recorded through the 1970s, as the deluxe editions filled with repurposed outtakes of recent times go to show. It even leaves us wondering if they couldn't have done even more with what they had at their disposal back in 1981.

So what if Tattoo You was a double album? In this reconstruction, we will be trying to find a home for the many more worthwhile outtakes the Stones had in the vault by 1981, on the heels of a twenty-year-long recording career. For starters, we know that other songs were considered for Tattoo You way back in 1980, but we have no idea which ones, so we'll be left to speculate and use the most finished-sounding songs they would've had then. We will only consider material recorded during the 1973 to 1980 period, as that's when all of Tattoo You was recorded. As good as some of the Exile leftovers are, they wouldn't be contemporary enough for this album, which means they won't be considered. Songs begun during this period, but completely redone later will also not be considered, which means songs such as "Too Tough" and "Lonely at the Top" won't make the album. Similarly, no modern Jagger vocals will be included, as you can always tell they were done after the fact by a nearly eighty-year-old. He also mostly wrote new lyrics for songs he re-recorded vocals, making them essentially new songs with old backing tracks instead of actual outtakes. Also, no songs that still remain in the vaults will be included, as that means they didn't even consider them good enough for their deluxe editions. However, in two instances we will have to use unreleased versions of two officially released songs, an issue which will be explained later. Finally, this album will be eleven songs long, and have a rock side and a ballad side, just like the original. With that out of the way, here's what the album looks like:

Living in the Heart of Love (Tattoo You)
Claudine (Some Girls)
Everything's Turning to Gold (Sucking in the Seventies)
Fiji Jim (Fully Finished Studio Outtakes)
So Young (Some Girls)
Criss Cross Man (Goat's Head Soup)
-
Through the Lonely Nights (Singles Box Set)
We Had It All (Some Girls)
I Think I'm Goin' Mad (Singles Box Set)
Drift Away (Tattoo You)
Fast Talking, Slow Walking (Fully Finished Studio Outtakes)

Download link:

Jagger, Wood, Richards, Wyman, and Watts, as photographed in August 1981.

All we have to do now is scour the deluxe editions of Goat's Head Soup, Some Girls and Tattoo You for any vintage lead vocals we could use here. "Criss Cross Man" is the only song from the Goat's Head Soup deluxe edition to feature vintage vocals, while also featuring assorted modern backing vocals and instrumental overdubs. "Through the Lonely Nights", a Goat's Head Soup outtake, found limited release as the b-side of the "It's Only Rock and Roll" single. It's the only song in this reconstruction that was previously released, but since it wasn't on any album and we are pretty short on ballads for the slow side, we will allow it. With those two, we have filled the same two-song quota of GHS outtakes that was given on the original album. "Living in the Heart of Love" and the Dobie Gray cover "Drift Away" are the only songs from the Tattoo You deluxe edition to feature vintage vocals, with "Living in the Heart of Love" featuring a new Ronnie Wood guitar solo, and "Drift Away" featuring some instrumental overdubs. They are both also from the It's Only Rock and Roll sessions, the only period not to be featured in any capacity on the original Tattoo You, something we've fixed by including them. Also, given that we have no Black and Blue era outtakes left, those two songs take over their slots on the album, which I think is fair enough. "Claudine" and "So Young" are the only songs from the Some Girls deluxe edition to feature vintage vocals, with the former being a full-on vintage master, and the latter only featuring a new piano overdub, filling the two-song quota for Some Girls outtakes.

"We Had it All", also from the Some Girls deluxe edition but dating from the Emotional Rescue sessions, is our Keith lead vocal for the album, being a completely vintage master. It's also a cover, and while the Stones were no strangers to putting covers on their LPs, they hadn't done so on Tattoo You. I'll allow it given their history and the fact that we have some pretty serious constraints. "Everything's Turning to Gold" was an Emotional Rescue outtake featured in the Sucking in the Seventies compilation, which was mixed and mastered virtually concurrently with Tattoo You, in late 1980 in Paris. If any one song can claim to be the closest to the album, it's this one. Meanwhile, "I Think I'm Going Mad", another Emotional Rescue outtake, was the b-side of the "She Was Hot" single in 1983. Since it postdates the release of Tattoo You, it's fair game and we can use it without any issues. With that, we have reached nine songs, two short of the obligatory eleven, and have completely run out of vintage vocals from the officially released studio albums. That's when the bootlegs come to our rescue! In the Fully Finished Studio Outtakes boot, we gained access to many alternate versions of Stones outtakes, including good quality versions of the original "Fast Talking, Slow Walking" from the IORR sessions, as well as the original "Fiji Jim", from the Some Girls sessions, before old man Mick Jagger had laid his hands on them. Truth be told, they are pretty unfinished, but given the alternatives they are more than worthy inclusions on this album, giving us both our final ballad and our final rocker.

The second half of the album takes most of its cues from the first, with the single and best song in the album serving as the lead-off track, a weirder song as the second, a disco experiment as song three, a blues exercise as song five, and so on. As previously stated, it's divided into a fast first side and a slow second side, which I did consider swapping to make things interesting, but since it didn't work very well I kept it as it was. Clocking in at 45 minutes with a slightly longer side one, this collection is clearly not as good as the real deal, but a fun exercise nonetheless. It goes places where the original didn't manage to go, such as rockabilly, covers, or country ballads, which are an essential part of the Stones' music, becoming a nice complement to Tattoo You. The title is just me playing around with Too and Two, as apparently the album was supposed to be named simply "Tattoo", and no one has any idea where the "You" came from. The accompanying cover is Keith's face from the gatefold, a solid choice for a cover given this is just part two. With "Living in the Heart of Love" already hand-picked for a single release, I could see "Criss Cross Man" being the second single, with "I Think I'm Goin' Mad" and "Claudine" serving as their b-sides. And since the original 1981 album was just an excuse for the Stones to go on a tour that year, I could easily see this second volume getting released just in time for the European leg of that tour in May 1982. It's a shame that these outtakes had to linger in the vaults for almost another forty years, reminders of a bygone time when it seemed like everything these guys touched turned to gold.

Sources:

Friday, January 05, 2024

Paul McCartney & Elvis Costello - Flowers in the Dirt (1987)


Paul McCartney released his sixth studio album, Press to Play, on 25 August 1986 through Parlophone Records. His first after the breakup of Wings not to be produced by George Martin, it was co-written and co-produced by Eric Stewart of 10cc fame, and became his second critical and commercial failure in a row, after Give My Regards to Broad Street. This failure hurt Paul pretty bad, and he felt he needed to bounce back both from the middling sales and from the criticism he received, and set about to try to stage a comeback. It was at this point that his manager suggested a new collaborator, Elvis Costello. The pair had met during the concerts for Cambodia in 1979, and shared an engineer and a studio while recording Tug of War and Imperial Bedroom in 1981. Paul had even played with Elvis' keyboardist Steve Nieve and drummer Pete Thomas in a TV show in early 1987, but had never performed with Elvis himself before. After Elvis agreed to join him, the first thing he did was change a few words of a finished song, "Back on My Feet", and travel to Paul's farm in Scotland to co-write fourteen brand new songs. Elvis had Liverpudlian roots and a verbose, literate style that complemented Paul's melodic sensibilities particularly well, making for an inspired choice of partner. The songwriting sessions go smoothly, as they write together with ease and complement each other much like Lennon and McCartney did, playing mirrored acoustic guitars and bouncing ideas off of each other. The results of these songwriting sessions were great, and so the two made plans to record them together, starting with demo sessions in February and March 1988. But the trouble came when it came to recording together.

Elvis, who had already been burned by trying out a contemporary 80s sound on the awful Goodbye Cruel World, wanted them to go for a stripped-down, bare-bones sound for the album. Paul, who was very hurt by the commercial failure of Press to Play, found himself chasing trends and playing catch up, and wanted a contemporary-sounding album, which he thought could be the key to a comeback. With that in mind, they recorded with Hamish Stuart of the AWB, guitarist Kevin Armstrong, and drummer Chris Whitten, who despite being great were a clear mismatch for the material. The ever-present drums with gated reverb, synthesizers, and all that goes along with it were there from the get-go. There is even a quite humorous moment when Paul mentions new wave pop band the Human League as a possible inspiration for one of the tracks and Elvis has to leave the room to calm himself down. By that point, it was clear that the differences between the two were too great for a full album together, so they decided to split amicably and each do what they think is best for the material. Elvis takes a couple of the pair's songs and releases Spike, and even has his only ever Top 20 hit with "Veronica", a McCartney co-write. Meanwhile, four producers and nearly two years later, Paul releases his own Flowers in the Dirt, a real mishmash of styles and genres which was considered a return to form and gave him a hit with Costello co-write "My Brave Face". From then, they kept using songs from these songwriting sessions all the way to the mid-90s, showing how fruitful these had been, but sadly never wrote together again. With that, fans of both artists were left with the sense that the two could have done much more together.

But what if Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello had managed to record a full album together? To answer that question, we will be gathering together every single song the two wrote as songwriting partners and turning it into a full-blown record, as Paul's very own version of the Travelling Wilburys, joining forces with another great songwriter to try and reverse his failing fortunes, as well as his attempt at finally finding the ideal writing partner almost twenty years after parting ways with John Lennon. It would have been recorded in early 1988 and released sometime later that year, instead of taking more than two years to complete with many producers, as was the case with Paul's Flowers in the Dirt. Given enough luck, they might even beat George Harrison and his Wilburys to the punch, making them the copycats! As for the rules, only McCartney/McManus originals are allowed to be considered, so even Elvis' "This Town", which even features Paul playing the bass, cannot be included in this album as it was written solely by him. And unless no duo version of the song exists, solo versions of the songs are not allowed to be included, as this would have been a full collaboration between the two and we need the both of them to be in every song. That also helps us with the problem that the production in the songs Paul took with him is remarkably different to the songs Elvis took, which would make for a jarring listening experience with two very different sounds. Fortunately, the McCartney/McManus demo sessions have been very well documented, so there don't seem to be many exceptions to this rule, giving us little to fix in this album. With all that out of the way, here's what our joint Costello/McCartney album looks like:

The Lovers That Never Were (Flowers in the Dirt)
Veronica (Spike)
Tommy's Coming Home (Flowers in the Dirt)
Twenty Fine Fingers (Flowers in the Dirt)
So Like Candy (Flowers in the Dirt)
You Want Her Too (Flowers in the Dirt)
Shallow Grave (Flowers in the Dirt)
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Mistress and Maid (Flowers in the Dirt)
I Don't Want to Confess (Flowers in the Dirt)
That Day is Done (Flowers in the Dirt)
Don't Be Careless Love (Flowers in the Dirt)
My Brave Face (Flowers in the Dirt)
Pads, Paws and Claws (Spike)
From a Playboy to a Man (Flowers in the Dirt)

Download link:

McManus and McCartney playing together at the Royal Albert Hall, April 1999.

"The Lovers That Never Were", "Tommy's Coming Home", "Twenty Fine Fingers", "So Like Candy", "You Want Her Too", "That Day is Done", "Don't Be Careless Love", "My Brave Face" and "Playboy to a Man" are solo acoustic demos from October and November 1987, featuring both McCartney and Costello, taken from the Special Edition of Flowers in the Dirt. Those nine tracks, in the other they were presented in the box set, will make the bulk of the album, with any other material we choose to include getting added into this sequence. Coming from these same demo sessions are "I Don't Want to Confess", "Mistress and Maid", and "Shallow Grave", which didn't make the main box set but were released as a Record Store Day exclusive in 2017 in a three-song cassette. Now, the sound quality of this cassette is noticeably rougher than the first nine songs, having been recorded on the very same day they wrote the songs. But the fact that they are great performances of essential songs, and that they come from the exact same late 1987 period, makes their inclusion a no-brainer, sound quality be damned. That leaves "Veronica" and "Pads, Paws and Claws", which are solo Costello demos from late 1987, taken from the deluxe edition of his Spike album. Now, while these demos sadly don't feature McCartney in any form, the fact that they're just Elvis with an acoustic guitar means they fit quite well with the other duo demos. And of course, given that Paul would most likely take the lead on about 90% of the other songs, it makes sense to have two songs serving as Elvis' "solo spot", where he would sing lead and Paul would just harmonize with him, taking a backseat role on an album that's already quite heavy on him.

The rougher cassette recordings are added right to the middle of the sequence, with the morbid "Shallow Grave" serving as side one closer and the great "Mistress and Maid" as the opener to side two. The lesser "I Don't Want to Confess", one of only three songs that didn't make it to any Paul McCartney or Elvis Costello album within the next ten years, gets placed in the middle of side two, where it won't bother anybody. Meanwhile, Elvis' two solo spots are added to opposite ends of the album, with the second and second-to-last songs being "Veronica" and "Pads, Paws and Claws" respectively. Ideally, the album's backing band would consist of McCartney, Costello, Attractions drummer Pete Thomas and keyboardist Steve Nieve, as well as Paul's guitarist Robbie McIntosh. A best-of-both-worlds scenario where we get the power of the Attractions and the technical ability of Paul's solo band, him obviously taking bass duties. And produced by Geoff Emerick, who had a lot of experience working with Elvis (he had produced the fantastic Imperial Bedroom album), and especially Paul, serving as engineer on nearly a dozen of his albums. A familiar figure to both, who could mediate whatever creative issues the two had and help them get the best album possible. This would most likely be a more stripped-down affair as Costello had intended, foregoing the more contemporary, slick sound McCartney had insisted on. I personally have nothing against the eighties sound, but there's a great mismatch between the folky, sometimes somber but sweet songs these two wrote and that type of production, which was much more suited to the poppier material Paul was writing outside his collaboration with Costello.

Since the name Flowers in the Dirt is taken from the lyrics to "That Day is Done", and is also a pretty nice title, we can retain it as the album's title for our reconstruction. The album is fourteen songs long, as that's exactly how many songs the two wrote from scratch ("Back on My Feet" only received  some small tweaks by Costello). It was also how many songs were featured in any early Beatles album, a detail which certainly would be picked up by Elvis. And since all the songs are on the short side, it works pretty well and makes for a regular 42-minute record, fitting into LPs, CDs and cassete tapes with ease. As for the cover, I took one of the few existing photos of the two during the sessions for FITD, threw some effects on it, and added both of their names and the album title. Of course, Paul will get top billing, but their names are the same size and both are featured prominently on this cover. It ended up looking more like the late 1990s than the late 1980s, but I figured it was good enough, and as rough as the material in the album itself. When it comes to the lead single we have it pretty easy, as both of them had hits with this material: Elvis with "Veronica", and Paul with "My Brave Face". I can see the both of them getting released as singles, with Paul's getting released first as a question of hierarchy more than anything. The strength of this collaboration is such that it easily obscures both Spike and the original Flowers in the Dirt, making for Paul's greatest late-career album and one of Elvis' greatest efforts, even in the form of half-baked demos! Then it's a shame those two couldn't put their differences aside and turn this album into a reality, with both putting their twenty fine fingers to very good use in this record.

Sources:
- Paul McCartney - Flowers in the Dirt [Archive Collection]
- Elvis Costello - Spike [Deluxe Edition]