Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Happy House (1984)

Neil Young and Crazy Horse performed their first gigs together in six years at the Catalyst in February 1984. Coming right after the Everybody's Rockin' debacle, where he countered David Geffen's request for "more rock and roll" by making a rockabilly record, it was his first foray into loud rock music since Re-ac-tor three years previously. Neil had been making solo, synth-based demos with his Synclavier at home throughout late 1983 and January 1984, showing he was still pretty much interested in electronic music after Trans. But now, he decided to play that material with Crazy Horse, giving the songs more guitar-based arrangements and adding Ben Keith on saxophone and synthesizer. Those Catalyst gigs were meant as a warm-up to upcoming recording sessions at the Power Station with producer Elliot Mazer, a way to make sure that the band was familiar with the songs. Once the sessions came about, working with a producer unsympathetic to the Horse (his work with Neil is mostly with the Harvest band) at an unfamiliar studio, Neil's obsession with a big drum sound and drummer Ralph Molina's inability to provide it meant that not a single usable performance was captured. Neil was at war with his label, his band wasn't playing well, and he was frustrated and angry. He then decided to abandon this material altogether, spending the next two years performing country music and recording the second version of Old Ways, leaving what could have been one of his strongest efforts of the 80s in the vault.

But what if Neil Young had released an album with Crazy Horse in 1984? The very good Catalyst material will obviously be the centerpiece of the album, but we will naturally have to find other material to fill it out, in order to turn it into an eight-song, roughly forty minutes long record just like Re-ac-tor. We will be operating under the assumption that once Neil saw that the Power Station sessions were a failure, he decided to pull a Rust Never Sleeps and release a live album of brand-new original material. They did perform a Billy Talbot-sung track at those gigs, but given that Neil didn't include it in the Archives, and wouldn't be likely to give Billy a spot on his album, we won't be considering it. Anything else recorded in 1984 is fair game, as long as it fits in stylistically and has a similar, electronic sound. Of course, that means none of his country material from the International Harvesters era can be considered, as they couldn't be further apart in terms of genre, but his solo Synclavier recordings from early '84 are a very good fit in both fronts. Later versions of the Synclavier songs performed by Crazy Horse and earlier Synclavier versions of the live tracks would be interesting inclusions, but I'll be focusing on stuff recorded in 1984, so they won't make it to this reconstruction. We will also be using a soundboard of the Catalyst gig, as the Archives Vol. III box set inexplicably has an inferior-quality audience tape instead. With all of that out of the way, here's what our reconstruction looks like:

Rock, Rock, Rock (Live at the Catalyst)

So Tired (Live at the Catalyst)

Violent Side (Live at the Catalyst)

I've Got a Problem (Live at the Catalyst)

Your Love (Live at the Catalyst)

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Hard Luck Stories (Archives Vol. III)

Razor Love (Archives Vol. III)

Touch the Night (Live at the Catalyst)

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Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Happy House (1984)

Neil performing live with the Shocking Pinks, late 1983.

Our first six inclusions are pretty self-explanatory, the six originals debuted at the Catalyst gigs: "Rock, Rock, Rock", "So Tired", "Violent Side", "I've Got a Problem", "Your Love" and "Touch the Night". Of course, studio recordings exist of "Violent Side", "I've Got a Problem" and "Touch the Night", but the fact that they don't feature the Horse in any capacity and were only recorded two years after the failed Power Station sessions makes me stay with the live recordings instead, in spite of their sound quality. We're still going to need at least two more songs to bring this to album length, however, and to do so we've selected "Hard Luck Stories" and "Razor Love", recorded at Broken Arrow Ranch in January 1984. These are solo Synclavier recordings, but the proximity in dates between them and the Catalyst gig, the sheer quality of the two songs, and the fact that they fit in pretty well with the Crazy Horse material even though their arrangements are wildly different makes their inclusion here pretty much inevitable. In terms of sequencing, they are placed in between "Your Love" and "Touch the Night", as the first five songs were performed in order and close together at the '84 gigs, and I thought it would make sense to preserve that. That way, it's also less jarring to hear the two solo tracks, as they are bundled together and have their own side with "Touch the Night" still closing out the album. That way, we can circumvent the jarring transition between them by using a convenient side break.

A 42-minute record with a slightly longer side one, this album is the unreleased sequel to Re-ac-tor we should have gotten in 1984. Angry, confused songs performed by an electronically-enhanced Crazy Horse, clearly uncomfortable with the eighties. Re-ac-tor is probably the strongest of the two, but songs like "Razor Love" and "Touch the Night" ensure that this is one of the highlights of Neil's eighties. Big dumb rock surrounded by heartfelt and emotional songs. The Happy House name was first used many years ago in a spoof article about fake unreleased Neil albums, but I liked the title so I decided to use it anyway as a joke. Why not? It fits the vibe of the album when used ironically. As this album is so similar to Re-ac-tor, I made a cover that was literally meant to signal that this was part two, with inverted colors and a similarly divided name. Who knows, maybe Landing on Water/Life could've been part three? This record is decidedly uncommercial even for Neil's 1980s standards, and so I don't think it would sell very much. It has no obvious singles, but I think "Razor Love" would be good more as a statement than anything else. This album would certainly fulfill David Geffen's request for more rock and roll, but would be unlikely to resolve their conflicts. It's a shame that we need a whole parallel discography to actually hear Neil's best work of the 1980s, searching for direction in a decade marred with personal issues, lawsuits, changes in direction, and hard luck stories.

Sources:

- Neil Young - Archives Vol. III (1976-1987)

- Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Live at the Catalyst [Bootleg]

- Jimmy McDonough - Shakey: Neil Young's Biography

Neil Young - Island in the Sun (1982)

Neil Young signed with Geffen Records in 1982, after spending fourteen years under Reprise Records. Dissatisfied with what he considered a lack of promotion for his previous album, Re-ac-tor, Young took on a lucrative deal with Geffen, which guaranteed him a million dollars per album delivered. With that, Neil quickly got to work, putting together his first album of the new deal. He had already recorded the synthesizer Trans material with Crazy Horse in late 1981, and was finally free of the patterning program with his son Ben, which took up most of his time from 1979 to 1981. Now he could finally go back to writing and playing music full-time, and dedicate himself fully to his next project. He went to Hawaii in May 1982 with a few friends and producer Tim Mulligan to record an album, tentatively titled Island in the Sun. A breezy, tropical record about sailing, sunshine, and loving your wife, it featured a band seemingly assembled at random, with Nils Lofgren, Ben Keith, former Buffalo Springfield bassist Bruce Palmer, Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina, and CSNY sideman Joe Lala. Despite that, they gelled pretty quickly and became Neil's band for the rest of 1982, christened as The Royal Pineapples. By the end of the month, Neil and the Pineapples had recorded eight new songs, enough for a brand new studio album. He and Mulligan sequenced the songs, chose an album title, and sent it to label boss David Geffen, expecting the album to be released shortly thereafter.

However, it didn't quite go that way. Once Geffen heard the LP, he was underwhelmed by it, and told Young so. Surprisingly enough, Neil agreed with him and promised to rework it into something else. This wasn't unheard of, as he had already shelved Oceanside/Countryside at the suggestion of Reprise head Mo Ostin, so he simply combined it with the late 1981 recordings to form a different album, titled Trans. Upon release, it confused casual fans, alienated his dedicated fanbase, didn't sell, and was the beginning of his many troubles with Geffen. But what if Neil had managed to release the album he wanted to release? While the actual tracklist of Island in the Sun has sadly never leaked, we finally have all the songs recorded for it, thanks to the release of Archives Vol. III, which means we can at least reconstruct what it might have looked like. We'll be aiming at eight songs and roughly forty minutes, using all Hawaiian songs, as "Like an Inca" is a pretty long song and we need to make space for it. We'll only be including material from the May 1982 sessions in Honolulu, which means no live songs, and no contemporary material recorded at different locations. By doing that, we'll ensure we have a cohesive album recorded all in one go, instead of the random hodge-podge of styles Neil tends to release every now and again. The leftover Vocoder material in turn would simply become a separate release, probably still by Reprise in late 1981. With all of that out of the way, here's what our album looks like:

Little Thing Called Love (Trans)

Raining in Paradise (Archives Vol. III)

Big Pearl (Archives Vol. III)

Silver and Gold (Archives Vol. III)

If You Got Love (Archives Vol. III)

-

Hold on to Your Love (Trans)

Island in the Sun (Archives Vol. III)

Like an Inca (Trans)

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Neil Young - Island in the Sun (1982)

Young performing live with the Royal Pineapples in Europe, September 1982.

When it comes to song selection, we pretty much have our work cut out for us. We simply select all nine of the songs tracked at Commercial Recorders in Honolulu, three of which are on Trans and six on the Johnny's Island disc of Archives Vol. III. Not included are the electronic "Johnny", which despite being recorded immediately before the material on this album would be much more at home in the Trans EP, and "Soul of a Woman", "Love Hotel" and "Berlin", which were all written and recorded during the 1982 tour and never made it into the studio. When it comes to sequencing, we will maintain the placement of the Hawaiian songs on the Trans album and simply expand on it, filling out the sides with the remaining material. That means "Little Thing Called Love" and the nine-minute version of "Like an Inca" still open and close the album, and "If You Got Love" and "Hold on to Your Love" still bookend the two sides. With that, all that's left to do is to place the other four songs where they fit best, replacing one emotional love letter to a family member with another ("Transformer Man" and "Silver and Gold"), one weird track on the theme of the album with another ("We R in Control" and "Big Pearl"), and so on. "Raining in Paradise" becomes the second song on the album, and "Island in the Sun" slots in pretty nicely right in the middle of side two, giving us a coherent, enjoyable album that wouldn't have felt out of place if it had actually come out right before his European tour in August 1982.

Clocking in at 35 minutes with a slightly shorter second side, Island in the Sun would've been easily Neil's softest, mellowest album to date, sounding like a long-lost sequel to his half of the Stills-Young Band's Long May You Run. It's also a pretty good album, and his take on yacht rock really shouldn't work nearly as well as it does during this album. Being their own separate entities really benefits both Island in the Sun and the Trans EP, no longer sounding like the Frankenstein compromise of an album it was, and allowing their best qualities to shine. "Little Thing Called Love" would still be the lead single, but "Silver and Gold" could make for a really good second single, given how great a song it is. Given that this was the first record of a brand new deal Neil undertook a massive tour in support of it in 1982, this album would have actually stood a chance of being commercially successful, given how accessible it sounds. The critics probably wouldn't like it that much, but it would probably sell better than Hawks & Doves. The cover is something I quickly threw together, with the Geffen logo cheekily added to the bottom corner to remind us of the reason it didn't come out. This alternate album opens the door to an entire alternate 1980s for Neil, free from the meddling of David Geffen and free to explore wherever it is that his muse took him, whether it was the distant future or simply Hawaii.

Sources:

- Neil Young - Archives Vol. III (1976-1987)

- Neil Young - Trans

- Jimmy McDonough - Shakey: Neil Young's Biography

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Songs for Beginners (1970)

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young released their second studio album, Deja Vu, on March 11, 1970, through Atlantic Records. Mostly recorded during the latter half of 1969, it came as the successor to the highly successful Crosby, Stills & Nash album, which they had toured with the addition of leader Stills' former Buffalo Springfield bandmate Neil Young on guitar and keyboards. It became an even bigger success than its predecessor, with Nash's "Teach Your Children" becoming a hit that summer and the supergroup performing a very successful tour through July 1970. During that tour, they debuted and performed many songs that would later appear on their solo albums, in order to fill out the early acoustic sets and showcase the individual members' talents. It was also probably due to the internal issues the band was facing at the time, with their group spirit giving way to infighting, drug use, and egotism. It was really no surprise when, following the end of the Deja Vu tour, the individual members decided to simply carry on with their solo careers instead of regrouping later in the year to start work on a third LP. It would be three years before the next time CSNY would perform together as a group again.

We will collect the best then-unreleased songs CSN played during their 1970 tour and turn them into a new album, the follow-up to Deja Vu. That way, we have an objective way of selecting the songs, and a way to avoid this turning into a "my favorites" playlist, which has always annoyed me. The reason I chose to exclude Neil Young from this was because I figured the only way CSN could carry on in the 70s would be to leave Neil alone. It seems clear that they could resolve their issues as a three-piece, but not as a foursome, it being no coincidence that when they finally managed to reunite in 1977, Young was nowhere to be seen. When it comes to their quotas, four Stills songs and three each for Nash and Crosby seems fair enough, as Stills was always the domineering one in the group, and he's the one who had the most material available. It would be ten songs long, just like the previous two, and as no high-quality live performances of this tour are available to us, we will have to make do with their solo studio versions. We operate under the assumption they wouldn't save their best songs for their solo albums, so that we can put together the best possible album here. With that out of the way, here's our album:

Love the One You're With (Stephen Stills)

Simple Man (Songs for Beginners)

The Lee Shore (Four Way Street)

Black Queen (Stephen Stills)

Laughing (If I Could Only Remember My Name)

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Chicago (Songs for Beginners)

So Begins the Task (Manassas)

Man in the Mirror (Songs for Beginners)

Song With No Words (If I Could Only Remember My Name)

As I Come of Age (Illegal Stills)

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Crosby, Stills & Nash - Songs for Beginners (1970)

Young, Crosby, Nash & Stills performing at the Fillmore East, 1970.

Of the ten songs selected for the album, nine were mainstays of the 1970 CSNY tour. The exception is "Song With No Words", which was only performed during the early 1969 tour. As we're short on Crosby songs for the album, we'll allow it, making it the only outlier in the reconstruction. In "The Lee Shore" we have our only de facto CSN recording, as the only studio version of it available is a Deja Vu outtake. However, given there are plenty of harmonies in the rest of the songs, it's easy to imagine the trademark Crosby, Stills & Nash vocals in most of these songs. The exception is "Black Queen", which would take "Almost Cut My Hair"'s spot as the harmony-less song on the record. "Chicago" incorporates the "We Can Change the World" coda, as it doesn't feel quite complete without it, bringing its runtime to four minutes. Outtakes include Nash's "Sleep Song" and Stills' "We Are Not Helpless". There's nothing wrong with those two, other than the fact that they were played live only once in 1970. Given that the others were played semi-frequently, I thought it was fair to give them preference. With three songwriters in the band, there are always a few outtakes to their albums, and this one would be no different.

In terms of sequencing, this album opens with its probable lead single, "Love the One You're With", with the second side starting with "Chicago", its probable follow-up. Side one ends with Crosby's magnificent "Laughing", and the album ends with one of the best songs on the album, Stills' "As I Come of Age". Other than that, I simply tried to not have two songs by the same member in a row, and put the songs where I thought they fit best. The result was a 41-minute album with roughly equal sides, which is what we were aiming for. Since they'd already released a self-titled album before, I decided to steal the Songs for Beginners title from Nash's album, as it's a nice name and fits this material well, them starting over after Neil's chaotic passage. I also made a nice album cover to go along with it, them rehearsing backstage at a CSNY gig with Young carefully cropped out. This album, which ideally would come out right before Christmas 1970, is a very good record, a better and more focused album than Deja Vu, but without reaching the heights of the debut, somewhat a compromise between the two. It would be nice to see what they would've done during the 70s, their sound and image evolving as they came of age.

Sources:
- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: Songs Performed in 1970

- Peter Doggett - CSNY: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

The Rolling Stones - Come On! (1963)

The Rolling Stones released their first single, a cover of Chuck Berry's "Come On", on June 7, 1963, through Decca Records. Backed by a version of Willie Dixon's "I Want to Be Loved", it reached number 21, a minor hit and an impressive result for their first-ever release. The Stones were signed to Decca through the recommendation of George Harrison, the label still reeling from their infamous rejection of the Beatles the year before. And so, after some demo sessions in March 1963 where they stepped into a recording studio for the first time, they recorded on and off for the rest of the year, releasing another single before the year's end, the Lennon/McCartney original "I Wanna Be Your Man". It became a big hit, and showed the label that the Stones had the potential to become a big act in the UK, and their first hit wasn't a fluke. However, Decca was still afraid to commit to a full LP by the band so early, even though they had already recorded enough material to fill one. So, they decided to release an EP instead, a compromise while they decided when and how to make the Stones' first album. The self-titled EP came out in the first week of 1964, featuring the highlights of their 1963 recording sessions, with songs such as "You Better Move On" and "Bye Bye Johnny". With its success, the first Stones album was finally greenlit, and they entered the studio to record it in February 1964.

But what if the Rolling Stones had released their first album in 1963? To answer that question, we will have to collect everything the Stones recorded before their first album, and turn it into a cohesive and feasible record, given the way the record industry worked in 1963. It will feature fourteen songs instead of twelve, just like your average Beatles album of the period. Singles weren't included in albums in the UK at the time, under the premise that the album needed to be worth the money, without songs you've already bought on singles, but we will have to make an exception at this time as we wouldn't be able to fill out a record otherwise, and even if we did, it wouldn't be of the quality we have come to expect of a Stones album. The Beatles' debut album also featured their singles, and so we will use it as a template, having the two songs off the single as either side closers or openers. Along with their early studio recordings, some live recordings of songs from their live set such as "Roll Over Beethoven" made for the BBC are also available, but won't be used here as their sound quality is much too poor. Studio outtakes that weren't officially released are fair game as well, as long as they are in decent enough sound quality. It will only feature a single original, the instrumental "Stoned", a fair cry from the six on Please Please Me, but it will have to do. With that out of the way, here's what our album looks like:

Bye Bye Johnny (Singles Collection)
Money (Singles Collection)
Baby, What's Wrong? (GRRR!)
Go Home Girl (Genuine Black Box)
Bright Lights, Big City (GRRR!)

I Want to Be Loved (Singles Collection)

Come On! (Singles Collection)

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I Wanna Be Your Man (Singles Collection)
Stoned (Singles Collection)
Road Runner (GRRR!)
Fortune Teller (More Hot Rocks)
Diddley Daddy (GRRR!)
Poison Ivy (Singles Collection)
You Better Move On (Singles Collection)

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The Rolling Stones - Come On! (1963)

Jones, Watts, Richards, Jagger & Wyman at ATV Studios, late 1963.

Our first inclusions are from the Stones' first proper studio session, in March 1963 at IBC Studios. With Glyn Johns on the producer's chair, they cut their versions of Rn'B staples "Baby What's Wrong", "Bright Lights, Big City", "Diddley Daddy" and "Road Runner". These recordings are very rough-sounding, for obvious reasons, but are more than good enough to help fill out the album, so we can include them without issue. Their next session, that May at Olympic, produced by Andrew Oldham, they cut their first single, "Come On" and "I Want to Be Loved". Oldham produced another session in August, this time at Decca, where "Fortune Teller" was recorded. Meant for a single, it was left unreleased until it made its way into a compilation a few years afterward by Decca. In October, they reconvened at De Lane Lea to record their next single, "I Wanna Be Your Man" and "Stoned". With it, gifted by the Beatles' Lennon and McCartney, they had their first real hit and were well on their way to stardom. Shortly thereafter in November, they returned and recorded "Poison Ivy", "Money", and "Go Home Girl", with the first two being paired with the leftover recordings from August to form their first EP, and the latter surfacing only through bootlegs. By including all of those songs, we managed to reach our goal of having fourteen songs, and all that's left for us to do is sequence this into a real record.

To sequence these songs into an album, we will have all the songs released either on the EP or on singles open and close the sides, and the lower quality studio outtakes and IBC demos will fill out the middle of the sides, thus burying them deep onto the record and making their lackluster quality less apparent to first-time listeners. Clocking in at 32 minutes with two even sides, Come On! is your typical early '60s album, inessential but fun, giving us a glimpse of the Stones' early stage act. This album would've been released instead of the EP, which only came out because Decca wasn't sure the Stones could release an album and wanted to test the waters first. Coming out hot on the heels of the "I Wanna Be Your Man" single, and right in time for the Christmas season of 1963, I see no reason for this album to fail to sell well. Would it have topped the charts? Who knows, but I'm sure it wouldn't have been a failure, and the Decca executives had no reason to worry. With the EP songs coming out for the first time here, we would have ten out of the fourteen songs on the album being released for the first time here, not up to British standards, but still pretty solid. I've taken both the cover and the title from the great AndrewskyDE from the Steve Hoffman Forums, who put this together a few years back. While their real-life debut album is no doubt much better, it's interesting to see the Stones in this early stage of their long career, just six blues and Rn'B fanatics who wanted to be loved.

Sources:

- The Complete Works of the Rolling Stones Database: 1963

- Bill Wyman - Rolling With the Stones

John Lennon - Now and Then (1977)

John Lennon released Rock and Roll, his sixth studio album, on February 17, 1975, through Apple Records. It was his last until 1980's Double Fantasy, giving way to a period during which he stayed at home, did no recording, and very little songwriting, his "house-husband" period. It came after a period of considerable personal turmoil for Lennon, who had been separated from his wife Yoko Ono for a nearly two-year period between 1973 and 1975, during the so-called Lost Weekend. He spent most of that period getting drunk with his buddy Harry Nilsson, mingling with other stars in Los Angeles, and getting into trouble. During this period, he had also become increasingly disillusioned with his career and the recording industry, after a series of issues that plagued him throughout this period. Those of course included the Beatles' official legal breakup in 1974, his firing of Allen Klein as a manager, the plagiarism lawsuit involving his "Come Together" and Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me", as well as the troubled production of Rock and Roll, which saw producer Phil Spector stealing the master tapes and only returning them a year later. By early 1975, John was tired, discouraged, and ready to move on from those wilder times, and even though he made plans to record a follow-up to Rock and Roll later that year, the idea of taking some time off was certainly already in his mind by then.

Making his decision that much easier was a surprise reconciliation with Yoko in early 1975, followed by her becoming pregnant. It was a very high-risk pregnancy, as she and John had already lost a baby in 1969, and if they were to have a kid, this would most likely be their last chance. Thankfully, Sean was born healthy in October 1975, and a week later, a compilation of non-album tracks called Shaved Fish came out, fulfilling John's contract and freeing him from Apple/EMI. The fact that he had no obligations and plenty to preoccupy himself with at home meant he stopped working, and from there, it was radio silence for the remainder of the 1970s. He wrote and demoed the occasional song, but his only major creative project in those five years was the Ballad of John and Yoko musical, which still ended up unfinished. He only attended a single recording session through this period, to give Ringo a helping hand, but other than that he stayed home, baked bread, took care of Sean, traveled to Japan, and kept music low on his list of priorities. When the odd idea came about, he would take a boombox that was placed near his piano, turn it on (usually with a rhythm box), and tape a few takes of whatever he was working on. He sometimes finished them, sometimes didn't, but they ended up unreleased, relics of the Dakota Years, before a trip to Bermuda in 1980 reenergized him and had him working again.

But what if John had released an album during his five-year hiatus? If we think creatively, we might be able to make an album out of the first two years of it, collecting all the demos he recorded. Of course, to do so we need to set some rules first. Nothing that was on Double Fantasy is to be considered, as this album is meant to bridge the gap between it and 1975's Rock and Roll, not to change the timeline in any significant manner. Also, our cutoff date for this album is 1977, so any song that was begun after that is left for a separate reconstruction. Maybe something for the future! Why 1977, you ask? I decided on it because it was the first year where enough songs for an album were available, and it's the exact middle point between his last two LPs of originals, 1974's Walls and Bridges and 1980's Double Fantasy. This will be twelve songs long, just like his final few albums before Sean was born, and we will be using exclusively John's demos here, to make this as faithful as possible to what he recorded. That means no Threetles overdubs, no fan mixes, and no AI, just John, his guitar/piano, and his boombox. Unfinished songs are fair game, as John really didn't record a lot for the first four years of his House Husband period, and we aren't able to be very picky when it comes to the songs' state of completion because of that. With that out of the way, here's what our reconstruction looks like:

Real Love (Between the Lines)

Everybody (Between the Lines)

She is a Friend of Dorothy's (Between the Lines)

Whatever Happened To? (Between the Lines)

Mucho Mungo (Between the Lines)

Tennessee (Between the Lines)

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Free as a Bird (Between the Lines)

One of the Boys (Between the Lines)

Mirror, Mirror (Between the Lines)

Cookin' in the Kitchen of Love (Between the Lines)

Sally and Billy (Between the Lines)

Now and Then (Between the Lines)

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John Lennon - Now and Then (1977)

John and his son Sean at their home's kitchen, in late 1977.

According to both his mistress May Pang and Apple vice-president Tony King, John already had plans for his follow-up to Rock and Roll in early 1975. He planned to record with David Bowie guitarist Carlos Alomar serving as his musical director, and he had already written two songs for the new album: "Tennessee" and "Everybody". He had even chosen a name for the album, calling it Between the Lines. However, as you probably know, life got in the way, Sean was conceived, and John ended up moving back with Yoko and entering his house-husband years, music ceasing to be one of his priorities. He didn't write any other songs for the whole of 1975, and 1976 saw him write only three new songs: "Cookin' in the Kitchen of Love", written on demand for Ringo, "Sally and Billy", and "She is a Friend of Dorothy's", probably the least productive period of his whole life. Although John had already given it away, "Mucho Mungo" was still seemingly in his head by the time 1976 rolled around, as he could be heard demoing the song at the time. We'll consider that a sign that John wasn't done with this tune yet, either due to dissatisfaction or writer's block, and so had he recorded an album back then, it would have been a serious contender. The same goes for Ringo's song, as it's one of the few songs Lennon actually managed to finish for the whole of this 1975-1977 period, we can't waste it.

John's inspiration seemingly returned to him by the time 1977 rolled around, however, as the bulk of this reconstruction comes from that year. From it, we have "Free as a Bird", "Now and Then", "One of the Boys", "Mirror, Mirror" and "Whatever Happened To?", five songs that could've made for the backbone of a very strong record. Finally, although it wasn't finished until 1980, "Real Love" was begun in late 1977, making it the last song to be written for the album, arriving just in time for us to be able to include it. When it comes to sequencing, I tried to take all of the most finished/strongest songs on the record and use them to open and close the sides, with the more unfinished and low-quality songs hidden away in the middle of the record. I was also trying to avoid having too many ballads in a row, as many of these demos are on the slower side, but the album doesn't seem to drag at any moment. An interesting detail to note is that half the album's songs were released commercially: Nilsson recorded "Mucho Mungo" for his Pussy Cats album in 1974, Ringo recorded "Cookin'" in 1976, and John himself re-did "Everybody" as "Nobody Told Me" in late 1980. Finally, the trilogy of "Free as a Bird", "Real Love" and "Now and Then" was finished by none other than The Beatles, during the Anthology project in the 90s. Not bad for something that's just supposed to be a collection of demos!

Clocking in at 40 minutes with two 20-minute sides, Now and Then is the lost link between two distinct periods of John's life, showing us what he'd been up to all those years. As an album, there's clearly no denying that these songs are very rough and unfinished, but with a little bit of work and the right producer being used (and I'm not convinced Alomar would be the right man for the job), it could've easily been as good as Walls and Bridges. The seeds for a good record are all there, and all that it would take for it to come out is some editing and tinkering. Our album cover is a repurposed pannel by his friend and occasional bass player Klaus Voormann, making for a very strong image. "Real Love" would probably be the lead single off the album, as it's one of the strongest, most finished-sounding songs on it and one of the poppiest ones too, with something lighter such as "Mucho Mungo" serving as its b-side. Although it would be fun to reuse the title, this album cannot be called Between the Lines because it is completely different in concept and in song choice, coming out two years after BTL would have, which means we'll have to settle for a different title. I went for Now and Then, which not only is one of the best songs here, but is also a fitting description of where John was at in 1977: dedicated to raising his son and watching the wheels, music relegated to a hobby he picked up every now and then.

Sources:

- Between the Lines: Complete Home Demo Recordings 1975-1980

- John Green - Dakota Days: The True Story of John Lennon's Final Years