Bob Dylan & The Band - 2188 Stoll Road (1968)

In October 1967, The Band's keyboardist Garth Hudson put together a fourteen-song acetate of new songs he, Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, and Rick Danko had been recording with Bob Dylan at the basement of Big Pink, a house in 2188 Stoll Road, Saugerties, NY. He had been instructed to do so the previous August by Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, as Dylan had gone more than a year without entering the recording studio and he wanted to shop his artists' compositions around for other artists to record. These lo-fi recordings were made spontaneously and without any intent of ever being released to the public, but in their goofing around, they had recorded much more than an album's worth of fantastic new compositions, something Grossman wanted to take advantage of. With the fourteen songs at hand, Dylan's publishing company Dwarf Music gave them away to artists such as Peter, Paul and Mary, The Byrds, Manfred Mann, and many others, scoring a few hits and giving the public their first taste of post-motorcycle crash Bob. The Band themselves, who had secured a deal with Capitol Records, recorded three of the Basement songs to great success. Eventually, the acetate leaked and became one of the very first bootlegs, and for a while, it was thought that those fourteen songs were the entire content of the sessions. However, by the time 1975 rolled around and the officially released double album came, songs such as "Goin' to Acapulco" made fans wonder just how much material was still sitting in the vault.

So, our objective today is to take the best of the rest of the Basement Tapes, and put together a 14-song part two to the Dwarf Music acetate, collecting all the other worthwhile compositions from this wildly creative period for Dylan. However, we will have to parse through upwards of two hundred recordings to create such an album, and to do so we will need some rules. No covers will be considered, as this is meant to highlight the unloved originals from the period, and this already clears off more than half of the Big Pink recordings. Some great recordings such as "Big River" will be lost, but maybe they deserve their own reconstruction further up the road. No songs that are only performed by The Band and don't feature Bob, for obvious reasons, and no post-1968 recordings are allowed either, even though a couple made the double LP. To further whittle down the contenders, songs have to either have been considered by Robertson and Fraboni for inclusion in 1975, or submitted for copyright earlier in 1969 or 1971. That way, we'll know if those involved with the recordings themselves consider them worthy. Also, as "I'm Not There" is already in my Basement Tapes reconstruction and "Tiny Montgomery" is in most versions of the album, neither of them is eligible, to save the spotlight for other songs. We'll still filter our song pool so that only the most finished-sounding of the bunch make it, while still allowing something like "Bourbon Street", which is wonky on purpose, to be included. Here's what the album looks like:

Odds and Ends (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11)

Get Your Rocks Off (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11)

Clothes Line Saga (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11)

Apple Suckling Tree (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11)

Wild Wolf (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11)

All I Have to Do is Dream (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11)
Goin' to Acapulco (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11)

-

Minstrel Boy (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11)
Santa Fe (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11)

Bourbon Street (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11)

Don't Ya Tell Henry (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11)

Silent Weekend (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11)
Dress it Up, Better Have it All (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11)

Sign on the Cross (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11)

Download link:

- Bob Dylan & the Band - 2188 Stoll Road (1968)

Dylan and the Band performing at a Woody Guthrie tribute, January 1968.

Now, let's have a look at what made our compilation. "Odds and Ends", "Clothes Line Saga", "Apple Suckling Tree", "Goin' to Acapulco" and "Don't Ya Tell Henry" were all issued in the original double LP from 1975. That tells us these songs were considered good enough for release, allowing us to earmark them for inclusion here. "All I Have to Do is Dream", "Get Your Rocks Off", "Bourbon Street", "Sign on the Cross", "Santa Fe" and "Silent Weekend" were part of a comp reel created by Robbie Robertson and producer Rob Fraboni in early 1975, telling us that they at the very least made the shortlist of what would be included on The Basement Tapes album later in the year. Based on that, we'll consider them worthy of our reconstruction. Finally, "Minstrel Boy", "Wild Wolf" and "Dress it Up, Better Have it All" were not in the running for the 1975 record, but were the best three songs copyrighted in 1971 from the sessions. The fact they were copyrighted tells us that they meant to do something with the songs, but we're still not sure why they ended up not using them. Either way, they're good enough to fill out our album and give us another fourteen songs of high-quality Basement noise. All that's left to do is to sequence so that the stronger material starts and ends the sides, with rockers such as "Odds and Ends" as openers and ballads such as "Sign on the Cross" as closers, and taking cues from the original double LP for the rest of the work, and we have ourselves a pretty good album.

The contents of this reconstruction were mostly taken from Reels 12, 13, and 16 of the Basement Tapes, which were recorded after the fourteen acetate songs but before the John Wesley Harding sessions began. They are obviously not as good as the original fourteen, but they're a lot of fun, featuring some surprisingly strong moments such as "Santa Fe", "Sign on the Cross" and "Goin' to Acapulco", and feel like the logical next step from songs such as "Lo and Behold!" or "Too Much of Nothing". The album is titled 2188 Stoll Road in reference to the address of the Big Pink house where its contents were recorded, in a nod to Highway 61 Revisited. In a better world, where the original Basement Tapes Acetate was released in 1968, this is what would've come out in 1975 instead of what we got, hence the prominent co-billing of the Band and the picture of the house I used for the cover. It had been six years since any of them lived there, so sharing its address wouldn't have been a problem. The 7+ minutes of "Sign on the Cross" push the album into the 48-minute area. But since we're dealing with recordings that were already lo-fi to begin with, very little would be lost in terms of sound quality. With that, we have ourselves a worthy successor to what could probably be described as Bob's strongest collection of songs, recorded at leisure and never meant to be heard by anyone but the friends he recorded them with, while the rest of the world was going in the opposite direction.

Sources:

- Bob Dylan - The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete

- Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes - Where We're Currently At

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)

-

Hard Luck Stories (Archives Vol. III)

Razor Love (Archives Vol. III)

Touch the Night (Live at the Catalyst)

Download link:
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)

Download link:
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)

-

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)

Download link:
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)

-
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)

Download link:
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