David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust: The Musical (1974)

David Bowie's breakthrough album, 1972's Ziggy Stardust, is a loose and non-linear concept album about an androgynous alien rock star, who lands on earth five years away from the end of the world, here forming a rock and roll band. It tells of his attempt to give humanity hope in that dystopic future, through music, sex, and drugs, with Ziggy being the main character behind promoting that ideology. What he sees there is a world in complete disarray, as well as a youth completely disillusioned and distant from the generations that came before them, who they consider out of touch with reality, with them being left "on their own" to deal with the consequences. Without any electricity or desire for rock music, he and his band are seen forced to sing about the news of the period, all of them about, of course, the imminent end of mankind. He's a representation of the ultimate cliche rock n' roll superstar, being destroyed by both his drug intake and his own fans' glorification of him at the end of the album, them disappointed his calls for hope and love didn't result in anything that could save them. The album was both a gigantic critical and commercial success, and also one of the firsts in a string of many great LPs to come from him during the seventies. Its follow-up, 1973's "Aladdin Sane", is a fantastic glam rock record that shares many of its predecessor's themes of stardom and heavy sound, its name being a pun on A Lad Insane. Bowie even nicknamed the album "Ziggy goes to America", due to it being written while on tour in the US, with its sleeve containing the name of the city each song was written in. 

He maintained the Stardust persona even after its release, adding the new album's tunes to the tour setlist and simply keeping on going, giving us all the feeling that Alladin Sane was nothing more than a sequel to the concept album. The new songs fit in perfectly with the whole concept, adding depth to its characters and universe, which Bowie certainly took note of and used to his advantage during concerts. But by July of 1973, it seems, he was already tired of the whole thing, and during the final show of the tour, in the Hammersmith Odeon, took all the audience by surprise by announcing his retirement from live performances from the stage, shortly before the last song of the concert. What they all didn't notice, however, was that Bowie was only doing so "in character", and was effectively putting Ziggy Stardust to rest, and moving on with his career. After that show (immortalized in D.A. Pennebaker's concert film), he disbanded his Spiders from Mars backing band, and started to conceptualize two new projects: an album adaptation of George Orwell's "1984", and a musical based on Ziggy Stardust, managing to write some six songs for the former and two for the latter. However, soon afterward his interest in the musical waned, most likely due to the fact that it had only been one year since he was performing as the character and it was too soon for him to tackle such a thing. And to put insult to injury, he was denied the rights to Orwell's work, and so David combined both projects into one, transforming them into the fantastic "Diamond Dogs" album, released in mid-1974, going on tour and even becoming a blue-eyed soul artist for a while after that. But what if Bowie had made that Ziggy Stardust musical?

This reconstruction is an update to my The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars post from November 2019. Our goal here, instead of merely compiling an extended version of Ziggy Stardust, is to create a two-hour musical separated into two one-hour acts, that can also function as a triple LP. That means we'll be looking for roughly thirty songs, and given the vast amounts of material Bowie recorded during this very prolific period, we won't have a lot of trouble finding it. Whenever they are avoidable, there will be no live recordings, as they feel quite out of place here, and only recordings from Bowie's glam rock period of around 1971 to 1974 will be considered. Additionally, we won't be respecting the original album's sequencing, as the added material will outnumber it almost two to one, meaning we'll have to find our own way of putting all of this music together in a way that makes sense. This musical's narrative will also be pretty loose, as none of the songs on the original are very narrative-driven, and without Bowie actually sitting down to write exposition-based songs for us, we're left with a production that's quite light on a story. So, we will be considering that an intended feature instead of a product of the circumstances. The focus of this reconstruction will be not on the story, but on the songs themselves and how they could fit together to create the best possible long-form rock opera centered around the rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, through the lens of Bowie's mid-70s discography. With that out of the way, here's what our version of this long-lost project looks like:

First act

Hang on to Yourself (Ziggy Stardust)
Ziggy Stardust (Ziggy Stardust)
Watch That Man (Aladdin Sane)
Soul Love (Ziggy Stardust)
All the Young Dudes (Aladdin Sane)

-
Five Years (Ziggy Stardust)
The Prettiest Star (Aladdin Sane)
John, I'm Only Dancing (Aladdin Sane)
Moonage Daydream (Ziggy Stardust)
Lady Stardust (Ziggy Stardust)

-
Rebel Rebel (Diamond Dogs)
Sweet Head (Ziggy Stardust)
Velvet Goldmine (Ziggy Stardust)
Holy Holy (Ziggy Stardust)
My Death (Ziggy Stardust)

Second act

Cracked Actor (Aladdin Sane)
Time (Aladdin Sane)
Let's Spend the Night Together (Aladdin Sane)
Port of Amsterdam (Ziggy Stardust)
Drive-In Saturday (Aladdin Sane)

-
Rock and Roll With Me (Diamond Dogs)
Aladdin Sane (Aladdin Sane)
Panic in Detroit (Aladdin Sane)
Star (Ziggy Stardust)
The Jean Genie (Aladdin Sane)

-
Starman (Ziggy Stardust)
Lady Grinning Soul (Aladdin Sane)
Around and Around (Ziggy Stardust)
Suffragette City (Ziggy Stardust)
Rock and Roll Suicide (Ziggy Stardust)

Download link:

David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust: The Musical (1974)

Bowie (as Ziggy Stardust) performing live in Newcastle, June 1973.

Now, we need to figure out what will make the album and what won't, starting with what made the cut. The entire Ziggy Stardust album is included, minus "It Ain't Easy", a Hunky Dory outtake that was shoehorned into the concept and honestly doesn't fit the concept very well. All the main outtakes from the Ziggy sessions can be added, those being "Velvet Goldmine", "Holy Holy", "Sweet Head", "Around and Around" and "Port of Amsterdam". All of those, except for "Sweet Head", were included in early running orders for the Ziggy album around December 1971, showing how close they were to actually fitting into the album proper. Live staple "My Death", which was an integral part of the performances and the character, despite never making it to the studio, is an almost obligatory inclusion, even though we'll be having to use a live version of it. The entire Aladdin Sane, the self-described Ziggy Goes to America, was performed live in character as Ziggy Stardust, except for "Lady Grinning Soul". We will include it anyway, alongside the other nine tracks, as it feels like it belongs on the album and provides some variety to the album, pointing the way to the soul sound of Young Americans. Aladdin Sane outtakes "All the Young Dudes" and "John, I'm Only Dancing" also make the cut, those being two songs with very strong connections to the Ziggy Stardust concept that inexplicably didn't make the album, but did get performed live regularly. And finally, the most obvious inclusions, the two songs known to have been written explicitly for the musical: "Rebel Rebel" and "Rock and Roll With Me".

Now, on to what didn't make the cut. The September 1971 songs "Looking for a Friend", "Shadow Man" and "Something Happens", which were recorded in-between Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust, but don't have any narrative or circumstantial link to either of those, will not be included. Neither will anything from Pin-Ups, which unlike the covers included here, didn't have anything to do with Ziggy and were just Bowie covering some of his favorite songs and influences from the mid-60s. Re-recordings of older songs are fine (we did include "The Prettiest Star" and "Holy Holy", after all), but not when it comes to songs previously released on an album, which means the re-recorded version of "The Supermen" from the late 1971 Trident sessions doesn't make the cut. There also won't be any space for the unfinished "Zion"/"A Lad in Vein" from the Aladdin Sane sessions, which would sound quite jarring between these songs in the state that it's in, but if finished, it would make for a sensible inclusion. A shame that it was abandoned. As for how we sequenced this behemoth, we used his 1973 setlists, which he played in character as Ziggy Stardust, as a basis for how to sequence this two-hour collection of songs, establishing a loose narrative around the Ziggy persona and his 1971/1973 material. As for the songs he didn't play live, we tended to replace songs that weren't part of the concept, but played live ("Wide Eyed Boy from Freecloud", "Space Oddity", "Changes", just to name a few), with their closest corresponding outtake, to keep the story as close to the shows as we possibly could. 

Even though we really weren't planning this reconstruction from an album standpoint, all sides are five songs long and between 17 and 21 minutes, which is within reason for the 70s. I do have to point out that, almost by accident, most sides work exquisitely well as their own small mini-acts, with strong openers and closers that make sense in the spot they were given, which is quite remarkable. Also, both acts are slightly under an hour long, ideal for a musical, and given that there would be an intermission and some dialog, give us a nice two-and-a-half hour attraction. As for both acts themselves, since Aladdin Sane was a continuation of Ziggy Stardust, the first act is mostly music from Ziggy and the second disc is mostly music from Aladdin, in an attempt to show the narrative progression between them, and the contrast between pre-fame and post-fame Bowie, with most of the cover versions being on the second act. The cover is an outtake from the photo sessions that spawned the original Ziggy Stardust album cover, which I then slightly edited and added a title to. You can pretend that's the cover to the original cast recording, if you wish to. This project certainly helps flesh out the rather loose Ziggy Stardust concept, giving it a depth and some world-building it certainly lacked when it came out in 1972. And hearing all of these songs together manages to show us how fantastic Bowie's glam period was, when for a brief period it seemed like he could do no wrong. It's just a shame that he couldn't put something like this together, to better represent when this cracked actor played his greatest part.

Sources:

- The David Bowie Bible

- 5 Years: The Ziggy Stardust Companion

The Hollies - Listen to Us (1968)

The Hollies released Butterfly, their seventh UK studio album, in November 1967 through Parlophone Records. One of the greatest records to come out of the '60s British psychedelic scene, it came during a period of transition for the Hollies, who seemed to be abandoning their poppier sound in favor of a more complex, self-penned style. This charge was mostly led by vocalist and guitarist Graham Nash, who greatly admired the Beatles and American groups such as the Byrds and the Buffalo Springfield, and wanted to emulate the changes in sound and image that those groups went through, which often clashed with the rest of the band, who were more traditional and didn't partake on the same recreational drugs as Nash. This rift was only intensified when their single "King Midas in Reverse", a song that Graham considered his magnum opus and one that was to signify the evolution that was taking place, failed to become a hit, barely making the top 20 in the UK. Wasting no time, Nash and Allan Clarke wrote the much more traditional "Jennifer Eccles" and recorded it in early 1968, restoring their chart success. But that ended up leaving Graham even more dissatisfied at the failure of this next step creatively for them and the fact that they'd taken a step backward as a response. Throughout the year, they record songs for a proposed eighth studio album, with intra-band issues just intensifying from then on.

Along with "Jennifer Eccles", they record other originals such as "Open Up Your Eyes" and "Wings", both meant for the new record. The Hollies even recorded the backing track for "Marrakesh Express", Nash's drug-influenced song that would later become a hit for CSN, but its themes and the rift between Graham and the rest of the band prevented them from completing it. This clash between the more conservative Clarke and Hicks and the hippie Nash was the main issue tearing the band apart, with the two looking more and more like squares as the 1960s rolled on, and Nash wanting no part in that. It was during the recording sessions for this album that the infamous meeting where Crosby, Stills, and Nash sang "You Don't Have to Cry" happened, but it would take until late 1968 for Graham to work up the courage to leave the Hollies, only doing so when CSN looked like a sure thing. In the meantime, he had the opportunity to record some more originals, such as his "Man With No Expression", as well as being stringed along for a horrible, horrible Las Vegas-esque version of "Blowin' in the Wind", which he absolutely hated and only solidified his desire to leave. By November, Nash had left to join David and Stephen, the band's eighth studio album had been shelved, and the Hollies' Greatest hits compilation had been issued in its place. But what if the Hollies had finished that final album with Graham Nash?

This post is an update to my Listen to Us reconstruction from April 2018. Here, it serves as the final part of a trilogy consisting of David Crosby (1968) and Songs for Judy (1968), which has the goal of answering a very simple question: what if Crosby, Stills & Nash never happened? This time, we will be tackling how Graham Nash's career would've been different, by finishing the album he was making when he left the Hollies in late 1968. He was the only member of CSN without enough songs to fill out a solo album, so this is what most likely would have happened. It would have been twelve songs long, as most Hollies albums were, and with a focus on original songs written by Clarke, Nash, and Hicks, since its predecessor Butterfly was all-original. With one major exception, we will only be considering material recorded by the band itself, and since there aren't enough of those to fill out an album, we were forced to make some very creative choices. We will further be limiting ourselves by not considering any re-recordings, such as the new version of "Very Last Day" they recorded for Colour Me Pop that year. We know a single part of the tracklist was set in stone, as per Bobby Elliot "Relax" was meant to segue into "Tomorrow When it Comes", but other than that, we'll be left to figure out an adequate tracklist on our own too. With that out of the way, here's what our revamped Listen to Us looks like:

Open Up Your Eyes (Clarke, Hicks, and Nash Years)

Do the Best You Can (Clarke, Hicks, and Nash Years)

Relax (Clarke, Hicks, and Nash Years)

Tomorrow When it Comes (Clarke, Hicks and Nash Years)

Lady of the Island (Crosby, Stills, and Nash)

Wings (Clarke, Hicks, and Nash Years)

-

Survival of the Fittest (Confessions of the Mind)

Jennifer Eccles (Clarke, Hicks, and Nash Years)

Man With No Expression (Clarke, Hicks and Nash Years)

Like Every Time Before (Clarke, Hicks, and Nash Years)

Marrakesh Express (Over the Years)

Listen to Me (Clarke, Hicks, and Nash Years)

Download link:

The Hollies - Listen to Us (1968)

Nash, Clarke, Elliot, Hicks, and Calvert as photographed sometime in mid-1968.

The Hollies, like most 1960s English bands, had the habit of not including songs released as singles on their albums. However, given that we barely even have enough good-quality material to work with here, that wouldn't be practical. Besides, by the time they were recording this, some bands had already moved away from this practice anyway. So, both "Jennifer Eccles" and its b-side "Open Up Your Eyes" and "Listen to Me" and its b-side "Do The Best You Can" are added to this reconstruction, and immediately are some of the highlights of the album. "Wings" had been donated to the World Wildlife Fund album Nothing's Gonna Change Our World alongside The Beatles' "Across the Universe", thus making it out of the vault at Graham's behest. Meanwhile, "Survival of the Fittest" was recorded in August 1968 while Nash was still in the group, but was strangely enough released as the opening track on the band's Confessions of the Mind album from 1970, with Nash's vocal replaced by Terry Sylvester. Were they short on material perhaps? Either way, the fact that these songs were released in any form goes to show us that the band considered them the best of the sessions, and didn't think they deserved being thrown out. Because of that, I thought it would be interesting to use those songs to bookend the album's sides and serve as the main songs on the album, with the two singles opening and closing side two.

With those six out of the way, there are only four good quality, finished songs from the 1968 sessions that were truly forgotten and left in the vault: "Relax", "Man With No Expression", "Tomorrow When it Comes", and "Like Every Time Before". They make for obvious inclusions, and are immediately added to the album's sequence. That means we still have two song slots open, and need to figure out what will be included between sub-par material, unfinished songs, and Nash's rejected originals. "Marrakesh Express" is a mashup of the Hollies' backing track with Graham's 1968 demo of the song, courtesy of the Hollies Rare and Unreleased channel, giving us the closest we can possibly get to an authentic '68 version of this tune. "Lady of the Island" is another song Graham offered to The Hollies sometime in 1968 but that they somehow rejected, alongside "Sleep Song" and "Right Between the Eyes". Given that our only other options for material are an appalling re-recording of "A Taste of Honey" and a cabaret arrangement of "Blowing in the Wind", our best option becomes adding one of those three rejected songs. I ended up choosing "Lady of the Island", as it was the one Graham liked enough to record with Crosby and Stills, and it's a very good song that would work well with a Hollies-like arrangement.

A marvelous collection of slightly psychedelic-tinged 60s pop, Listen to Me is a worthy follow-up to Evolution and Butterfly, taking the forward-thinking sound of those two albums and expanding it thanks to songs such as "Relax" and "Marrakesh Express". Clocking in at 33 minutes with a very short side one, this is a very brief record, and due to its poppy nature, feels really short but sweet. This album would probably sell decently because of the Hollies' sheer size, but doesn't go on to set the world on fire. A shame, but that is also true of many albums that are now revered. The album title is merely a play on what some '60s artists used to do with their album titles, by slightly altering one of the song's titles. It's corny, for sure, but it's fun and something they'd be willing to try. Meanwhile, the cover is simply a recycled version of the Hollies' Greatest album cover. Not nearly psychedelic enough for 1968, but it'll have to do. All songs are originals, except for "Listen to Me", written by Tony Hazzard, which also happens to be the last thing Graham recorded with the band. It points out the direction they'd go in for the 70s, having hits with other people's songs. This reconstruction is particularly interesting because it shows the Hollies could have gone a different and much more interesting path in the 1970s had Graham stayed. But they couldn't put their differences aside, even though they did the best they could.

Sources:

- The "lost" 1968 album and Graham Nash's 1968 demos

- Graham Nash - Wild Tales: A Rock and Roll Life

Jimi Hendrix - Straight Ahead (1970)

Jimi Hendrix released the Band of Gypsys live album on March 25, 1970, through Capitol Records. Recorded during four New Year's performances at the Fillmore East, it existed to fulfill a contractual obligation due to a contract Hendrix signed to PPX Enterprises in 1966. He had agreed that Ed Chalpin, head of PPX, be his manager only to leave the country and form the Experience in London shortly thereafter. So, PPX sued, and to settle the dispute, it was agreed that Jimi would give them an album, as distributed through Capitol, and that would be the end of it. His latest studio album, Electric Ladyland, was released in October 1968, which means that his label Reprise Records had by then been waiting for two years for any new product by him. He had been on and off the studio for the same length of time, without ever coming close to making anything that he considered finished, mounting up massive studio bills at the Record Plant that he had to tour to pay off. To remedy that, Hendrix and his manager Mike Jeffries decided to build a studio of their own, christened Electric Lady Studios, so that he could record as much as he wanted and for as long as he wanted without paying exorbitant studio fees, and maybe finally finish recording his fourth studio album. Indeed, this period of mid-1970 saw Jimi recording many brand new songs, showing he was in a very creatively fruitful phase of his career, aided by a band consisting of Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell and BOG bassist Billy Cox, a versatile band that could give him the best of both groups. And by putting those together with the great material the now-defunct Band of Gypsys had recorded at the Record Plant, you were looking at 30+ songs available to him for a new record. All he had left to do now was to assemble an album out of all of those songs.

And that he tried, with varying degrees of success. To make the best use of the material he had, Hendrix was interested in making his fourth studio album into a double LP, with names like First Rays of the New Rising Sun, People, Hell & Angels, and Straight Ahead being considered. He even created a couple of very interesting preliminary running orders, which have since become the main pieces of this puzzle. The first was a double album sequence neatly divided into sides, but with the fourth side missing and some slight overlap between sides one and three. That list has been the source of some controversy as many people don't think the handwriting on it resembles Jimi's, but there still hasn't been enough evidence to discredit this three-sided tracklist. And the second was simply a huge list of (presumably) every song Hendrix considered worthy of the album, with twenty-five songs being listed without side breaks or even any apparent sequencing under the name "Songs for L.P. Strate Ahead". That one is clearly Jimi's, but there are a few problems with it too. As I mentioned, it doesn't seem as if it was a preliminary tracklist per se, and it even features songs we are not sure exist, or that don't circulate at all. To make matters worse, there's a very real possibility that Jimi couldn't use everything he recorded on his next album, as his manager Mike Jeffries had intended him to make a Rainbow Bridge soundtrack album even before his death. Jimi clearly wasn't interested, but had to play along, and might've seen himself obligated to stockpile material for that as well. Because of all of those factors, what Jimi's final album would look like remains a mystery, and a niche community of Hendrix fans obsessed with this material has cropped up, trying their best to solve that mystery. So what if we play along too?

This reconstruction is an update to my Straight Ahead album by Jimi Hendrix from December 2020. Here, I will try to create a more faithful rendition of the original "Strate Ahead" tracklist where I don't add songs to the middle of the sequence and don't stray so far from the original. This list of songs has long intrigued me, and the fact that it has largely been ignored by most attempts at reconstructing Jimi's final album is puzzling. So, instead of using the unfinished three-sided sequence as soniclovenoize has brilliantly done in the past, we will take this 25-song behemoth and make it the basis of our new album.  A relatively fresh take on a saturated topic, I hope that will provide us with an interesting alternative. Once that's done, whatever's left of our reconstruction will be turned into a contractual obligation Rainbow Bridge soundtrack album, to appease manager Michael Jeffries and make sure not a single track recorded between November 1969 and August 1970 is left on the cutting room floor. This is essentially the Kitchen Sink version of Jimi's fourth studio album, and should not at all be taken as what Jimi would do had he lived, as we sadly cannot predict that, but as an exercise in including every single possible song. However, songs such as "My Friend" and else anything recorded before November 1969 will be excluded, as that's when the fourth album sessions began in earnest and those deserve their own reconstruction.We will be using the most finished possible versions of the songs, no matter if they were Hendrix mixes or posthumous mixes. Jimi's mixes are great, to be sure, but many date further back and don't feature some of the last few overdubs and tweaks he performed, which we would certainly want to include. With that out of the way, here's what our brand new revamped Straight Ahead looks like:

Discs 1-3: Straight Ahead

Ezy Ryder (The Cry of Love)

Room Full of Mirrors (Rainbow Bridge)

Earth Blues (Rainbow Bridge)

Valleys of Neptune (Valleys of Neptune)

Straight Ahead (The Cry of Love)

-

Cherokee Mist (Purple Box)

Freedom (The Cry of Love)

Stepping Stone (War Heroes)

Izabella (War Heroes)

Astro Man (The Cry of Love)

-

Drifter's Escape (Loose Ends)

Angel (The Cry of Love)

Bleeding Heart (War Heroes)

Burning Desire (Loose Ends)

-

Night Bird Flying (The Cry of Love)

Pali Gap (Rainbow Bridge)

Hear My Train a-Comin' (Rainbow Bridge)

-

Lover Man (Purple Box)

Midnight Lightning (South Saturn Delta)

Heaven Has No Sorrow (Electric Lady Studios)

Send My Love to Linda (Both Sides of the Sky)

Drifting (The Cry of Love)

-

Come Down Hard on Me (Loose Ends)

Dolly Dagger (Rainbow Bridge)

The New Rising Sun (West Coast Seattle Boy)

Disc 4: Rainbow Bridge

Power of Soul (Both Sides of the Sky)

Beginnings (War Heroes)

Message to Love (West Coast Seattle Boy)

Belly Button Window (The Cry of Love)

In from the Storm (The Cry of Love)

-

Lonely Avenue (West Coast Seattle Boy)

All God's Children (West Coast Seattle Boy)

Machine Gun (Live in Berkeley)

Download link:

Jimi Hendrix - Straight Ahead (1970)

Hendrix performing at the Isle of Wight Festival, September 1970.

Our main album is going to be simply a reproduction of the original "Songs for L.P. Strate Ahead" 25-song list in full, with substitutions made when songs aren't available or wherever else needed. To do so, we will need to expand this from a double album to a triple, as this material is much too long to fit into two pieces of vinyl. Thankfully, Jimi himself considered releasing a triple album at some point during the making of this fourth record, which means we're only following his wishes. When it comes to take selection, we will be once more using the fantastic Loose Ends version of "Burning Desire", a live-in-the-studio performance for the ages, while "Hear My Train a-Comin'" is the superb live version found on Rainbow Bridge due to the lack of an adequate studio take of the song. The often bootlegged demo of "Heaven Has No Sorrow" is the only thing on our album not sourced from an official release, suffering from a mediocre sound quality but fitting right in with the more unfinished material of side five. "The New Rising Sun" meanwhile features the "Bolero" intro, ballooning its length to 11 minutes and providing us with our second epic of the album after the monumental live "Train". Slightly more controversially, we will make the assumption that what is listed as "Electric Lady - Slow" is actually "Pali Gap", since it was originally recorded under the name "Slow Part" at Electric Lady studios, which sure, is conjecture, but is way too close to be a coincidence. Finally, side breaks were added whenever the sides hit 20+ minutes long or wherever I felt there was a strong side opener/closer to be seen, in order to make this flow better. And considering this is just a list off the top of Jimi's head, the sequence we ended up with in this reconstruction is actually pretty decent!

With that out of the way, we only have to worry about replacing the unavailable songs and working out what's going to feature on the bonus disc. "Local Commotion", which was part of the Black Gold demo tape but sadly has yet to surface, is replaced by "Come Down Hard on Me", a song that was recorded before this list was made, made it to the three-sided sequence, but was inexplicably absent here. On the other hand, "This Little Boy" we know virtually nothing about, since unlike "Local Commotion" we don't have knowledge of any recordings or lyrics existing anywhere in the vaults. We don't even know if it's a real song! Either way, we will be replacing it with "Drifting", one of the only other songs present on the three-sided sequence that was recorded as of August 14, 1970. "Belly Button Window", another highlight of the three-sided sequence, was recorded eight days after the list we are basing ourselves on was made, meaning it gets to be part of our bonus disc. Alongside it are studio versions of the Band of Gypsys' "Power of Soul" and "Message to Love", as well as the great live take on "Machine Gun" from the live June 1970 Berkeley performance, giving us one of the few good versions of the song with Mitch Mitchell on drums. Added to those are other strong tracks that failed to make our triple album, such as the instrumental ditty "Beginnings" and the fantastic "In From the Storm", making for one of the highlights of this pseudo-soundtrack. Finally, we pad out this contract-fulfilling compilation with the meandering instrumental of "All God's Children", one of the final backing tracks Hendrix ever recorded, and with the uninspired cover of Doc Pomus' "Lonely Avenue", to give Jimi's management 40 minutes' worth of semi-releasable material, to get them off his back and let him realize his vision in peace.

Of course, it needs to be said that this is insane and would've never been released in 1970. Reprise Records, who had been waiting for new product from Jimi since late 1968's Electric Ladyland, would never release something this sprawling and experimental. They would have interfered and demanded that the very least a whole disc be cut down, and maybe even postpone the Rainbow Bridge soundtrack indefinitely. However, this is an interesting thought exercise in combining everything Jimi recorded in the last year of his life and seeing what the whole of his efforts sound like together, and I'm more than pleased with the results. Almost three hours' worth of music and over eight sides of vinyl goes to show what an absurdly creative period this was for Hendrix, and that we needn't worry for him when it came to topping his first three albums. Hendrix was well on his way to creating a masterpiece that rivaled his recorded output with the Experience. Commenting on the material itself, the very unfinished studio material and assorted live tracks we've used to complement this album fit in remarkably well with the more finished, release-ready songs, which really surprised me at first as I was expecting a much rougher listen. But the varying degrees of completion help give the album variety, as many of the finished songs share the same full, funky mid-tempo sound that tends to sound similar on repeated listens. Our album has sprawling epics, small solo demos, and everything in between, helping create the maximalists' version of his fourth album, as well as the soundtrack to a misguided movie. This collection helps us put in perspective how many ideas Jimi had going on in his mind at the time of his death, and it's a shame that he couldn't live to see the world's reaction to his new earthier, straight-ahead sound.

Sources:

- Jimi Hendrix's Unfinished Fourth Studio Album

- Jimi Hendrix - EH Released Recordings October 1968 - August 1970

The Small Faces - 1862 (1969)

The Small Faces released their third UK studio album, Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, in May 1968 through Immediate Records. It was divided between a first side of short, poppy songs, and a sidelong suite narrated by comedian Stanley Unwin, about a man named Stan and his fairytale-like journey to find the other side of the moon. Needless to say, this record was heavily informed by the psychedelic craze and the Summer of Love, and was critically successful, showing that the Small Faces could adapt their Rn'B sound to the swinging sixties vogue and create their first consistently great album. The album also spawned a hit, the cockney "Lazy Sunday", another in a line of smashes for the band which had already given us "Itchycoo Park" and "Tin Soldier". But all was not well: the impossibility of playing the new Happiness Stan suite live frustrated the band, especially lead singer and guitarist Steve Marriott. They'd created their magnum opus, but simply couldn't perform it live in 1968. They did play it all the way through once, for the BBC's Colour Me Pop program, but the fact that they couldn't use this ambitious piece of music to break out of their pop image toward a more "serious" one, as the Who would later do with Tommy, weighed heavily on their minds. Disillusioned but still soldiering on, in mid-1968 they started recording a new album on and off, this time with no concept attached. It was given the working title of 1862, part of Steve's then-current address, and they'd recorded a couple of songs.

By late 1968 however, the band was closer and closer to breaking up. Coming to the fore were creative differences between Marriott (who wanted the band to play in a heavier style) and the rest of the band, who wanted to keep things as they were. Issues were further aggravated by Marriott's desire to expand the band's lineup into a five-piece with guitarist Peter Frampton from the Herd, which the others were against, once more wanting to keep things as they were. Serving as the soundtrack to all this turmoil was the non-album single of "The Universal", a stopgap release to appease record buyers until their new album was finished, but which wasn't as successful as the singles that came before it. Still, they carried on, touring the UK and mainland Europe right around the time of New Year's Eve, and contributing to French singer Johnny Halliday's Riviere... Ouvre Ton Lit album, writing him three songs (translated into French, of course) and backing him in the studio with the aid of Frampton and producer Glyn Johns, who invited them to play in this project in the first place. It was during this stay in continental Europe that the Small Faces broke up, with the 1862 album left unfinished, and the Autumn Stone compilation released in its place. Marriott formed Humble Pie with Frampton, recycling some unreleased Small Faces material for their debut, while the others joined Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, becoming simply the Faces. But what if the Small Faces had managed to finish this final album?

This reconstruction is an upgrade to my 1862 album by the Small Faces from February 2018. Here, we will try to create a version that's more faithful to what could have been released in 1969, thanks to some new information and brand new additions (and exclusions!) to my running order. Thankfully, there's a vast amount of material to choose from, so we will be worrying not about what to include, but about what to leave out of the album. "The Universal" and "Donkey Rides, a Penny, a Glass" are great songs, but since the band had the habit of releasing non-album singles, I figured they wouldn't include this pairing on the album, especially when we have so many good songs to choose from. Also excluded is "Call it Something Nice", which hails from an early 1967 session, nearly two years removed from the main 1862 sessions. With so much good material to choose from, why bother resurrecting an outtake that old? The same goes for "Picanniny", "Don't Burst My Bubble", "Every Little Bit Hurts", and any other outtake from their previous albums that have been mentioned as being in the running. We will try to keep our choices as current to the album's sessions as possible. Recordings by Humble Pie or the Faces are fair game, so long as we can prove that the songs were meant for the 1862 album or they are reworkings of older Small Faces songs. Besides that, we will be trying to include as much from the late 1968 sessions as possible. With that out of the way, here's what the album looks like:

Wide-Eyed Girl on the Wall (The Autumn Stone)

Bang! (As Safe as Yesterday Is)

Red Balloon (The Autumn Stone)

What You Will (As Safe as Yesterday Is)

The War of the Worlds (The Autumn Stone)

Wham Bam Thank You, Ma'am (The Autumn Stone)

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Buttermilk Boy (As Safe as Yesterday Is)

Evolution (Who Came First)

Growing Closer (As Safe as Yesterday Is)

Wrist Job (As Safe as Yesterday Is)

Collibosher (The Autumn Stone)

The Autumn Stone (The Autumn Stone)

Download link:

The Small Faces - 1862 (1969)

McLagan, Marriott, Jones, and Lane play one of their final gigs, January 1969.

Now that we have figured out what won't make the album, we need to figure out what will. "Wrist Job", recorded as the instrumental "The Pig Trotters" by the Small Faces, was finally recorded with lyrics for Humble Pie's debut album, making for an easy replacement. Recorded at virtually the same time as "The Pig Trotters", "The War of the Worlds" unfortunately was never recorded with lyrics, being left as an unfinished instrumental. Though our album is already quite heavy on the instrumentals, I figure it needed to make the album, as it's running short on actual Small Faces recordings. French versions of "Bang!" and "What You Will", credited as being written by Marriott/Lane, were recorded by singer Johnny Halliday in January 1969. He had the backing of the Small Faces plus Peter Frampton on guitar, in their final recording sessions as a band. Finally, Steve Marriott's son Toby has mentioned in the past that he has a song list written by his father for the 1862 album, and that supposedly includes the songs "Buttermilk Boy", "Growing Closer" and "Evolution", by Humble Pie and Ronnie Lane, respectively. We don't know how trustworthy that is, but we will take him at his word and include both songs in our version of 1862. We add to that the obvious inclusions of "Wide Eyed Girl in the Wall", "Red Balloon", "Wham Bam Thank You, Ma'am", "Collibosher" and "The Autumn Stone", all from The Autumn Stone and all dating from the main late 1968 album sessions, and we have ourselves a record!

Now, all that's left for us to do is to turn that list of songs into an album. We selected twelve songs, the same amount as in most Small Faces records, so that already goes a long way in helping us. We start off with an instrumental, "Wide Eyed Girl on the Wall", mimicking their previous record, and end on the strongest song of the bunch, Marriott's beautiful "The Autumn Stone". As was common practice back then, we have the lead single as the last song on side one, "Wham Bam Thank You, Ma'am". Other than that, we'll be sequencing this by mostly trying to avoid having two Humble Pie songs in a row, as there are a lot of them. If they stick too closely together, you might end up thinking you're listening to As Safe as Yesterday Is! We'll also be trying to keep the three instrumental tracks as far apart from each other as we can, so that it doesn't seem as if there are that many of them. Then again, apparently all three of them were unfinished backing tracks and not intentionally instrumental, meaning that if 1862 was released, they'd be fully-fledged songs, solving this problem altogether. Highlights include their cover of Tim Hardin's "Red Balloon', which was often partnered by a great live cover of "If I Were a Carpenter" that unfortunately never made it to the studio, the 3-minute edit of "Evolution" released in a Meher Baba tribute, and Ian McLagan's "Growing Closer", released by Humble Pie as he had rehearsed for a couple of weeks with the band before changing his mind and returning to the Faces.

As an album, 1862 makes for a fitting Small Faces record, showing how far they'd come from their early days and how they could adapt to the looming 1970s. The songs here are as good as the ones on Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, and with its focus on individual songs, makes for a nice transitional album that never was. It features a heavier, boogie-based sound instead of its predecessors' more folkier, psychedelic sound. Because of that, the Humble Pie songs don't even sound that off-place, being a close representation of what a heavier Small Faces with Peter Frampton would probably sound like. Of course, it would take them a few months to record (with Frampton) all the new songs and additions needed to finish this album, meaning it would come out sometime in mid-1969, being delayed by a couple of months. With side one clocking in at 20 minutes and the longer side two at 23, "Wham Bam Thank You, Ma'am" backed with "The Autumn Stone" would be the record's lead single, as originally planned before the band's breakup. The cover I've used in this upgrade was borrowed from a different blog, for variety's sake, and honestly fits with this version of the album pretty well! Quite paradoxically, Lane, Jones, and McLagan protested the band's change of style to a heavier sound only to immediately start playing just that when they became the Faces, showing us that the differences that kept them apart weren't that great after all. It's simply a shame we never got to see their evolution.

Sources:

- The Small Faces - The Autumn Stone

- Humble Pie - As Safe as Yesterday Is

- Pete Townshend - Who Came First

The Beatles - A Doll's House (1968)

The Beatles released the "Lady Madonna" b/w "The Inner Light" single in March 1968, through EMI Records. A stopgap release, it came out when the band was going on a retreat to learn Transcendental Meditation in Rishikesh, India, and would be away from the studio for a couple of months. Once there, they were under the tutelage of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, attending lessons, meditating, and spending time with their wives in bungalows. Away from the thrills London had to offer, they found themselves with a lot of free time on their hands, which then turned into songwriting time, especially for the ever-prolific Lennon and McCartney. With fellow Yogi alumnus Donovan, they learned how to fingerpick, something they would put to very good use in the nearly forty songs they wrote while in the retreat. However, after settling in, the band slowly started to lose interest in the retreat. The first to leave was Ringo two weeks in, as the food there upset his sensitive stomach, shortly followed by Paul a few weeks later. John lingered for a few weeks, before an unfounded accusation of sexual misconduct on the part of the Maharishi got to him, which infuriated him and prompted him to leave as well. That left only George, clearly the most interested in meditation of the bunch, to be the last to leave at the course's end. Once they were all back in London, they reunited at George's house in Esher and recorded demos for nearly thirty of the songs they had written, with an eye on recording them in the studio shortly.

The recording sessions finally begin in June, with one of the first things the band actually records being the "Hey Jude" single. From there, they take a more fragmented approach to recording than they had done before, with the four Beatles only appearing on half of the finished album. When they did appear, takes went up to the hundreds as the songs were recorded mostly live in the studio, and sessions started spanning the whole night up until the early hours of the morning. Further complicating things, Yoko is at John's side at every session, after the two had gotten together and recorded Two Virgins that May, and the sessions become tense and fraught with infighting. Things get so tough that their engineer since 1966, Geoff Emerick leaves in August as he's no longer able to deal with the situation. Worrying, Ringo then becomes the first Beatle to leave the band, after having a row with Paul over a drum part, coming back two weeks later to find his drumkit decorated with flowers. From there, the recording thankfully transpires more smoothly, and the decision to make a double album is made. They also decide on the working title A Doll's House, after a Henrik Ibsen play, only to find out that the title had already been taken by the group Family earlier in the year. The album finally was released in November 1968, a double album titled simply The Beatles with a totally white cover. It received massive critical acclaim, being hailed as the great follow-up to Sgt. Peppers fans had been waiting for a year and a half.

Once some time went by, however, the massive critical and commercial acclaim it received slowly began sharing space with some criticism, claiming the record was way too long and inconsistent. This criticism was even echoed by producer George Martin, who later claimed to believe they should have simply selected the strongest material and released a single album. That stance was later criticized by Beatle Paul McCartney in the Anthology interviews, where he famously said "It's great, it sold. It's the bloody Beatles' White Album, shut up!" to try to put an end to all of the controversy. However, this feeling that the White Album is a "flawed masterpiece" has led to a trend where fans all around the world select their fourteen favorites from the album and create their own custom single White Album. And what's interesting about that is that there tends to be very little overlap between one beatlemaniac's list and another, as it seems no one can decide which ones the strongest songs on the album actually were! What's also surprising is that there are a whole lot of songs that were written around the same timeframe but that were rejected from the White Album, meaning not only did they make a huge, sprawling, indulgent record, but they didn't even include all they had in hand on it, leaving many great songs such as "Child of Nature" and "Junk" on the cutting room floor. So what if they did release everything they had written that year? What if the White Album was a triple album instead of a double?

This reconstruction is an upgrade to my old A Doll's House reconstruction from 2017, which has sadly been deleted since. In it, we will try to expand the already double White Album into an absurd triple, going in the opposite direction of the "it should have been a single!" criticism. Instead of adding the new songs to the tracklist, we will make a third disc out of them, so that they don't interrupt the flow of the album (one of its biggest strengths, in my opinion), and that we maintain the original tracklist as much as possible. Given that the double LP was 30 songs long, we will be aiming to make this new disc about 15 songs long as well, averaging out the sides. There'll be a quota of three songs for George and Ringo, and twelve for John and Paul, making sure those two get roughly the same amount of songs. Only songs from the India songwriting spurt and later will be considered, meaning that as great as "Across the Universe" is, it sadly won't have a place in our album. Not to worry, however, as we have more than enough quality material to fill a record as it stands. We will prioritize recordings made by the Beatles themselves while the band still existed, but solo recordings where a Beatle plays all the instruments are fair game as well. That means there will be times when we'll be forced to use Esher demos on the album, but we can just explain those away as The Beatles inventing lo-fi twenty years before it was invented, right? With that out of the way, here's what our reconstruction looks like:

Back in the U.S.S.R. (The White Album)

Dear Prudence (The White Album)

Glass Onion (The White Album)

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (Anthology 3)

Wild Honey Pie (The White Album)

The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill (The White Album)

While My Guitar Gently Weeps (The White Album)

Happiness is a Warm Gun (The White Album)

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Martha My Dear (The White Album)

I'm So Tired (The White Album)

Piggies (The White Album)

Blackbird (The White Album)

Rocky Raccoon (The White Album)

Don't Pass Me By (Anthology 3)

Why Don't We Do It in the Road? (The White Album)

I Will (The White Album)

Julia (The White Album)

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Revolution (Past Masters)

Circles (The White Album)

Maxwell's Silver Hammer (Abbey Road)

Child of Nature (The White Album)

Teddy Boy (McCartney)

What's the New Mary Jane? (Anthology 3)

Look at Me (Plastic Ono Band)

The Long and Winding Road (Anthology 3)

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Sour Milk Sea (The White Album)

Let it Be (Let it Be)

Mean Mr. Mustard (Abbey Road)

Polythene Pam (Abbey Road)

Junk (McCartney)

Not Guilty (The White Album)

Hey Jude (Past Masters)

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Birthday (The White Album)

Yer Blues (The White Album)

Mother Nature's Son (The White Album)

Everybody's Got Something to Hide (The White Album)

Sexy Sadie (The White Album)

Helter Skelter (The White Album)

Long, Long, Long (The White Album)

-

Revolution 1 (The White Album)

Honey Pie (The White Album)

Savoy Truffle (The White Album)

Cry Baby Cry (The White Album)

Revolution 9 (The White Album)

Good Night (The White Album)

Download link:

The Beatles - A Doll's House (1968)

George Martin, Paul, Ringo, John & George recording at EMI, October 1968

The first disc of the White Album remains virtually untouched, with only "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" being replaced by the superior Ronnie Scott take (which would have saved them a couple of days of work!) and "A Beginning" being reinstated as the intro of "Don't Pass Me By". The second disc also doesn't have any changes to it, but it now becomes disc three, so that the album still ends with "Good Night" and that the bonus disc can be accommodated snuggly in between them. So with that, we're left to figure out what's gonna be on the bonus disc. The first two inclusions are rather obvious, the "Hey Jude" b/w "Revolution" single, which was a part of the WA sessions but released a few months in advance of the album. Songs that were actually recorded by the band and considered for inclusion, but left on the cutting room floor include George's "Not Guilty", "Sour Milk Sea" (which was recorded with Jackie Lomax on vocals but featured the Beatles minus John), and John's "What's the New Mary Jane?", easy additions for us. There are also the songs we know were written in India but not recorded by the band for some reason or another, we have "Child of Nature", "Teddy Boy", "Junk", "Polythene Pam", "Mean Mr. Mustard", "Circles" and "Look at Me". And finally, there's a group of songs that were written in October 1968, which were simply late arrivals and there wasn't enough time to work on them for the White Album: "Let it Be", "The Long and Winding Road" and "Maxwell's Silver Hammer".

Now, all that's left is to sequence this album accordingly. And we begin the only way possible, with "Revolution", right off Past Masters, the second version of the song to feature on the album. Following it is a song radically different in tone, the spooky Esher demo of "Circles". The lo-fi nature of it actually works toward making the song better, making it a haunting song, in the same way "Long, Long, Long" manages to be. Up next is the controversial "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", in its regular Abbey Road studio version. The only difference I see is the absence of the Moog synthesizer on the bridge, as the Beatles had yet to acquire one in 1968. Another Esher demo, John's "Child of Nature" would have been one of the highlights of the album, but was inexplicably left off before being turned into "Jealous Guy", which is way too different to be included here. Paul's solo "Teddy Boy" fits in rather well here, given that there are one or two one-man-band recordings in the White Album. John's outtake "What's the New Mary Jane" taps into the weirdness of "Wild Honey Pie" and "Revolution 9" with ease, but we've edited it down to a more manageable three minutes here, to make sure side one doesn't run long. "Look at Me" is next, a solo John recording that is eerily similar to "Julia" in arrangement and in lyrical content, which means it feels right at home on the album. And closing off the side we have the overdub-less version of "The Long and Winding Road", a nice ballad to finish off proceedings on side five.

Opening up side six is the outfake of "Sour Milk Sea", combining George's demo vocal with Jackie Lomax's backing track to create another Beatle song that never was. Given that we don't have any Ringo songs in the running, I figured it was only fair if we gave his slot to George, which means he'll get one last track further down the road. It is followed by Paul's "Let it Be", a loose version of which even made it to the White Album Deluxe Edition box set. We won't be using that, however, we'll use Take 28 of it from the Let it Be sessions, its superior version. The medley of "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam" is up next, featured in its regular Abbey Road studio version. The only difference is that instead of segueing into "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window", "Polythene Pam" simply fades out. Would these two songs have been made into a medley had they been recorded for the White Album? Probably not, but it works pretty well musically and keeps us from having two full-blown lesser songs. Paul's solo "Junk" is next, another song that fits in well on the album. There's a Beatle-era demo of it on Anthology, however, its unfinished lyrics mean we'll have to stick with the McCartney version. Finally vindicated after 100+ takes is "Not Guilty", featured in its original 1968 mix running a full 4 minutes, one of the best songs on the new disc and the one that deserves most to be here. As the album closer, we have the only possible song to end it, Past Masters' "Hey Jude" in all of its glorious 7 minutes.

With the bonus disc clocking in at nearly 47 minutes with two 23-minute sides, the entire monstrous triple album is now a two-hour-plus affair, a massive undertaking not unlike the Clash's Sandinista. Then again, a triple album is really excessive and probably not even the Beatles could have done that at the time, but this is a great imaginary exercise nonetheless, and really shows on how much of a roll the three songwriters of the band were. The two sides we've put together rival the original four in quality, but lose out in consistency as the sound quality and recording dates are all over the place, which of course wouldn't be the case in this timeline. Them having to record this many new tracks would probably also delay the album by about a month, making it a very nice Christmas gift, even if prohibitively expensive. One other thing we'll do is to reinstate the White Album's original working title of A Doll's House and its original cover, just to differentiate our efforts from the real album. Notable absences you might be noticing are "Step Inside Love", as it's a Magical Mystery Tour-era song, and "Cosmically Conscious", as it was recorded 25 years too late. Also, the download link includes only the bonus disc, because that's what this reconstruction is really about, isn't it? It's insane that the Beatles could release 45 songs in one go with the vast majority of them being very high-quality material, and given the sheer amount of outtakes available, we're not guilty if we took matters into our own hands.

Sources:

- The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions: Mark Lewisohn

- The Way to White: Kevin Howlett

- The White Album Track by Track: Kevin Howlett

The Who - 6ft. Wide Garage, 7ft. Wide Car (1970)

The Who released their fourth studio album, Tommy, through Track Records in May 1969. Their first rock opera, it was the culmination of songwriter Pete Townshend's ambition to create an album-long narrative out of his songs. It was something he'd experimented with in the past, and even hinted at with songs such as "A Quick One While He's Away" or "Rael", but this was the first time he'd managed to do it at such a scale. The album was also The Who's breakout hit in America, where it cemented the band's status among the elite of 60s rock groups and saw them perform their biggest concerts yet, performing Tommy in its entirety as the centerpiece of their set. Given its importance for their career, one question stayed on the band's mind: how the hell do you follow that up? Well, the easy way out is to release a live album, which they did, recording a live show at Leeds University in February 1970 and releasing it as a stopgap, to buy some time before needing to deliver product again. Thankfully, little by little Pete was starting to write new songs, taking a live jam the band played after "My Generation" in 1969 and turning it into "Naked Eye". Shortly thereafter, he wrote the ode to spiritual yearning "The Seeker", which became the first song to be recorded in the studio after Tommy that January at IBC studios, alongside b-side "Here for More", with both being released as a single that March.

The band then relocated to Pete's garage, repurposed and renamed Eel Pie Sound Studios, where they recorded five new songs, including the aforementioned "Naked Eye" and other new tracks such as "Now I'm a Farmer" and John Entwistle's "Postcard". Due to the very idiosyncratic location where they were recording, drummer Keith Moon jokingly came up with the title 6ft. Wide Garage, 7ft. Wide Car, which became the working title of an EP. For whatever reason, that didn't happen, and those five, alongside live staple "Heaven and Hell" which had been recorded that April at IBC Studios, remained in the vault. Undeterred, the band keeps touring, playing the Isle of Wight and other gigs, and garage songs such as "Water" and "I Don't Even Know Myself" are premiered live. However,  Pete still seemed obsessed with the idea of coming up with a new rock opera, as he didn't think simply releasing a collection of new songs would be good enough to follow up what many (himself included) considered his magnum opus. So it was good timing, when in September 1970 he wrote the song "Pure and Easy", the stepping stone of the Lifehouse concept, the concept he was searching for all year. He then abandoned this batch of songs and started anew with Lifehouse, writing 15 songs for it before it also was abandoned, unfinished. But what if they had made an album out of their 1970 sessions?

This reconstruction is an upgrade to my "7ft. Wide Car, 6ft. Wide Garage" post from March 2018. The release of the Who's Next Super Deluxe Edition last month has finally given us the complete, unedited '70s Eel Pie studio sessions, which means we can finally recreate the most accurate possible version of this lost album. But besides that, most of the rules remain the same. No overlap with Who's Next is allowed, and likewise with Lifehouse, with the only exception being made for songs that were written for the 1970 album and only later retrofitted into Lifehouse, such as "I Don't Even Know Myself". Also, only studio recordings are allowed, so as great as the Isle of Wight versions of "Water" and "I Don't Even Know Myself" are, we'll be sticking with the studio takes of them. The same goes for covers, so their medley of "Shakin' All Over/Spoonful" the band recorded for the BBC and frequently played live will sadly be omitted here. The new remixes found in the Deluxe box set will take preference over the old Odds and Sods released versions as I believe they're the closest to what would actually have been released in 1970. So we'll be using those unedited versions, and only editing or fading out when time constraints are affected, or when the take of a song simply runs too long for our taste. With all that out of the way, here's what our revamped version of this lost Who album looks like:

Heaven and Hell (New Stereo Remix)

Drowned (March 1970 Demo)

Now I'm a Farmer (Eel Pie Sound Studio - Unedited Mix)

I Don't Even Know Myself (Eel Pie Sound Studio - Unedited Mix)

Water (Eel Pie Sound Studio - Unedited Mix)

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The Seeker (Unedited Version)

Postcard (Eel Pie Sound Studio - Original 1970 Mix)

There's a Fortune on Those Hills (September 1970 Demo)

Here For More (Original Single Mix)

Naked Eye (Eel Pie Sound Studio - Unedited Mix)

Download link:

The Who - 6ft. Wide Garage, 7ft. Wide Car (1970)

Entwistle, Daltrey, Moon, and Townshend performing at the Isle of Wight, August 1970.

Coming back to the studio for the first time since finishing Tommy, The Who recorded "The Seeker" and its b-side "Here for More" in January 1970 at IBC Studios in London. Customary show opener "Heaven and Hell" was recorded shortly after that, during an April 1970 session meant for broadcast at the BBC alongside some other material, but ended up being released as the b-side to the "Summertime Blues" single from the Live at Leeds album. And finally, between March and May 1970, The Who recorded five songs meant for the unreleased 6ft. Wide Garage, 7ft. Wide Car EP at their own Eel Pie Studios: "Water", "I Don't Even Know Myself", "Now I'm a Farmer", "Postcard", and "Naked Eye". With that alone, we already have eight songs and 30+ minutes' worth of vintage 1970 Who, with five Townshend originals, two Entwistle songs, and a rare Daltrey composition. We can even give it a sequence, with customary show opener "Heaven and Hell" as the leadoff track, encore classic "Naked Eye" as the album closer, and hit single "The Seeker" opening up side two, and all the other songs being distributed accordingly where I felt they'd fit best, with four on each side. However, we still need at least one or two more songs to fill out an album, as ten songs and more or less 40 minutes is what they'd aim at during this period. Now our goal is to find two sensible additions to our reconstruction.

The first of those will be Quadrophenia's "Drowned". Demoed in March 1970 as an ode to Pete's spiritual guide Meher Baba, but seemingly forgotten or set aside until it was shoehorned into the Quadrophenia narrative with mixed results, it's featured here in its original demo version from 1970. It's a fantastic song, one of Townshend's best, and works much better away from any rock operas or concept albums, as a sign of Pete's growing spiritual concerns. The second would be "There's a Fortune in Those Hills", which was demoed in mid-1970 at roughly the same time as the first Lifehouse demos, but was never meant for the rock opera. It was, however, mentioned in a Rolling Stone article from the same period as being a song "meant for a post-Tommy studio album which got shunted aside for Lifehouse", which means the album we're trying to reconstruct here, making for a natural fit. With that, we can add those two tracks to our preliminary sequence, one to each side, and consider ourselves satisfied. "Drowned" becomes the second song on side one, making for a great one-two punch with "Heaven and Hell", while "There's a Fortune in Those Hills" fits quite snugly in the middle of side two. Also, I do believe that 1970 studio band versions of the two songs would have Roger sing lead on "Fortune" and Pete sing lead on "Drowned", as he did the better job with it out of the two in my opinion.

A 44-minute album with one 23-minute and one 21-minute side, 6ft. Wide Garage, 7ft. Wide Car is a very strong album, surely not as great as Who's Next but certainly good enough to stand up on its own among The Who's discography. A nice transitional album from Tommy to Lifehouse, giving Pete the time to develop the latter at his own pace, as the task of following up Tommy would have already been taken care of by this album. There's also no need for a lead single, as "The Seeker" already served that function, and the album's title is simply the title of the proposed EP that never got released, which I got backward in 2018. To go along with that, the artwork is an updated take on my old cover from back in the day, using the same picture but a different font and colors. The entire album, including "Drowned" and "There's a Fortune in Those Hills" was recorded in early to mid-1970, well within the constraints of this reconstruction and before Lifehouse existed, making it as consistent as it possibly can get. Speaking of which, "Drowned" could be replaced in Quadrophenia by material that's lesser in quality but which fits much better in the narrative, such as "We Close Tonight". Given the many great songs featured in this album and how easy this was to put together, it really is a shame such a record didn't come out when it was supposed to, as we missed out on the Who's very own version of Garage Rock.

Sources:

- The Who - Who's Next [Super Deluxe Edition]

- The Who - Quadrophenia [Super Deluxe Edition]

The Monkees - The Birds, the Bees and the Monkees (1968)

The Monkees released their fourth album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd., on November 6, 1967, through Colgems Records. The second album in which the band exerted creative control, it marked a departure from its predecessor Headquarters by featuring hired studio musicians in a more prominent role, with drummer Eddie Hoh playing on nearly every single song on the album. The band still performed the majority of the instruments, with Mike Nesmith's guitar and Peter Tork's keyboards prominently featured in the album, but that move signaled that the group was losing interest in playing in their own records a mere six months after they began to do so. This loss of interest became apparent as, when sessions for a new album started the very next month, producer Chip Douglas was gone and the band had diverted to their old method of recording: completely performed by studio musicians, and with a single Monkee coming in to record lead vocals. The only difference was that before, those sessions would be produced by Boyce & Hart or somebody like Jeff Barry or Carole King, and this time around they were produced by the band members themselves. Sure, they still retained the creative control Nesmith and Tork so yearned for, but the togetherness and unity of something like Headquarters was long gone. And with the TV show coming to an end, the writing seemed on the wall.

And with the ease of recording by themselves and with the best musicians in town, the floodgates opened. More than forty songs were recorded, with each Monkee essentially recording a solo album without any input from the others. From that, we got many great songs, many awful songs, and just about anything in between. And then, there came the challenge of turning this diverse and often disjointed batch of songs into an album. Executive producer Lester Sill put together a provisionary tracklist for the album in March 1968, and such was the diversity of tracks available to him, that it featured three songs that wouldn't make the cut and excluded other three songs that would. And that was weeks away from release! That alone shows that the task of turning those 40+ songs into an album was a demanding one, especially given what was at risk. The album was the last released while the TV show still existed, their only chance at creating some kind of post-TV career, and they blew it by not making the best possible record. They could very well have released another psychedelic pop classic in the vein of PAC&J with the material they had available, but simply didn't, a missed opportunity that hurt them a great deal in the long run. But what if the Monkees had managed to assemble a great album, and create the version of The Birds, The Bees, and The Monkees that should have been?

This post is an update to my The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees reconstruction from February 2019. This time, we will simply try to make the best possible album out of the songs that we know were shortlisted for inclusion on the album, walking the line between our meddling and the artists' intention. That means that for a song to be included it needed to, at the very least, have been seriously considered for the album at one point. We will do that as an abundance of songs were recorded for BB&M and it would be nearly impossible to listen to every single song and decide if it's worthy of inclusion or not, and even if I did, we'd end up with a record that was really far from what could sensibly be released back in 1968, and even further from what the band intended. Nothing included on my previous Changes reconstruction is considered, for consistency's sake, but songs included on post-Head albums that hail from the BB&M sessions will be considered, to give us a wider net to cast. Our reworked album will feature twelve tracks and a spoken word segment, just like Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd, and "Daydream Believer" is retroactively added to that album in "Hard to Believe"'s place, meaning we will only be using songs from the main November 1967/April 1968 sessions the other eleven songs hail from. Without further ado, here's what our updated reconstruction looks like:

Through the Looking Glass (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

We Were Made for Each Other (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

Writing Wrongs (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

I'll Be Back Upon My Feet (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

Valleri (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

Lady's Baby (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

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Magnolia Simms (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

P.O. Box 9847 (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

Tapioca Tundra (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

Auntie's Municipal Court (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

Alvin (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

The Girl I Left Behind Me (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

Zor and Zam (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

Download link:
The Monkees - The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees (1968)

Nesmith, Jones, Tork, and Dolenz on the set of HEAD, February 1968.

The album, as first compiled sometime in March 1968 by executive producer Lester Sill, consisted of "Through The Looking Glass", "We Were Made For Each Other", "Writing Wrongs", "I'll Be Back Up On My Feet", "Valleri" and "Long Title: Do I Have To Do This All Over Again" on side one, with "Dream World", "P.O. Box 9847", "Tapioca Tundra", "The Poster",  "Alvin", "Daydream Believer" and "Zor and Zam" making up side two. We can follow through with our new first side pretty easily in this reconstruction, as even the original March 1968 mixes of "Through the Looking Glass" and "Do I Have to Do This All Over Again" were featured in the Deluxe edition of BBM. However, since the latter was held over and used for the Head soundtrack, I felt using it would mess with our timeline too much, so I decided to substitute it with another Tork song, "Lady's Baby". It's a fair inclusion, in my view, as Sill expressed the desire to include the song on the album. The only reason why the song wasn't included in the first place is that Peter notoriously wasn't able to finish the song to his liking, creating just about a billion mixes and different arrangements, only to end up dissatisfied. We'll use the fourth mono mix with the baby noises in the intro and outro, as to me it sounds like the most finished version of the song, and it's a great addition to the record, and one that nearly happened at that.

It's side two that's going to need the most work, however. The two main offenders of the original album in terms of quality are the two Davy originals, "Dream World" and "The Poster". They stand out negatively among the nicely crafted psychedelic pop of the other ten tracks, and that's made worse by the fact that the LP actually starts with "Dream World"! If we actually want to improve on the album, we'll have to replace the two with superior songs. Thankfully, there are two songs that made it to the final album but are nowhere to be found in this alternate tracklist: "Magnolia Simms" and "Auntie's Municipal Court". They fit into the vacant spots left by the other two rather nicely, and "Magnolia Simms" in all of its lo-fi glory especially works pretty well as an opener, with its popping and clicking sounds, stuttering, and 1920s vibe. Sure to many many-a listeners check their stereo for issues! Finally, another controversial choice is removing "Daydream Believer" from the album, as it comes from the PAC&J sessions. I know it's probably the best song on the record, but it sticks out like a sore thumb among the rest of the album. I decided to replace it with a different song from the sessions that were similar in tone, if not in quality, and that could also be released as a single: "The Girl I Left Behind Me". A downgrade to be sure, but one that strangely enough benefits the album in terms of cohesion.

37 minutes long with a slightly longer side two, our revamped The Birds, the Bees and the Monkees is not as good as the two albums that came before it, but the substitutions we've made have helped create a much better album than we'd originally had. It now sounds like the logical next step for a band that was slowly going back to using studio musicians in their songs and moving away from working as a band, but still maintaining a more cohesive sound than what we got back in 1968. One flaw with this album is that it features a measly three songs sung by Davy, who was used to a much bigger share of the pie by then. However, I do consider this quota to be a fair representation of how much quality material he was able to contribute, and we can even have "Me Without You" as a non-album b-side to compensate. One thing this does have going for it, however, is that it doesn't mess much with their discography at all, as only "Through the Looking Glass" and "The Girl I Left Behind Me" were featured in any post-Head album, and they can both be easily replaced with period-accurate tracks. "I'll Be Back Up on My Feet" b/w "The Girl I Left Behind Me" would make a much better follow-up single to "Valleri", another song promoted by the TV show and a ballad with commercial potential. All in all, this makes for an album much more in tune with what the Monkees stood for in 1968, at the tail end of their golden era.

Sources:

- The Monkees - The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees [Deluxe Edition]

- The Monkees: The Day-By-Day Story of the 60s TV Pop Sensation

Neil Young - Mediterranean (1974)

Neil Young released his sixth studio album, On the Beach, in July 1974. The third chapter of the so-called Ditch Period, it was released right before Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's 1974 Reunion Tour, which reunited Young with his estranged bandmates for the first time in four years. During this period of his career, his now-infamous relationship issues with his partner Carrie Snodgress were beginning to show, with these issues becoming a strong source of inspiration for him, and the main focus of the latter period Ditch albums's songwriting. This can be clearly seen by the fact that, despite him having just finished recording a full studio album mere months ago, he spent the rehearsals for the tour (held at his own Broken Arrow Studios, no less!) writing and recording some new songs. The seven sparsely-arranged songs he recorded during these sessions divided themselves into happier songs, with lighter themes, and moodier, more depressed about his failing marriage and infidelity. The tour itself saw the live debut of three of those songs, and the writing and incorporation into CSNY's live set of a couple other tour-written songs as well. By the tour's end in August, he had about enough material for a good studio album in the can, but had no plans of recording in the near future. Instead, ahead of CSNY's planned London concert at Wembley Stadium, he traveled to Amsterdam with a couple of friends and a Dutch journalist named Constant Meijers, who documented the whole trip for a piece he would be writing on Neil,  where he got a closer look into Neil's creative process than anyone ever before. 

A new writing spree in September gave birth to some brand new songs, with most of them having two things in common: their aquatic theme and sad, brokenhearted nature, due to the state of his relationship with Snodgress. He claimed to have already written fourteen songs based on this theme and to have 37 new songs in total, with nine of those being discussed by them, with some of them already recorded before the tour started and others in the can and ready to be recorded. The common themes of those new songs made it so that Young decided to put them all together in an LP, to be titled Mediterranean. Those nine songs were its' prime contenders, and the album would be recorded on an island (it seems that Neil wanted to record it in Ibiza, Italy), and produced by Elliot Mazer. Of course, as we all know the rather volatile nature of Mr. Bernard Shakey, "technical problems prevented such sessions from ever happening. By the first few days of October 1974, he was already back home, and by November, was already recording a wholly different batch of songs, which obviously went on to become Homegrown. These new songs abandoned the slightly more positive water-themed aspects of the Mediterranean material in favor of diving face-first into his separation, with some of the most personal writing of his career. When he didn't release Homegrown either, it became a much more famous Lost Album than its immediate predecessor, which besides a passing mention in Johnny Rogan's Sixty to Zero book, is still pretty much unknown. But what if Neil Young had released Mediterranean?

This is an update to my reconstruction of the unreleased Mediterranean album, from the middle of the pandemic in November 2020. This time, we will try to create the most faithful version of the album we possibly can, no matter the overlap with Homegrown or any other issues it could present to us. That way, we are able to present as closely as possible Neil's state of mind during his ill-fated trip to Europe following the end of CSNY's 1974 tour. The songs we know to be a part of the Mediterranean or water album concept album are "Star of Bethlehem", "Mediterranean", "Vacancy", "Daughters", "Love/Art Blues", "Hawaiian Sunrise", "Frozen Man", "Deep Forbidden Lake" and "Through My Sails", will make for the core of the album, which will feature at least a couple of other songs as well. Neil has issued nine-song (or less!) albums before, so that would be fine. However, the real issue is that together, those nine songs amount to a paltry 28 minutes, pretty far from your average 1970s NY album. These new additions need to have some kind of connection to the album's concept or songs themselves, and they must fit in well period-wise and musically with the main nine in order to create a cohesive whole. Also, nothing written after September 1974 will be considered, as that's the main cut-off date to when Young abandoned the album's concept, making our selection period from May 1974 to September 1974. Four months sound like very little time, but considering the creative streak he was on during this part of his career, we'll have more than enough songs to consider. Here's what the album looks like:

Star of Bethlehem (Archives Vol. II)

Mediterranean (Archives Vol. II)

Vacancy (Archives Vol. II)

Daughters (Archives Vol. II)

Barefoot Floors (NYA Outtake)

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Love/Art Blues (Archives Vol. II)

Hawaiian Sunrise (Archives Vol. II)

Frozen Man (Archives Vol. II)

Deep Forbidden Lake (Archives Vol. II)

Bad News Comes to Town (Archives Vol. II)

Through My Sails (Archives Vol. II)

Download link:
Neil Young - Mediterranean (1974)

Neil performing with CSNY at Wembley Stadium, September 14th, 1974.

When looking through the May to September 1974 period for inclusion-worthy songs, I decided on including "Bad News Comes to Town" and "Barefoot Floors" as our two new additions. Bottom Line debuts "Long May You Run" and "Pushed it Over the End" aren't considered as there aren't any period-accurate studio versions of both available to us. That's a shame, as "Pushed it Over the End", with its mentions of ocean floors and whatnot, would actually fit in pretty well within the water concept of the album. "Pardon My Heart", "Homefires", and "The Old Homestead" are other songs from the June 1974 solo sessions that were considered, but that were excluded since they didn't fit the concept of the album too well and would sound shoehorned. Included instead of all of those, the gorgeous "Barefoot Floors" is finally given a home, as it is a very similar song to "Hawaiian Sunrise" in its themes of maternity and raising a child, fitting in like a glove concept-wise and sonically. Also included is "Bad News Comes to Town", which thanks to the photos folder of the Neil Young Archives we know to have been written in the same manuscript of the original "Star of Bethlehem" lyrics, the two of them sharing the same piece of paper. That means it can be included as well, being from the same timeframe as the Mediterranean concept, and I personally find it to be a great fit both in sound and theme. We have two additions that don't mess with the concept too much, and are good enough songs to enhance what already was an impressive collection of songs, all while managing to give a great unreleased song an album. Not bad!

Our album begins with the closest the nine-song list has to a strong album opener, "Star of Bethlehem". Since a studio version of it with the "The answer is no one in this room" bridge, as it was performed in the CSNY 1974 Tour, doesn't exist, we will have to settle for the regular studio version, as I believe the former is the way it would be featured in this album. Ironically enough, the title track "Mediterranean" was only recorded in the studio two years after the project was shelved, but its importance to the album's concept and being part of the original nine-song list means it stays on the album regardless, slotted in as track two on side one. Taking a cue from Homegrown, "Vacancy" is next, featured in its acoustic version from November 1974, slotting in much better as the solo, paranoid song it began as rather than the aggressive, electric version it would become further on up the road. "Daughters" is its regular studio version in the lack of a solo acoustic take, and "Barefoot Floors" is the gorgeous solo outtake released as an NYA exclusive a while back. "Love/Art Blues" is also featured in a late 1974 version, the middle ground between the solo version from June 1974 and the highly inebriated version from the following January, serving as a good opener for side two. "Hawaiian Sunrise" is the June 1974 take with the outro chatter edited out, and "Frozen Man", "Deep Forbidden Lake" and "Bad News Comes to Town" are their regular studio versions. Finally, we end on a similar note to Zuma, with the alternate version of "Through My Sails", as found on the Archives box set.

A 35-minute album with roughly similar sides, Mediterranean is a nearly full-on acoustic album with very little in the way of band tracks, a departure from the more diverse albums Neil would put out at the time, and maybe even a predecessor to Hitchhiker in scope and general mood. Eleven songs is an odd number, but it surely works for our purposes. And hey, After the Gold Rush is a short eleven-song album too, so we're in good company in that department. There really aren't any potential singles to be found on the album, with maybe "Star of Bethlehem" coming closest. We're firmly in Ditch territory, this is an uncompromising, uncommercial album concerned with his failing relationship, fatherhood, and the pressures of fame. When sequencing this, I took some cues from the albums some of these songs were actually released on, such as "Vacancy" in the middle of the side or "Through My Sails" as the closer, but for the rest of them, I simply worked out where they fit best and put them there. As an album, it fits in pretty comfortably within Neil's 70s discography, being as good and consistent as something like the original Homegrown, all while being different enough to stand up on its own. The album cover is my creation, a picture of him with his vintage Rolls Royce in Amsterdam, in September 1974 during the trip that inspired the Mediterranean concept itself, with some nice typography added on top. The 1970s saw the height of Neil Young's talent and some of the most complicated times he'd ever faced, with the combination of those two quite evident here, in his self-imposed holiday from fame.

Sources:

- Neil Young - Archives Vol. II (1972-1976)

- The Lost Pair: Mediterranean & Homegrown