Bob Dylan - Wallflowers (1971)

Bob Dylan released his eleventh studio album, New Morning, on October 21, 1970, through Columbia Records. Considered a return to form after the controversial Self Portrait, it was moderately successful both critically and commercially, setting detractors from the former significantly at ease. 1969 and 1970 were busy years for Bob, where he recorded and released three albums in 18 months, one of them a double. He had done quite a lot of recording, and so he spent the following year of 1971 working under a far less productive rhythm, tracking the occasional song or two without an album in mind. The first example of that came in March, when with Leon Russell in the producer's chair, "Watching the River Flow" and "When I Paint My Masterpiece" were made, with the former getting released as a single in June. From there, his next spurt of activity came a few months later that August, when he performed live at George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden, his first concert in the United States in six years and one of the greatest performances of his career, as you can see in the film.

Hot from the Bangladesh performance, he made four recordings that September with folkie Happy Traum on banjo and backup vocals. They were all re-recordings of older songs of his that he never got around to releasing on an album, there of them dating back to the Basement Tapes. These recordings were meant to enhance his Greatest Hits, Vol. II compilation, one Dylan had unusually agreed to cooperate with. At year's end in November, he was reunited with Leon Russell, taping two versions of the protest song "George Jackson", and another song that would remain unreleased for the time being. As 1972 rolled around, he performed at The Band's New Year's gig at the Academy of Music, debuting "When I Paint My Masterpiece" and ending with a rousing version of "Like a Rolling Stone". It might've seemed like the beginning of a busy year, but Dylan didn't do anything at all in 1972, going further and further into semi-retirement before being brought back to play a cowboy in a movie. It marked the end of a three-year hiatus between his albums that was nearly unheard of at the time.

But what if Bob Dylan had released a new studio album in 1971? To create this missing link between New Morning and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, we will take all the songs Bob recorded throughout the year and piece them together in the best manner we possibly can. Since "George Jackson" was released in two different versions in the same single, it shows that Bob considered both of them worthwhile, meaning we can include either of them on the record. As for the others, we will use the more common studio versions of them, one of each to avoid (too much) repetition. We will also not include any outtakes from either Self Portrait or New Morning, even though an abundance of them exist out there. It would dilute too much the purpose of our reconstruction, and Dylan didn't have the habit of putting things from the vault on new records. Older songs re-recorded during these sessions are fair game, as long as they were unreleased. This record is also studio-only, so even though he performed live twice that year, nothing from those can be included. With that, here's our album:

Watching the River Flow (Greatest Hits Vol. II)

Wallflower (The Bootleg Series Vol. I-III)

Only a Hobo (Another Self Portrait)

George Jackson (Side Tracks)

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George Jackson (Side Tracks)

When I Paint My Masterpiece (Greatest Hits Vol. II)

I Shall Be Released (Greatest Hits Vol. II)

You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Greatest Hits Vol. II)

Down in the Flood (Greatest Hits Vol. II)

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Bob Dylan - Wallflowers (1971)

Dylan and the Band performing live, December 1971.

Our choices for this album are quite simple: every single song Bob recorded in 1971. From the March sessions produced by Leon Russell, we have "When I Paint My Masterpiece" and "Watching the River Flow". From the September session with Happy Traum we have re-recordings of "Only a Hobo", "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", "Down in the Flood" and "I Shall Be Released". And finally, from the November sessions, we have both the solo acoustic and "Big Band" versions of "George Jackson" and "Wallflower". With that, we have eight songs and nine versions, clocking in at 31 minutes. That might not seem like much, but it's already longer than Nashville Skyline, meaning it's well within the realm of possibility. We could have included some New Morning outtakes such as "Tomorrow is a Long Time", which was featured on Greatest Hits in a live version from 1963, or his cover of "Spanish is the Loving Tongue", which was the b-side to "Watching the River Flow", but the fact that we've managed to break the 30-minute barrier tells us to keep well enough alone.

Including two versions of "George Jackson" might seem like cheating on our part, but the fact that Dylan later did the same thing with "Forever Young" on Planet Waves sets a precedent that we'll be happy to indulge in, given the dearth of material available to us. When it comes to sequencing, I mostly followed the track listing to Greatest Hits Vol. II, as that's where the vast majority of the songs here were released, and shows us how Dylan might have dealt with that material, as well as giving us a nice framework from which to start. With that in mind, we also kick things off with "Watching the River Flow", and side two has the four last songs on GH2 in the very same order they were featured there, making "Down in the Flood" the album closer. The big band version of "George Jackson" closes off side one, and the acoustic version opens side two, again taking a cue from "Forever Young"'s placement on Planet Waves. With that, all we need to do is fill out the first side with "Wallflower" and Greatest Hits Vol. II outtake "Only a Hobo", which only saw release twenty years later, and our work is mostly done.

Wallflowers is a transitional album, his first not to be produced by Bob Johnston since Bringing it All Back Home and part of a move away from straight country music started on New Morning the previous year. The fact that this album features four re-recordings of older material, which weren't released in any other Dylan studio album before this one but were already widely known through other artists' recordings. For that reason, I can see contemporary critics labeling it as lazy or uninspired, which is a fair criticism, even though all four of those versions are quite good. You could even make the argument that this is a sequel to Self Portrait, only this time he's paying homage to his own past work and not other people's. It was titled after what I think is the best song on the album, a gentle country ballad that was inexplicably the only 1971 original composition Bob didn't release at the time. It would surely be interesting to see this coming out instead of Greatest Hits Vol. II, filling a pretty big hole in Bob's life where he had become reclusive and unproductive, himself a Wallflower.

Sources:

- Still on the Road: 1971 Recording Sessions

- Clinton Heylin - Revolution in the Air

The Beatles - Introducing the Beatles (1962)

The Beatles entered Decca Studios in London on New Year's Day 1962, for their first-ever audition for a record label. Nervous, hungover from the previous night's celebration, and unable to use their own amplifiers, they struggled through fifteen songs, which were chosen as they best represented their live act at the time. The audition came about because Decca had been going through a major reshuffling in its roster, necessitating new artists, and through Brian Epstein's ties with Decca (he did own Liverpool's biggest record store, after all), he got them to do a Commercial Test, as they were called. Newly hired A&R man Mike Smith was the one put in charge of finding new talent, and even though he wasn't very impressed with their performance (especially with their drummer), he still thought them worthwhile and wanted to sign them. But because of company policy, Decca insisted he only sign one act out of the two he had recently auditioned: he'd get either Brian Poole and the Tremeloes or the Beatles. He went with the more professional and established Tremeloes, as they were the safer bet, and the Beatles drifted for a while before signing with Parlophone six months later. And the rest, as they say, is history.

But what if the Beatles had passed their Decca audition? To answer that question, we will be presenting the fifteen Decca audition songs as if they were the Beatles' first studio album, with all the necessary substitutions and tweaks being made for it to slide in easily along with the rest of the Beatles' discography. That means we will be removing any songs that were featured in actual Beatles albums, trying to make this into a standalone collection of songs, a snapshot of the Beatles during the Pete Best era. It will be presented in the order it was recorded, which means we'll forego any sequencing, and only songs that either feature Pete Best on drums or are known to be performed with him will be considered. Given that it was common practice in the UK to have recordings from auditions be released as an artist's first single at the time, it's not as insane as it seems to have the audition itself be commercially released, though it was rare to have artists release albums right out of the gate. Some suspension of disbelief will be needed, of course, as we'll be working within very tight constraints, but I'm sure we can put together a decent album with what we have. With that out of the way, here's what our Decca album looks like:

Like Dreamers Do (The Decca Tapes)

The Sheik of Araby (The Decca Tapes)

To Know Her is to Love Her (The Decca Tapes)

Take Good Care of My Baby (The Decca Tapes)

Memphis, Tennessee (The Decca Tapes)

Sure to Fall (The Decca Tapes)

One After 909 (Cavern Club Rehearsal)

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Hello Little Girl (The Decca Tapes)

Three Cool Cats (The Decca Tapes)

Crying, Waiting, Hoping (The Decca Tapes)

September in the Rain (The Decca Tapes)

Besame Mucho (The Decca Tapes)

Searchin' (The Decca Tapes)

Love of the Loved (The Decca Tapes)

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The Beatles - Introducing the Beatles (1962)

Harrison, Best, McCartney & Lennon rehearsing at the Cavern in early 1962.

First of all, we need to get rid of the two songs that were later featured on With the Beatles in late 1963: "Money (That's What I Want)" and "Till There Was You", to avoid repetition. Now down to thirteen songs, our next task is to find one more tune to fill out the album and have it be a 14-track record, like all other Beatles records up to 1966. And although recordings from the Best era are pretty hard to come by, we do have a few candidates, such as a cover of Roy Orbison's "Dream Baby", recorded for their first BBC appearance later that March, and Joe Brown's "A Picture of You", also recorded for the BBC in June. The Lennon/McCartney original "One After 909", the only other original in their live repertoire by January 1962, survives as recorded in a rehearsal at the Cavern taped that August, with one caveat: Ringo's on drums. Pete had already been sacked by the time it was captured, so to include it, we'd have to deal with that anachronism. Given that they only performed three originals for Decca, "One After 909" seems like the most sensible inclusion, and we'll have to leave it to our imaginations as to what a version with Pete would have sounded like, had they recorded it properly for Decca in January 1962.

Clocking in at 33 minutes, Introducing the Beatles is a very capable, if not brilliant, debut album, one that shows both the strengths and weaknesses of the Beatles as they were in 1961. It's not, of course, anywhere near the level of any of their other studio albums, but as a curiosity, it does quite a good job. Would it have sold well? Who knows, but with "Hello Little Girl" b/w "Like Dreamers Do" as the first single, the two most immediately commercial and poppy songs performed at the audition, I'd say they'd have at least a fair shot at making the top 50. We title our reconstruction Introducing the Beatles as it sounds like the kind of generic first album title Decca would probably come up with, and it fits this collection of songs well. As for the album cover, it was made by AndrewskyDE over at SHF, and was one of the main inspirations behind this reconstruction, using one of the Beatles' best photos with Pete Best and the original Beatles logo as designed by Paul McCartney. So thanks to him! While Ringo and George Martin's absences are very much felt, this proves to be an invaluable document of the Beatles at their rawest, captured nervously trying to convince the Decca suits that their dream was worth it.

Sources:

- Mark Lewisohn - Tune In [Extended Edition]

- The Beatles - The Decca Tapes [Bootleg]