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)

-

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

Faces - Open to Ideas (1975)

Ronnie Lane left the Faces in June 1973. This departure was a long time coming, seen as many issues plagued the band by the time 1973 rolled around: Lane's folkier tendencies were incompatible with the rest of the band, who much preferred to play rock and roll, and lead singer Rod Stewart's neglected the band due to his concurrent solo career, which was starting to take off in the US. Such was his neglect that the last Faces album to feature Lane, Ooh La La, was almost entirely led by him, with Stewart's contributions few and far between. As if that wasn't enough, soon after the record was released, Rod gave an interview where he badmouthed the album and criticized its songs, which incensed Ronnie and became the final straw: he quit the band and started a solo career. Wasting no time, the group replaced him with Japanese bassist Tetsu Yamauchi, who had already replaced bassist Andy Fraser in Free, and toured for the better part of 1973. For the next year, the band recorded some non-album singles but seemed directionless, with sessions for a purported fifth studio album in January 1975 going nowhere and plans ending up scrapped. After a final US tour in December 1975, Ronnie Wood quit to join the Rolling Stones, with whom he'd already toured, and replace Mick Taylor, and the band finally ended for good. But what if the Faces had managed to release a final studio album?

This post is an update to my June 2018 fifth Faces album, titled Open to Ideas. This time around, we will try to create an album that doesn't feature anything that's already on any albums by Ronnie Wood or Rod Stewart. That way, we'll have something that can coexist with the rest of the Faces' discography as well as their members' solo careers without any issues or overlap in songs. To do so, anything they recorded or released after Ooh La La is fair game for our intent. That means songs from the August 1973 to January 1975 period will be considered, which admittedly is a pretty long span of time. But it's pretty much the only way we could make this work, given the dearth of material available from this time period. All songs will feature Tetsu Yamauchi on bass, as he replaced Ronnie Lane right after the release of Ooh La La, with one notable exception which will be explained later. Again, since there's not much material up for consideration and all the songs are pretty long, I figured eight songs and 35 minutes is more than enough for a full-length Faces album, given their track record. We will be including covers, as the band had the habit of including those in their albums, but the majority of songs on the album will be originals. But even with two songs less, it's still a couple of minutes longer than its predecessor! With that out of the way, here's what our updated Open to Ideas album looks like:

You Can Make Me Dance, Sing, or Anything (Five Guys Walk Into a Bar)

As Long as You Tell Him (Five Guys Walk Into a Bar)

Gettin' Hungry (Five Guys Walk Into a Bar)

Rock Me (Five Guys Walk Into a Bar)

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Pool Hall Richard (Five Guys Walk Into a Bar)

Jodie (The Mercury Collection)

Hi Heel Sneakers/Everybody Needs Somebody to Love (Five Guys Walk Into a Bar)

Open to Ideas (Five Guys Walk Into a Bar)

Download link:
Faces - Open to Ideas (1975)

Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart performing during the Faces' final US tour, late 1975.

Ooh La La outtake "Jodie" was re-recorded shortly after the album's sessions were finished in August 1973 and issued as the b-side to a Rod Stewart solo single. It does feature Ronnie Lane on bass, but given that it was recorded after Ooh La La was finished and wasn't included in any album either by the Faces or Rod, I decided to include it. From November 1973 is the single "Pool Hall Richard", and from nearly a year afterward in October 1974 comes another single, "You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything", along with its b-side "As Long as You Tell Him". All three are pretty good, poppy songs that were probably never meant for an album in the first place, but given our limitations have to find their homes here. From January 1975, come the proper fifth album sessions themselves, which yielded originals "Rock Me" and "Open to Ideas", as well as covers of the Beach Boys' "Gettin' Hungry", and as a rhythm and blues classics medley consisting of Tommy Tucker's "Hi Heeled Sneakers" and Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love". Sure, featuring four previously released songs in an album is a bit excessive, but by having those singles serve as side openers and the newly recorded material filling up the record, we can strike a pretty good balance between the old and the new through sequencing, and what we end up with is a pretty cohesive album in spite of its issues.

The album is titled Open to Ideas after the strongest of the original songs, which is accompanied by original artwork I put together with a photo of the band from 1974. Good pictures of the Faces with Tetsu are pretty hard to come by, so it was a lucky thing that photo was available. No new singles would be pulled out from this album as three songs were already released as singles, and frankly, there really aren't any songs left that could do well in the charts. The band certainly suffers from Ronnie Lane's absence, as his songwriting, singing, and bass playing were integral to the band's sound, and however serviceable Yamauchi was as a bass player, he wasn't able to replace Lane to that level. However, this proves that even without him they'd be able to create a perfectly able farewell album that featured what the band could do best: play some good rock and roll. This certainly doesn't reach the heights the Faces reached with their classic records, but I don't think anyone was expecting anything of the sort from a band that was, at that point neglected by their lead singer and double-timed by their lead guitarist, who would become a Rolling Stone later that year. This reconstruction is a great glimpse into an often-forgotten era of the band, giving a home to outtakes and hit singles alike, and chronicling their dysfunctional final days before they either joined the competition or crossed the Atlantic.

Sources:
- Faces - Five Guys Walk Into a Bar

- Rod Stewart - The Mercury Collection

- Woodworks 1957/1975: Ronnie Wood Chronology

Pink Floyd - Spare Bricks: Music from the Film "The Wall" (1982)

"Pink Floyd – The Wall", released in 1982 through MGM Studios, is a feature film based on the album of the same name. Directed by Alan Parker with a screenplay by band member Roger Waters, the film project first started out as a concert film of the band's Earls Court residency, to be interceded by newly filmed footage, such as Gerald Scarfe animations and dramatical scenes starring Roger Waters as Pink. However, at some point, the live footage was deemed unusable (it was apparently "too dark") and so the film became a straight adaptation of the original album, with Bob Geldof taking on the role of Pink and any live music being dropped. From then, the film had a considerably troubled production, with Parker and Waters constantly clashing over the direction of the film, and both describing the experience as extremely unpleasant and miserable by the end of it. However, by its release, The Wall was a success, managing to receive generally positive reviews and to gross 22 million dollars at the box office by early 1983. Said success led to a renewed interest in the record, already three years old by that point, which made Pink Floyd's label EMI become interested in releasing a soundtrack album to the movie. After all, some of the songs were altered or re-recorded to be featured in the movie, and two new tracks were featured in the movie: "When the Tigers Broke Free", newly recorded and split into two parts, and outtake "What Shall We Do Now". However, Waters and the rest of the band decided against the idea, as that wasn't enough to warrant a soundtrack. But they did become interested in a different approach: combining the re-recordings with outtakes and new songs related to the concept to form a new album.

That new project, the adequately titled Spare Bricks, would be able to give a home to the re-recorded soundtrack songs while simultaneously giving a home to songs meant for The Wall but left unreleased, or new songs meant to flesh out the album's narrative, essentially a best of both worlds scenario. The sessions for it began in July 1982, with the band managing to record the basics to some six new tracks, all of them in some way related to the Wall concept. However, Roger Waters was still not fully satisfied with the direction of the album. The Falklands conflict, which started earlier that year, weighed heavily on his mind, as did his dissatisfaction with how the film turned out, which combined spelled disaster for the Spare Bricks concept. It led Waters to write new material inspired by his feelings about the conflict and the state of English politics in the age of Thatcherism, adapting the previously recorded songs and creating the highly personal concept of Requiem for the Post-War Dream, later retitled simply to The Final Cut. This decision was also one that further alienated Floyd member David Gilmour. He also wasn't very enthusiastic about the Spare Bricks concept, but The Final Cut barely even features any contributions by him, be it by songwriting, singing, or even guitar playing. He did ask for some time to write some material of his own to contribute to the album, but was denied by Waters, who felt he was on a roll and could finish the album quickly and to his liking alone. With Gilmour thrown to the side, Richard Wright long gone by this point, and Nick Mason a secondary presence, the band had essentially broken up by the time the album was released. But what if Pink Floyd had released Spare Bricks?

This reconstruction is an upgrade to the very first post on the blog, dating from January 2018. We will be tackling the unreleased Spare Bricks album, again trying to put together the best possible version of this lost Pink Floyd album. Between re-recordings and film exclusives we have "When the Tigers Broke Free", "Mother", "What Shall We Do Now?", "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3", "In the Flesh", "Bring the Boys Back Home" and "Outside the Wall". Of those, most are pretty safe bets for inclusion, with the exceptions of "In the Flesh" and "Mother", which Waters thought didn't translate well going from the soundtrack to the album, and "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3" was surplus to requirements. While I disagree when it comes to the gorgeous version of "Mother" used in the film, the other two are pretty fair assessments, especially considering no version of "In the Flesh" without film noise obscuring most of the song exists. The songs recorded before Spare Bricks became The Final Cut were "The Hero's Return", "Paranoid Eyes", "Your Possible Pasts", "The Fletcher Memorial Home", "The Final Cut" and "The Post-War Dream". Again, not all of those would have been included, and songs that go beyond both lists and could have been recorded for the project had world politics gone a different way won't be considered, even those that have a clear and indisputable link with either the album or the movie. Our goal then is to create the closest approximation we possibly can to what an accurate version of Spare Bricks would look like in 1982. With that out of the way, here's what I've managed to come up with:

When the Tigers Broke Free (The Wall Soundtrack)

Mother (The Wall Soundtrack)

The Hero's Return (The Final Cut)

Paranoid Eyes (The Final Cut)

What Shall We Do Now? (The Wall Soundtrack)

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Bring the Boys Back Home (The Wall Soundtrack)

Your Possible Pasts (The Final Cut)

The Fletcher Memorial Home (The Final Cut)

The Final Cut (The Final Cut)

Outside the Wall (The Wall Soundtrack)

Bonus tracks:

Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3 (The Wall Soundtrack)

In the Flesh (The Wall Soundtrack)

The Post-War Dream (The Final Cut)

Download link:

Pink Floyd - Spare Bricks: Music from the Film "The Wall" (1982)

Roger Waters as pictured during the filming of Pink Floyd - The Wall, early 1982.

Starting off with two songs that are practically guaranteed to have been part of the Spare Bricks album, both sides of the "When the Tigers Broke Free" b/w "Bring the Boys Back Home" are featured here, the only official release of any songs from the film. All other movie pieces will be sourced from cleaned-up DVD rips of the soundtrack. Sure, they're not release quality or anything but the work put behind them by fans is admirable and they're quite usable. Most, like "Mother", "In the Flesh" and "Outside the Wall" have new, completely different arrangements, while "What Shall We Do Now?" was cut from the album at the last minute but restored for the movie because of its narrative importance. Spare brick "The Hero's Return" is featured in an extended version, as released on the b-side of the "Not Now John" single, presenting the complete story of the teacher as a WW2 veteran suffering from PTSD.  "The Fletcher Memorial Home" is featured without the spoken word interlude, which tied it down too much with the concept of the Final Cut and 1980s politics. Other than those two, all other spare bricks are featured in their regular album versions. Roger Waters's solo track "The Moment of Clarity" wasn't recorded during these sessions, but was recited by Bob Geldof following "Stop" during the movie, later being featured in Roger's first solo LP. Unfortunately, as the song is a core part of the Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking concept and wasn't recorded by Pink Floyd, it cannot be included on the album. Coming from later on in the Final Cut sessions is "One of the Few", a song that dates back to the original Wall demos as "Teach", with its absence owing to the fact that it wasn't recorded in time for Spare Bricks.

Speaking of songs that won't make the cut, "In the Flesh" isn't included as it was sung by Bob Geldof and features no members of Pink Floyd, which wouldn't make sense in a Pink Floyd album, and Roger didn't consider it one of the main contenders for the Spare Bricks album in the first place. In addition, "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3" is so similar to its album version that there's no point in including it in this reconstruction, and Roger didn't have many plans for it either. When it comes to the mid-1982 sessions, "The Post-War Dream" is also omitted from the album, even though it hailed from the Spare Bricks era, as its lyrics are way too tied up with the critique of Thatcherism or the general conceptual narrative of the Final Cut album. "Sexual Revolution", which got as far as being demoed by the band in late 1978, wasn't considered for the Spare Bricks project, as Waters was probably already holding it back for use in the Pros and Cons album. As for the tracklist, the album is sequenced within the rough narrative structure of the album and movie, as it's the only way this combination of new songs and re-recorded soundtrack pieces could ever make sense as a cohesive record. This also helps show the narrative function of the newer songs, be it to humanize the Teacher and connect him to the impact of WW2 in young Pink's life ("The Hero's Return"), to portray Pink's fragile psyche and insecurities through a lens of "stiff upper lip" English culture ("Paranoid Eyes"), or to further document Pink's descent into self-destruction and reminiscing ("Your Possible Pasts", "The Fletcher Memorial Home", "The Final Cut"), fleshing out the album's narrative and giving it depth it didn't previously have.

A 40-minute album that's divided evenly into five songs from the film and five newer unheard songs, Spare Bricks is the realization of a very interesting concept, that most certainly would lead to the newer songs being much better received than they ended up being. The Final Cut album is already heavily criticized for consisting of "The Wall leftovers", so admitting to it up front and giving the songs the necessary context certainly eases the criticism, even if some of the highlights of the album aren't featured here. If you wanted to you could shoehorn "The Post-War Dream" into side two, but I find the selections I've made create the strongest possible album. I'm also not sure what would happen to the rest of the Final Cut's material, written after the Falklands conflict began, with them being shoehorned into The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking to turn it into a double album or not written at all. But maybe Waters could have written a new album from scratch about the Falklands War, with more involvement from Gilmour as he'd have time to write some songs, something he complained about quite a bit during the TFC sessions. The second single off this project would probably be "Your Possible Pasts" b/w "The Final Cut", a planned single off The Final Cut that for whatever reason never ended up being released. It obviously wouldn't be a hit single, but I could see it doing ok. The great album cover seen here is taken from the I Design Album Covers Tumblr, which is much more Hipgnosis than Gerald Scarfe but still works great. Given that forty years have passed and the soundtrack to The Wall remains unreleased, this might be the closest we'll ever get to seeing these spare bricks slotted back where they belong.

Sources:

- The Wall Soundtrack - Sequenced and Extended by }{eywood

- Pink Floyd - The Final Cut

- Pink Floyd - When the Tigers Broke Free [7" single]

- Pink Floyd - Not Now John [7" single]

- Pink Floyd - Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd

- The Wall Complete: The Missing Songs from Pink Floyd the Wall

George Harrison - George Harrison (1969)

George Harrison left the Beatles on January 10, 1969. Many factors weighed heavily on his decision, such as the creative clashes he was having with both John and Paul over the arrangements of songs on the Get Back project, the increase in his songwriting quality from 1968 onwards not being followed by an increase of his quota of songs on the albums, and others. The fact that he spent Thanksgiving 1968 in Woodstock with Bob Dylan & the Band and came out impressed with their communal attitude towards making music and general camaraderie, only to be greeted by the tensions of Apple and the supremacy of Lennon/McCartney certainly didn't help, with his long-held feelings of being a second-class Beatle coming to a boil. He was convinced to return a week later under certain stipulations, such as moving the sessions from Twickenham film studios to their own Apple Studios and nixing any plans of performing live. The sessions then see renewed enthusiasm and newly cordial relations from there onward, with the Get Back project coming to a satisfying closure on the 31st. Shortly afterward, Harrison considers the idea of releasing a solo album, following the advice given to him by John Lennon. That way, he'd return reinvigorated to the newest Beatles project and have a creative outlet where he could use all of his surplus material. He took a tentative first step toward that on his birthday, February 25, 1969, where he recorded demos for three songs that weren't used in the previous month's sessions alone on his guitar.

Unfortunately, plans didn't get much further than that. His dedication was instead given to producing many Apple-related projects and artists such as Billy Preston and Doris Troy, and recording the Abbey Road album with the Beatles. During those sessions, he is given a considerably larger role creatively, since John is sidelined due to a car crash. He collaborates much closer with Paul and contributes the two songs which are arguably the highlights of the album, "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun". The former even warranted George's first A-side of a Beatles single, showing how far he'd come since he wrote 1963's "Don't Bother Me". Because of this newly found prestige, it seems that after the tentative February session, George decided against releasing a solo album while the Beatles still existed, shifting his attention elsewhere. After the Abbey Road album is finished Harrison again dedicates himself to producing Apple signees and tours as a sideman with Delaney and Bonnie, still seemingly not worried about starting a solo career. He talked about it but didn't seem to commit to it completely, maybe due to a bit of lingering self-doubt because of the years of being taken for granted. He only started work on the All Things Must Pass album the month after the McCartney press release, when there was absolutely no doubt that the Beatles had split and he basically had no option but to become a solo artist. But what if he had recorded his first solo album while the Beatles still existed?

This reconstruction is an update to my George Harrison solo debut essay from April 2019. But this time around, George doesn't quit the Beatles, and follows John's advice of simply recording a solo album concurrently with the band to "let all of the songs out". Because of that, songs released by the Beatles will not be considered for this album, as we aim to create a simple, standalone solo album that could fit alongside the Beatles' recorded output in late 1969. Another change is that the deadline for the songs to be written is shortened to May 1969 from the original August 1969, meaning this album would have been recorded during a break in the recording of Abbey Road, from May to June 1969. Songs that were released later on when George actually started his solo career are obviously given the preference, as he thought of them highly enough to record less than a year later. We'll be aiming at about ten tracks for the record, as was the norm by then, and we've got some pretty long songs on our shortlist. As Harrison hadn't met or worked with Phil Spector yet, we will try to avoid using his Wall of Sound as much as we possibly can, which means we will be using the alternate takes of the songs as released on the deluxe edition of All Things Must Pass. It was a last resort, as the 2020 remixes are, well, horrible, and those alternate takes provide us with the only quality reverb-free alternatives to the original album versions, something that's a prerequisite for our goals. With that out of the way, here's what the album looks like:

What is Life? (Take 1)

Let it Down (Take 1)

The Art of Dying (Take 1)

All Things Must Pass (Day 1 Demo)

Isn't it a Pity? (Take 27)
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I'd Have You Anytime (Take 5)

Wah-Wah (Take 1)

Window, Window (Day 2 Demo)

Run of the Mill (Take 36)

Hear Me Lord (Take 5)

Download link:
George Harrison - George Harrison (1969)

George as photographed in his Esher home, April 1969.

Of the ten songs I selected for this reconstruction, nine were eventually released on All Things Must Pass and the other was offered/played to the Beatles during the Get Back sessions four times, which I considered indication enough that it was a contender and worthy of inclusion. "Isn't it a Pity?" and "The Art of Dying" possibly date all the way back to late 1966, while "Let it Down", "All Things Must Pass" and "I'd Have You Anytime" are the fruit of his visit to Dylan & the Band in upstate New York on Thanksgiving 1968. "Wah Wah", "Window Window", and "Hear Me Lord" are all from the January 1969 Get Back sessions, "Run of the Mill" dates to February 1969, and finally the late inclusion "What is Life" comes from the May 1969 sessions for Billy Preston's first Apple album. I didn't consider others known to date from this period such as "Dehra Dun" or "Nowhere to Go" as they were seemingly forgotten by Harrison himself, who never seemed to consider them good enough to record or suggest to the Beatles. These alternative versions range from radically different interpretations ("Let it Down", "Art of Dying", "Run of the Mill"), to virtually unchanged with just about everything in between, with varying degrees of success. The more subdued "Let it Down" is beautiful, while the faster "I'd Have You Anytime" sounds somewhat clunky. But something that every single song here does benefit from is the lack of the obnoxious amounts of reverb added by Spector to the finished product.

The two songs that are straight-up demos, "All Things Must Pass" and "Window Window" do stick out some from the rest due to their especially unfinished sound, but not in a particularly intrusive way. The fact that the latter is such a simple song certainly helps, as there's not else much you could do with it. And as we're dealing with outtakes, some amount of editing was needed, which mainly consisted of cutting out studio chatter and fading out the tracks before they ended abruptly. Once that was done, this sounded pretty much like a finished album! The rougher, less polished sound seems much more like a conscious choice, inspired by his obsession with Music from Big Pink, than anything else. When it comes to sequencing, I chose to have "What is Life" as the album opener, as it's as close to an energetic album opener as we have, with the rest taking their cues from ATMP. It's a no-brainer to finish side one with "Isn't it a Pity?" and side two with the nearly nine-minute epic "Hear Me Lord", and "I'd Have You Anytime" works pretty well on side two. As to the sessions themselves, this album would've been recorded with a smaller group of friends, such as keyboardists Nicky Hopkins and Billy Preston, bassist Klaus Voormann, and drummers Ringo Starr and Tony Newman, with Delaney and Bonnie and their friends nowhere to be seen. His buddy Eric Clapton was on tour with Blind Faith at this moment, meaning George would tackle all of the guitar parts himself.

A self-titled album to signify the beginning of a solo career, this alternate debut is 44 minutes long with two 22-minute sides, a little bit on the long side for the era but nothing too worrisome. The album cover, as edited by myself, is a photo of George's dating from April 1969, with the Apple Records logo added on top. "What is Life" b/w "Isn't it a Pity?" would make for the ideal lead single in my view, with both a rocker and a ballad that have the potential to become hits, propelled by his name. As for technical details, this album would have probably been self-produced by Harrison and recorded from February to August 1969, which means its sound would have been much closer to, say, Living in the Material World than to the overblown, epic sound of the All Things Must Pass album, something I find we've managed to mimic here. The material as presented in this reconstruction also seems much more like a logical next step from the White Album and Abbey Road than the starkly different sound of the All Things Must Pass, and the more laid-back, stripped-down sound benefits these songs significantly. In terms of quality, it is as consistent and can withstand repeated listening with the same ease as something like the Abbey Road album, which is quite an achievement in itself. It's both a shame and a pity that George couldn't find a way to reconcile his growing prowess as a songwriter with his duties as a Beatle, an alternate path that could've preserved the band and many friendships within it.

Sources:

- I Me Mine: George Harrison
- All Things Must Pass [50th Anniversary Edition]