The Rolling Stones - Confessin' The Blues (1964)

 

CONFESSIN' THE BLUES

1. Down The Road Apiece

2. I Can't Be Satisfied

3. Confessin' The Blues

4. Empty Heart

5. Don't You Lie To Me

6. What A Shame

7. Time Is On My Side

8. It's All Over Now

9. Look What You've Done

10. If You Need Me

11. 2120 South Michigan Avenue

12. Around And Around

_________________________________________________________________________

    Hiya! This is Confessin' The Blues, an album recorded in 1964 by some young, sloppy Rolling Stones at the legendary Chess Studios (located at 2120 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago; interestingly, the Nation Of Islam's famous leader Elijah Muhammad lived down the street at 6116 for a while). To properly describe the importance of Chess, I'm going to quote some passages from Martin Chilton's well-written piece about those sessions, published on January 15, 2025 on Udiscovermusic.com; "'The Rolling Stones No.2': Mick And Keith's Love Letter To Chess Records."

    The studios were regarded as the home of Chicago blues and the place where the Rolling Stones' heroes, such as Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry, had cut much of the music that had inspired them in the first place [indeed, their name was taken from a Muddy Waters track] . . . Bass guitarist Bill Wyman said he could still remember his bandmates' looks of disbelief when Waters came out to help them with their bags . . . "We thought we'd died and gone to heaven," said [lead guitarist] Keith Richards . . . "The blues stars were gentlemen and so interested in what we were doing... you figure you're gonna walk in and they'd think, Snooty little English guys and a couple of hit records. Not at all. I got the chance to sit around with Muddy Waters and Bobby Womack, and they just wanted to share ideas. And you were expecting, 'Oh, English kids making money out of me,' and it could well have happened. But they wanted to know how we were doing it, and why we wanted to do it." . . . [As well,] the Chess musicians were pleased to get royalties from the versions by the young English musicians . . . [as, in the words of Allen Toussaint, the Rolling Stones] would know how to roll my song all the way to the bank."

The Rolling Stones' debut album from 1964. The North American version

removed a track, tacked a song onto the beginning, and overlaid a pile of

promo text onto the cover. Apparently the band really had to fight their

label to get a textless cover on the original European release.

    Indeed, the makeup of songs on Confessin' The Blues is quite telling of the musicians that they were spending time with at the studio; "I Can't Be Satisfied" and "Look What You've Done" are Muddy Waters originals; "Down The Road Apiece," "Confessin' The Blues," and "Don't You Lie To Me" had each been covered by Chuck Berry, who himself wrote "Around And Around;" Bobby Womack's "It's All Over Now" became the Stones' first #1 hit in their home country; also, "Time Is On My Side" had just been covered by Irma Thomas, and "If You Need Me" was a Wilson Pickett song covered by Solomon Burke. The difference is made up by two tracks composed by members of the band, "Empty Heart" and the instrumental "2120 South Michigan Avenue," and one early Jagger/Richards composition called "What A Shame." It must be noted that the Stones' cover of "Don't You Lie To Me" had the "You" dropped from the title upon its release, which I decided to reinstate to make it clear what song they're covering.

    What separates this album from the rest of their projects is that while they were making it, they were in dialogue with, receiving tips, and generally learning from some of the African American musicians whose music they so adored. While much of their early career was spent recording versions of these tracks that many people deemed to be "plastic soul" (the Beatles' Rubber Soul is a play on that label), Confessin' The Blues is undoubtedly, directly as a result of that dialogue, the least plastic-y that they ever recorded, at least during this early stage of their career. In the words of Sly Stone (from his autobiography), "you have to live the blues to sing about the blues," and I don't mean to say that this band, mostly made up of privileged university dropouts, had suddenly lived lives of intense hardship, but the artistic influence of their African American idols lends a degree more of authenticity to their sound than is otherwise present, generally speaking.

The Rolling Stones No.2, their second European album. The cover photo

was overlaid with text on the band's second North American album, 12x5,

which was more or less a cross between this album and the EP.

    The cover art that I chose to use is that of the Five By Five EP, which was released two months after the Chess sessions in June 1964 and was made up of five of the songs tracked there. Like their first two official European albums, the cover is a textless band photo, but this one has a background that's blue instead of black (which is partly why I chose "Confessin' The Blues" as the title track). The different colour palette also reflects a big change in sonics compared to nearly all of their other recordings from this era; their usual low-fidelity near-garage rock mono sound is polished into lush, high-fidelity stereo by the steady hands of the in-house Chess team. It was an excellent studio with a very hi-fi sound, complete with two echo chambers that lend a lot to its' distinctive sound: compare this Stones number to this Muddy Waters one to hear it. Anyways, this is resultingly their first and only full-stereo album up until 1966's Aftermath (the recording of which began the December prior), but the balance of instrument and vocal volumes is much better on Confessin' The Blues than on Aftermath. In fact, these stereo mixes are so good that they didn't even bother to mix the tracks to mono, as they did for pretty much every song up until 1968. All tracks have been sourced from the excellent 2002 remasters, bar four. "Empty Heart," "Confessin' The Blues," and "Around And Around" had tape startup issues, so I have used versions with subtle remastering done by Prof Stoned which have that problem corrected. As well, the song "Don't You Lie To Me" was released much later on than all of the others, and when it was its stereo mix was for some reason significantly narrowed. I went with Prof Stoned's remaster of the original wide mix from a nice-sounding bootleg to keep the track in line with everything else on the album, sonically speaking. 

    Like many of their contemporaries, substantially different albums were released in Europe and North America in the '60s. Unlike these contemporaries, however, it was the band themselves (as well as their management) who compiled both versions of their catalogue, meaning that they are both equally artistically authentic (unlike, say, the Beatles' North American albums, which were mostly assembled by U.S. label executives by slicing and dicing the band-approved British releases). The end result of this dual authenticity is that neither the European nor the North American catalogue has been picked over the other as the "official" one, resulting in a horrid mess that does absolutely no service to the music itself. There are albums with similar names but dissimilar songs. There are albums with similar songs but dissimilar names. Some songs are only on a European album, some songs are only on a North American album, some songs are on both, and some songs are on neither. Even today, when the Stones put out new albums, the publications still have to say that it's their 27th album in the U.S. and 25th in the U.K., or whatever. 

The original North American edition of Out Of Our Heads (1965).

    So, if nobody else is going to sort this mess out, I figured it had to be me. After much thought (several years' worth, actually), I decided to handpick a few of the official albums from each catalogue, ones without song overlap. I then set myself the task of assembling the rest of their songs into albums that fill the gaps between those official releases, collecting every song in the process. The official albums I chose are these: The Rolling Stones (1964, U.K.), Out Of Our Heads (1965, U.S.), Aftermath (1966, U.K.), and Between The Buttons (1967, U.K., but recorded 1966), and Confessin' The Blues is the first installment in this gap-filling series with the goal of creating a definitive (not to mention more cohesive and simply better-assembled) early Rolling Stones discography. So, all in all, I hope you enjoy it: happy listening!

CD-quality down-low'd linc's here.

Jimi Hendrix - Hear My Train A-Comin' (1969)

  

HEAR MY TRAIN A-COMIN'

1. Look Over Yonder

2. Midnight

3. Stone Free

4. My Friend

5. Tax Free

6. Hear My Train A-Comin'

7. Gloria

8. Waitin' For That Train

[aka Hear My Train A-Comin' (Acoustic)]

9. Red House (Live)

10. Little Wing (Live)

11. I Don't Live Today (Live)

12. Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) (Live)

13. Purple Haze (Live)

 _____________________________________________________________________

Source List:

The Cry Of Love 2014 CD: 4
Rainbow Bridge 2014 CD: 1
Blues CD: 8
South Saturn Delta CD: 2, 5
The Jimi Hendrix Experience box CD: 3, 7, 9-13
Valleys Of Neptune CD: 6

    Greetings! This is my newly assembled album Hear My Train A-Comin', the fourth and final one by the original lineup of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It's a double album, with the first disc being recorded in the studio, and the second live on stage. When Hendrix died, he left a huge wealth of studio material in varying states of completion; in this fan's humble opinion, not a single official posthumous studio album has been up to par with the three incredible ones he released during his lifetime, so I have taken it upon myself to reassemble the best albums possible out of the stuff he never got the chance to release, and this is a keystone installment in that series. Hear My Train A-Comin', along with more soon-to-come albums, is meant to complement and sit alongside Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold As Love, Electric Ladyland (as well as my already-posted reassemblies of First Rays Of The New Rising Sun and War Heroes). There are minimal overlapping songs between them, and all tracks are taken from a specific set of sessions so as to show where the fast-evolving guitarist was, stylistically speaking, at that point in his too-brief career. Most importantly, the track sequence has been laboured over to create the most satisfying and cohesive collection of music as is possible with the material at hand, to the point where it sounds like a normal studio album.

    But first, some historial context for this recording project. After finishing their double album opus Electric Ladyland in the summer of 1968, Hendrix re-entered the studio that October to produce (and play all over) Northern Irish rock band Eire Apparent's Sunrise (1969), their only full-length LP. Eventually, the rest of the Experience decided to join him there, at T.T.G. Studios in Hollywood, possibly in part because it had one of the first 16-track recorders in the world at the time. There they began recording new music. It seems Hendrix was creatively exhausted, and he had stopped writing songs in the same way that he used to, instead turning to jamming as his source for new musical ideas. That is to say that he didn't have much in the way of new, complete songs to bring to the sessions. No doubt the inhumane pressures of fame and immense success were at least partly to blame for this, and he is known to have eventually come to use the studio as a refuge from the whirlwind outside, although this may or may not have been the case quite yet.

The Electric Ladyland (1968) cover art in Jimi's home country of the U.S.A..

The cover for Hear My Train (taken from 1971's The Cry Of Love, which

also contains "My Friend") is intended to mirror it. The blue cover was made

by Jimi's close friend Nancy Reiner, the wife of his manager.

    Many tracks from this week or so of recording have since been released, and the evidence supports this hypothesis. "Look Over Yonder," by far the most polished and overdubbed recording to come out of these sessions, was originally recorded for Axis: Bold As Love over a year earlier. They also recorded versions of several of their live staples, "Lover Man" and "Red House." Beyond that, things get iffy. Often based more or less just on jams or riffs or melodic ideas, most tracks contain only the building blocks of what could become a finished song. Some are unfinished backing tracks ("Untitled Basic Track"), some are sonic experiments ("New Rising Sun"), some are jams with few to no lyrics ("Hear My Freedom," "Messenger," "Calling All The Devil's Children," "Peace In Mississippi."). None of these are worthy of standard, widespread official release, and I'm sure he would have been furious if any of them had been put out while he was alive, especially outside the context of an archival, fan-oriented collection.

    Soon enough, though, sessions wrapped for the year, and the trio focused on their many upcoming live performances instead. They were, after all, busy promoting their new album which had topped the prestigious American charts for two weeks! As often happens when bands graze the stratosphere of success, tensions began to rise; in this case, it was between Hendrix and bassist Noel Redding; it would seem that their work ethics were clashing. Sessions resumed from February to April 1969, and here are excerpts of Redding's diary from the time, as quoted on Wikipedia from the book Ultimate Hendrix (which I don't have), and they make pretty clear why they stopped working together: "On the first day, as I nearly expected, there was nothing doing [in the studio] ... On the second it was no show at all. I went to the pub for three hours, came back, and it was still ages before Jimi ambled in. Then we argued ... On the last day, I just watched it happen for a while, and then went back to my flat." 

Sunrise by Eire Apparent. Hendrix's fingerprints are all over it.

The track "Let Me Stay" is especially good.

    Hendrix was working at his own pace, and things were only marginally better on the compositional front than they had been in October. They played more of their live repetoir in the studio (Many of these versions will appear on a forthcoming 'live in the studio' album), as well as recording more demos and jams, gradually working out new material. Very few groups could afford to develop their songs in the studio in this way, but if anyone could, it was Hendrix. Many of the tracks on the First Rays Of The New Rising Sun album which I assembled can be traced back to this time, for example "Night Bird Flying." The version of "Star-Spangled Banner" on that album was recorded the month prior, too, just not with the Experience. They even recorded a Noel Redding-penned instrumental called "Noel's Tune." Not a scrap of any of this was released while he was alive. By early April, despite the rising tensions, the Experience put to tape a smattering of excellent tracks, many of which made it onto Hear My Train A-Comin': the proto-metal "Midnight" (and its sibling "Trash Man" from my War Heroes album), the electrifying "Hear My Train A-Comin'" (along with a strong alternate take), and...

    ...a rerecording of their song "Stone Free." In something of a full-circle moment, the very last session Noel and Jimi ever played together was dedicated, in part, to overdubbing this remake of their very first B-side from way back in late 1966, the second track they ever recorded together, and its' lyrics, to me at least, take on a new layer of context considering Jimi's catapulting into stardom in the time between when these two versions were put down. This rerecording was intended to feature on the then-upcoming stateside release of the band's Smash Hits compilation, but only got as far as the rough mix stage before they decided to just use the original single version, making it the only studio recording by the Experience following the completion of Electric Ladyland for which I know its' intended purpose. The studio half of Hear My Train A-Comin' is built out of the best of the Experience recordings from October to mid-April, as well as a few leftovers from the Electric Ladyland sessions to flesh it out (those being "My Friend," "Tax Free," and "Waitin' For That Train'").

An alternate Electric Ladyland cover made by Jimi's American label Reprise.

It came to be used as the back cover to the album in some regions and the front in others.

    Even if Hendrix couldn't be relied upon to show up to a session, he'd absolutely be there for a concert. As a result, from April 15 until their final show on June 29th, the Jimi Hendrix Experience existed only onstage. I imagine that they only stuck it out due to their American summer tour already having been booked, but I have no actual information with regards to that. Possibly due to the tension in the group at the time, the Experience's performances in 1969 are among the most consistently gripping, intense, and incindiary of Hendrix's entire career. A few of the shows were professionally recorded: two in London (filmed, but more or less unreleased), and one apiece in L.A. and San Diego. Between these shows, the Experience had some career-highlight performances on their hands. Now, because of a lawsuit over a forgotten pre-fame recording contract, Hendrix, who usually worked for the Reprise label, owed Capitol Records a full-length album of new material. What eventually fulfilled this was the Band Of G****s live album in 1970, but prior to that, in the summer of 1969, a live album of performances by the Experience from this tour was assembled for potential release. This obviously didn't come to fruitition, and has still to this very day never been released in full, but the live half of Hear My Train A-Comin' is largely based on it. All of the tracks which I used, barring "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)," were intended for it, and "I Don't Live Today" and "Purple Haze" are even featured in those very mixes made for that record, which Hendrix likely approved. Everything else on Hear My Train A-Comin', except for the special case of "Waitin' For That Train," was mixed after Hendrix died, so obviously without any input from him.

    From what I understand, Hendrix himself regarded his studio recordings and live performances as very seperate affairs especially once he began using the studio as an instrument on Axis: Bold As Love (1967). The reason I decided to combine those two sides of his musicianship together on this album is because the rawness of his studio recordings from late '68 and early '69 makes for a very smooth transition into songs recorded live on stage. Indeed, half of the tracks on Hear My Train's first disc were recorded live in the studio without a single overdub, making for an almost seamless transition into the second, live disc. Their power-trio'ed peers Cream put out a half studio/half live double album right as Hendrix was finishing up Electric Ladyland in the summer of '68, so there was very much a precedent for this kind of record at that point. In line with the times (as well as Cream themselves), the Experience had begun to stretch out their songs and improvise a lot more onstage, and these recordings really reflect that. This is where Jimi was pointing with "Voodoo Child" and "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)" on Electric Ladyland, just without the psychedelic production blanketing the raw takes. In some senses, that album is a transitional one, and Hear My Train A-Comin' is where Jimi arrives at his destination, at least as far as the Experience are concerned.

A much-improved fan-made edit of the cover for the recently re-released

L.A. Forum gig from this time period. (Thanks yet again to John

Busey-Hunt on the Steve Hoffman Forums)

    As I often do, I took the limitations of vinyl side lengths into consideration while sequencing the album. Each of the four sides of (imaginary) Hear My Train A-Comin' LP is in its own way musically distinct, resulting in a unified yet varied listening experience. Side one is made up of relatively short and polished rock songs with plenty of overdubs, as well as one instrumental. Side two opens with the album's second and last instrumental, and following it are two extended live-in-the-studio performances which close out the studio disc. Opening the live one is an older delta blues-style arrangement of the first of those two songs, a variation on a theme if you will, and that's followed by the album's 13-minute centerpiece. After it comes what is arguably the most delicate and intimate song on the album, which also happens to be one of its' shortest, offering a form of contrast to the listener. Lastly, the fourth side closes things out in style with three balls-to-the-wall rockers. Now for the track-by-track breakdown!

    Hear My Train A-Comin' kicks off with the massive opening chords of "Look Over Yonder," which, as written above, is a rerecording of a Axis: Bold As Love outtake from mid-1967. It's easily the most polished song to come out of those October '68 T.T.G. Studios sessions that kicked off Hear My Train's recording, and is featured here in a vintage posthumous mix from 2014's sublime-sounding Rainbow Bridge CD. After that burst of feedback-laden energy, the listener's ears are attacked by the monster riffage of "Midnight." This is an album of near-constant shredding, and this track makes that abundantly clear (however, although it's certainly proto-metal in sound, Hendrix's most proto-metal track is without a doubt "Peace In Mississippi" from my already-posted War Heroes album). It's sourced from a South Saturn Delta compilation CD. The tempo then picks right back up where it left off with "Stone Free," that 1969 rerecording of a track from 1966. It's a tight song with a killer solo that leans into the groovier direction Hendrix would soon go in, and I take it from the Y2K-released Jimi Hendrix Experience box set (although I faded it out a little quicker so the song doesn't break down too much). These last two song were put to tape in April 1969, the very month the Experience stopped working together in the studio, making them among the very last songs they ever recorded as a unit.

The self-titled box set from 2000.

    Closing out side one is "My Friend," a folksy, dylanesque, faux-barroom number where Jimi shows off his lyrical skills. Though it took me a while to decipher it, the track is about the rough times Jimi went through before he hit it big, and how he had to be his best friend through the thick and thin of it. Recorded back in March of '68, this is the first of three Electric Ladyland leftovers that I chose to fill out this collection. It was originally released in 1971 on The Cry Of Love, sitting among nine other songs recorded by-and-large in 1970, which led me to wondering why it was chosen for inclusion. The story goes that, at the beginning of the Electric Lady Studios sessions that summer, while he and his team were reviewing his masses of old tapes from the prior years in order to find tracks to get to work on, Hendrix found and really enjoyed listening back to this one. By the time he was dead and his team had to start going about putting his next record together, I suppose engineer Eddie Kramer and drummer Mitch Mitchell's sentimentality led them to include it. Anyhow, it's sourced from the excellent 2014 Cry Of Love CD.

    After flipping the imaginary record, side two opens with the album's second (and final) instrumental, as well as the second Electric Ladyland leftover, the high-energy "Tax Free:" a cover of a Swedish jazz song by an organ/drums duo. Some or all of the drums on Jimi's version were rerecorded in the early '70s, marking them the only posthumous overdub on the album. It's also the final track on Hear My Train to have recieved any overdubs at all; along with those drums, Hendrix recorded several layers of guitar for the track. I also sourced it from the afformentioned South Saturn Delta CD, and the song ends in a climax that leads us directly into the next one, the (possibly-autobiographical) live-in-the-studio number "Hear My Train A-Comin'," which is also the first of two furious blues-rock behemoths near the middle of this album. It is also the third and final song from this album to be recorded during the Experience's final slew of sessions in April '69. There are official releases of four different studio recordings of it from the first half of that year, each of them highly enjoyable, but I think this one, Take 1 off of the highly uneven Valleys Of Neptune compilation (as well as in overdubbed form on Midnight Lightning from 1975) is best, because his singing is the strongest. In fact, he harmonizes with his guitar in both this and the acoustic version featuring later on in the album. Unlike the bulk of Hear My Train A-Comin', this, "Stone Free," and the soon-to-come "Gloria" are all modern digital mixes from the last 30 years. Luckily, though, I don't think they stand out all too badly among the other late '60s to early '70s mixes, despite the tremendous technological shift that took place in the time between. Anyways, this searing song is the title track for a reason, and is taken from the 2010 Valleys Of Neptune CD. 

2010's Valleys Of Neptune. The photo was taken by Linda McCartney, and

Hendrix painted the background watercolour himself when he was younger.

    That goes right into the closer for the studio half of the record: Hendrix's very heavy take on Them's much-covered garage rock classic "Gloria," recorded in October '68 at the same time as "Look Over Yonder." Sludgy and churning, "Gloria" was released on a largely-forgotten single in the late '70s, but remains, at least in my opinion, one of the most exciting tracks in his entire oeuvre, complete with spine-tinglingly-distorted riffs, a very rare, throbbing bass solo, "groovy grass," a drug bust, and an even rarer shout-out to the band members! Interestingly, mere hours before he flew out of the United States for the very last time in August 1970, Hendrix chatted with a young pre-fame Patti Smith on the stairs outside of his very own Electric Lady Studios (which was then holding its opening party), and she went on to record a very famous version of "Gloria" herself several years later. I sourced this song from that box set from 2000, but with the opening studio chatter edited out. Interestingly, both this as well as the next song had their recording captured on video. The one for "Gloria" is horribly edited but does nonetheless exist, while the video for "Waitin' For That Train" is simply fabulous (go watch them for yourself via the links in the tracklist up top). One could consider it a music video of sorts for the album. Hear My Train A-Comin's live half is opened by an earlier, fully acoustic, delta blues-styled version of the title track (though it's missing the title lyric, so I renamed it). A rare recording of Hendrix on acoustic guitar, "Waitin' For That Train" was put to tape spontaniously during a photo session in late December 1967. It's taken from the compilation Blues, and the audio recording is less than perfect, but with the song being in an old-timey blues vein, I consider the drop in fidelity an artistic decision within the context of the album. It also servies as a sonic boundary smoothing out the transition from the studio disc to the (forthcoming) live one.

    Otherwise, the six-song live disc is sourced (performance-wise) from two live albums assembled the years prior and following Hendrix's fatal 1970 suicide attempt: one being that unreleased 1969 album, the other being 1972's Hendrix In The West (stay tuned for my remake of that one!). All tracks are live renditions of key songs from each of the Experience's three original studio albums, all are sourced from that boxed set from 2000, and all were recorded from February to May 1969 in London, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Bookended by the two shortest tracks on the album is its longest, the gargantuan 13-minute San Diego rendition of the blues-rock workout "Red House," a song which featured on the band's debut album (outside of North America, at least). I mean, talk about soloing. What follows is contrastingly delicate and breathtakingly beautiful rendition of "Little Wing" from Axis: Bold As Love, recorded in London at the filmed-but-still-unreleased-due-to-legal-wranglings-between-the-rights-holders Royal Albert Hall concert, the Experience's final British gig. This was the first live Hendrix song I ever came to love, so it holds quite a special place in my heart. After it ends, raucus crowd noises herald the start of the fourth and final side of the album, before a fantastic rendition of "I Don't Live Today" begins. It's also a song from their debut album Are You Experienced, but all editions this time. The performance is from the L.A. Forum show in April, where, word has it, Jimi was only allowed to take to the stage because those in charge believed - maybe correctly, by the sounds of it - that he would be the only person capable of preventing the crowd from breaking into an all-out riot. 

The British edition of Are You Experienced (1967).

    This song, as well as the soon-to-come album closer, were mixed in 1969 for the afformentioned live album that never came out. Considering the fact that Hendrix may have approved these mixes for release, they are indeed fantastic ones compared to the others done shortly after he died; for example, the instruments are largely centered, as opposed to being at times quite widely panned on the others, I would say unnecessarily so. Next up is a down-and-dirty performance of "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)," also from the London concert, before the album closes with the San Diego version of Hendrix's signature "Purple Haze" (which he would eventually grow quite tired of playing), also culled from that unreleased live album. With that, both Hear My Train A-Comin' and its' write-up come to a wrap! I hope you enjoy the album, it was a long time in the making, and I'm really proud of how well it came together! Happy listening!

CD-quality down-low'd linc's here.

The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

 

MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR

1. Magical Mystery Tour

2. Your Mother Should Know

3. I Am The Walrus

4. The Fool On The Hill

5. Flying

6. Blue Jay Way

7. All Together Now

8. All You Need Is Love

9. Strawberry Fields Forever

10. Hello, Goodbye

11. Penny Lane

12. Only A Northern Song

13. It's All Too Much

14. Across The Universe

[WWF Version]

15. You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)

16. Baby You're A Rich Man

_________________________________________________________________________

    On December 8, 1967, just in time for the holiday rush, a new release by the Beatles appeared on shelves in record stores across their home country of England. This was a 19-minute-long double EP comprising two vinyl singles, each with one to two songs per side. The six songs included in the package were the soundtrack to a forthcoming film that the band had just finished making: Magical Mystery Tour. It topped the major EP chart, as well as hit the number two spot on an influential singles chart, held back from the top spot by only the band's most recent single, "Hello Goodbye." Although the success was even greater, things nonetheless panned out somewhat differently in the band's largest market. A full vinyl LP, again titled Magical Mystery Tour, had been released over a week earlier in the United States, that being on November 27, 1967. The six soundtrack recordings that made up the full EP in England were all featured on the first side of the album, though in a slightly rearranged sequence. If a listener chose to flip the record, they would find all five of the band's singles from throughout the year right there, collected for easy listening, starting with none other than "Hello Goodbye." The album topped the chart for weeks and was nominated for a Grammy two years later.

    This was far from the first time that the group's American releases had differed significantly from those that the band had assembled themselves for their home market, but it was the first significant difference to crop up since they, in  1966, had renegotiated their contract with Capitol Records (their British label's stateside subsidiary), where the band had demanded an end to the slicing and dicing of their albums by label executives in the USA. So why, in late 1967, was there another Capitol album which differed signifcantly from the British release? The answer lies in the fact that, by the late 1960s, EPs were a dying format in the USA, and the Capitol suits wanted profit. So the band agreed to a compromise, resulting in the North American Magical Mystery Tour LP, which has since become the only North American-exclusive Beatles album to become canonized as part of their core catalogue, starting with its release on CD alongside their UK album catalogue in 1987.

From Billboard Magazine issue on November 25, 1967.

    Besides the 11 EP and singles tracks that ended up on the North American LP, the band had recorded four other songs during the same period, all produced in the exact same layered, psychedelic-pop style used on the album. Three of these were reluctantly held over for the then-in-progress Yellow Submarine film, whose soundtrack would have to wait another two years for release. The end product included four new Beatles songs, two older ones which had already been released, and twenty minutes of orchestral soundtrack music which they were not involved in making. By including these four unique tracks on other albums ("Hey Bulldog" will feature on a later post) I hope to render this ill-fitting collection of music redundant. Alongside these songs, there's "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)," which lay unfinished on the cutting room floor by the end of 1967. Intent on nabbing it for a solo single of his own, songwriter John Lennon dusted off the old tape and finished the song with the help of his bandmates in April 1969, the same day that guitarist George Harrison overdubbed a solo onto the song "Let It Be," whose B-side "You Know My Name" eventually became. Also, back in early February 1968, the group recorded what is arguably their last big psychedelic production, "Across The Universe." A radically different remix of the same basic performance was issued in 1970 on the Let It Be album, and another on the Let It Be... Naked remix album, but the version featured here, first released on a World Wildlife Fund charity LP in late 1969, is the original.

    Seeing that the official album was somewhat slapped together after label executives refused to release the band's envisioned EP, I became quite interested in centralizing all of this leftover psychedelic Beatles music in a singular release. By starting out with the UK EP in its' original running order and then adding in everything else they recorded during those sessions after that, I hoped to arrive at a more cohesive and well-rounded collection of songs than the official version of Magical Mystery Tour has, as I've always found it to feel a bit slight when compared to the band's original British albums. While putting it together over the course of several years, I came to realize that there were slightly too many songs to fit on a single vinyl disk, so I decided to include with the album an (imaginary) bonus 7" single, to be played after the main 12" disk was over, as a coda of sorts. 

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), the second CD I ever got.

It was highly influential in terms of music production at the time.

    As for that main disk though, I decided to close off side one in style with the celebratory fanfare of "All You Need Is Love" (which never had enough finality to properly deserve being the closer on the official album), preceded by the short singalong buildup of "All Together Now," which also serves to strip things back slightly after the dreamy haze of sound called "Blue Jay Way." Side two starts out fairly quietly with "Strawberry Fields Forever," which is then followed by two poppier Paul McCartney-written singles, "Hello Goodbye" and "Penny Lane." George Harrison's "Only A Northern Song" and "It's All Too Much" (both from the Yellow Submarine soundtrack) follow, bringing the total number of his compositions on the record from one to three. After that, the disk closes with the World Wildlife Fund version of "Across The Universe," in my opinion the best song (lyrically-speaking) that the group ever made. If not for the bonus single, "Across The Universe" would make for a lovely closer.

    The first track on this single is one of the band's silliest and most theatrical songs, "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)," after which comes the psychedelic afterparty of "Baby You're A Rich Man," which, in my interpretation given this context, is about being wealthier in philosophical and/or spiritual ways after taking the Magical Mystery Tour for a spin. Both tracks happen to have an unusually large bass response compared to other Beatles songs, so placement on a single is quite ideal as they can hold, as far as I know, quite a bit more bass than a 12" LP. Lastly, I would be remiss to not mention that the fantastic New Zealand-based musician Fathom (instagram & youtube) helped me to iron out the final kinks in the song flow. Please check Nancy out, as alongside her own wonderful music she also records Beatles covers on instruments that she builds and invents. Lovely stuff.

The Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab edition of the North American version of Magical Mystery Tour.

    Included are both the mono and stereo mixes of the album. Unlike the mono mixes (which are all taken from the 2009 Mono CD box set), many of the stereo mixes (especially in the album's second half) were made long after the album was recorded, even as recently as the late '90s. Audio technology advanced light years during that roughly 30-year gap, so inevitably the mixes do sound a little bit different, though not jarring by any means. All tracks on the stereo version are taken from the stereo remasters from 2009, except for "Only A Northern Song" and "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)." The former had its' various instruments recorded onto two separate sets of tapes, which were incredibly difficult to sync up perfectly. As a result, no stereo mix was made during the 1960s, and listeners would have to wait until the Yellow Submarine Songtrack (1999) to hear it as a stereo remix: that CD is the source I used. The latter track, however, was remixed to stereo for the Anthology 2 (1996) archival compilation, but I had to edit out the second section of the song in order for it to match the song structure of the mono mix, which John Lennon had originally (and rightly) edited out for its' prospective single release. The stereo remix also faded out the spoken section which concludes the song, whereas it maintains a steady volume in the mono mix. I left that as is. The cover artwork of the two mixes of the album also varies slightly, with the mono one having far fewer stars around the band's name. The cover art itself is that of the UK EP, as the North American cover doesn't look as nice to me, and also has the tracklist of the official release clearly written on it.

    Interestingly enough, every song on this album except for "Across The Universe" and the two tracks on the bonus single has been released with accompanying video! For the six songs that make up the UK Magical Mystery Tour EP, the film of the same name contained musical sequences for each of them (and all are linked in the tracklist, except for the "Flying" video, which I could not find in full on YouTube), although some are very different edits compared to what is in the actual film. Several other songs had music sequences in the Yellow Submarine film, and the rest all had music videos (Some, like "Hello Goodbye," even have several) or TV broadcasts (like for "All You Need Is Love"). I have half a mind to edit together a full film out of these videos, but have other things to spend my time on in this short life, unfortunately.

While "Across The Universe" was being recorded, George Harrison was in the middle of

recording his debut solo album, the fabulous spaghetti-western-meets-indian-classical melange

which is the soundtrack to the film Wonderwall Music. The backing track for the Beatles'

"The Inner Light" was originally recorded for this project.

    Time to wrap things up. In terms of how this album compares to the Beatles records that come before and after it chronologically, those being Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) and The Beatles (a.k.a. The White Album) (1968), it plays like a more expansive and more all-over-the-place listening experience than Sgt. Pepper's, with its expanded length (and playful disjointedness) foreshadowing the diverse and fractured soundscapes of their self-titled double album that would come the year after. So now it's time to strap in and roll up (as the Beatles surely were) because this Magical Mystery Tour wants to take you away! Happy listening!

CD-quality down-low'd linc's here.

The Beach Boys - Surf's Up (1971)

 

SURF'S UP

1. Don't Go Near The Water

2. Long Promised Road

3. Student Demonstration Time

4. Disney Girls (1957)

5. Take A Load Off Your Feet

6. Lady

7. Feel Flows

8. Lookin' At Tomorrow

9. A Day In The Life Of A Tree

10. 'Till I Die

11. Fourth Of July

12. (Wouldn't It Be Nice To) Live Again

13. Surf's Up

_________________________________________________________________________

    The general narrative about the Beach Boys spewing out from both the music press and significant numbers of their fans, at least as I have come across it, is that their LP Pet Sounds (1966) stands tall, high above all their other albums, give or take its' notoriously unfinished follow-up release Smile (1967, check out my version of it here). During those years, bandleader, bassist, songwriter, and vocalist Brian Wilson sort of usurped the group, in the process bringing them to the very cutting edge of popular music at the time. The other members were lending only their voices to backing tracks of Wilson's songs, which were put down by teams of session musicians under his guidance. The fabled story of Smile's collapse, as one can read about in great detail in a multitude of places all over the internet, led to the gradual return of relative creative democracy within the group, as Wilson began a slow retreat from any sort of leadership position. He came to compose less and less of the band's new material, which forced (or, alternatively, allowed) the other members to pick up the slack and begin churning out more material themselves. Indeed, by 1968, drummer Dennis Wilson started blossoming as a songwriter, and a good one at that. By the next year, he had recorded "Forever," a Beach Boys song that remains cherished by fans to this very day. That track was featured on their album Sunflower (1970), which was the band's first fully democratically written record, having songwriting contributions from all six members.

    Sunflower's follow-up, Surf's Up (1971), was crafted in a similarly democratic fashion. At the final moment, though, Dennis Wilson's (excellent) songs were removed from the master tape and thusly not included on the LP when it hit the shelves. That was apparently done to keep tensions within the group at a reasonable level, but came at a great musical cost to the resulting album. Despite maintaining some incredible highs, I always found the official release to feel a bit slight, and it doesn't help that the tracklist gets pretty janky at the end of side one. So, the version of the album that I'm posting today has had all three of Dennis' songs ("Fourth Of July," "(Wouldn't It Be Nice To) Live Again" [funny Pet Sounds connection in that title], and "Lady," which I think features an early drum machine) reinstated. One can rarely insert more than one or two songs into a pre-existing tracklist without messing up the flow severely, so I carefully reworked the song sequence so as to significantly improve the entire listening experience. I would now argue that this expanded version of Surf's Up stands right near Pet Sounds in terms of quality, cohesion, and lushness, while the official version, I am sure most fans would agree, falls just slightly short.

Sunflower (1970)

    But that's not all! Pet Sounds was incredibly influential in terms of its production, and Surf's Up may have been too, if only it wasn't for those meddling label executives! One of the band's key engineers for both the Surf's Up and Sunflower LPs was Stephen W. Desper. Quadrophonic (i.e., four-channel surround) sound had not quite been invented yet, so, looking to create the most immersive production possible, Desper developed (and later on patented) a technique to simulate 3D sound that could be listened to using no special equipment beyond the standard two-speaker setup that everyone already has (one can read his description of it here). He eventually went on to use it on TV broadcasts of the Olympics, so, like, it's the real deal. I will call this Virtual Surround Sound, or VSS, from here on out. With the band's permission, he encoded all of the songs' final mixes with VSS. However, the VSS would only be activated if the encoded signal was resolved. Despite many requests over the decades, the Beach Boys' record label has never agreed to release the mixes in resolved form, with the end result being that the album has always played in normal stereo, without VSS. However, this version of Surf's Up, including Dennis Wilson's tracks, has been resolved and therefore has VSS 3D sound! Personally, I can't say that I really hear sounds coming from particularly unexpected angles, even with my head positioned perfectly in front of my two bookshelf speakers. But all of the sounds in the mixes certainly blend together exquisitely, far more so than they do on the standard, unresolved stereo versions. I did always find that the standard mixes for this album and its similarly VSS-encoded-but-left-unresolved predecessor Sunflower sounded slightly unusual, though not bad by any means, so it's fantastic to hear them with the full, immersive sound that they were originally intended to have. As a little bonus, I've included Sunflower with its fully resolved 3D sound as well, without any changes to its' tracklist or anything. Also, everything here is sourced from Desper's study videos and sounds phenomenal.

    Before I wrap up, I do want to discuss my choice of album closer. Surf's Up's title track - in my eyes one of the group's greatest numbers - is an unfinished song from their Smile album. At the time of its original recording during those 1966/1967 sessions, only a portion of the backing track for the first of the song's three sections was ever put down. Luckily, though, Brian Wilson, alone in the studio at the end of that day, recorded a stripped-down version of it with just one piano and double-tracked vocals. This breathtaking demo is probably the only reason the song ever survived. In 1971, the band hauled out the old tapes for it and added a number of overdubs onto what little had been recorded the first time around; Carl Wilson sang lead on that opening section, bass and keys were added, and a whole choral part at the end, newly arranged by Brian, is the cherry on top. This was the only time that he ever creatively contributed to the finishing up of any of his Smile material between 1967 and 2003, before the severe (and seemingly intentional) degradation of his voice in the mid-70s. One wonders what could have been if they'd decided to finish the rest of the tracks in 1971. Anyhow, despite the fact that I dislike including duplicates of songs on these reconstruction projects of mine, and I already included the song on my version of Smile, after some thought I made the decision to include "Surf's Up" here as well. Not only because it's the title track, but also because it feels like a slightly more perfect closer than the other option. One of the points of contention that caused Dennis to remove his songs was that he wanted "(Wouldn't It Be Nice To) Live Again" to be the closer for the album. I find that it serves the spot of penultimate track much better, so decided to have it there instead. The title track just has more of a finality to it. Sorry Dennis! 

Surf's Up: CD-quality down-low'd linc's here

Sunflower: CD-quality down-low'd linc's here

Led Zeppelin - Coda (1981)

 

CODA

1. We're Gonna Groove (Live)

2. Poor Tom

3. Friends

4. Walter's Walk

5. Darlene

6. Hey, Hey, What Can I Do

7. Ozone Baby

8. Sugar Mama

9. Bonzo's Montreux

10. Wearing And Tearing

11. Key To The Highway/Trouble In Mind

12. Baby Come On Home

_________________________________________________________________________

    Howdy-doo-dah. I would like to present a revised version of rock band Led Zeppelin's fittingly-titled final studio album, Coda. Actually, it's honestly less of a studio album and more of a "best of the leftovers" compilation. With that in mind, I have reassembled it so that it includes all (as opposed to simply some) of the good songs left off their eight original studio albums. When these albums were remastered and reissued in the 2010s, many outtakes, alternate recordings, early mixes, and so on, were put out on accompanying bonus discs. A few of those outtakes were of a level of quality relatively close to what the band put on those eight studio albums, which is really why I decided to revamp this LP in the first place; the official version of the album from 1982 is simply not their best work (I'll elaborate on that below). I sequenced it carefully, of course, so as to create the best possible listening experience. In all honesty though, I don't like this band very much anymore. I stopped listening to them several years ago, after I learned about all the monetary theft (via publishing royalties) and rape that the band and its' individual members committed. They've done some very disgusting things. This updated version of Coda is, as a result, largely a holdover from when I was into the band in high school. But I suppose I've begun to separate the art from the artist ever so slightly here and have recently found myself able to listen to them in small amounts without a bad conscience. But anyways.

    After their drummer John Bonham drank himself to death during tour rehearsals, the rest of the legendarily hedonistic band members decided to finally call it quits after twelve highly profitable, drugged-out years. On December 4th, 1980, it was announced to the world that Led Zeppelin was no more. Nonexistence, though, is no match for a legally binding contract; one more record was still owed to their label, so a few ideas were floating around their long-haired heads as for what could be done to resolve this. The group had amassed many high-fidelity live recordings over the course of their twelve years together, and had already released their first live album (alongside a concert film) in 1976, so a second live album was a distinct possibility. They also had a bunch of leftover songs and outtakes, which could potentially be assembled together into an album. The live album option was eventually vetoed, but in truth the two ideas were sort of merged together; the official release of Coda in 1982 contained six studio recordings as well as two live tracks (with audience sounds removed), one of which received guitar overdubs.

A rare version of Led Zeppelin's self-titled debut LP,

recorded in 1968, with turquoise instead of red text.

    So where did all these songs originate? Three, the rocker "Ozone Baby," the rock 'n' roll hoedown "Darlene," and the faux-punk "Wearing And Tearing," were leftovers from the sessions for their final "real" album, In Through The Out Door (1979), recorded at ABBA's studio (of all places). These songs were almost released as an EP at their popular Knebworth show that same year, but that didn't end up coming to fruition, and they remained unreleased. Alongside these, there was a drum solo with synth overdubs from 1976 called "Bonzo's Montreux," which was recorded for, as far as I can tell, no project in particular. This showcase and/or memorial to the dead drummer was apparently intended as the album's centerpiece, but I can't say it really comes off that way. It's just a half-decent drum solo, and far from the best I've ever heard at that. There was one outtake from their fifth album, the rocker "Walter's Walk," which received guitar overdubs and a new vocal in 1981, as well as another from their third album, the acoustic romp "Poor Tom," which needed no finishing touches whatsoever. The latter has a pleasant shuffle groove. The two covers, "I Can't Quit You Baby" and "We're Gonna Groove," were performed live at the band's Royal Albert Hall concert in January 1970 (which was filmed, and a few decades later released on DVD), with the latter receiving nicely layered guitar overdubs. The former had already been released as a similarly arranged studio recording on their debut album, and is, as a result, highly redundant. I decided to remove it so as to make room for several other good leftovers that didn't make the cut in 1982.

    These include two outtakes from the sessions for that same debut album, the blues-rocker "Sugar Mama" and the blue-eyed soul-styled "Baby Come On Home." The former had been in the running for Coda at one point and appears here in the mix prepared for it at the time. The other was thought lost until the 1990s, when it was found, mixed, and released, in a relatively short span of time. I added two more leftovers from Led Zeppelin III (1970), one being the band's only non-album B-side, the country rocker "Hey Hey What Can I Do," and the other being the faux-delta-blues-with-a-very-put-on-vocal-warble "Key To The Highway/Trouble In Mind." Way back in high school, the latter song was my introduction to acoustic blues music (while Blue And Lonesome by The Rolling Stones, bought at an Irish truck stop in 2018, was my introduction to both that band and blues music in general); thank goodness that I've since begun listening to many of the Black blues greats, who inserted much more spirit, soul, feel, and pain into the music than just about any White artist has ever managed to cram into their pleasant imitations of the historic tradition. "Hey Hey What Can I Do" appears in its' original single mix, although the closing guitar part has sensibly been faded out early compared to the original single (it's no loss whatsoever). My final addition is a very interesting alternate version of that album's track "Friends," put down in 1972 while half the band was visiting Bombay, India. Backed by some Indian classical musicians recruited by a student of Ravi Shankar, they put down versions of two of their already-released songs, "Friends" and "Four Sticks," with the former being the only one to receive a vocal; that's why I included only the one track. Unlike "I Can't Quit You Baby," this one has a very interesting updated arrangement, although it is a slightly shakey performance.

The Song Remains The Same (1976), the band's first official live album.

    All in all, this brings the album from eight songs (33 minutes long) to twelve songs (48:30 minutes long). Many stylistic changes are introduced that were not present before, making for a significantly more well-rounded, pleasurable, and interesting listen, as opposed to the group simply retreading well-tread hard rock ground (in far less interesting ways than they had already done before) over the course of a brief (and slightly unsatisfying) 33 minutes. The stylistic diversity should also help to mask the slightly subpar quality of much of the music. One thing made abundantly clear by putting songs from all across the band's history back to back to back, though, is the serious deterioration in singer Robert Plant's vocal capability, which began setting in in the years following 1970. He ought to have taken better care of his precious instrument. The only editing I did to the recordings was the removal of the quiet count-in from "Bonzo's Montreux," so that I could make it come immediately after the ending of "Sugar Mama" with almost no gap of silence whatsoever, keeping the album's momentum moving (something which the seconds of silence before the long drum solo did not help with). All songs are sourced from the 2015 3-CD remaster of Coda, apart from "Key To The Highway/Trouble In Mind," which is from the 2-CD remaster of Led Zeppelin III from the previous year. While this isn't their best album by a significant shot, it's hopefully a better listen now than it was before, and is somewhat more in line with their actual studio albums. 

CD-quality down-low'd linc's here.