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 Velvet Underground - Rock And Roll (1969)

 

ROCK AND ROLL

1. Stephanie Says

2. Foggy Notion

3. She's My Best Friend

4. Andy's Chest

5. Lisa Says

6. I Can't Stand It

7. Temptation Inside Your Heart

8. Ocean

9. One Of These Days

10. Guess I'm Falling In Love

11. We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together

12. Ferryboat Bill

13. Hey Mr. Rain

14. I'm Gonna Move Right In

15. Over You (Live)

16. Beginning To See The Light

17. Coney Island Steeplechase

18. I'm Sticking With You

19. Rock And Roll

20. Ride Into The Sun

_________________________________________________________________________

Introduction

    Greetings on this merry day to all of those who celebrate Christmas and all of those who do not! Despite the ongoing genocide taking place around the birthplace of history's most famous communistic Jew, there is a new gift in this digital stocking called Rock And Roll by the Velvet Underground, a new collection which I posit as the band's fourth studio album! They recorded their four official and influential albums in 1966 (released 1967), 1967 (rel. 1968), 1968 (rel. 1969), and 1970 (finally rel. 1970), and astute readers will notice a curious hole in this busy band's discography concerning 1969, a hole which I aim to fill with this collection! Despite how it may seem, they did indeed put 54 minutes of brand new material to tape during that year, and a majority of the fourteen songs from those sessions even recieved final mixes before the project, for one reason or another, fell by the wayside. A large part of why nothing ended up coming out at that time was because the group were dropped by their label MGM for ostensibly financial reasons. MGM, however, owned these tapes, and as a result nothing on them was released until they were found on some shelf when the Velvets' four official albums were being prepared for CD issue in the mid-1980s. Most of the songs featured here were remixed (adding digital reverb, gated drums, and other anachronistic mixing decisions) and released on the resulting album VU (1985) and its' bonus-disc-cum-follow-up-album Another View (1986), with band members even having some input. Funnily enough, VU became their highest-charting album. Despite it being a pretty good release, splitting the songs into two albums as well as the relatively slapped-together nature of the follow-up are keystone decisions which don't do the music justice, at least in my eyes. 

The band's most famous LP, and the first that I heard. I chose the Warholian album

artwork for Rock And Roll so that it could be something of a nod to this cover.

    When the band's albums were again reissued in the 2010's for their 45th anniversaries, the original mixes of these leftovers were used wherever they existed, and new dry (as opposed to reverb-laden), similar-sounding mixes of the other songs were made for the rest. These were released as bonuses in the boxed sets of the group's second and third albums, and in that of the latter, the '69 songs were given a dedicated disc all to themselves. A double album called 1969 was then released a few years later with a different tracklist exclusively on vinyl, including on its' first three sides the songs recorded in '69, and then on the fourth the remaining leftover tracks from late '67 and early '68. Those older songs featuring founding (and highly experimental) member John Cale were similarly issued in their original mixes wherever possible, with new dry remixes being made for the rest. I listened to both the box set disc and 1969 sequences many times and was fully prepared to find either of them definitive, but instead found both lacking: their sequences are uneven, and the former isn't even based on the LP format that any '60's album would have been released on. In other words, neither flows like the band's other studio albums do, nor do they hold together as artistic pieces all too impressively. Part of that is certainly because, unlike on the '80's releases, the '67-'68 outtakes are sequentially segragated (if included at all) in these reissues, to the detriment of the larger collection. These are the principle reasons for why I decided to redo the albums myself, putting, as often happens, several years into finding the ideal flow of songs within the specifications of their originally-destined format, which is, in this case, two slabs of 12" vinyl.

Some of these songs were first released on this live album that was largely sourced

from mediocre-sounding acetates of the Matrix shows. It contains a faster alternate

performance of "Over You." Thankfully, they located the multitrack tapes and so

were able to remix the Matrix shows in excellent quality in recent years.

    Rock And Roll was therefore recorded from late '67 to late '69, during the time of which they also made their very intimate third record. Coming in at precisely 75 minutes, it serves as the band's only double album. That's because, unless they really wanted to queeze them on, a single disc isn't enough to contain all the songs from '69 alone. This is why I decided to expand it to a double and fill it out with older leftovers and a live track. Now, one might protest that the maximalism of a double album is in opposition to the Velvets' proto-punk ethos. To that I would point out that proto-punk, and proto-anything for that matter, is a label applied exclusively with the benefit of hindsight. And even then, one can imagine, if one wishes to, that Rock And Roll was assembled by a record label instead of the band themselves. Anyhow, I've taken the liberty to include on this album a few alternate versions of songs that the band recorded and released at other times. These are all fairly different and of high enough musical quality to make it quite worthwhile in my view. As well, nearly all of the standard versions were recorded after this album was put down, so, although it's not ideal, these original performances are fair game, chronologically-speaking, in my little rewriting of history, for this imaginary December '69 release. In conclusion, that's all for the introduction!

Track-By-Track Breakdown

    Like "Sunday Morning" and "Candy Says" (and arguably "White Light/White Heat") before it, "Stephanie Says" lulls the listener into something of a false sense of security as they begin the musical journey ahead (although the difference is not nearly as severe as on the group's previous albums). Indeed, after a soft melodic introduction on guitar, a celesta is added that's reminiscent of the one that opens "Sunday Morning" on their debut record. Recorded and mixed in early '68 to be the A-side a single that didn't get released, this song's original mix eventually came to be released on the 45th Anniversary reissue of the Velvet Underground's second album (and the first I got to know very well) White Light/White Heat. It's one of the five songs on this album that feature John Cale prior to his firing from the group (he's here on backing vocals, celesta, and his signature viola). The lyrics are somewhat cryptic, but I interpret them as discussing the distance between Stephanie and those in her life (the lyrics say she's the door instead of the room; that she is, or is in Alaska [which sits geographically apart from the main 48 US states]; that she's not afraid to die because she has little to lose; and so on). But that's just my reading of it; I invite you, dear reader, to interpret them for yourself. Also, as their previous album starts with "Candy Says," opening this one with "Stephanie Says" makes for some conceptual continuity of sorts. Rock And Roll's first LP side is actually bookended with "says" songs. bandleader (and early trans chaser) Lou Reed rerecorded a number of songs on this album during his far more successful solo career, and this one was reworked into "Caroline Says I" and "II" on his miserable masterpiece Berlin (1973).

    Anyhow, after that song fades to silence, a voice pops up saying "here we go, rolling on one," which is followed by some guitar licks. Then "Foggy Notion" kicks in, the six and a half-minute rocker that really gets this album up and running. It's featured here in its' original 1969 stereo mix, taken from The Velvet Underground 45th Anniversary boxed set. Lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter Lou Reed, who in this number has both a foggy notion and his calamine lotion, sings with sass when he's not taking solos over rythm guitarist Sterlin Morrison. The interplay between their two guitars is a central aspect of this album, something that the clarity of this album's mixes (compared to those of some of their earlier, lower-fidelity albums) helps to highlight. "Foggy Notion" also makes clear the direction the band is taking on this LP. While on The Velvet Underground the band softened their sound and made it really up-close and personal, and on 1970's Loaded (i.e., with hits) they went full commercial pop/rock despite a compromised band line-up, Rock And Roll finds them smack in the middle of that shift: drummer Mo Tucker (who has a simple and influential arms-only style) had not yet gone on maternity leave, but the songs are more commercial than before—the Velvet Underground play rock and roll. The tunes are, maybe as a result, more fun and less serious than ever before. It might be going too far, but I believe that had this double album been released in 1969, it could've been a big seller—maybe even their biggest. It's certainly the most commercial thing they did prior to Loaded the next year. But I digress. 

The album cover for the official collection of almost all of these songs, 1969.

It's a different photo than the next one, but from the same session.

    Continuing onward, the listener arrives at "She's My Best Friend," one of the catchiest songs on the album, sung with the softer voice of multi-instrumentalist Doug Yule (who replaced John Cale). Reed, though, redid this one himself on his album Coney Island Baby (1975). Tucker's yells during the outro are fun. This one is also a '69 mix, as made evident by that good old vacuum tube-born vocal distortion. After it comes "Andy's Chest," another '69-mixed track with some interesting and silly lyrics along with a short, delectable guitar solo that ends quite abruptly. Evidence of Lou Reed's B.A. in English and his resulting mastery of the language comes with the lines, "'cause you know what they say about honey bears/when you shave off all their baby hair/you have a hairy-minded pink bare bear." This one was also rerecorded by Reed, on his breakthrough David Bowie-produced classic Transformer (1972). Side one draws to a close with "Lisa Says." Unlike all the previous guitar-dominated tracks, this one softens things up with a piano high in the mix. It's also the first modern mix on the album; luckily, these aren't drastically different beyond increased clarity and reduced vocal distortion. Reed also later rerecorded this one on his commercially-flopping self-titled solo debut, where he was backed by a portion of the prog-rock band Yes. That album is actually contains the first official releases of four of this album's songs, including its' opener... 

    "I Can't Stand It." Side two opens with the count-in that precedes this rocker which picks the energy back up again. It's one of my favourites, with its' memorable lyrics such as "she used to hit me with a mop" and an interesting guitar solo, during the middle of which Reed builds tension by way of a countdown from eight to one. It's is featured here in a 2014 mix, and after it comes the fantastically silly "Temptation Inside Your Heart," the second song here featuring John Cale. Along with almost everything else they recorded in early '68 before he was kicked out of the group, this number shows the less serious and somewhat more commercial direction the band was already headed in. Reed and Cale parrot strange and often funny (as well as third-wall-breaking) vocal lines at each other overtop an imitation-R&B backing track, ending in laughter and a bust of bongos or possibly a different type of hand drum.

The "Foggy Notion"/"I Can't Stand It" single from the '80s with the text removed.

The picture is from the same photoshoot as the 1969 cover shown above.

    Things get more artsy and serious after that with the pretty ballad (I may be wrong about that second descriptor) "Ocean." The fabulous Mo Tucker washes the listener with cymbals imitating waves, and this song was hypnotically extended when they played at the Matrix in '69 (those four sets are highly recommended by this author, who finds The Complete Matrix Tapes to be one of the best live rock albums by anybody). Featured in its' '69 mix, this song was re-recorded by the Velvets later in '70 but nonetheless went unreleased until Reed closed his debut record with an excellent version of it in '72. The ghostly "here come the waves" backing vocals are a real treat. After that, Rock And Roll moves onward with a catchy pop-rock song called "One Of These Days" (one of many songs with that title), the only track with lead guitar by Doug Yule. A 2014 mix, its' second half is an instrumental jam that segways nicely into the following track, "Guess I'm Falling In Love," the first instrumental. It's also a modern mix. Interestingly, all three of the instrumentals on this album are simply unfinished songs—all had lyrics when performed live, and they are included at the bottom of the essay. There's a decent recording of the song with Reed singing from their April '67 gig at the Gymnasium in the Big Apple: I based the lyrics off that performance, and it's available in the excellent White Light/White Heat 45th Anniversary box. Anyhow, this is the only track recorded in '67, either during or shortly after the White Light/White Heat sessions, and as a result is full of that album's distinctive highly distorted and gritty guitar. It chugs along nicely, and fortunately (in my opinion, at least) doesn't feel too out of place, coming after the previous track's jam section. And with that, the first half of the album comes to a close!

Many of these songs (including an alternate take of "Hey Mr. Rain") were released

for the first time on the compilation Another View (1986), which is really a bonus

disc that got repackaged as an album.

    Opening the imaginary second LP is the album's intended lead single (according to Lou Reed), the intentionally-commercial "We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together." It has prominent handclaps, and I don't have much else to say about it besides it being both pretty fun and a modern mix. Following that comes a weirder one, "Ferryboat Bill." This song and the earlier "Ocean" are the only ones whose '60's mixes were included on VU and Another View. Same mix here. With swirling keys, offensive lyrics, and doo-doo-doo-doo backing vocals, this short number almost feels more like an interlude than a real and complete song. After it ends abruptly on the doo-doo-doo-doo's, the song "Hey Mr. Rain" kicks in. This is another of the ones recorded before John Cale was fired from the band, and that viola is very prominent here. There were two versions of the song recorded: the way I see it, vesion one is somewhat more pedestrian and gets dull as a result, whereas version two (the one included on Rock And Roll) remains interesting throughout despite getting a little weirder, with elements unique to it such as the guitar zaps (for lack of a better word) that take place several times over the course of its' runtime. That's why I picked version two. It's also a modern mix.

The band's very personal third album that was recorded right after Doug Yule joined the band.

    Continuing on through the third side of the imaginary vinyl record, the instrumental "I'm Gonna Move Right In" follows "Hey Mr. Rain." Churning live versions of the track had lyrics (see them at the bottom of the post, although I couldn't make out a few of the words due to the limitations of the low-fidelity audience recordings I found), but this studio recording, which was mixed at the time, for some reason don't. Wether it was considered finished or not is unclear (to the extent of my knowledge, at least), but this six and a half minute groove is a pleasant change of pace in for the album despite that. Closing out the penultimate side is a live recording of "Over You," a song never recorded in the studio. Luckily, two different versions were recorded to multitrack tape during their four sets at the Matrix in November '69. 1969: The Velvet Underground Live (1974), which is largely sourced from those shows, uses the faster and sloppier performance, whereas I have chosen to include the slower and more carefully-performed version. It's a wonderful-sounding modern mix, and luckily doesn't sound too out of place next to these studio recordings. Also, the great line "I keep chasing lesser, lesser rainbows" really shows Reed's skill in the economy of words. He can say lots with very, very little, and his 1972 masterpiece "Perfect Day" is a masterclass in exactly that.

    After side three ends with applause from the tiny audience, side four matches that non-musical energy with a quiet count-in to "Beginning To See The Light." This particular recording was made while John Cale was still there (this is actually the final track which features him), some months before the more acoustic-leaning version was recorded with Doug Yule for The Velvet Underground. I judged it both good and different enough to be worth including, and also becase this final side needed a chugging opener to get things moving again: a job which this version executes perfectly. Both it and this following track, "Coney Island Steeplechase," are modern mixes. "Steeplechase" is fun and catchy, especially the part where Lou Reed counts down the days of the week. After that we arrive at the album's closing trio of songs. On the band's third album, drummer Mo Tucker sings lead vocals on its' excellent closer "After Hours." Here, near the very end of the album, she does it again, singing "I'm Sticking With You." This track was used in the soundtrack to a wonderful film about a teenage pregnancy called Juno (2007), after which Lou Reed began performing it live again. This one is a sweet and silly song, as much of this album seems to be, and is a 1969 mix. 

The Complete Matrix Tapes live album, made up of four great entire sets played

shortly after Rock And Roll's recording ended. "Over You" is sourced from it. One of

the performances of "White Light/White Heat" is unbelievably fast, and "Sister Ray"

goes for around 40 minutes, so long that the tape cuts out and an audience recording 

is substituted for a brief time. Well worth a listen by any fan of live rock music.

    Same goes for the next track, which is also the title track and the final track with singing, "Rock And Roll." Several of the songs that the Velvets put to tape in 1969 were rerecorded during and shortly after the band made their final album, Loaded, the following year, but this was the only one that actually made the cut onto the released LP (the others were "Ocean," "I'm Sticking With You," and "Ride Into The Sun" with vocals). Nonetheless, I decided to make "Rock And Roll" the title track here because, the way I see it, this song is the band's thesis statement on this album. They are making, generally, the shallowest and most commercial rock music that they had recorded up until that point (although a number of songs don't fit that description, especially the Cale ones that I have shoehorned snugly into this LP). "We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together" being planned as the lead single is a real statement of commerciality that this number further encapsulates. The Velvet Underground are making rock music to have fun and good times to—at least relative to what they were doing before. Apart from on "Ocean," they're really not taking themselves that seriously, and as a result, this is their lightest album before Loaded. It is for this precise reason that I chose the album cover that I did. It's an Andy Warhol imitation that was used as the cover to the Andy Warhol's Velvet Underground Featuring Nico compilation from 1971, an image commonly associated with the band that one of my friends even has on his wall as a poster. I see the lips sucking on soda as representing the commercial music (by their standards, it must be remembered) being listened to: in other words, feel-good product being consumed. Loaded with hits, but in different words and with a lot less in the hits department (not that Loaded charted much higher than their other stuff in the end). When, as the lyrics say, Jenny put on that New York station and heard fantastic rock music that saved her soul, she was listening to the Velvet Underground. That is why "Rock And Roll" is both the title and penultimate track on this album (and the last one with words). It's their statement about the music they were making—and is actually the polar opposite of the statement they were making with their second album White Light/White Heat, a monolith of uncommercial anti-beauty.

Their intentionally-abrasive White Light/White Heat, featuring a black-on-black

still from a Warhol film as the cover. This was my real introduction to the band.

    The album's musical journey ends, obviously, with its' final song: the beautiful cutrain-calling instrumental "Ride Into The Sun." Probably unlike the other instrumentals here, vocals were indeed recorded for this one in '69, but it seems the session tape with those and a pile of other overdubs dissapeared at some point before the song first got mixed for release in the '80s. This version with vocals still exists as a crappy-sounding acetate recording (for those who don't know, acetates are these records which degrade with each play but can be made very quickly, so were commonly taken home by artists at the end of sessions before cassettes replaced them), but I find most of the instruments in this modern remix relatively inaudible there, or at least the beauty of it is lost entirely to me (maybe or maybe not as a result of the serious loss in fidelity). It doesn't matter too much that the words are missing here because there are several later studio recordings of this song that include the full lyrics, so it's not like fans are really missing out on much. I find this song to be just so sublime, the audio equivalent of a sky-melting, blood-red, golden-violet sunset. It's the perfect playout music to this lovely album, in a way that makes it feel as if movie credits are rolling by. This is one of my very favourite song on the album, and by the band for that matter. And with its' fade out, Rock And Roll concludes. 

    So, to wrap things up nicely, here are the album's three sets of missing lyrics:

"Guess I'm Falling In Love"

I got fever in my pocket

You know I gotta move

Hey babe, I guess I'm falling in love

I got fever in my pocket

Down to my shoes

Oh babe, I guess I'm falling in love

I got in my pocket, hey babe

Everything that I can have

I've got things in my love life

It's gonna work out fine

It's gonna be alright

I gotta move

You got yours on your side

Hey now babe, I guess I'm falling in love

I got fever in my pocket

Down to my shoes

Oh babe, I guess I'm falling in love

You'd better move it on sweet babe

Hey, on down to your shoes

Things they're right, mama

You know it'll work out fine

Hey, you gotta lose

Got hand in my pocket

You know it's up your street

Oh babe, I guess I'm falling in love

I've got ankles in my braces

Find it's hard to lose

Oh babe, guess I'm falling in love

Oh babe, guess I'm falling in love

Oh babe, guess I'm falling in love

"I'm Gonna Move Right In"

Well she's straight and looks like a lot of fun

The bar is open I'm gonna go drink with everyone

Walking down main street with my hat [unintelligible]

I've got all this money and have to have a care

I'm gonna move right in

I'm gonna move right in

I'm gonna move right in

After we hang a little we'll have a little fun

Maybe go shoot and kill and knife everyone

The bar looks like fun gonna have myself a drink

Babe I seem to know myself, I ain't gonna think

I'm gonna move right in

I'm gonna move right in

I'm gonna move right in

I'm gonna pay and try get myself straight

Gonna have a last look at me, she's gonna be my date

Go down on Main Street [unintelligible] going to the wire

I'm saying I have to get get get my plane higher

"Ride Into The Sun"

Looking for another place

Somewhere else to be

Looking for another chance

To ride into the sun

Ride into the sun

Ride into the sun

Ride into the sun

Ride into the sun

Where everything seems to pretty

When you're lonely and tired of the city

Remember it's a flower made out of clay

To the city

Where everything seems to ugly

When you're sitting at home in self pity

Remember you're just one more person

Who's living there

It's hard to live in the city

It's hard to live in the city

It's hard to live in the city

 CD-quality down-low'd linc's here.