The Who - Who's For Tennis?

The Who – Who’s For Tennis?

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

Side A:

1.  Glow Girl

2.  Fortune Teller

3.  Girl’s Eyes

4.  Dogs

5.  Call Me Lightning

6.  Melancholia

Side B:

7.  Faith in Something Bigger

8.  Early Morning: Cold Taxi

9.  Little Billy

10.  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

11.  Shakin’ All Over

12.  Magic Bus

A long-desired blog-follower request, this is my reconstruction of the proposed and promptly withdrawn 1968 album Who’s For Tennis? by The Who.  Originally intend as a proper studio album (or live album, as some maintain) that would have been released in-between The Who Sell Out and Tommy, the idea for the album was scrapped and the recorded material instead came out as either single releases or remained in the vaults.  This reconstruction draws from numerous sources to create a completely stereo, cohesive album, utilizing the best mastering available and is volume-adjusted for aural continuity.  Also, a completely new and unique stereo mix of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” was created, unavailable elsewhere and exclusive to this reconstruction.

Riding as high as they possibly could from 1967’s The Who Sell Out, a concept album recorded to emulate British pirate radio stations, The Who embarked on tours of Australia and the United States throughout 1968, biding their time until their next concept album.  During this time, Pete Townshend began composing what he believed could be his magnum opus, a rock opera that spanned an entire album-length (rather than a single-song ‘pocket-opera’ such as “A Quick One While He’s Away”) about a deaf, dumb and blind kid (who sure played a mean pinball).  Such a lofty project required time to compose and demo properly, and the album was set to be recorded that fall.  But in an attempt to keep up with their British rock contemporaries such as The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and The Kinks who could release an entire album of material every year, the question was proposed: what album would The Who release in 1968 to fill the stopgap until Townshend’s rock opera, which at best would be released in early 1969?

Thus The Who’s manager and producer Kit Lambert proposed an album entitled Who’s For Tennis? to be released that July of 1968, meant to capitalize on the upcoming Wimbledon Championships.  The album would have included all new recordings as well as any number of the relevant outtakes from the previous year’s Sell Out sessions, which had produced a wealth of non-LP material.  In January and February of 1968, The Who recorded Townshend’s “Faith in Something Bigger”, “Glow Girl” and “Little Billy”, the later written for the American Cancer Society for an anti-smoking campaign.  Also recorded during these initial sessions was a very old Who song originally dating from 1964 called “Call Me Lightning”, and bassist John Entwhistle’s own “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, yet another ‘scary’ children’s song.  After embarking on their spring tour of the US directly after the February recording sessions, The Who returned to the studio in May and June and recorded seven more tracks: Townshend originals “Dogs”, “Melancholia”, “Magic Bus”, “Joys” and “Facts of Life” as well as live staples of old blues covers “Fortune Teller” and “Shakin’ All Over”. 

With twelve new studio recordings in the can, the absurd idea of Who’s For Tennis? was eventually withdrawn as the summer drew upon The Who.  Instead of an entire album, just three of the tracks trickled out as single-releases: the US single “Call Me Lightning” b/w “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and it’s UK counterpart “Dogs” b/w “Call Me Lightning”.  Neither single charted particularly well, becoming long-forgotten Who singles.  There was also some discussion of a live album of The Who’s performance at The Fillmore East to be released in Who’s For Tennis?’s place (some sources claim the Who’s For Tennis? concept was this live album rather than a studio album of the 1968 recordings) but the performances were a bit too sloppy and were set aside.  The final decision was to instead release the single “Magic Bus” as well as two cash-grab compilations: The Magic Bus: The Who On Tour in the US, and Direct Hits in the UK.  The decision paid off, as “Magic Bus” became a long-time fan favorite and live staple for The Who for years to come.  This was enough to bide the band’s time until Townshend could see, feel, touch and heal his rock opera into fruition, even as much as pillaging the outro of the now-canned “Glow Girl” into Tommy’s “Overture/It’s A Boy”. 

The remaining tracks were left unheard for years, with each slowly trickling out on anthology collections: first on Odds and Sods in 1974; then on Rarities volumes 1 & 2 in 1983; and finally the Maximum R&B boxset in 1993.  Aside from the tracks that remain in the vault to this day (“Shakin’ All Over”, “Joys” and “Facts of Life”), Who fans have just enough material to reconstruct what this theoretical 1968 stopgap album would have been.  Various fans’ track sequences tend to utilize the same 12-or-so tracks recorded during this period but the actual track sequences fluctuate wildly, as there never was a finalized tracklist.  The only concrete information we have (beyond a title) is that it would have been a ‘preachy’ album (a reference to the inclusion of “Little Billy” and “Faith in Something Bigger”) and the album would have opened with “Glow Girl”.  Keep in mind that allegedly Sell Out outtakes and non-LP tracks would have been used as filler on Who’s For Tennis?, which could have included any of the following songs: “Pictures of Lily”, “Doctor, Doctor”, “Glittering Girl”, “Hall of the Mountain King”, “Sodding About”, “Early Morning: Cold Taxi”, “Girl’s Eyes”, “Summertime Blues”, “Someone’s Coming”.  What would have actually been on Who’s For Tennis?  While there is no possible answer, we can certainly know what is on this reconstruction!

Side A begins with the only clue Pete Townshend has left us: the album starts with “Glow Girl”, which would have also been a single, here sourced from the best-sounding version from the Sell Out remaster.  Following is “Fortune Teller” taken from the 30 Years of Maximum R&B boxset.  The first of my chosen Sell Out outtakes follows (using only the ones that seemed to stylistically and sonically match the rest of the 1968 material): Keith Moon’s “Girl’s Eyes”, again taken from Maximum R&B.  Mellowing down a bit, the unique stereo mix of “Dogs” taken from the Maximum R&B set is next, followed by mod-rocker “Call Me Lightning”, using the true stereo mix (albeit frustratingly narrow) again found on Maximum R&B.   Side A closes with the epic rocker “Melancholia”, once again taken from the Maximum R&B set.  

Side B opens with Townshend’s admittedly preachy “Faith in Something Bigger” from Odds and Sods, followed by a song that seemed a bit ahead of its time in terms to social acceptance to the health hazards of smoking: “Little Billy”, using the superior master from Odds and Sods.   Next is the second Sell Out outtake which fits in with the sound of The Who circa 1968, Roger Daltrey’s “Early Morning: Cold Taxi”, also taken from the Maximum R&B box set. 

Midway through side B we come upon the two truly unique mixes on my reconstruction.  First, a completely new stereo mix of the otherwise mono “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” is created when syncing up the two different mono mixes.  Panned at 9 o’clock to the left is the mono mix found on the Rarities album that features prominent drums; panned at 3 o’clock to the right is the mono mix found on the vinyl-only release of Magic Bus: The Who On Tour that features prominent backing vocals and sound effects.  Because both versions are mixed differently enough, we are able to create an interesting stereo spectrum.   At some points, the two mixes fall out of sync, creating a sweeping phase effect; while this is usually unwanted, I thought the effect was particularly effective in the creepy psychedelic track, and I left it in!  While “Shakin’ All Over” was recorded during the May 1968 sessions, no recordings of the track have been released nor leaked.  Instead, I present here a soundboard recording of the song taken from their Fillmore East performance, a nod to the brief concept that Who’s For Tennis? might have been a live album from that date anyways.  Edited to a more modest length, I also personally remixed the crusty-sounding soundboard recording to emulate the mixing found during the ending of “Melancholia” by reducing the volume and high end of the guitar in the left channel, and raising the high end of the drums in the right channel as well as bringing them in a bit to about 3 o’clock.  Concluding the noisy  performance—and the album as a whole—is “Magic Bus”, the stereo mix taken from Odds and Sods, which featured the most natural mastering in my opinion.

With cover art brilliantly reimagined by Jon Hunt (thanks Jon!) as the icing on the cake, we have twelve songs evenly spread over two shorter sides, in tandem with their previous three albums.  And what of the quality of this audio tennis match?  The most points scored here is for the drastic change from mod-pop into full-blown rock icons.  Here we hear the band beefing up their sound and more importantly Roger Daltrey shifting from the slight, short-haired teen-pop singer of “I’m A Boy” and “Substitute” into the wailing, bare-chested, long-haired rock star of Tommy, Who’s Next and Quadrophenia.  Listening to the album, we now see how The Who went from Sell Out to Tommy.  But taking the album into a whole, we can understand why Who’s For Tennis? was left out: while there are some great songs here, the album as a whole is pretty weak, scatterbrained and honestly a bit corny.  Regardless, this reconstruction offers a missing piece of The Who’s history, an excellent addition to their album discography as it, at the very least, collects a number of non-LP songs that would be quite an annoyance to gather piecemeal.  Let the match begin!  

Sources used:

30 Years of Maximum R&B (1992 original CD master)

Fillmore East: 6 April 1968 (bootleg CD, Sunrise Records)

Magic Bus - The Who On Tour (1968 unknown vinyl rip)

Odds & Sods (1998 Polydor CD remaster)

Rarities vols I & II (2004 Polydor CD remaster)

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Captain Beefheart - It Comes To You in a Plain Brown Wrapper

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band –

It Comes To You in a Plain Brown Wrapper

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

Side A:

1.  Trust Us

2.  Mirror Man

Side B:

3.  Korn Ring Finger

4.  25^th Century Quaker

5.  Safe As Milk

Side C:

6.  Moody Liz

7.  Tarotplane

Side D:

8.  On Tomorrow

9.  Beatle Bones n’ Smokin’ Stones

10.  Gimme Dat Harp Boy

11.  Kandy Korn

This was a long-overlooked follower-request from a few years ago and I was recently reminded to do it!  This is a reconstruction of the unreleased 1968 double-album It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band.  Originally scrapped with half of the material re-recorded and infamously “psychedelicized” for the album Strictly Personal and the other half released as 1972’s Mirror Man, this reconstruction attempts to cull all the originally intended material for the double album that was supposed to be their sophomore release, more successfully bridging the gap between 1967’s Safe As Milk and 1969’s Trout Mask Replica.  Some tracks have been crossfaded to make a continuous side of music (notably Side D) and the most pristine sources are used for the best soundquality, including a vinyl rip of an original pressing of Mirror Man. 

 

After a prominent rise of notoriety upon the release of Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band’s psychedelic-blues debut Safe As Milk in 1967, the group stood at a crossroads of how to proceed: continue being a cutting edge cult act or expanding their horizons?  After a disastrous warm-up performance for their scheduled 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, it seemed that breakthrough success would elude the riotous bunch.   To make matters worse, Don Van Vliet’s band had been damaged by lineup changes due to members who had had enough of The Captain’s drug hallucinations and erratic behavior.  Prodigal guitarist Ry Cooder vacated to be replaced briefly by Gerry McGee, who was in turn replaced by Jeff Cotton. 

Despite the troubled waters, Don reunited with a Magic Band that consisted of Cotton, Alex St. Clair Snouffer, Jerry Handley and John French in the fall of 1967 to record their follow-up to Safe As Milk.  The album was planned to be a double album and was to follow the contemporary fad of extended improvisational jams, as well as featuring a more “live” feel as compared to the first record.  The album was to be called It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper, in reference to an ambiguous parcel containing either narcotics, drug paraphernalia or possibly pornography.  The cover art was to feature exactly that as well, a plain brown wrapper marked ‘strictly personal’! 

This parcel was never delivered however, as the recording sessions came to a halt.  No reason was ever given, but it has been suggested that their label Buddha Records had pulled the plug out of disinterest.  A consolation was offered by the producer of the Plain Brown Wrapper sessions, Bob Krasnow, who convinced the band to rerecord some of the material and release it on his label Blue Thumb.  Recorded in April and May of 1968, Don & his crew recut the more ”commercial” tracks from the Fall 1967 sessions at a much more abbreviated length (“Mirror Man” was cut from the original 15 minutes down to 5!).  In a move that angered Beefheart fans for ages, Krasnow took the liberty himself (allegedly) to overdub numerous faux-psychedelic effects onto the newly-recorded album, even completely burying the mixes under unlistenable phasing.  The released album—Strictly Personal—was a commercial disaster and The Captain disowned the album, claiming the effects were added without his permission.  Some speculate that was untrue and Don had given his approval only to later turn on the album after its failure.  Either way, this folly of questionable truth is just simply a part of the Captain Beefheart mythos, as was everything else. 

After the critical success of the seminal experimental and Frank Zappa-produced rock album Trout Mask Replica (not to mention its respectable follow-up Lick My Decals Off Baby), Buddha Records wished to capitalize on Captain Beefheart’s renewed cult status and artistic credibility.  Going back to the original fall 1967 Plain Brown Wrapper tapes, they compiled a single-disc of material, primarily focusing on the extended live improvisations.  1971’s Mirror Man showed the world (or at least the few who were listening) what Strictly Personal was supposed to sound like, to some extent.  But it was not without its own short comings: not only was it merely half of the original Plain Brown Wrapper album, but it featured anachronistic cover art, improper musician credits and Buddha falsely claimed the album was recorded in one night in 1965! 

Years passed before fans were able to piece together the Plain Brown Wrapper album, beginning with questionably-legal British import I May Be Hungry But I Ain’t Weird in 1992.  Suffering from the same fate as other early Captain Beefheart CD reissues of poor mastering and use of inferior mastertapes, it wasn’t until 1999 when Buddha Records released The Mirror Man Sessions, essentially a properly-mastered Mirror Man with five outtakes from the Plain Brown Wrapper sessions included as bonus tracks.  Seven more outtakes (presumably the rest of the listenable material) were included as bonus tracks on their remaster of Safe As Milk.  Finally, Sundazed Records collected all the non-Mirror Man outtakes and one more additional track in their own vinyl-only 2008 reconstruction of It Comes To You in a Plain Brown Wrapper (which made no attempt to literally reconstruct the lost album, unlike my own reconstruction).

While all the pieces are now available to recreate It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper, we still have the task to wrap it all up as one.  The layout of my reconstruction was rather simple: each of the four sides would feature one of the lengthy live jam sessions, with one whole side following Side B of Strictly Personal as close as possible (giving one an alternate and more authentic take on the album).  I also used a pristine needledrop vinyl rip of Mirror Man by Euripides for those tracks, as it features the album’s original EQ and mastering parameters that has since been lost, deeper bass and crisper highs.  It is of note that the Sundazed vinyl utilized the same mastering as the 1999 Buddha remasters, so it was not used here as source material.  I also chose to exclude the instrumental tracks that Captain Beefheart had never gotten around to recording vocals for (“Big Black Baby Shoes”, “Flower Pot” and “Dirty Gene”), thus making a more finished-sounding album (although the instrumental “On Tomorrow” was used to mimic the tracklist for Strictly Personal).  The end result is eleven tracks that span two 45-minute discs and offer a purer Captain Beefheart album than Strictly Personal, with this effectively replacing it. 

Side A of my reconstruction begins with take 12 of “Trust Us” from the Safe As Milk remaster, selected over take 6 as take 12 featured vocal overdubs, suggesting it was the master take.  This is followed by the epic “Mirror Man” from Euripides’ vinyl rip of the album.  Side B begins with the reserved Delta Blues “Korn Ring Finger” from the Safe As Milk remaster, followed by “25^th Century Quaker” from Euripides’ Mirror Man vinyl rip, concluding with take 12 of ”Safe as Milk” from The Mirror Man Sessions, again chosen over take 5 because of its vocal overdubs.

The second disc begins with the decidingly upbeat take 8 of “Moody Liz” from The Mirror Man Sessions (chosen over the overdub-less take 16 from Sundazed’s Plain Brown Wrapper) and the rest of the side C belongs to “Tarotplane” from Mirror Man.  The final side of the album attempts to offer an alternate, unadorned version of side B of Strictly Personal, beginning with the instrumental “On Tomorrow” from the Safe As Milk remaster, which is segued into “Beatle Bones n’ Smokin’ Stones” from The Mirror Man Sessions. The final descending bassline is hard edited into “Gimme Dat Harp Boy”, also from The Mirror Man Sessions.  The album concludes with possibly the most commercial track of the lot, “Kandy Korn” from Euripides’ vinyl rip of Mirror Man.  

Sources Used:

Mirror Man (Euripides vinyl rip, 1971 Buddha Records)

Safe As Milk (CD remaster, 1999 Buddha Records)

The Mirror Man Sessions (CD, 1999 Buddha Records)

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The Zombies - RIP

The Zombies – R.I.P.

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

Side A:

1.  She Loves The Way They Love Her

2.  Imagine The Swan

3.  If It Don’t Work Out

4.  Smokey Day

5.  I’ll Keep Trying

6.  Conversation Off Floral Street

Side B:

7.  I’ll Call You Mine

8.  Telescope (Mr. Galileo)

9.  I Know She Will

10.  To Julia (For When She Smiles)

11.  Don’t Cry For Me

12.  Walking In The Sun

This is a reconstruction of what would have been the final Zombies album, an intended 1969 release as a posthumous follow-up to their sleeper-hit Odessey and Oracle.  While all 12 albums tracks were collected in the box set Zombie Heaven in 1997 and then sequenced as originally intended as an official Japanese release in 2008, my reconstruction attempts to create a more well-rounded and cohesive album with a new sequence that more evenly distributes the posthumous 1969 Argent-led tracks with the overdubbed 1964-1966 Blunstone-led outtake tracks, as well as using alternate mixes of both.  Also through creative editing I was able to add more Colin Blunstone vocals to the album and less Rod Argent lead vocals.  In effect, my R.I.P. seems a bit less awkwardly anachronistic, and more a cohesive theoretical baroque-pop follow-up to Odessy and Oracle. 

The Zombies are a perfect example of how sometimes great things can be overlooked and simply fall through the cracks.  Despite consistently producing some of the most well-crafted and well-performed pop-rock songs of the 1960s, the amount of new material from the band approached a near standstill by 1966.  The music scene was becoming increasingly psychedelic and the generally straight-laced Zombies were in danger of becoming irrelevant.  With a label quickly becoming uninterested and a live circuit drying up, they pooled their own scant resources together and financed the recording of their sophomore album, a sink or swim record entitled Odessey and Oracle.  Recorded literally as The Beatles walked out of EMI Studios after completing Sgt. Pepper in 1967, The Zombies utilized the plethora of exotic instruments their British pop brethren left lying around.  Adorning magnificently-written psychedelic pop songs with these instruments as well as serendipitous harmonies, the outcome was one of the greatest masterworks of the 1960s, let alone 1967.  But the unfortunate reality is that relatively few people really paid attention.  The magnificent “Care of Cell 44” ceased to be a hit, live gigs dried up and singer Colin Blunstone, having no stake in The Zombies’ publishing royalties, left the band because he simply didn’t have the money to continue.   The album was released to silence in 1968. 

Yet due to friends in high places—namely Al Kooper who championed the band to Columbia in the US—Odessey and Oracle was given a second chance on the other side of the Atlantic.  But because of the fatal choice to push “Butcher’s Tale” as a single, the album again fell to silence.  It wasn’t until another year passed that radio picked up on “Time of The Season” which propelled the song to an eventual status as an anthem of the Summer of Love, despite being two years late and from a band that had ceased to exist.  But keyboardist Rod Argent and bassist Chris White, whom were already occupied in their current project Argent, were offered the chance to essentially capitalize in the unexpected interest in the dead Zombies who were suddenly undead.  In an effort to create closure to the band that had passed away before it’s time—and a chance to not only clear the vaults but to advertize their band Argent—the pair began work on the final Zombies album, the posthumous R.I.P. 

The plan was simple: the first side of the album was to feature “new” Zombies recordings and the second side of the album to feature newly finished outtakes from the numerous singles-sessions from 1964-1966.  Argent and White collected the best of the series of demos recorded in-between the demise of The Zombies and the formation of Argent, recordings which were used to secure their own record contract.  While sometimes reminiscent of the mid-60s psyche-pop of The Zombies, their songs bared a stronger resemblance to the tail-end of the 60s and the hard rock/prog of Argent.  In stark contrast to this, the outtakes found on side B were simply anachronistic, sounding exactly like they were: tracks recorded around1965 with new layers of lush harmonies and some with new orchestration.  As it stands, R.I.P. sounded more like a document of how far recording techniques had progressed in the 1960s.  Of the Side B tracks, only “Walking In The Sun” approached the soundquality of Side A with newly recorded symphonic instruments and new lead vocal by Colin Blunstone juxtaposed with the backing track dating from a demo session in 1964.  Singles were released for “Imagine The Swan” and a newly-finished “If It Don’t Work Out” (which was originally a 1965 demo for Dusty Springfield), both failing to replicate the success of “Time Of The Season” or even their 1965 hit “Tell Her No” and the R.I.P. album was scrapped. 

Of the 12 songs slated for the album, most trickled out as bonus tracks on various compilations throughout the decades.  It wasn’t until 1997 with the insanely comprehensive four-disc box set Zombie Heaven that the public heard R.I.P., as all 12 of the tracks from the album were featured on the ‘rare/studio outtakes’ disc .  Finally in 2000, the same exact R.I.P. masters as found on Zombie Heaven were released as their own standalone album in correct track sequence, albeit as a Japanese import with numerous bonus tracks (followed by a 2008 compilation of outtakes from this era of the band called Into The Afterlife).  In plain sight—but also apparently as overlooked as  Odessey and Oracle was in 1968—we could hear the bizarre combination of late-60s proto-prog and mid-60s pop.  Perhaps we can have a second memorial service for The Zombies and allow this album to better rest in peace?

My reconstruction of R.I.P. had two main goals:    

1) To resequence the songs and use some alternate mixes so that the vast time difference between recording dates is less-apparent, making the Argent-led songs and the refurbished classic Zombies songs intermingle, in turn making a more cohesive album.  

2) Less Rod Argent and MORE Colin Bluestone!  After all, he was the voice of The Zombies.  To do this we are able to use recordings from Blunstone’s first solo album One Year (produced by fellow Zombies Argent & White), replacing Argent’s vocals with Blunstone’s.  Just as well, we will drop the two weakest Argent-led songs for others, making the album more Zombie-like and less Argent-like.

Side A begins much as the official R.I.P., with “She Loves The Way They love Her”.  Instead we use the version from One Year but with the audience sound effects from the R.I.P. version overdubbed at the appropriate points, effectively “replacing” Argent’s vocals with Blunstone’s.  The R.I.P. mix of “Imagine The Swan” is next, with the orchestral mix of “If It Don’t Work Out”  from the compilation Into The Afterlife following, an attempt to make a more baroque-pop follower to Odessey and Oracle.  Next, Colin Blunstone’s lead vocal from “Smokey Day” is extracted from his One Year album and superimposed into the alternate mix of Argent’s “Smokey Day” (a bonus track on the Repertoire remaster of Odessey and Oracle), again creating a new Colin lead vocal that sings a harmony to Rod’s.  Note that the vocals fall out of sync in the last verse, due to Colin intentionally deviating from the rhythm of the vocal; no attempt was made to change his artistic decision to sing the verse in that manner.  The R.I.P. versions of “If It Don’t Work Out” and “Conversations Off Floral Street” end the side, the later being the only post-break-up song on the album featuring the original Zombies lineup, including guitarist Paul Atkins and drummer Hue Grundy.

Side B opens with the R.I.P. version of “I’ll Call You Mine”, following with an unused Argent track from this era which seemed more appropriately Zombie-esque, “Telescope” from the Into The Afterlife compilation, which replaces “Girl Help Me”.  My own unique edit of “I Know She Will” follows when the first half of the orchestral version from Into The Afterlife is edited together with the second half of the full-band mix found on the R.I.P. album, creating a strong dynamic and emphasizing its orchestration.  Next is another “more Zombies-like Argent track” taken from Into The Afterlife and remixed my myself, the classical “To Julia” which occupies the same idiosyncratic function as “Butcher’s Tale” held on Odessey and Oracle and replaces “I Could Spend The Day”.  The R.I.P. mix of “Don’t Cry for Me” attempts one final ruckus before giving way to my own unique edit of “Walking In The Sun”, again editing the orchestral version from Into The Afterlife onto the full-band R.I.P. mix, creating a wide dynamic. 

Sources used:

The Zombies - Into The Afterlife (2007 Rhino Records)

The Zombies - Odessey and Oracle (1992 Repertoire Recrods)

The Zombies - R.I.P. (2008 Imperial Records Japan)

Colin Blunstone - One Year (2007 Water Music Records)

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*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

Neil Young - Chrome Dreams

Neil Young – Chrome Dreams

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

Side A:

1.  Pocahontas

2.  Will To Love

3.  Star of Bethlehem

4.  Like A Hurricane

5.  Too Far Gone

Side B:

6.  Hold Back The Tears

7.  Homegrown

8.  Captain Kennedy

9.  Stringman

10.  Sedan Delivery

11.  Powderfinger

12.  Look Out For My Love

By overwhelming request, this is a reconstruction of the famous unreleased 1977 Neil Young album Chrome Dreams.  Originally compiled from material recorded between 1974-1977 and slated for a release after an acetate was allegedly compiled, Young withdrew the album and restructured it into American Stars ‘n Bars.  This reconstruction collects all the best possible source tapes into the sequence generally accepted as being Chrome Dreams.   It is banded as a cohesive album and attempts were made to create a large dynamic range between the acoustic Young songs and the full-band Crazy Horse songs.   While my reconstruction isn’t necessarily anything that hasn’t been heard before, it attempts to be as close to a finished album as possible with the best possible soundquality, an improvement on circulating bootlegs.

Ups and downs and an epic back-catalog of recordings were Neil Young’s modus operandi throughout the 1970s, the true seeds of what would eventually become—and then not become—Chrome Dreams.  So epic in fact, that Young simultaneously worked on different albums and collections of songs thought the mid 70s, in as much as cultivating numerous projects that either never materialized or were shifted into something else, often completely unrelated to each other.  After his triumphant success with 1972’s Harvest, Young attempted to undo the very success he initially strived to reach by recording his “Ditch Trilogy”—the more challenging Time Fades Away, On The Beach and Tonight’s The Night albums—partially instigated by the death of Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten.  As well as “The Ditch Trilogy” albums, Young also composed a set of ‘Water Songs’ meant as a concept album about, well, water, which was never realized and the songs scattered to other projects.

Aside from those three albums and abandoned concept, Young also offered a slew of originals for the reformed Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album Human Highway which never materialized either (but of which this blog has already tackled).  And still aside from those five projects Young also recorded an entire folk/country album concerning his separation from his wife Carrie Snodgrass, entitled Homegrown.  That project nearly saw the light of day as the second album of the ‘Ditch Trilogy’, but Young scrapped the more somber and painful Homegrown for the more raw and immediate Tonight’s The Night (which the label put on hold making it the third album of the Trilogy).  Young’s classic 1975 album ZUMA collected some of the scattered leftovers from the six mid-70s projects, following it with a duet album with Stephen Stills, 1976’s Long May You Run.

Finally bringing us to Young’s next project in 1977, it was to be a hodge-podge of new material and leftovers that dated back to the unreleased Homegrown album.  Titled Chrome Dreams, it was to be a fairly schizophrenic record, jumping from Nashville country-rock, solo acoustic folk and full-blown Crazy Horse rock anthems, all tracks simply culled from his personal vaults, recorded between 1974-1977.  The few that have heard Chrome Dreams commented that it could have been one of his strongest albums of the 1970s.  But for reasons unknown to this day, Young scrapped the album and recorded a completely different set of forgettable songs as the meat of American Stars n Bars, which was released in Chrome Dreams’ place in 1977.  While this completely new set of mediocre songs occupied all of side A, four of the original songs slated for Chrome Dreams found its way onto side B, giving the second half of the album a hint at the greatness Chrome Dreams could have been.

A few of the Chrome Dreams songs—“Pocahontas”, “Sedan Delivery” and “Powderfinger”—were re-recorded for Young’s triumphant finale of the 1970s, Rust Never Sleeps.  Aside from a few more trickling out over time and mediocre follow-up albums, Chrome Dreams was never a shared dream with anyone outside Young’s inner circle.  Its reputation grew over time, accumulating to an officially released sequel in 2007, Chrome Dreams II, a completely new set of songs by a Neil Young not without a sense of humor.  Luckily a few acetates of the original tracks have leaked out into the bootleg market as well as an alleged copy of the album’s tapebox (although denied as being accurate by some close to Neil, but never necessarily confirmed).  With all of the material existing either on bootlegs or the original 1970s albums, we will be able to reconstruct one of the great Neil Young albums that never were.

Side A begins with the original acoustic version of “Pocahontas”.  While the official version on the Rust Never Sleeps album features subtle overdubs, this is the unadorned version found on the bootleg Chrome Dreams “GF Rust Edition”.  Following are three songs all taken from the album versions of American Stars n Bars: the eerie and ethereal “Will To Love”; “Star of Bethlehem”, a track salvaged from the Homegrown album; and the epic “Like A Hurricane” which became a hit for Neil Young.  “Too Far Gone” releases the tension built up from the hurricane blast, this being the original unreleased version taken from the Black Label bootleg of Chrome Dreams rather than the re-recoded version from 1989’s Freedom.

The longer Side B starts with “Hold Back The Tears”, which was re-recorded for American Stars n Bars; presented here is the original acoustic version taken from the GF Rust bootleg.  "Homegrown" from American Stars n bars is next, a re-recording of the allegedly acoustic title track from the unreleased Homegrown album.  My personal favorite “Captain Kennedy” is an alternate unreleased mix as compared to the version from Hawks & Doves,  also taken from the GF Rust bootleg.  I used it here as it is in true stereo and matches the mixing of the other acoustic songs on the album, probably sourced from the same tape.  My own remaster of “Stringman” from the GF Rust bootleg creates a smoother intro to the song which was otherwise too loud, a track eventually re-recorded for Young’s 1993 Unplugged performance.  The unreleased original studio versions of “Sedan Delivery” and “Powderfinger” follows, taken from the GF Rust bootleg.  Closing the album out is the official album mix of “Look Out For My Love” from Comes A Time.

The last task of our reconstructed Chrome Dreams is an original artwork by LCM, representing the original conceptual artwork for the album: an anthropomorphic grill of a 1955 Chrysler as “a beautiful chick”.  When set alongside Young’s 1970s discography, Chrome Dreams shines brilliantly over its own dull replacement American Stars n Bars, and can fend its own against Young classics ZUMA and Rust Never Sleeps.  According to the man himself, a reconstruction of Chrome Dreams (as well as Homegrown) will appear on Archives Volume II, set to be released later in 2014… allegedly anyways, knowing the vast length and improbability of ‘Neil Young-time’.  Until then, we can only dream.

Sources used:

American Stars n Bars (2003 Reprise CD remaster)

Chrome Dreams (bootleg, 1993 Black Label)

Chrome Dreams (bootleg, 2008 Godfather Records)

Comes A Time (1988 original CD master)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR, Goldwave and Audacity --> flac encoding via TLH lv8

*md5, artwork and tracknotes included