Ten Rock myths debunked
Words: Tim Worthington
1. "There Ain't No Get Back In The Union Jack"
The Myth: There is an unreleased early version of The Beatles' 'Get Back', entitled 'No Blacks', with lyrics urging immigrants to return to their ancestral homelands forthwith. This is considered so potentially damaging to The Beatles' reputations that it is kept under lock and key and will never be heard in public.
The Reality: like most of the songs that The Beatles recorded during the latter half of their career, 'Get Back' started out as a simple 'sketch' of a song with a rudimentary rhythm and chord structure and no concrete lyrical ideas. Taking advantage of their status and ability to spend prolonged periods of time in high quality recording studios (a luxury that was not routinely afforded to most pop acts of the 1960s), the band would often consign rough working versions of these half-formed ideas to tape for future reference. The very first recording of what would eventually evolve into 'Get Back' featured Paul McCartney improvising garbled lyrics based around a newspaper report that he had just been reading, covering the row that followed MP Enoch Powell's notorious "rivers of blood" speech about Britain's relatively open immigration policy. The improvised lyrics could only really be deemed 'offensive' if individual phrases were picked out and isolated - something that in itself is difficult, as the lack of need for a cogent lyrical structure is particularly obvious on this recording and 'lines', such as they are, often disappear into mumbling - and the piece as a whole is little more than a stream of consciousness reportage based on someone else's words. There is certainly no reason to take it any more seriously than the improvised lyrics based around Jimmy Saville's catchphrases that McCartney was captured performing in a 1989 BBC documentary about the making of "Flowers In The Dirt". By the time that the first take of the song came to be recorded, 'Get Back' had acquired lyrics that parodied the upsurge in anti-immigration feeling, featuring the line "all the fools round here don't dig no Pakistanis takin' all the people's jobs" (tellingly, most 'shock' reports on this subject conveniently omit the first five words of the line, lending it a completely different sheen). In this version, 'Get Back' is effectively satire in the same mould as the contemporaneous television sitcom "Till Death Us Do Part", adopting the persona of the bigot in order to caricature their stance. On listening back to the recording, however, it was decided that the satire did not come across well in a straight-faced pop song, and rather than struggle further with what could easily have become widely misinterpreted, McCartney opted simply to replace the lyric (and other, non-contentious parts of the song) with something inoffensive, thus obscuring the original theme. Unsurprisingly, neither of these early versions made it onto the "Anthology" series of compilations (which to be fair only covered a small and releasable percentage of the known extant Beatles recordings anyway), but the idea that they are kept under lock and key and have never been heard outside of the recording studio is a fallacy; they were first sighted on bootleg releases as early as the mid-1970s.
2. "Take A Giant Step Outside The Recording Booth"
The Myth: The Monkees did not play on their records.
The Reality: Intended as the stars of a television sitcom that would pick up where the Beatles film "A Hard Day's Night" had left off, The Monkees were assembled in 1965 after open auditions were held in the hope of finding "four insane boys". The 'insane boys' who were eventually chosen were picked largely on the basis of their looks, personality, acting ability and suitability for the madcap comedy of the show, but all of them had a background in music, and indeed it was quite possibly this fact that swung the producers' opinion in their favour. Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz had both been child performers with a background in variety, Mike Nesmith was a keen songwriter who had already recorded some solo pop singles (as in fact had Davy Jones), and Peter Tork was a prominent figure on the LA folk-rock scene, recommended to attend the auditions by some of his fellow troubadors. As the foursome had lines to learn, promotional duties to undertake and a hectic filming schedule to adhere to, it made sense for musical director Don Kirshner to assemble the backing tracks for the dozens of songs needed to fill their television shows and accompanying singles and albums himself, using session musicians and simply adding the quartet's vocals at a later date. However, The Monkees were keen to prove themselves as a musical unit in their own right, studiously rehearsing their own versions of the songs in their own time, and undertaking live engagements right from the outset. Soon their own compositions began to be incorporated into the band's repertiore, and for the sake of convenience and ease of recording it made sense for one or more of the foursome to participate in the sessions rather than hire a session musician to learn a part that had already been studiously rehearsed by the person who devised it (a notable example is Nesmith's 'Mary Mary', one of the earliest songs recorded by The Monkees and featuring Peter Tork on guitar). Before long, the band were expressing a desire to participate in all of the recording sessions. Presumably seeing this as a threat to his status, Kirshner responded by issuing 'A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You' (featuring only Jones and some session players) as a single without seeking the band's approval first. Kirshner left in acrimonious circumstances soon afterwards, and the third Monkees LP "Headquarters" was completed by the band themselves, using only three additional players to bolster their sound where necessary. Practically everything that they recorded from this point onwards followed a similar pattern, and although it is widely assumed that their career subsequently nosedived, it should be pointed out that "Headquarters", "Pisces Aquarius Capricorn And Jones" and "The Birds, The Bees And The Monkees" all reached the top five in America (the first two topping the album charts), and the soundtrack to "Head" was primarily their work too. Those still requiring convincing that The Monkees were ever allowed to be creative in front of a microphone are directed towards the unedited overdub session for 'Ditty Diego' included as a bonus track on the CD reissue of "Head".
3. “Do You Think I Might Even Begin To Speculate About The Merest Possibility Of Why He Would Have Burnt A Tape?”
The Myth: The Beach Boys once recorded a song called ‘Fire’. Believing the song to be responsible for a spontaneous outbreak of fires at the time of the recording session, Brian Wilson later burnt the tapes.
The Reality: There is no question that Brian Wilson was in a very parlous mental state indeed while working on the unreleased Beach Boys album “Smile”. The dozen or so songs intended for the final running order were recorded in small and musically diverse fragments, with the intention that they would be edited together into finished tracks. This approach had worked fine and to impressive effect on the preceding single ‘Good Vibrations’, but by the time of the “Smile” sessions Brian appeared to have lost his grasp on the sonically adventurous yet solidly commercial sensibilities that had shaped that track and the superlative album “Pet Sounds”, moving into such strange areas as recording top session musicians sawing wood rather than playing their instruments, and toying with endless variations on a recurring keyboard motif. The remainder of the band, who were out on tour for much of the instrumental sessions, were troubled by this new direction, feeling that while it might have been impressively avant-garde and that the songs might have been very good indeed on a compositional level, they were hardly likely to trouble the charts to any great extent. A perfect example of this is ‘Mrs O’Leary’s Cow’ (named after the animal that started the Great Chicago Fire by kicking over a lamp), an instrumental piece that was intended to form the ‘Fire’ section of a four-part track named ‘The Elements’. Using crackling percussion, sliding strings, whistles and organ, the piece succeeds in evoking both the ebb and flow of burning flames and the wailing sirens of firemen battling with the blaze. Although most of the tracks that were intended for “Smile” were edited into some semblance of a releasable state, barnyard sounds and all, a combination of legal complications with their record label, the unease of the other Beach Boys and the fact that Brian was in no fit mental state to fit the many seemingly unrelated fragments of the album together (a situation that was not helped by his main collaborator Van Dyke Parks quitting the project after witnessing the hostility of the other band members towards the new material first hand) led to “Smile” being shelved indefinitely. A compromise album named “Smiley Smile”, made up mostly of hurriedly re-recorded versions of around half of the songs that were originally to have appeared on “Smile”, was released late in 1967. However, ‘Mrs O’Leary’s Cow’ was not included there, nor did it appear amongst the handful of “Smile” fragments included in the “Good Vibrations” box set in 1993 (but then, nor did the majority of the unreleased “Smile” tracks). Yet the master of the track - which at the time would have been the only copy in existence - was clearly not destroyed in some bizarre fit of pyromanic paranoia, as it first surfaced on the original “Smile” bootleg in the early 1970s and continued to appear with great regularity and in varying quality afterwards. There is no verified source for the story that Brian had burned, or had even talked about burning, the tapes. In fact, he now categorically denies that this happened. What has been verified, however, is that some time in the late 1960s Carl Wilson burned tapes of recordings that he had made with notorious cult leader Charles Manson (with whom he had co-written the little-heard Beach Boys b-side ‘Never Learn Not To Love’), claiming that “the vibrations connected with them don’t belong on this Earth”. There is another anecdote, enthusiastically confirmed by fellow members of The Doors, that fellow less-than-full-deck-dealing psychedelic cheerleader Jim Morrison sprayed the entire studio with a fire extinguisher after the recording of ‘Light My Fire’ (which would have been roughly contemporaneous to the ‘Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow’ session), acting on his somewhat chemically stimulated belief that the band’s performance was so ‘hot’ that it had scorched itself into the surroundings. Like so many of the multitude of bizarre myths that surround the “Smile” sessions, this would appear to be a confused combination of exaggerated events that actually happened to completely different people.
4. “…In And Out Of One Ear, Everybody Hates This Song, So Hate It Too…”
The Myth: ‘Bang’ is the worst song that Blur have ever recorded.
The Reality: When Blur first came to prominence with ‘She’s So High’ narrowly missing the top forty late in 1990, they were viewed by many as little more than yet another run-of-the-mill post-Madchester indie outfit. Discerning listeners could - and did - detect enormous potential for development in their inventiveness, easy assimilation of disparate reference points and keen ear for a catchy melody, all of which were lacking in the majority of their peers, but even so the likelihood of them reaching the levels of popularity that they would reach in the mid-1990s were so remote as to not even be considered by anyone bar overenthusiastic record company employees. Thus it was with some audible surprise that their second single, ‘There’s No Other Way’, broke into the top ten early the following year. This success introduced Blur to the world of appearances on “Top Of The Pops” and in “Smash Hits” that was simply beyond the reach of most of their contemporaries, and although this initial burst of success is largely omitted from less detailed career overviews (ironically echoing the early singles chart success of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, a band to whom Blur have always owed an obvious stylistic debt), there was a feeling at the time that they were about to make an unprecedented breakthrough to a mainstream audience. However the follow-up single ‘Bang’ entered the charts at number twenty four, and although it still won them an appearance on “Top Of The Pops” (and indeed managed to climb two places in its second week on the chart; an occurrence that is almost unheard of for ‘indie’ acts), this was widely viewed as something of a comedown after their success of a few months previously. Despite their promise, Blur ended the year lumped in with a whole host of other British acts whom the press were busily consigning to the musical scrapheap in the wake of American ‘grunge’ outfit Nirvana’s ascension to the levels of international success that had seemed almost within Blur’s grasp at the start of the year. The band have long claimed to hate ‘Bang’, and it was conspicuous by its absence from the otherwise all-inclusive “Best Of Blur” released almost a decade later. They have perfectly understandable reasons for hating it; the single’s chart failure curtailed their initial flirtation with a ‘star’ lifestyle, dented sales of their debut album “Leisure” (which stalled at number seven in the UK, and would undoubtedly have done far better had it been released straight after ‘There’s No Other Way’), and almost certainly initiated the management and record company uncertainty that dogged the protracted and arduous recording of their second album. The fact that it was probably extremely tedious to perform (Dave plays along to a programmed rhythm, and although both Graham and Alex turn in impressive performances, the song’s limited tonal and rhythmic range leaves them with little room to display their usual off-kilter invention) cannot have helped much either. Nonetheless, this animosity appears to have fuelled a widespread belief that ‘Bang’ is somehow a terrible record, and it is routinely dismissed as Blur's worst ever recording. Whilst it isn’t as good as either ‘She’s So High’ or ‘There’s No Other Way’, or even as good as some of the tracks that were omitted from “Leisure” to make room for it (indeed, two of Blur’s greatest recordings from this time - ‘Luminous’ and ‘Uncle Love’ - ended up relegated to the b-side of ‘Bang’), it has an appealing melody and catchy chorus that bear repeated listening, and the impulsive guitar lines and chugging bubblegum pop-like rhythm are far from being tedious or unlistenable. More to the point, there were worse songs on “Leisure” itself - the bland and vacuous ‘High Cool’ is a particularly noteworthy offender in that regard - and exactly why anyone would describe an inoffensive and vaguely pleasant pop song as the worst that Blur have ever recorded in a world where ‘Mr. Robinson’s Quango’, ‘Top Man’, ‘My Ark’, ‘Red Necks’ and the vast majority of “Think Tank” are easily available defies rational explanation.
5. "It's Not Where You're At, It's Where You've Been For The Past Five Years"
The Myth: The Stone Roses took five years to record "Second Coming" and are the laziest band ever.
The Reality: "The Stone Roses", the massively influential debut album by the band of the same name, was recorded and pretty much completed late in 1988. However, the album was not released until the early summer of 1989, having been intentionally held back whilst a couple of singles were extracted from it in order to heighten excitement and anticipation. The release of "The Stone Roses" was followed towards the end of the year by the release of 'Fool's Gold'/'What The World Is Waiting For', a double a-sided single that provided them with a breakthrough hit. At this point the band were geared up to record their second album; new material had been previewed in their most recent live shows, and at least one new track had been partially essayed in the studio. By the time that 'One Love' followed 'Fools Gold'/'What The World Is Waiting For' into the upper reaches of the singles chart in the early summer of 1990, however, relations between the band and their record label Silvertone were beginning to deteriorate. The finer points of the dispute are the subject of much debate and conjecture, but it would appear that the band's contract with the label, which predated the emergence of Compact Disc as a dominant recorded music format, denied them at least some of the revenue from international sales on the format. The Stone Roses announced their intention to leave the label, but Silvertone were not prepared to let them go that easily, and a protracted legal standoff immediately commenced. This left the band unable to record any new material, as they were technically still under contract to Silvertone until such time as it was legally established otherwise. As Silvertone also owned their publishing rights it was also not in their best interests to even write any new material (or at least to make it obvious that they had done so). A court hearing found in favour of the band in the late Summer of 1991, but Silvertone immediately launched an ultimately unsuccessful appeal which dragged the protracted process out until late 1992, when the band were finally freed from the label and able to pursue other options. Although plans for the intended second album were at an advanced stage as early as 1991, but by the time that the band were free to begin recording in earnest it was obvious that a drastic rethink was needed. Initial sessions with the debut album’s producer John Leckie ground to a halt with only a handful of tracks completed (namely ‘How Do You Sleep?’, ‘Begging You’ and ‘Ten Storey Love Song’), whilst a further spanner had earlier been thrown in the works by Silvertone’s decision to release an unfinished version of the unreleased ‘Where Angels Play’. Heavily rumoured to have been deliberately kept back for the prospective second album, the song in fact made its first unauthorised appearance as the b-side of ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ (hurriedly released as a single late in 1991, and marking the start of a ridiculously sustained reissue campaign by Silvertone that has seen them continually repackage every last scrap of recorded Stone Roses material available to them in as many different – and often not so different – permutations as possible); ironically, even in this ostensibly inferior state it stands as arguably the finest recording ever made by the band. Sessions soon recommenced with a largely new set of songs, and “Second Coming”, preceded by the single ‘Love Spreads’, appeared in December 1994. From the end of the appeal process, actual literal work on the album had only taken a little over two years.
6. “He’s Off His Bike”
The Myth: Pink Floyd’s ‘Bike’ reeks of craziness and hints at the mental collapse that was to come for composer Syd Barrett.
The Reality: Roger Barrett, as he was then known, began to experiment with writing songs as a young teenager in the early 1960s. Although his favourite acts at the time were The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, all of whom were in the initial stages of their careers and far removed from the psychedelic excesses that were to come in the mid-1960s, Barrett’s earliest compositions did not seek to slavishly replicate the sounds of his idols. If anything, the influence of whimsical Music Hall comic songs and the poetry of Hilaire Belloc (both of which would have an enduring influence on his later work) are more obvious. Compositions believed to date from this era, reputedly meticulously transcribed as lyrics and chord structures and kept in a folder marked ‘Roger’s Songs’, include ‘Scarecrow’, the melody of what would later become ‘See Emily Play’, and ‘Bike’. The latter song, which predates both Barrett’s mental problems and his introduction to hallucinogenic drugs, is an uncomplicated song made up of nursery rhyme-like couplets and characterised by occasionally slightly clumsy lyrical phrases that bear all the hallmarks of an aspirant songwriter striving to master the art of manipulating words to fit with music; certainly, it displays little of the linguistic panache of ‘Arnold Layne’ or ‘Flaming’, both of which were written later. ‘Bike’ was apparently never originally intended as part of Pink Floyd’s repertoire. No concrete evidence has ever come to light to suggest that the band ever performed the song live, even in the early days when they were quite happy to perform lesser Barrett compositions that would not subsequently make it onto record, and although in a broadly similar vein to much of their early work it bears a stark musical contrast to their more dynamic and improvisation-led numbers. Instead, it only surfaced once the band were at work in the studio over the spring of 1967, and were being encouraged to include a greater amount of short songs with catchy refrains on their debut album to balance out the longer part-improvised pieces. With its upbeat singalong nature, ‘Bike’ was an obvious contender for the closing track of “The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn”. The arrangement was most likely worked out during the recording session, and the extended sound collage of musical toys that closes the track – often held up as a ‘disturbing glimpse’ into Barrett’s psyche – was probably in fact inspired by Nick Mason, who was developing a keen interest in musique concrete which he would later put to good use on such Pink Floyd albums as “Atom Heart Mother” and “The Dark Side Of The Moon”. Some of those who were close to Barrett at the time suggest that they had noticed him starting to behave in a disturbingly eccentric manner by the early summer of 1967, but ‘Bike’ was written (and most likely recorded) before any such incidents took place. It was not until the band reconvened to the studio towards the end of 1967 to record some new numbers that the effect of Barrett’s condition on his songwriting first became apparent, yet the nature of the (still largely unreleased) results of those sessions is the subject of frequent exaggeration and distortion; indeed, some writers have claimed that it is possible to detect the effects of his parlous mental state in the vocals on ‘Scream Thy Last Scream’, apparently ignorant of the fact that it is in fact Nick Mason who handled vocal duties on the studio version of the song. Even on Barrett’s solo albums, there are plenty of strong and coherent songs in evidence amongst the sparse and disjointed numbers, and most of the supposed ‘insights’ into his condition exist only in the minds of writers who are more preoccupied with the myth than the music.
7. “No No No, What Was The Rude Word?” – “Hit”
The Myth: John Lydon swore on a live edition of “Juke Box Jury” which resulted in the show being cancelled.
The Reality: “Juke Box Jury”, BBC television’s pop review show in which a panel of guests from the music world gave their opinion on newly released singles, originally ran between 1959 and 1967. In its original incarnation the show was not without its noteworthy moments – an occasion when all four panelist’s chairs were occupied by The Beatles and Pete Murray’s disgruntled dismissal of psychedelic pop music as ‘a con’ are just two of the moments that have survived in the public consciousness if not in the archives – but it was generally a polite and sedate affair where opinions rarely became more outspoken than Ringo Starr declaring that a song would “do well in America”. In 1979, following an absence of some twelve years, “Juke Box Jury” was revived for a trial series on Saturday afternoons. Its host on this occasion was Noel Edmonds, a highly popular Radio 1 DJ who was also becoming a rapidly rising television star thanks to his presentation duties on such diverse shows as “Come Dancing” and the live Saturday morning children’s show “Noel Edmonds’ Multicoloured Swap Shop”. Much had changed in the music industry since the late 1960s – even Edmonds himself was markedly more irreverent than his counterparts of the previous decade – and it was inevitable that this would be reflected in the choice of guests and reviewed releases in the revived show. Nonetheless, it was to the surprise of many that the production team booked John Lydon to appear on the 31st May edition. The outspoken Lydon, who three years earlier had caused a national furore by swearing on the London-only early evening magazine programme “Today” (an incident that is in itself much-misrepresented and has to be viewed in the context of presenter Bill Grundy’s goading remarks), was teamed with a number of less opinionated panelists including the Radio 1 DJ Alan Freeman. Needless to say the panel did not see eye to eye over most of the week’s choices, with one particularly protracted argument developing over a Donna Summer single (which Lydon rightly opined was a mediocre comedown after the excitement of her electronic tracks like ‘I Feel Love’), but for the most part this was relatively cordial and good humoured. However, when it came to ‘Nice Legs, Shame About The Face’ by Monks, matters took a turn for the worse. Seeing through the Monks single as a tired and clichéd punk-by-numbers track (which, given that it was the intentionally tongue-in-cheek work of former members of the folk-rock outfit Strawbs, it effectively was), Lydon described it as ‘patronising’ and took issue with its somewhat less than enlightened lyrics. The rest of the panelists, and Freeman in particular, rounded on Lydon and accused him of criticising something that was essentially the same as the music that he had been making a couple of years previously. Lydon had of course long since disbanded The Sex Pistols (who would never have used such lyrics anyway) and formed the innovative Public Image Ltd, whose early work represented a logical step forward from punk and arguably set the blueprint for what later became ‘indie’, and was therefore quite right to dismiss this accusation as irrelevant. Nonetheless, the panel persisted in chastising him for failing to encourage this new young talent (whose architects were probably chuckling into their sleeves as they waited backstage as that week’s mystery guests), and after Freeman told him to “shut up” Lydon walked off set without swearing. The programme, which contrary to popular belief was pre-recorded (indeed, outtakes from the taping session have surfaced on a couple of Sex Pistols bootlegs), continued and concluded without him, and the incident barely featured in the national press. “Juke Box Jury” did indeed come to an end soon afterwards (later to be revived once again, in 1989 with Jools Holland at the helm), but its departure had less to do with Lydon than with scheduling problems and Edmonds’ increasing workload.
8. “I Can’t Dust Tonight”
The Myth: The La’s expressed a wish that their album had been recorded in a studio with ‘real sixties dust’.
The Reality: Hugely under-appreciated in their time, The La’s first emerged in the late 1980s with a handful of singles on the Go! Discs label that combined modern indie-styled songwriting with a desire to strip pop music down to its musical basics. In keeping with this, the band were keen that their debut album should have a rough, earthy sound akin to that of The Who’s early singles. Unfortunately for them, they happened to be recording at a time when newly available digital technology had made the music industry obsessed with obtaining as ‘clean’ a sound as possible under all circumstances, and it was difficult to find a studio or mastering suite of a high enough technical capability that was not geared towards filtering out all of the rough edges and ‘extraneous’ noise from recordings. The La’s made at least four attempts at recording their debut album in various studios and with various producers, and each time the lacklustre-sounding results were deemed unsuitable for release (it is worth noting that the only recording that the band ever felt had fully captured their intended sound was ‘Over’, a b-side originally recorded onto a radio cassette player as they performed live in a garden). Unable to wrestle the desired sound out of the clinical and sterile studio equipment, the band began experimenting with other methods of ‘dirtying’ their sound. One of frontman Lee Mavers’ suggestions was to avoid dusting their guitars for as long as possible, reasoning that the resultant dulled, fuzzy tones would bring them a stage closer to capturing their intended sound. Ultimately, Go! Discs’ patience was pushed too far, and they simply issued the results of the most recent sessions with only the merest hint of the most grudging consent imaginable from the band. The album is superb, but often suffers from sounding too ‘clean’; guitars that should be dynamic and distorted come across as tinny, and the semi-acoustic tracks lack the earthy qualities that really ought to have infused them. The La’s, who were never particularly happy about the ‘album’ in the first place (not least because it had a different tracklisting to the one that they had envisaged) were bluntly dismissive of it in interviews. They did claim on more than one occasion that they would like to re-record it, but in all honesty that was probably little more than wishful thinking spoken out loud. Undusted guitars would have no doubt played a significant part in this, but at no point did anyone suggest that any such re-recording should take place in a studio caked with authentic 1960s dust.
9. “Revelation Of The Dullards”
The Myth: Love’s ‘Revelation’ is a side-long slice of boredom that was recorded out of a lack of inspiration and does little bar drag an otherwise great album down.
The Reality: One of the first bands to experiment with avant-garde psychedelic sounds and challenge the long established ‘rules’ of the three-minute pop song, love recorded their self-titled debut album for Elektra records early in 1966. The debut was certainly exciting and forward thinking, but was nonetheless constrained by the limitations of the band’s traditional ‘guitar group’ line-up. Determined to develop their sound for the follow-up album, Love brought in two new members – Tjay Cantrelli to handle woodwind, and new drummer Michael Stuart to allow the band’s existing drummer Alban ‘Snoopy’ Pfisterer to switch to keyboards. To take full advantage of the possibilities of the new line-up, songwriters Arthur Lee and Bryan MacLean provided a new set of songs that had a looser, jazzier feel. However, all of these songs still conformed to the traditional song structure and length (indeed, the most promising new number – Lee’s ‘Seven And Seven Is’ – clocked in at barely two minutes long), and the band were keen to develop an improvisational number for live shows that could last for as long as they felt like playing it for. At the time, this kind of lengthy freeform jamming was almost unheard of outside the jazz world and certainly without precedent in guitar pop (several band members recall The Rolling Stones coming to see them perform live some time before they recorded the part-improvised ‘Going Home’, generally recognised as the first long-form pop track). The resultant number, initially nicknamed ‘John Lee Hooker’ in reference to its driving bluesy chord structure, became a highlight of the live set and often lasted for up to an hour, taking in all manner of diversions including individual solo performances (in the most literal sense – the others would simply walk offstage and take a break!) and even spontaneous diversions into cover versions of rhythmically similar songs like Them’s ‘Gloria’. The song, featuring a rare lead vocal from guitarist Johnny Echols, was always intended for the sessions for their second album “Da Capo”, but there was one major problem – such an epic length and musically unpredictable track had never really been attempted as a live number before then, let alone in the studio, and nobody really seemed certain of the best way to recapture its live impact on tape. Producer Paul Rothchild, who would later win renown for his ability to remould the popular live acts of the late 1960s in a studio setting without compromising their sound, opted to simply let the tapes roll as the band performed and then edit it down. However, this method made it difficult to achieve a satisfactory mix (the band have always regretted that the various solos lacked their intended prominence), and while Rothchild’s editing was occasionally inspired – such as the sublime harpsichord introduction – for the most part it interfered with the structure and natural flow of the band’s improvisation. Unfortunately, endless hours in the studio attempting to get tracks just right was not a luxury that was afforded to pop groups in the 1960s, and the finished take simply had to be issued as it stood. ‘Revelation’ is not the only example of an early live-orientated number failing to work in a studio setting – for instance, Pink Floyd’s “The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn” featured ‘Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk’, a song that had been deliberately written for maximum stage impact as an ear-splitting improvisational number that bordered on atonality, but in its studio incarnation it sounded dull and tuneless and proved so troublesome to producer Norman Smith that he simply excised the middle section with a crude edit – and in all fairness, while it can be a bit much to take in one sitting, it is nowhere near as tedious or unlistenable as its reputation might suggest.
10. “To Here Knows When We’ll Put Out A New Record”
The Myth: My Bloody Valentine took the money and ran when they signed to Island in 1992, and never bothered to record any more material.
The Reality: Released in 1991, My Bloody Valentine’s second album “Loveless” is arguably the finest ever issued by Creation Records, and its skilful blend of sonic extremity and delicate songwriting has rarely been equaled. However, the seemingly endless amount of studio time that its perfectionist creators required to create it was a massive drain on Creation’s resources, and when Island offered the band a contract in 1992 the label did not put up much of a fight to retain them. In their defence, My Bloody Valentine had always intended to build their own home studio in order to cut down on costs and other associated problems for future recordings, and they used their advance from Island for this very purpose. The band spend pretty much all of 1992 touring Britain, Europe and America, and when they returned to work at the end of the year they found that the studio was not quite in the state of readiness that they had hoped. Accounts of the problems vary, but it seems that some equipment was simply not performing to the required standard and it soon became clear that a significant amount of legal wrangling would be required before it could be put right. This dragged on for much of 1993, after which the band began work on a new album. Said to have been heavily influenced by drum and bass and other new dance music sounds, the new album was intended for release in 1995 but was pulled by band leader Kevin Shields at the last minute. The reasons for its failure to appear have never been fully explained, but the fact that several other acts (notably Leftfield) had recently won widespread praise for similarly genre-fusing efforts should not be ruled out. Following this, drummer Colm O’Coisig and bassist Debbie Goodge gradually drifted away from the band and into other musical projects, leaving Shields and guitarist Bilinda Butcher to continue as a duo. Shields then became heavily involved with Primal Scream, particularly in a touring capacity, which drastically reduced the time that he was able to devote to new My Bloody Valentine material. It seems that at least three new tracks were complete by some time in 1998 or 1999, which were heard by Island and given a round of approval, with an album intended for release sooner rather than later, but again this failed to appear and again the reasons for this are unclear. In 2003, Kevin Shields was invited to provide the soundtrack for the motion picture “Lost In Translation”, and was given a mere handful of days in which to complete it. Finding this a liberating experience after so many years of toiling away endlessly with unlimited studio time, Shields has announced his intention to finally get some new My Bloody Valentine material (possibly with Goodge and O’Coisig back in the fold temporarily) recorded and released to accompany an imminent box set of the band’s work.
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