Rickie Lee Jones and The Last Chance Texaco

Rickie at home in New Orleans

One of the unforeseen benefits of the Covid lockdowns was having your favourite artists play for you from their living rooms.

Of course, for them it was driven by the need to keep in touch with their audience and to maintain some kind of a living.   

One artist I willingly paid to spend time with was Rickie Lee Jones. From her home in New Orleans she would sing and tell the stories behind her most popular songs; stories that fed into her memoirs, Last Chance Texaco, published in 2021. It was a total pleasure. I miss those days, in some ways. 

Live in London, 1979

Rickie Lee Jones the performer was, in retrospect, bound to succeed, such was her irrepressible persona and innate musical and lyrical genius. Her early music is a rich melee of cocktail jazz and showtunes, with echoes of Laura Nyro and Janis Joplin. Her words like beat poetry, full of street vernacular, influences from West Side Story and Runyon-esque characters with names such as Kid Sinister, Bragger and Junior Lee. 

You can't break the rules
Until you know how to play the game
But if you just want to have a little fun
You can mention my name
Keep your feet in the street
Your toes in the lawn
But keep your Business in your pocket
That's where it belongs

Rickie Lee Jones was penniless and often homeless pretty much right up to the time, in 1978, when she was signed by Warner Brothers and given a $50,000 advance.

Even then, she had to borrow some cash because she didn’t have a bank account and was behind on her rent. Rags to riches, literally.

In 1976, based in and around Venice Beach in California, she had begun writing her first songs, the likes of Easy Money and Weasel and the White Boys Cool, and arguably her greatest song, The Last Chance Texaco.   

Being a street urchin, working menial jobs and singing in local bands to pay the rent, it was the maverick souls she met along the way that fed her stories. Her persona, with the beret and the boho styling, was an act. But equally, it was who she was. 

At the heart of her book is the doomed love affair with her fellow boho bum, Tom Waits. It seemed they were cut from the same raggedy cloth. They belonged together. 

“Tom and I were beautiful beyond compare, and so nourished and inspired by each other's hearts that for a very short time, we nearly consumed each other. Love, they used to call it.”

Waits had his bachelor pad at the Tropicana Motel in Los Angeles, with his pal Chuck E. Weiss. "Tom had two tattoos on his bicep. He liked to don the vintage accoutrements of masculinity; sailor hats and Bernardo's (from West Side Story) pointed shoes."

"We always needed to touch each other"

Of Rickie, Waits said at the time, “We drank together. You can learn a lot about a woman by getting smashed with her. 

"I remember her getting her first pair of high heels and coming by one night to holler in my window to take her out celebrating. There she was, walking down Santa Monica Boulevard, drunk and falling off her shoes.”

Even then, Waits was wary: "I love her madly in my own way - but she scares me to death. She is much older than I am in terms of street wisdom; sometimes she seems as ancient as dirt, and yet other times she's so like a little girl."

They danced around each other for a long while. Waits, already semi-famous, was scared of commitment, but Rickie knew how to catch a man. One night at the Troubadour club, already cultivating the RLJ persona in her beret and elbow-length fuchsia gloves, she had him on the hook.  

"A guy I know, Ivan Ulz, was performing at the Troubadour one evening and he asked me to come over and sing a couple of songs. This fella Chuck E. was working back in the kitchen of the club, and that's how I met him."

Waits, Chuck E., RLJ and Dr. John

“Tom came out of the kitchen and stood behind the bar. He pretended he didn't come out to see me.

"'Hey', was all we said to each other. He sat down by me, ordered a scotch. We drank and talked at length and laughed until it was closing time. 

"He walked with me to my car. There, under the streetlight, Tom took me in his arms, and we danced. All the love in the world was there that night.”

The following morning he told her to go home, he had a lot to do. “I was still standing on the step when he closed the door. I was wearing high heels. I was doing the walk of shame that so many others had walked. I may have hidden behind a bush.”

After a brief fling with Lowell George - who gave her a huge leg-up by covering Easy Money, but then tried to steal the publishing rights to it - she started reeling in Tom Waits once again.

“Each time I put a dime in the phone, Tom and I got a little closer. He answered the phone with, 'What?' But when he heard my voice, he'd grow a little sweeter. 'Ah, hey you'. 

"By the time my phone was installed, we had become lovers again. We inhabited black holes where we floated upward and down again. We were jellyfish floating from day to night. Only poetry evokes the long undulating time of our lying in each other's arms.”

Warner Brothers put the best session players to work on the debut album. Steve Gadd, Victor Feldman, Tom Scott, Buzzy Feiten, Dr. John et al, with trusted producers Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman. They treated her not as a newcomer, but as someone who was giving her all to put across music of distinct character.

Her co-producer on those first two classic albums, Russ Titelman said "Rickie Lee was fairly wild, but you knew you were in the presence of something special.

"The sessions were spontaneous, explosive. She'd never done this before. She was just a kid with a guitar, but she knew exactly what she wanted. At the end of the session, we played through the album and Rickie sat there and asked, "Is that me?".

She recalled, "I think the musicians, Lenny, Russ and the people at the record company recognised the magic I was trying so hard to create. So they cheered me on."

Saturday Night Live, 1979

But no one expected the record to take off the way it did. Once Chuck E's In Love was a hit, Rickie was swept up by the sudden demands of fame, starting with an elaborately staged set for the TV show Saturday Night Live. 

"There was no time to build a stable home. I was launched like a rocket and the rocket went much further than the expected trajectory."

She told Uncut magazine, "When I look back at the films of that first tour. I'm a very sexy and wild girl onstage. It's an act, but I really am that girl. But I did not now how to put it down. It was a hard way to be."

Tom travelled to Europe to support Rickie when she became homesick on the first European tour, but he shied away from the camera. “He wanted no part of my celebrity, just as he did not want to share his own. Tom felt the business of Tom Waits must stay uncorrupted by our affection."

Nonetheless, she said his affection was constant and very physical. "We always needed to touch each other. I cannot remember anyone else holding me so completely that I felt safe to go outward. 

"I could not conceive that this would ever end, and yet I had conceived of it with Coolsville. I knew very well that it was likely one day I and Bragger and Junior Lee (that's her, Tom and Chuck) would be a past tense.

Waits' Blue Valentines album cover shoot.
"Tom said, come closer. I leaned myself against
him. I slid down his body and he raised his arms.
There is the enigma of our very private love
 and passion caught in that photo."

I and Bragger and Junior Lee
That's the way we always thought it would be
In the Winston lips of September
How we met
Decked out like aces
We'd beat anybody's bet
Cuz we were Coolsville

Chuck Weiss told Uncut magazine, "Things were never really normal again after that. She just couldn't handle it. The record company were making such a fuss over her. 

"They more or less chose to ignore some of the heavy drug use that was going on. I thought that was bullshit, that they wouldn't pay attention to that. As long as she kept producing the songs, it didn't matter to them. It was a harsh lesson."

An earlier romance with Dr. John, in between breaks from Waits, had given Rickie a taste for smoking heroin – chasing the dragon. Her mistake was managing to function as an addict, and believing it wouldn't eventually all come crashing down. 

“I didn't feel heroin was taking from me. I thought it was giving so much that I was becoming a new and improved Rickie.”

With Tom, her biggest mistake was thinking he would understand, when she hid it from him for a year.  

I did a foolish thing
A real, real foolish thing

"Tom wanted to make a stop at the humble little house he'd seen for rent in Echo Park. We watched the lights of the city and dreamed about a life together in that house with our kids. I would make dinner and he'd mow the lawn.

“That porch that night was our crossing over place. There, in each other's arms, dreaming of a life we'd never have together.”

Rickie was suffering withdrawal from the drug and maybe she thought if she confided in him, he would be sympathetic.  

But you ran out of gas
Down the road apiece
Then the battery went dead
And now the cable won't reach

"I walked around the park thinking about us. If he loves me, then I can tell him. I think I can tell him. I need to tell him, now, about the dope.

"I walked back to the motel and he was standing outside the door. His body was taut.
I thought you left.
What a thing to think. I just went for a walk, bub.

"But some part of me was disconnected. Perhaps I had a premonition of what was about to happen to us.

"I have something to tell you.
There was no going back. I was appealing for sympathy, but there would be none.

"You take dope? This was like when Tony told Maria he had killed Bernardo. I was already dead to him. I raised my eyebrows. Yes.

"Junk? Heroin? He almost buckled like he had been hit in the stomach.

"For how long?
For almost a year. The outer edges of my safe space were closing in.

"That time I came to meet you on Avenue B?

 "I should really lie. Yes.

"When we went to the Carnaman in Little Italy?

"He was deconstructing our romance and building something else, a darker, unloving relationship where dope had tricked him. 

"I was thinking, didn't I look different when I was high? And how come no one knew?

"Silence. He had stopped talking. I was alone now, watching my baby fall because of me. Because of me. He seemed so weak and unmade by disappointment. I could not find a path forward. Tom's rejection of my holler for help precipitated a complete and utter break from him.

"All night long, Tom cried like a baby. I began to recede to a faraway place, for I knew there was no going back. In the morning, he rose, picked up his wallet and keys, and drove away.

"A day later, I went to see Tom at his studio where he was rehearsing for his tour. I was thinking, okay, we had a fight and that's enough of that, right?

"Instead, a doppelganger had taken Tom's place and my boyfriend was not there anymore."

And that was that. Rickie lost her man through carelessness and some of that pain has come through in her music through the rest of her career. Not least on the second album, Pirates.

And now Johnny the King walks these streets without her in the rain
Lookin' for a leather jacket and a girl who wrote her name forever
And a promise that
We belong together
Yeah, we belong together

Writing about Tom Waits for the book was very hard, she told The Guardian. “It seemed to be an open wound that had never healed. When I first started writing about it, there was still so much anger and tears that, at one point, I thought how am I going to write about this without it just bleeding on to the paper?”

And she told Mojo magazine that she still had a store of prose to write about her love affair with Waits: “That will never go away. Some people love people forever, and I’m one of them. I really feeling like writing the book is as close as I can ever come to shoving that thing into the now and letting it be."

I remember you too clearly
But I'll survive another day
Conversations to share
When there's no one there
I'll imagine what you'd say

I'll see you in another life now, baby
I'll free you in my dreams
But when I reach across the galaxy
I will miss your company.

Some clips worth a look
Rickie Lee Jones live in London 1979 (BBC)

Live At The Howard Theatre, 2024

Live at Montreux Jazz Festival, 1982

Singing Steely Dan's Showbiz Kids, 2023

Rickie's Criterion Movie collection picks

Weasel and the White Boys Cool, Paris 1985

Rickie's homepage

ALSO ON THIS BLOG

Idiot Wind Marks Bob Dylan's Return to Greatness, 1975

Joni Mitchell and The Hissing Of Summer Lawns

A Visit To The Annual Nick Drake Gathering

Sandy Denny and Fotheringay - A Beguiling Songbook

Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan's Artistic Peak In The 1960s

'The Making of Five Leaves Left' - A worthy Grammy nominee

photo by Keith Morris

If awards mean anything for a musician, then a Grammy is something to aspire to. Nick Drake, a relatively obscure English songwriter and guitarist who died over 50 years ago, was never going to win one in his lifetime. Like Vincent Van Gogh, his genius was only recognised long after he died. 

And now, 56 years after it was released, a specially curated collection documenting the making of his first album, is nominated for a Grammy award for Best Historical Album. It would be some kind of poetic justice were it to win. 

The boxset 'The Making of Five Leaves Left' is a lovingly detailed account of how a shy young university student came to make a richly melodic and timeless album. 

As a historical record, it is pretty much faultless and a credit to the various people involved, from the Island Records archivists, to producer Joe Boyd and engineer John Wood, and the Nick Drake estate who are keepers of the flame. It's certainly worthy of the Grammy Award. 

Will it win? Well, it's up against Queen Joni - nominated for the Joni Mitchell Archives - Volume 4: The Asylum Years (1976-1980) - so probably not. Joni can seemingly do no wrong right now, and she deserves the acclaim. But if you know his story, it would be tremendously fitting to see Nick Drake get a Grammy.

{Post-awards note: As I thought, the award went to Joni Mitchell}

If you're not familiar with the tale, the three albums that Nick Drake released in his lifetime failed commercially and he withdraw from live performance very early in his career, which made it difficult for his music to reach a wider audience. He died in 1974 after a prolonged period of treatment for depression. 

The quality of the music would not be denied, however, and today there is considerable demand for 'new' Nick Drake material. Hence this box set, which documents the making of Nick’s first album from 1969, Five Leaves Left, starting with the two earliest semi-formal recording sessions where Nick showcased his material. 

The Making of Five Leaves Left

Albums were not generally done as slowly as this. Nick was still at Cambridge during the making of Five Leaves Left, and so the album was recorded over 14 months' of sessions in London. That would have been an age in this period of musical revolution. By way of comparison, in a 14-month period in the mid-60s the Beatles recorded Rubber Soul, Revolver and half of Sgt. Pepper.

On The Making of Five Leaves Left, we hear the evolution, from March 1968 to April 1969, of Nick Drake’s musical vision, guided by producer Joe Boyd and engineer John Wood, with the support of his university friend and string arranger, Robert Kirby.

Any work of musical archaeology will only be as successful as the treasure unearthed in the process. In this case, the almost miraculous retrieval of two early reel-to-reel tapes that pre-date the first formal recording sessions, are the holy grail items.

The so-called Beverley Martyn tape, which was the first showcase for Joe Boyd, kept safe by Nick’s friend (and John Martyn's wife) Bev, helps fill in the picture of how Five Leaves Left came to be commissioned in the first place.

The second key piece of the jigsaw that makes this package such a compelling collection, is the nine-song tape of Nick playing and talking, recorded at Cambridge in early 1968 by another university acquaintance, Paul de Rivaz and incredibly, preserved by him. Strangely, despite the tremendous interest in Nick Drake's music in the past 25 years, de Rivas had kept it to himself, until recently.

What these tapes show is that as early as March 1968, many of the songs that would appear on the final album in May 1969 were almost fully formed. The guitar parts were more or less worked out. 

The assurance displayed in his singing and playing from the earliest tapes is striking. Here was someone with immense confidence in his material and determined to show it. 

I've listened through to the four record/disc set a few times now, and there are many aspects worth highlighting. Here are some of the things that have jumped out to me.

• There’s a piano line on Strange Face (Cello Song) from the first proper studio session in September 1968 (volume 1, track 7). It doesn’t really work, but it’s still an excellent accompaniment. Who is playing that piano is not clear from the session notes. It is possible Paul Wheeler was present at the session.
  
  
• It's interesting to see how Day Is Done progresses between the April and November ’68 sessions at Sound Techniques. Nick’s guitar playing during this period is so clear and well articulated, you can hear his confidence, and understand how Joe and John were so impressed with him. I think I almost prefer Day Is Done without the string quartet, because it makes Nick's guitar much more prominent.
  
  

  

  In the garden at Belsize Park

• The jaunty early versions of Time Has Told Me - on the Beverley and de Rivas tapes - with great assurance in the guitar playing, contrast with the relatively sluggish final album version. It’s a different dynamic at play, and quite effective.
  
  One of my long-held views is that not enough prominence was given to Nick Drake the guitar player. Why, for example, does the album version of Time Has Told Me place Richard Thompson as the main accompanist?

Thompson - who also played electric guitar on an unused version of Thoughts of Mary Jane, that later appeared on the album Time of No Reply - regarded Nick as “quite extraordinary’ in his guitar playing.

“He played immaculately and uniquely on acoustic guitar, which isn’t an easy instrument to play in a flawless way. You get buzzes, you get fret noise. Not with Nick. He’d really worked at it very hard.”

Nick’s time in France and Morocco in 1967 would have broadened his musical vocabulary, resulting in the different rhythmic ideas, tunings and the relative exoticism of a track like Three Hours. 

• Hearing Nick explain his ideas for the arrangement of the unused song My Love Left With The Rain from the Cambridge tape, is one of the delightful surprises of this boxed set. Nick tells Kirby and de Rivas “This is the one I want to have as expansive a sound as possible”, which makes it all the more curious why the song was never taken further. 
  
  
• Another of the May 1968 Cambridge tape curios, Blossom is a pleasant but unremarkable tune, notable for the work tape section at the end, where Nick shows the bass part, again demonstrating how prepared and assured he was in presenting his songs.  

The instrumental that follows this on the Cambridge tape is similarly illuminating in that it brings us closer to his compositional process, while also showing, as John Wood observed, his solid understanding of music theory.

“The most striking thing about Nick to me was how musically literate he was,” Wood told biographer Richard Morton Jack. “I’ve never worked with anyone else of that age who had that level of musical understanding and ability, as well as such a wide taste and knowledge of music.”

• On Thoughts of Mary Jane (Vol 2, track 5), Nick sings and plays the flute melody. Similarly, he knows that Day Is Done will have a string quartet accompaniment well before it is recorded.
  
  
• Nick talks about his ideas for I Was Made To Love Magic (Vol 2, track 3). Since this was only a matter of weeks after he had played the song at The Roundhouse, on the fateful day he met Ashley Hutchings, the version of Magic we hear on this tape must be close to what he played at the gig. Richard Hewson gets a bad rap generally for his arrangement work with Nick, but I've always liked what he did on Magic as it appeared on the Time Of No Reply album.

On the Cambridge tape, Nick apologises, “so badly played” (by his high standards) and then talks about his ideas for a different rhythm on Magic, with a latin-esque bass pattern.

Another Jobim-esque song (though possibly inspired by The Pentangle) follows. This is Mickey’s Tune, which was known only for its lyrics before the Cambridge tape was unearthed. And in the studio session on November 12 ’68 (Vol 2, track 12) it sounds like Nick is trying for almost a flamenco feel at the very beginning of Fruit Tree.

I have always felt - going right back 40 years ago when I first took note of Fruit Tree as the opening track on the Heaven In A Wild Flower collection - that it should have opened Five Leaves Left. That slightly hesitant, exploratory guitar line at the beginning of Fruit Tree is a more beguiling introduction to Nick’s world, and I feel it's rather hidden away on side two of Five Leaves Left.

• On the final series of sessions, on album 3, the version of Time Of No Reply is, to my ears, the same as the one that appeared on the 1980s album of the same name. Which, by the way, is a worthy companion to this boxset. 
  
  
• Along with Time Of No Reply, Mayfair was the other early song still being tried out at this late stage for inclusion on FLL. Both were ultimately discarded and never considered again for inclusion on a subsequent album. 

Richard Morton Jack wrote that it was striking that Nick remained loyal to Mayfair, in particular. “Perhaps he was fond of it as an echo of his mother’s style… although there’s a consensus that by 1969 it didn’t fit comfortably alongside his other material.”

Joey, a favourite of mine, and Clothes of Sand were likewise omitted in the final analysis and again, despite being an excellent showcase for Nick’s elegant guitar melodies, they were never considered for his following albums. They were all included on the posthumous Fruit Tree box set as part of a fourth album, Time Of No Reply. 

• Another musical snippet that was discarded by the final studio sessions is Nick’s lead into River Man, from the January 1969 session (Vol 3, track 4).
  
  
• Way To Blue, with just Nick on piano, is another revelation from the 1968 Cambridge tape (Vol 3, track 5). You might think it actually sounds good like this, but when Robert Kirby came to Sound Techniques for the first time in April 1969, to conduct the strings, he blew Joe and John away.

photo by Keith Morris

The sessions with the string ensemble were all done live, with Nick playing guitar. The first song Nick and Robert tackled was Way To Blue, which Joe and John had never heard. 

According to Richard Morton Jack, "Nick had initially written it for his own piano accompaniment, but he and Robert had since agreed – perhaps owing to the influence of Randy Newman’s I Think It’s Going To Rain Today – that its impact would be greater if he simply sang to the strings.”

Joe and John were sceptical. Having set up levels for each instrument, John gave Robert the nod. “Suddenly, John pushed up all the faders. We heard this string part and we were both knocked back in our seats,” remembers Joe. “We thought, this is exquisite, just amazing.”

For anyone who knows and loves the original album, The Making of Five Leaves Left is a fascinating glimpse at the inner workings of an emerging talent. The weaving together of the varied source material, and the meticulous detail contained in the accompanying book, are truly a credit to the production team.

Credit is also due to Michael Burdett, for his role in bringing the Paul de Rivas Cambridge tape to the attention of Nick’s estate. Burdett will be familiar to anyone who saw his one-man show, the 'Strange Face Project' about travelling the UK talking to random folk and a handful of celebs, while playing them a discarded early recording of Nick's Cello Song.

At the conclusion of one of these shows, Paul de Rivas approached Burdett and explained that he had known Nick Drake. What's more, he had a recording of him. 

Not just any old recording, it turned out.

ALSO ON THIS BLOG:

A Visit To The Annual Nick Drake Gathering

Duncan Browne's Journey - and comparisons with Nick Drake

Nick Drake - Heaven In A Wild Flower 

An alternative to those predictable lists of classic albums

Sandy Denny and Fotheringay - A Beguiling Songbook

Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan's Artistic Peak In The 1960s

The Day David Bowie Died - 10 years gone.

I was in my office in Hong Kong on the day Bowie died, surrounded by people mostly much younger than me, who didn't seem at all interested when I blurted out 'Oh no, David Bowie died!'

The first tweets were coming through (news guy wept and told us…) with the shocking truth. Faced with a room full of 150 people who couldn’t give a toss, I had to take a walk outside.

Top Of The Pops, 1972

It can’t be wrong to feel so deeply the loss of someone you didn’t know personally, when that someone has been such a powerful figure in your life.

It’s a story well-told, that for anyone who grew up in the 1970s and 80s, Bowie played a pivotal, crucial role in our youthful fantasies.

Hard to imagine now but on the 6th of July 1972, when Bowie appeared on Top Of The Pops and sang, “I had to phone someone, so I picked on you…” and pointed straight at the camera, he sparked a cultural change for a whole generation. 

Such was the power of television at that time. Everyone who saw it, remembers Bowie putting his arm around Mick Ronson as they sang the Starman chorus in harmony. Men didn't do that kind of thing, but these guys were clearly different. I mean, look at them! "Bunch of poofs", our Dads would have said.

Ciggie stardust

His carefully cultivated image of otherness - from Major Tom to Ziggy to the Thin White Duke and on, to the many and various characters he embodied - gave young people the licence to think outside of the norms of society, with no apologies.

His intellect and imagination was fed by a diet of the most diverse writing he could find, some of which, like The Divided Self by R. D. Laing or The Stranger by Albert Camus and The Outsider by Colin Wilson, inspired his music directly.

At Live Aid in 1985, it was Bowie’s performance at Wembley, rather than Queen’s, that had people grabbing their phones to donate. His selfless decision to set aside time in his set to show the awful images of the Ethiopian famine, was a true measure of the man and his humanity, capturing the mood of that amazing day perfectly.

I could make the transformation as a rock and roll star

He was well ahead of the game in seeing the potential of the internet and his early bowienet platform allowed him to see at close quarters how online communities might develop.  

We were all richer for having David Bowie in our lives.

That evening in Hong Kong, I went back to my flat, opened the windows wide and played 'Life On Mars' at full volume. It never sounded better.

Something happened on the day he died

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL. THANKS

Also On This Blog:

David Bowie interview with the NME, 1974

February 1970 - with Bowie in obscurity, Mick Ronson joinsMichael Chapman

My old David Bowie RCA CDs - the only ones of value

1971 - At home with Marc Bolan

A Tribute to David Sanborn, the sax player on Young Americans

My visit to Abbey Road Studios

Abbey Road has a special significance for me, as it was where I met my wife. We shared a flat at Neville Court, the red brick mansion block directly across from the famous recording studios. 

<= Yes, I lived here. That was back in the early 1990s. We would sometimes see tourists ‘doing the crossing’ as we left for work, but nothing like the crowds you get there today.

And though I lived right across the road, it wasn’t until 2022 that I got to see inside Abbey Road Studios. 

It was the day the Queen died, 8 September 2022 and I was staying at my mother's place while on a visit to the UK. 

I have a friend who’s a sound engineer and does occasional sessions at Abbey Road. I'd asked him if there was ever an opportunity to come and see inside the studio, to let me know. He called me up that evening and just as I'm on the phone to him, my mum comes in and tells me "she's gone". 

The SSL 96-channel console in Studio 3

I felt a bit bad leaving my mum to grieve for the old Queen on her own, but she understood this was a unique opportunity for me. 

An hour later, I entered the courtyard of Abbey Road Studios and made my way up the steps to the studio reception. My mate Simon came to greet me and took me first of all to Studio Three, or 'Number 3' as AR insiders say. 

This is the smaller (relatively) performing space where, most famously, Pink Floyd recorded their classic albums including Dark Side Of The Moon, as seen in this clip from 1972.

Although the Beatles are most closely associated with Number 2 studio, they recorded several of their classic songs in Number 3, including Eleanor Rigby. Penny Lane, Let It Be and, from the Abbey Road album, Come Together, Something, I Want You (She’s So Heavy), You Never Give Me Your Money and Here Comes the Sun.

Elgar on the podium of Number 1,
George Bernard Shaw on the stairs

Back in 1966, Studio Three also hosted the famous tape-looping session for the Revolver album track Tomorrow Never Knows. I wrote about it here. There is also footage of them in Studio 3 used in the promo videos for Lady Madonna and Hey Bulldog.

Moving on, we went to Studio 1, the orchestral chamber where Sir Edward Elgar made many of his most famous recordings. It's a cavernous room. 

Elgar actually conducted the first-ever recording session at Abbey Road (then known as EMI Studios) in 1931, leading the London Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Pomp and Circumstance,  familiar to anyone who has watched the Last Night Of The Proms, as it includes Land of Hope and Glory.

Gilmour recording the Shine On riff in Number 1

Although Pink Floyd recorded mostly in Studio 3, for the track Shine On You Crazy Diamond, the band and engineers wanted to gain maximum ambience for the song's iconic guitar figure. So, the men in white coats placed David Gilmour's amps in Studio 1. I wrote about that here.

At the height of 1967's Summer Of Love, a few days after the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles recorded backing tracks at Olympic Studios for a new song by John, All You Need Is Love. This was premiered on 25 June in a television show, Our World, the first live global television link, broadcast via satellite and seen by an audience of over 400 million in 25 countries.

All You Need Is Love, filmed in Number 1

Filmed in Studio One at Abbey Road, the Beatles were accompanied by a thirteen-piece orchestra and surrounded by friends and acquaintances seated on the floor, including Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and Keith Moon.

Engineering the session and the live link was Geoff Emerick, who recalled the experience as "horrendous". 

"To attempt to record what he did, even without a link up, was ridiculous." George Martin had the band record a basic track for them to play along to on the live feed. Nonetheless, the vocals, bass guitar, George's lead solo, the drums and the orchestra were all done live. 

Studio One today

The pre-taped rhythm track went onto track one of the four-track tape. On to track two went the bass, lead guitar and drums; track three the orchestra and track four the vocals. 

While all this was going on, George Martin and Geoff Emerick did an instantaneous remix that was fed directly to the BBC and then to the world.

The market for new orchestral works stagnated somewhat in the 1970s and Studio One was utilised so little that it became an indoor sports venue for the musicians. 

Its fortunes were revived in the 1980s with the growth of orchestral recordings for films. Raiders of the Lost Ark being the first major film soundtrack recorded in Studio 1.

Number 2, from the stairs to the control room

Studio 3 has been updated and modernised over the years, but the larger recording rooms have retained many of their period features, in large part because of the historical significance attached to the music that has been made there.

Number Two, the most renowned recording space, perhaps in the world, is similarly intact from its heyday, when The Beatles created many of their greatest songs.

Sixty years ago, they would record on four-track machines, often bouncing down four tracks onto one and sometimes using two four-track machines in sync. Today in Number Two, Abbey Road has a 60-track desk, while Number Three has a 96-track console. 

Amongst the vintage instruments still on the studio floor is the old Steinway Vertegrand upright piano that Paul McCartney would have used for Lady Madonna (actually recorded in Number 3) and the filming of Hey Jude. 

Lab coats were standard
for technical staff 

The piano has seen better days and has some keys missing, but has been kept entirely because of its Beatle associations. 

In the 1950s, Abbey Road was a very traditional classical music and light entertainment studio. The men in white coats kept everything tickety-boo and the recording engineers wouldn't dream of seeing the volume meters edging into the red. 

Recording engineers will tell you the key to a successful session is the correct use of microphones. Abbey Road retains one of the greatest collections of vintage and modern microphones in the world; all still fitted with their original valves and regularly maintained.

Another unique aspect of the Studio One facility was the 'ambiophonics' speaker system, whereby 100 speakers were fitted symmetrically to all four walls, artificially tailoring the acoustics by feeding signals delayed at different intervals. 

A new era began in the late 1950s, when Studio 2 was remodeled; the control room was moved upstairs and the now-famous staircase was installed descending onto the studio floor. 

The 60-channel Neve console
upstairs in Studio 2

At that point, no one would have foreseen the pioneering musical explorations that would follow in the Sixties. The Beatles pushed at the boundaries of acceptable studio practice, encouraging others like The Pink Floyd, to express themselves fully, using psychedelics and the avant-garde as their inspiration. As a new generation of engineers came through the ranks, people like Geoff Emerick, Ken Scott and Alan Parsons, Abbey Road became a rock and roll studio, and the Beatles were the ground-breakers.

Given free-rein at Abbey Road, and having quit touring by 1966 to concentrate on studio work, the Beatles were way ahead of other groups at the time, in terms of composition and studio innovation.

While Tomorrow Never Knows, the final track on 1966's Revolver, had been a major leap in how bands could use primitive studio trickery, the final track on the 1967 follow-up album still stands as one of the most successful and iconic musical experiments.

Not only was A Day In The Life compositionally unconventional, joining two distinct songs into one cycle, it has a number of peaks and troughs, culminating in a final chaotic crescendo. The middle section is particularly inspired, with fairly obvious allusions to marijuana and LSD: "found my way upstairs and had a smoke; and somebody spoke and I went into a dream..."

John listening to a Sgt. Pepper play-back

John had already recorded his dream sequence vocal that follows, and since they were recording on the same track, Paul was under pressure to follow his guide vocal exactly, or risk erasing part of John's bit. 

The dream sequence that follows, with John singing the euphoric melody line (ahhh, ah-ah-ah, etc) drenched in reverb is, I would contend, the high point of progressive popular music in the 1960s. It's exactly why Sgt Pepper was so revered at the time and for years afterwards, though nowadays its immense influence has tended to be forgotten.

The orchestral session for A Day In The Life confirms their influence by the avant-garde composers. They left 15 bars at the end of the song blank, telling the orchestra to start on their lowest note and be at their highest by the end of the 15 bars.

Paul recalls, "It was interesting, because the trumpet players - always fond of a drink - didn't care, so they'd be up there at the note ahead of everyone. The strings all watched each other like sheep  'Are you going up?' 'Yes', 'So Am I'. 'A little more?' Yes. All very delicate and cosy. You listen to those trumpets. They're just freaking out."

Paul with the orchestra in Number One

It was the largest number of musicians ever heard on a Beatles track. According to Derek Taylor, the big orchestral session was "a riot of festive props, false noses, upside down glasses and imitation bald heads". Erich Gruenberg, the lead violinist, wore a gorilla's paw on his bowing hand.

The recording of the orchestra for A Day In The Life was engineered by Geoff Emerick. He said, "It was only by careful fader manipulation that I was able to get the crescendo of the orchestra at the right time. 

"I was gradually bringing it up, and then slightly fading it back in without the listener being able to discern this was happening. Then I'd have about 4 dB's in hand at the end. It wouldn't have worked if I'd just shoved the level up to start with."

Mark Lewisohn's book, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, reveals how, at the end of the orchestra's tremendous crescendo, everyone in the studio broke into a spontaneous barrage of applause. 

This youtube clip includes rough footage of the orchestral sessions for A Day In The Life, in the typically psychedelic style of the times, with candid shots of the various band members and friends. 

Yours truly in Studio 2

The final 'eternal chord' on A Day In The Life came from all four Beatles and George Martin in the studio playing three pianos. All of them hit the chords simultaneously, as hard as possible, with the engineer pushing the volume input faders down on the moment of impact. Then, as the sound gradually diminished, the faders were pushed slowly up to the top. It took 45 seconds and it was done three or four times, piling sound upon sound. 

George Martin said of the Day In The Life sessions, "One part of me thought, we're being a bit self-indulgent here.

"The other part of me said, It's bloody marvellous".

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL. THANKS

You see that little green light in the window
 on the left? That's where I used to live

Also on this blog:

1966 - The Beatles escape the madness of the road to createRevolver

LIFE magazine reports on 'The New Far-out Beatles', 1967

 Sgt. Pepper Is The Beatles - Who Knew?

How Sgt Pepper disappeared from those lists of classicalbums

At Home With the Lennons, 1967

 A Night With John Lennon - The Fab Faux at Radio City MusicHall

Electric Ladyland - Genius At Work

I have been listening to Jimi Hendrix's 1968 magnum opus Electric Ladyland for over 50 years. There are periods where I haven't heard it for a while. Then I listen again and marvel at just what an amazing, visionary, unique musician it was who created this work. 

I've had another one of those epiphanies this week, writing about when Jimi first came to London and settled into the only period of domestic bliss he ever knew, with Kathy Etchingham. 

In 1968, when Jimi and Kathy were shifting from Ringo's flat in Montagu Square to the loft apartment on Brook Street, Jimi was working on his third album, the double LP that would become Electric Ladyland. His band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, with Mitch Mitchell on drums and Noel Redding on bass, were out touring in the US and Europe. In between, Hendrix would spend time in studios on either side of the Atlantic. 

Jimi Hendrix was a fabulously inventive guitarist, who at his best had no equals at that time. His exploration of the recording studio as an instrument in itself, pushed the boundaries of the primitive eight-track recorders then available, with the patient help of his most loyal engineer Eddie Kramer and the Record Plant's Gary Kellgren.

He told Disc magazine, "My music is my personal diary. - a release of all my inner feelings, aggression, tenderness, sympathy, everything."

Within the double album scope, Hendrix was able to express his range of emotions more fully. This tested the patience of some in his circle, who wanted him to follow a straighter course. 

Notably, his mentor and manager Chas Chandler withdrew from working with him during the slow gestation of Electric Ladyland, because Jimi wouldn't listen to his advice to keep it simple and give his audience more of the same. 

The finished album isn't perfect (find me a double album that is...) but then Hendrix wasn't perfect. Still a young man, not willing to be tied down in any way, he made missteps, allowed too many hangers-on into his sessions and probably abused true friendships and the support of those around him. But there's no denying his genius as a guitar player and musical visionary. 

Above all, it's important to assess Electric Ladyland in the context of what else was being produced at the time. In terms of musical innovation and imaginative use of the studio, it's hard to think of anything, apart from Sgt Pepper, that even comes close. From the opening sounds of And The Gods Made Love, you are being taken on a sonic and sensory trip. Hendrix used his guitar and effects in ways that no one else could even fathom at the time. 

The swirling guitar effects dissolve into the slow soulful Have You Ever Been...to Electric Ladyland. Jimi plays some wonderfully fluid guitar and sings high and handsome. He may not have had the smooth tones of Smokey Robinson - maybe closer to Curtis Mayfield - but he was a great soul singer when he wanted to be. 

Jimi's handwritten lyrics

Then, as if to say, OK that was nice, now dig this, he rocks out with Crosstown Traffic. Funky, melodic and psychedelic at the same time, Hendrix puts down a marker that this album is going to be a real step up in production terms. And before you know it, the mood has changed again. We're live in the studio, for a blues jam - Voodoo Chile - with a bunch of guests, including Steve Winwood on organ and Jack Cassady on bass. 

Everyone gets a chance to blow on this one. It's 15 minutes long. Jimi sings the blues and gets wild as the jam reaches its crescendo. Winwood is the master accompanist and helps the tune to build, but the guy who really drives the whole thing is Mitch. His groove is monumental and his soloing on this is some of the best he ever did on a Hendrix track. So ends side one of the vinyl album.

I'll be honest, side two doesn't match the invention and transcendence of side one. It starts off tamely with a Noel Redding tune, which is out of place in my view. The other tracks are all fine, but they don't hang together or match the overall quality of the other three sides. There is a suggestion that some of them, like the cover of Earl King's Come On, were just filler tracks and when you look at the four sides, there's some truth in that. 

The experimental and exploratory sounds on side three of the original vinyl take us further out still. The dreamy shuffle of Rainy Day, Dream Away features Buddy Miles on drums and Mike Finnigan on organ. Hendrix's guitar is drenched in wah-wah and he's clearly having fun with his lyrics. 

Well, I can see a bunch of wet creatures, look at 'em on the run
The carnival traffic noise it sinks into a splashy hum
Even the ducks can groove, rain bathing in the park side pool
And I'm leaning out my windowsill, digging everything
And you too

The shuffle groove fades slowly as we're transported to Jimi's underwater fantasy world, with beautiful guitar and the gorgeous melody of 1983...A Merman I Should Turn To Be. Jimi's guitar carries the listener off to Atlantis, with Mitch alternating between a slow march and a kind of bolero snare drum pattern. His solos that link the various underwater dream passages show off his Elvin Jones-style chops to great effect. I don't know what you'd call this music, but I do know it's marvellous.

Easily the trippiest track on the album, the denouement of side three - Moon, turn the tides... gently, gently away, is Jimi taking you deeper underwater, or wherever your mind chooses to go, now he's got you under his spell.

Chas may not have been alone in wishing Jimi would stick to more conventional music, but Hendrix was adamant that he wasn't just playing around; this was serious music he was making. 

Don't look on it as self indulgence. Consider it as the artist showing you the full breadth of what he or she can do. 

Steve Vai said something that I thought was pretty cool: "Everyone is a genius when they find what they love and they throw themselves into it without any excuses." That definitely applies here. 

Side Four showed Jimi still had plenty more of his singular music to share with us, leaving two absolute masterpieces to the very last. 

All Along The Watchtower was recorded in January 1968, only a month or so after the release of the Bob Dylan album from which is was taken, John Wesley Harding. It showcased Hendrix's extraordinary range as a guitarist, with solos played on different guitars in different styles. Dylan reportedly said that Hendrix found things in the song that others people wouldn't think of finding there. 

Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) once again defies categorisation because it's completely unique. There isn't a guitarist alive who could have come up with something as brilliant as that. Astonishing technique, amazing use of the studio, completely a one-off. 

Voodoo Chile - in his own handwriting

The reason guitar players and listeners still revere Jimi is because he was an innovator, with a completely unique musical vision. 

Of course, it's tragic his life was cut short at 27, especially when you listen to Electric Ladyland's touchstone moments and imagine what he would have been capable of, if he could have got back on the straight and narrow on his return to London. But time ran out for Jimi, leaving this album as the most complete expression of his genius and vision. 

If his reputation has suffered posthumously, it's because so many have sought to exploit the demand for 'new' Hendrix material with sub-standard recordings that Hendrix would never have approved.  

Jimi was kept busy in '68

Anyone coming to him now would be well-advised to stick to the records he released during his lifetime, as a true testament of his abilities and his legacy. 

Was Electric Ladyland filmed?

I am reading the booklet that came with the Experience Hendrix mid 1990s CD reissue of Electric Ladyland.

I'm intrigued by this passage in the notes to the CD: 

"For 16 days in May 1968, an ABC-TV film crew followed the Experience to stage and studio. Shooting began at the Record Plant on May 3....The footage begins with scenes of a groupie sketching Jimi as he records Voodoo Chile. The scene cuts to the control room where Eddie (Kramer) tells an interviewer 'Jimi's music is here to stay'. Mike Jeffrey and Chas Chandler were also interviewed while Jimi was filmed writing lyrics."

I think I know a fair amount about film footage of Jimi, but I have never heard or seen anything related to this ABC footage. Surely, it it does exist, it would have seen the light of day by now. But if it didn't exist, how could the Experience Hendrix CD notes be referencing it? 

The latest extended release of the Classic Albums program, now made available by Experience Hendrix as 'At last...the beginning: the making of Electric Ladyland' offers some glimpses of the Record Plant sessions, visuals only, no sound.

The DVD is worth getting for the extra footage, most of which features engineer Eddie Kramer peeling back the layers of the backing tracks to show the detail and the unique vision that Jimi applied to the album. Some of this is just beautiful, especially the rhythm tracks behind 'Have you ever been...'

Another thing this extended episode reveals is that on the original acetate of the album, the 'white-coated men at CBS' had got the name of the album wrong. Many years before Kirsty MacColl turned it into a joke album title of her own, here it is, Electric Landlady!

Here's a clip from the original Classic Albums program, which contains brief footage from the Record Plant sessions at the very beginning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2gdC99R93A

 

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL THANKS

Also on this blog:

Jimi Hendrix - Sunday Night At The Saville Theatre

Hendrix releases the Band of Gypsys album

Handel and Hendrix - Neighbours in London

Five Days of Drama at the Isle of Wight festival, 1970

Jimi Hendrix - The Last Interview