I am reading the booklet that came with the
Experience Hendrix mid 1990s CD reissue of Jimi's 1968 masterpiece 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:
File under: Before the record companies knew how to market their back catalogue in CD format.
Again, no idea how much this one is worth, but what a twofer? Arguably Marvin Gaye's finest albums on one CD!
Bought in the mid/late 80s for £5, this is a classic example of the early days of CD, when there really wasn't much choice in terms of available back catalogue to buy. The record companies were trying to figure out this new format and were unsure whether people would go out and buy music on CD they already owned on vinyl. So the back catalogue stuff was chucked out at discount prices and in packages like this.
Soon enough, they realised people were embracing CD as a format; packages like this one were swiftly withdrawn and the individual albums were marked up to £15.
Due to a change of living arrangements (working in Hong Kong for an extended period) I am revisiting my CD collection. Have to say these old David Bowie CDs sound much better than I thought they would.
Probably the only CDs I have of any monetary value are the five Bowie albums from the batch released in the mid 1980s, and then withdrawn by RCA after they lost the rights to the Bowie catalogue. I haven't played them for years, preferring the vinyl experience. Well I've just played the Ziggy CD and blow me, it sounds great!
That got me thinking: I wonder if their stock has risen, or whether they are just worthless bits of plastic, like most CDs. So I searched online and discovered there is no end of discussion on the relative merits of the German and Japanese RCA Bowies (Nerd fact: mine are the German versions ). Also, it turns out the RCAs have stood the test of time because subsequent versions have messed with the formula.
As one reviewer on Amazon commented, "the original RCA Bowie CDs from the 1980s were lambasted at the time as subpar, but actually did a pretty good job of staying faithful to the sound of the original LPs. They have held up very well in light of the reissues that followed: the anemic and overly bright Ryko reissues of the late `80s and the bloated, heavily compressed Virgin/EMI remasters of the late `90s, which remain the standard versions available today.
Oh Gawd!
However, it was the 30th Anniversary edition of Ziggy Stardust that represented the nadir of all Bowie remasters: it sounded worse than even the '90s EMI remaster; worse yet, it actually removed portions of the music and reversed the stereo channels." Bowie himelf is on record as having said the recent CD remaster sounded 'weedy'.
OK, so while that makes the case for the original vinyl even stronger, it should at least make these RCA CDs more collectible. From a quick scan of various blogs and online resellers, it appears each of the CDs is worth at least $100 (US) and perhaps more given they are in good condition.
But hey, it's not about the money! What pleases me the most is they actually sound really good. So until I can get back to using my record deck, it's time to rediscover the joys of CD.
(NOTE: Since I wrote this, it has been announced that a new boxed set of early Floyd material is being made available, including Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream. All you need is a spare $550!)
Also please note that this blog post has been taken down twice by the service provider under threat of copyright infringement. So if the links don't work, that is why.
---- In this age, when any well-known artist's every last demo and throw-away has been dredged up for completist fans to pore over, it remains astonishing to me that there was never an official release of Syd Barrett's last recordings as the leader of Pink Floyd.
After all this time, why not let those fans who might be interested have a listen?
Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream were both readied for release in 1967, but were rejected
by the record company for being too strange and uncommercial.
As anyone who has heard them will probably agree, they are indeed raw and somewhat unhinged, but so is 'I Am The Walrus' and that didn't do too badly. Syd's final songs for the Floyd are, regardless of their commercial appeal, an important part of the band's history, illustrating Syd’s state of mind as his excessive LSD intake tipped him over the edge.
The Pink Floyd, as they were known at first
The songs could only have been written by Barrett. Like his earlier material on The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, they reflect a peculiar attitude to the craft of songwriting. Even without the drugs, his songs were oddly formed, combining nursery rhyme lyrics, the 'psychedelic' sounds of the time and added bars where the lyrics didn't scan properly.
It
worked - on that first album at least - because the band believed in Syd and
encouraged producer Norman Smith to deliver on Syd's Edward Lear-on-acid
vision. Meanwhile, The Beatles were in the studio along the corridor at Abbey Road recording their own
psychedelic masterpiece,Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
After the success of See Emily Play in 1967, the Floyd's management put pressure on Syd, as the principal songwriter, to come up with more hit singles. But Syd's perspective had been warped by his acid intake, and his idea of what would make a good single was a little challenging.
Spiced with generous helpings of LSD, he wrote Vegetable Man. Was her referring to himself? Or was he just taking the piss out of the need to follow fashion?
In yellow shoes I get the blues Though I walk the streets with my plastic feet With my blue velvet trousers, make me feel pink There's a kind of stink about blue velvet trousers In my paisley shirt I look a jerk And my turquoise waistcoat is quite out of sight But oh oh my haircut looks so bad Vegetable man where are you?
So I've changed my gear, and I find my knees, And I covered them up with the latest cut, And my pants and socks all point in a box, They don't make long of my nylon socks, The watch, black watch My watch with a black face And a big pin, a little hole, And all the lot is what I got, It's what I wear, it's what you see, It must be me, it's what I am, Vegetable man
Syd was by this time, October 1967, losing his grip
Syd's increasingly erratic LSD-fuelled behaviour became intolerable for the rest of group. At one concert, it is said he mixed the oily hair ointment Brylcreem over his head to make it look like his head was melting under the stage lights.
Joe Boyd, who produced their first single, Arnold Layne, told how Syd passed him on the way into the UFO club one night, with eyes like impenetrable pools of blackness, a sign of just how far gone he was.
You can see the difference in his appearance in the second part of this See Emily Play clip (3 minutes in) where they are playing Apples and Oranges on the Dick Clark Show in the US. So the story goes, when they were taping one TV show in the US, he refused to move his mouth.
The writing was on the wall for the end of Syd's tenure, when EMI declined to release Vegetable Man or Scream Thy Last Scream as a single. It must have been clear to the band they could not carry on as they were. They were all still very young and inexperienced. More mature heads may have been more sympathetic to Syd, whose mental problems were all too real.
They claim they didn't actually fire Syd and that bringing in Dave Gilmour wasn't an attempt to force him out. But after yet another night when he was unable or unwilling to perform, they just decided not to pick him up on the way to the next gig, and that was the end of it.
And they moved on. It's possible the other members of Pink Floyd did not want to see Syd's last songs released. They are a document of one very talented man's descent into madness - as Gilmour said "never to return".
On the other hand, if it's acceptable to dredge up those last desperate recordings of Nick Drake, to reveal the dark despair of a song like Black-Eyed Dog, then I
think it's equally valid for the world to hear Syd's last recordings
with the Floyd, tracks that reveal not just his mental state, but the
culmination of a musical journey.
For me anyway, there was an artistic statement being made here by Syd, however perverse. The band must have been in on it too, because both these tracks are essentially finished items. Acetates were made ready for the single's release. They also recorded a version of Vegetable Man for a BBC session in December 1967.
Syd post-Floyd, couldn't sustain his musical talent
There's no mistaking the psychotic whimsy here - it's the work of someone on the edge of madness; completely
uncommercial and obviously for those close to Syd, too raw to be
released, ever.
That's the strangest thing, though, for me. After all this time, when compilation after compilation was released, at great expense for the Floyd completists, the release of these tracks was never considered.
Really, no history of Pink Floyd could ever be complete until Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream take their rightful place in the collected works.
Another picture of domesticity, but one that was to come to an end soon afterwards. It is the Spring of 1967 and John Lennon is putting his feet up at the family home he shared with first wife Cynthia and their son Julian in Weybridge, Surrey.
Surrounded by the traditional framed pictures and ornaments are the tell-tale signs of someone who has turned on to a new way of life, but has not quite let go of the old one. He's reading a copy of the counter-culture newspaper International Times and the cabinets are festooned with promotional stickers for Captain Beefheart's new album.
John's mind was clearly miles away from here. But while Paul McCartney was living in the heart of London, close to Abbey Road studios, John was cut off from all that and was going through what Cynthia described as his 'neurotic phase'.
She said, "He didn't know where his life was going and he was fed up with being a Beatle. He'd spend a lot of his time in bed with a notepad. When he woke up he'd write a few words down and then maybe go over to the piano. He was basically dropping out. Everything he was doing outside the home was pretty high-powered."
As Derek Taylor attested, John also seemed to spend a lot of time taking acid, even once remarking one morning, as he was driving Taylor in his psychedelic Rolls Royce, that he had it for breakfast.
1967 marked a real turning point for The Beatles. Having unveiled their crowning achievement as a band, Sgt Pepper, in June, they had shed the final layers of their moptop image and were in full experimental mode musically.
Though they were forced to keep the whole Beatle gravy train on the rails, they had become disillusioned with it all. They had stopped touring, so it was only in the studio where they were still in any sense a band.
As it was, they "battled on against overwhelming oddities" through 1967 and 68 with Magical Mystery Tour and the White Album. John's pursuit of something to make sense of his life brought about his fateful meeting with Yoko, the encounter that would lead him to, as he said, "break up a happily married state of boredom".
with son Julian, 1967
As Philip Norman writes in his biography of Lennon: "All four Beatles, kaftaned and beaded, sat at the
yogi's feet to listen to his Buddhist wisdom. This was mysticism in an
easily digested, tabloid form, instantly appealing to young earthly gods
for whom real self-denial was unthinkable.
"His route to spiritual
regeneration involved no special training, no memorising of complex
prayers or incantations, and next to no personal inconvenience. It was
bliss without the effort. "
John wanted to take Yoko, but since the pilgrimage included wives, he had no choice but to take Cynthia. They
stayed in a village on the banks of the River Ganges (Rishikesh) looking towards
the snow-flecked Himalayas, though their living conditions were far from
spartan. Their bungalows had hot water and western plumbing, and a
handful of two-rupee notes bought extra home comforts, from chocolate
bars to booze and hash.
For all the Beatles, it was an enforced
slowdown from the lunatic pace that had not let up for seven years,
since they left Liverpool for Hamburg and their careers suddenly took
off. Day after day, there was nothing to do but sit and think.
"John
seemed happy, strumming guitars with Paul and George in the balmy
sunshine and even holding hands with Cynthia. She was convinced their
difficult marriage was entering a new phase of companionship and mutual
tolerance. What she didn't know was that John was all the time
receiving postcards from Yoko, which his minders had strict orders to
forward to him in plain brown envelopes so she would suspect nothing.
Often they consisted of a single thought, in Yoko's tiny, arty script:
'Watch for me - I'm a cloud in the sky."
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In a galaxy far, far away, there existed a time when UK rock music fans could treat themselves to an evening at The London Planetarium for what was described as 'The new cosmic laser rock concert'.
It was a fairly simple concept - take a bunch of rock and classical tracks and set them to entertaining laser visuals. Sit everyone down in a darkened room and project the images on the Planetarium dome. It was, of course, tailor-made for anyone who happened to have smoked a jazz woodbine before the show. The visual effects were probably a bit primitive by modern standards, but it was a novel idea at the time. It was a real treat to hear the music played through a good sound system too.
The music was a mix of American rock (Joe Walsh, the Doobie Brothers), popular classical music (The Planets, the Blue Danube) and generous helpings of prog rock (Yes, ELP, Utopia, Genesis). I went to the London show on two or three occasions in the late 70s and also went to one in New York around the same time (he 'Eye See The Light Show').
The Laserium idea was actually developed in 1973 by an American filmmaker, Ivan Dryer. The Laserium shows played in 46 cities worldwide and were viewed by over 20 million people.
The Los Angeles show continued until 2002, a run of 28 years.
I have managed to find some footage from the original
shows, including this one, the opening number of the 'Laserock' show,
Automation Horroscope, by Nektar.
Although the original shows at the London Planetarium only lasted for a
while,
from about 1977, the Laserium franchise is still going, though they tend
to be held in larger theatres nowadays in special events. Here's some
vintage footage of those early Laserium shows and how they were put
together.
For a time in 1971 and 1972, before he was overshadowed by Bowie and the other Glam Rock bandwagon jumpers, Marc Bolan was unquestionably Britain's biggest pop star. In my archive I found these black and white photos which capture Bolan and his T. Rex band mates Mickey Finn, Steve Currie and Bill Legend as they are about to release the album Electric Warrior.
A version of this photo was given as a poster with copies of Electric Warrior
The photos were taken by Kieron 'Spud' Murphy, who was also responsible for the original photo used as the image for the cover of Electric Warrior.
That photo, taken at the Albert Hall, Nottingham on 14 May 1971, can be seen on the wall behind Mickey Finn in the lounge photo shown here.
These interior photos and the colour photo below were all taken at the flat in Clarendon Gardens, Maida Vale, London, where Marc lived with his wife June Child.
The band photo with Marc in the foreground was given away as a poster with early copies of the Electric Warrior vinyl LP.
Following on from the success of Hot Love, the Electric Warrior album contained the hits Get It On(Elton John plays piano on this clip from Top Of The Pops) andJeepster, which cemented Bolan's new rock style and created the greatest teen music craze since Beatlemania.
The album was produced by Tony Visconti and benefits from the background vocal talents of Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, otherwise known as Flo & Eddie, fresh from their exploits with Frank Zappa. The template for the T. Rex sound, with the characteristic raw crunch of Bolan's guitar and the band's behind-the-beat groove, was set on this record.
My vintage copy of Electric Warrior
But not everyone was taken in by Bolan's new direction. DJ John Peel said his close friendship with Marc and June effectively ended because Peel was reluctant to play the new T. Rex single when it arrived at Radio One.
Marc and June Child
Peel didn't specify which single it was, but having been such a strong
supporter of the band in its previous form, Tyrannosaurus Rex, he had to
ask himself whether he would have played the record if he and Marc were
not friends. He concluded that he wouldn't have. Bolan froze him out
from then on.
Peel obviously felt that Bolan had sold his soul to the screaming teens. I'm sure a lot of other fans from the Tyrannosaurus Rex period felt the same.
Whatever the merits of Bolan's new direction, it was a hugely successful
one and in 1972 the run of hits continued with Telegram Sam, Metal Guru,
Children of the Revolution, Solid Gold Easy Action and 20th Century
Boy.
But as
the photographer in the colour shot here (not credited so I can't
name them) says, Marc was extremely vain and convinced of his own
genius.
As his fame increased, so did his cocaine usage. Tony Visconti is adamant that his music suffered as a result.
Clarendon Gardens, Maida Vale
Visconti noted that while Bolan was still able to write hit songs, he didn't have the musical vocabulary to break beyond the singles market and was incapable of taking direction from those around him. It was only a matter of time before his star burnt out.
As their careers progressed, Bolan was compared with David Bowie, who had his own ideas about how to carve out an identity with glam rock imagery.
By 1973, Bowie soon overtook Bolan, through the sheer breadth and brilliance of his music, whereas Marc wasn't able to maintain the quality and the momentum. His run of Top10 hits came to an end in 1974.
In that initial burst of Glam Rock in 1971 and 72, though, Bolan vied with Slade as the UK's most popular chart act. Electric Warrior stands as a still vibrant and vivid snapshot of the time.
Here is a live studio version of Jeepster which I think captures the spirit of the T. Rex sound. There's some contemporary footage included at the end of the video too.
And while we're celebrating this music, let's have some more. Probably my favourite of the 1972 singles. Children Of The Revolution. Mickey Finn is a riot on this.
