The EP, or extended play, record has been around in some form about as long as records have. In rock music, they’ve been issued in several formats over the years, from seven-inches and twelve-inches to ten-inches, CDs, and bonus seven-inches with full twelve-inch LPs. Back in the 1960s, they were usually four-song compilations of tracks that were also and/or previously available on singles and albums. They didn’t take off to a meaningful extent in the US (though that changed a bit in later decades), but were a popular medium in the UK and numerous other countries. In fact, for quite a few years they were the primary format in France, which issued more Beatles EPs than Beatles singles before 1967.

The most interesting EPs—certainly if you weren’t living in the countries of their origin—were those that presented material that had not been available on singles or LPs. These days, just about all of the songs that were exclusive to certain rock EPs are available on reissues. But it’s neat to look back at the ones that used the EP as a vehicle for fresh sounds, not as a marketing tool for recycling or repurposing songs that ultimately made more sense to buy on singles and albums, if you had the budget.

Here’s an opinionated summary of the most noteworthy ’60s EPs, most of them from British acts, and most of them UK releases. It was relatively rare for US artists to issue EPs that unveiled new material, but there are a few of those too. All of these are seven-inches. Some purists might question whether a few three-song seven-inches are more properly classified as “maxi-singles,’ as the term was sometimes given in the UK press, but I’ve put them on too. I haven’t tried to rank them in quality, instead listing them in the order in which they were released.

The Big Three, At the Cavern (Decca, November 1963). It’s a little strange to lead off this list with one of the least musically interesting items, but we’re going in chronological order. The Big Three were one of the most popular Liverpool groups, and occasional comments in oral histories from those who were there suggest they were on par with, or even better than, the Beatles live. That assertion certainly isn’t borne out from their small official discography, which is energetic but mundane Merseybeat fare. They could play forcefully and had some of the top instrumentalists on the Merseyside. But when you don’t write many songs, and what little original material you have is weak, you certainly can’t bear comparison to the Beatles even if you did blow them off the stage at the Cavern (which I doubt happened, but no matter). 

The Big Three never released an album, but they did manage to put out four singles and an EP that was, as the title says, actually recorded at Liverpool’s most famous club. As the only disc by a Merseybeat band taped at the Cavern, it’s of notable historical interest for that alone. The audience noise and introduction by compere Bob Wooler (famed for his role in the early Beatles’ career as fan and general advisor) add to the atmosphere. Musically it’s a truer representation of their sound than their studio 45s, where they were given some inappropriately lightweight pop material. But let’s be real here — it’s competent but not great, in part because two of the tunes are overdone rock classics (“What’d I Say” and Chuck Berry’s “Reelin’ and Rockin'”), and the other a not-so-great version of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.” The one group original, “Don’t Start Running Away,” is just passable.

There could have been a much more famous recording made at the Cavern in 1963. As many Beatles fans know, George Martin was considering taping the Beatles’ first album there, but then figured they could re-create their live excitement in the studio. Which they did, magnificently, for their debut LP Please Please Me.

The tracks on the Big Three’s Live at the Cavern EP—fairly successful in the UK, by the way, where it reached #6 on the EP charts—haven’t been hard to find since 1982, when they were on the Cavern Stomp compilation, which gathered all thirteen of the cuts they released in the ’60s. It includes a cover of “Bring It On Home to Me” from the 1964 various-artists compilation At the Cavern, also recorded at the club, and also with an introduction by Bob Wooler.

The Rolling Stones, The Rolling Stones (Decca, January 17, 1964). The Rolling Stones took more advantage of EP opportunities than most of their British Invasion rivals, issuing three of new material in the mid-’60s (and a maxi-single in the early ’70s). They could have used more imagination for the title of their first EP, but it was a good sampling of their early R&B repertoire, preceded by only two actual UK singles. The highlight, easily, was their soulful interpretation (complete with wavering but haunting background harmonies) of Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On,” the track primarily responsible for propelling this to #1 on the UK EP chart. As Roy Carr speculated in The Rolling Stones: An Illustrated Record, “Had it been released as a single, it may have well reached the very top.”

Also good was “Bye Bye Johnny,” a reliably energetic Chuck Berry cover. Less impressive was their rather murkily recorded version of “Money,” which was far inferior to the Beatles’ classic interpretation, and a routine run-through of the Coasters’ hit “Poison Ivy.” Perhaps these were attempts to be accessible to listeners likely to be more familiar with those songs than the relatively arcane blues that still featured in much of their repertoire. It wasn’t until late 1965 that “You Better Move On” came out in the US (on the December’s Children LP), and not until 1972 that “Bye Bye Johnny” and “Money” finally did so on the More Hot Rocks compilation.

“Poison Ivy,” meanwhile, didn’t come out in the US until the expanded CD version of More Hot Rocks in 2002. Note that the version of “Poison Ivy” on the 1972 More Hot Rocks collection (also included on the expanded CD) is a different, somewhat less impressive take, easily distinguished from the other by the presence of a guiro’s scraped percussive noises. It also fades out, where the harder-rocking EP version comes to a “cold” ending with a drum flourish. The weaker alternate version of “Poison Ivy” had first come out, I’m guessing by sloppy accident, on a UK various-artists sampler LP, Saturday Club. 

The Downliners Sect, Nite in Gt. Newport Street (Contrast Sound Productions, January 1964). It was pretty rare that British Invasion bands released independent live EPs. Maybe there were some private pressings of such items here and there, but this four-songer is certainly the most widely known. Not that the Downliners Sect are too widely known–they never had a British or American hit. But they did put out three albums and a bunch of singles, and as something of a yet rawer Pretty Things (who themselves were something of a rawer Rolling Stones), they have their cult followers.

All four songs on Nite in Gt. Newport Street were American R&B covers, including routine workouts on Jimmy Reed’s “Shame, Shame, Shame” and Chuck Berry’s “Beautiful Delilah.” “Green Onions” doesn’t actually sound too much like the Booker T. & the MG’s classic, and hits a nice, slightly menacing loping groove. Their take on Bo Diddley’s “Nursery Rhyme” is really cool, laying down a solid Diddley beat behind effectively restrained vocals. I’m aware I’m not as much of a Downliners Sect fan as some other ’60s/British Invasion fanatics, but I think “Nursery Rhyme,” as early as it is in their career, is their best track, except maybe for “Sect Appeal” from their first LP.

This is a mighty rare disc, but all four cuts have long been easily available, as they were part of the 1994 compilation The Definitive Downliners Sect: Singles A’s & B’s. Not so for an unissued follow-up EP they recorded for Contrast Sound Productions. The four tracks (including covers of “Rock and Roll Music” and Jimmy Reed’s “Brite [sic] Lights—Big City”) came out in 2011 on the Brite Lights—Big City EP, which itself is now very hard to find.

Georgie Fame, Rhythm & Blue-Beat (Columbia, May 1964). Fame debuted a higher percentage of his output on EPs than most British Invasion stars, and maybe a higher one than anyone. Three EPs in 1964-65 presented a dozen tracks that hadn’t been available elsewhere—a whole album’s worth. Since he was a pretty big star in the UK after “Yeh Yeh” topped the British charts in January 1965, it’s strange he didn’t put out an LP that year. The same could be said of the Yardbirds, who had no British albums (although two were issued in the US) in 1965 either.

Rhythm & Blue-Beat is the first of those EPs, and is exactly what the title promises: Fame’s brand of jazzy R&B, married to a ska beat. It’s okay, but not up to the standard of his best mid-’60s work, and has a sort of novelty feel, especially on his adaptation of the “Humpty Dumpty” nursery rhyme (a live version of which had already come out on his debut album). He’d do another thematic EP of sorts in May 1965 with Fats for Fame, featuring four Fats Domino covers. In November of the same year, Move It on Over didn’t have a theme, though aside from the title track, it was devoted to R&B standards that were rather overdone by then (“Walking the Dog,” “High [sic] Heel Sneakers,” and “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu”).

The dispersal of numerous Fame tracks on EPs and non-LP singles, along with the usual discrepancy between his British and American discography, made assembling a complete collection of his pre-1967 material a difficult task indeed for decades. That was finally solved in 2015 by the expensive five-CD box The Whole World’s Shaking: Complete Recordings 1963-1966, which has everything from these EPs.

The Beatles, Long Tall Sally (Parlophone, June 19, 1964). Lots of Beatles EPs came out in their homeland in the first three years of their career, some of them big UK sellers. But Long Tall Sally was the only time they included tracks not previously available on UK albums or singles. It was a stormer, too, particularly the title cut, which had been a staple of Beatles shows almost since they began, and would be the last song they played at their last official concert (at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966). The other three tracks were hardly slouches, with John Lennon’s vocal pacing a terrific cover of Larry Williams’s “Slow Down” and Ringo taking one of his infrequent leads on Carl Perkins’s “Matchbox.” Rounding out the seven-inch was the sole original, “I Call Your Name,” a characteristically decent second-tier Lennon-McCartney tune.

Technically speaking, this didn’t mark the debut of all the tracks. Capitol Records, hungry for Beatles product after they invaded the US in early 1964, put “I Call Your Name” and “Long Tall Sally” on The Beatles’ Second Album, which had come out two months earlier. Also “I Call Your Name” had been the B-side of a Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas single back in July 1963, though the Beatles’ own rendition slays it.

Even if you were one of the (likely very few) British residents who had The Beatles’ Second Album, however, on its own merits this was arguably the finest EP of the British Invasion. Perhaps it was an excuse to get some of their covers on disc without jamming up their albums with too much non-Lennon-McCartney material, but it’s none the worse for that. Likely they could have filled up several more EPs with more great covers if they’d had the inclination, but luckily quite a few of those were cut at their BBC sessions, and are now widely available on CD.

The Merseybeats, On Stage (Fontana, July 1964). Throughout early rock history, there were a bunch of releases by high-profile acts that gave the false impression they were recorded live. This is one of the more obscure ones, actually recorded in the studio, though the idea was to capture them more like they were on stage than their poppier singles did. The opportunity to record them in their native Liverpool’s Cavern Club was not taken advantage of, and it was, according to the Merseybeats’ Billy Kinsley, cut in a mere 25 minutes. All of the songs were covers, including “Long Tall Sally,” “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry Over You” (which Elvis Presley had recorded early in his career), Jimmy Reed’s “Shame, Shame, Shame” (here just titled “Shame”), and Bo Diddley’s “You Can’t Judge a Book By Its Cover” (written by Willie Dixon). It was a major commercial success, making #2 on the British EP charts, on which it stayed for 25 weeks.

It would be great to report this shows the Merseybeats could have been a tough rock/R&B act given the chance, but in fact the results are mostly mediocre. Actually, “Long Tall Sally” and “Shame” have terrible throaty, rasping lead vocals, a kazoo (!) on “Shame” adding another irritant. Perusing the detailed liner notes of a couple Merseybeats reissues doesn’t reveal who was responsible, though according to Spencer Leigh’s It’s Love That Really Counts: The Billy Kinsley Story, it’s drummer John Banks on “Long Tall Sally,” and (the text seems to infer) Aaron Williams on “Shame.” As the Beatles’ own ace version of “Long Tall Sally” had come out only slightly earlier, the one by the Merseybeats can’t help but sound ghastly in comparison.

“I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry Over You,” at least, is fairly good—not nearly as good as the Beatles’ terrific 1963 BBC version, but then that would not have been available for contrast back then. “You Can’t Judge a Book By Its Cover” is fair at best, and no match for the best Diddley covers by the likes of the Rolling Stones and Pretty Things. In truth the Merseybeats were really more suited for pop-rock, and made some fairly good (though hardly great) singles in that vein, though they never had US success.

All four tracks from this EP, and everything else they did in the ’60s, are on the 2002 Bear Family compilation I Think of You: The Complete Recordings. According to the Merseybeats’ Tony Crane, On Stage was the third best-selling British EP of 1964, “only beaten by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones,” though I have a hard time believing there weren’t more than a couple Beatles and Stones EPs that outsold it.

The Rolling Stones, Five By Five (Decca, August 14, 1964). Having cut some fine sides at Chess Records’ studios during their first US tour, the Stones were eager to get some of them out before their second full-length UK album. Devoted mostly to covers, 5 X 5—with, as the title suggested, five tracks rather than the more common four—was a fine dish of those, from the time they were still a very R&B-oriented band. Their rendition of Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around” (the very first song Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had performed in public) was the most popular. But the instrumental “2120 South Michigan Avenue” (named after the address of the Chess studios) was the best, as kind of a more rock-oriented take on Booker T. & the MG’s with a compelling riff and great Ian Stewart organ (and some of Bill Wyman’s best bass).

Also on the EP were a contemporary soul cover (of Wilson Pickett’s “If You Need Me”) and a slow blues (“Confessin’ the Blues”), both well done. Their songwriting was still in a relatively primitive stage on the one original, “Empty Heart,” but even that had some cool irregular rhythms and wayward backing vocals. American fans wouldn’t miss out on these cuts for long, as they formed the backbone of their second US album, 12 X 5, just a couple months later. To quote Roy Carr’s The Rolling Stones: An Illustrated Record again, “Along with the Beatles’ Long Tall Sally four-tracker, Five By Five is unquestionably the first and last great EP. They really don’t make records like these any more.”

Another collectors’ note: a longer version of “2120 South Michigan Avenue” came out on a German LP compilation, with markedly more guitar soloing by Keith Richards. That was finally made available in the US on the 2002 CD of 12 X 5.

The Rolling Stones, Got Live If You Want It! (Decca, June 11, 1965). The Rolling Stones’ first live release had rather lo-fi recordings from their March 1965 UK tour. If not the Stones as their early very best, it’s still a fun and atmospheric (for the wild screaming) listen. Three of the songs (“Route 66,” “Pain In My Heart,” and a very abbreviated “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”) had been on their first couple British LPs in different studio versions. But the two others, Bo Diddley’s elemental “I’m Alright” and Hank Snow’s “I’m Moving On,” were not otherwise issued by the Stones. “I’m Alright” is exciting and “I’m Moving On” is easily the EP’s high point, with fine slide guitar and harmonica, in a hard-driving arrangement not too similar to either Snow’s country original or Ray Charles’s soul cover.

Got Live If You Want It! caused more than its share of discographical confusion among collectors. First, the US album Got Live If You Want It!, issued in 1966 (and not issued in the UK), is an entirely different recording. It does have a lamer version (with the original backing track, but re-recorded vocals) of “I’m Alright,” which had appeared in its original EP version on the American 1965 album Out of Our Heads. Two of the other tracks, “I’m Moving On” and “Route 66,” found their way onto the grab-bag late-’65 American Stones LP December’s Children. “Pain in My Heart” and “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love,” meanwhile, didn’t get released in the US until the 2004 box set Singles 1963-1965 (although these had been on an EP, not a single).

Finally, “We Want the Stones,” listed as a “song” on the original release, is in fact nothing more than a crowd chanting “we want the Stones,” lasting thirteen seconds (and credited to the band’s pseudonym for group compositions, Nanker Phelge). That’s on Singles 1963-1965 too. As for the title, “Got Live If You Want It” is a pun on the Slim Harpo blues classic “Got Love If You Want It,” which had already been covered by the Yardbirds and the Kinks, though the Stones never put out a version.

Manfred Mann, The One in the Middle (HMV, June 18, 1965). Manfred Mann utilized the EP format to debut tracks more than most major British Invasions did. I’m just choosing one here since some of them weren’t that interesting (particularly the EPs of instrumentals), and/or the tracks often soon appeared on other releases. For the record, the January 1965 EP Groovin’ with Manfred Mann had a dynamite Ben E. King cover in the title track and a couple fair R&B rockers with “Did You Have to Do That” and “Can’t Believe It,” But all were on the US The Five Faces of Manfred Mann LP a couple months later, and the fourth track on the EP was “Do Wah Diddy Diddy,” which had already been a #1 single.

The One in the Middle was their most interesting EP, though one track, “Watermelon Man,” had been on the American LP The Five Faces of Manfred Mann. “The One in the Middle,” a self-referential Paul Jones composition detailing the roles of the Manfreds (though he originally intended it for Yardbirds lead singer Keith Relf), was the song most responsible for the disc topping the British EP chart. Quite possibly it could have been a hit British single on its own, though Manfred Mann were in the midst of a lengthy bunch of those. Just as notable was their cover of Bob Dylan’s “With God on Our Side,” which had an almost orchestral buildup (without orchestral instruments) that gave it a power and feel quite unlike the plaintive folk original.

In this company, their cover of the Paris Sisters’ “What Am I To Do” was lightweight, though it’s worth noting that it’s not only a catchy pop-rocker, but is also far better than the timorous original. It, “With God on Our Side,” and “The One in the Middle” all appeared Stateside in October 1965 on the My Little Red Book of Winners LP.

The Kinks, Kwyet Kinks (Pye, September 17, 1965). Contrary to the title, the four songs on this EP weren’t that much quieter than the Kinks’ usual early fare. Most of them were folkier, though, and one in particular marked the first major departure of main singer-songwriter Ray Davies into social commentary. That was “A Well Respected Man,” which became a deserved big US hit when it was issued in the US the following month. It’s a rare example of a British Invasion band and/or label misjudging the singles market, since it was–to this day, to the surprise of some British Invasion fans—not issued as a 45 in their home country.

The other songs on this EP might not have been up to that level, but a couple were certainly good. Dave Davies had his first major outing for his folky tendencies as singer and songwriter of the pleasing midtempo “Wait Till the Summer Goes Along,” which had a rambling country-folk feel. Ray Davies had a decent, and still largely overlooked, folk-rockish outing with “Don’t You Fret,” which almost sounded like a Scottish or Irish ballad given a couple tense rave-up accelerations. “Such a Shame” was much more ordinary (if rather downbeat) British Invasion pop, but three out of four on an EP of previously unavailable originals is pretty good.

Part of the reason this EP doesn’t get much comment outside of the UK is that all of the tracks were quickly available on US releases. “Such a Shame” showed up on the B-side of the American “A Well Respected Man single, and all four songs were on the US Kinkdom album just a couple months after the EP came out across the Atlantic.

Country Joe & the Fish, Talking Issue #1 (Rag Baby, October 1965). Distributed with the underground Rag Baby magazine, this might be of more historical importance than musical brilliance, but its position in Bay Area rock history is notable. This early version of Country & the Fish—Joe McDonald and guitarist Barry Melton were the only musicians who’d go on to the fully electric Fish—was more jugband folk than rock, though Melton did play electric guitar. Also, this EP has just two tracks (all of side one) by the group on the disc. The flipside has two forgettable folk songs by Peter Krug, who wasn’t in the Fish.

But the two Fish songs are early versions of a song that would feature in a full rock arrangement on their first album (“Superbird”) and, more notably, an early version of their most famous number, “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag.” These are barer and considerably less effective than the re-recordings. Yet they’re among the earliest relics of Bay Area protest rock, which would grow more psychedelic as folkies like McDonald and Melton made the transition to loud electric instruments. They did so fully by the time of their second, far more impressive EP in 1966, also listed here.

Country Joe & the Fish, Country Joe & the Fish (Rag Baby, July 1966). While this features a slightly different lineup than Country Joe & the Fish would have slightly later when they recorded their debut album, this is all-out electric rock that counts among the first truly psychedelic recordings from the San Francisco Sound (though to be technical, the Fish were based in Berkeley). All three of the songs would be re-recorded for their first LP, and all are in somewhat less polished state here, though not much if at all to their detriment. These include “Thing Called Love,” which would be retitled “Love” on the album, and “Bass Strings.” 

But the piece de resistance of the EP—if not of the Fish’s whole career—is the nearly seven-minute instrumental “Section 43.” It’s one of the greatest psychedelic instrumentals, blending hypnotic Asian-influenced melodies, spooky ethereal organ, fiercely distorted electric guitar, and even a bit of bluesy raveup and jugband hijinx. The remake on the debut Electric Music For the Mind and Body album is similar, but not as good or spontaneous. Country Joe & the Fish can also be seen performing this, to great effect, in the Monterey Pop movie.

It will never be possible to get accurate statistics, but this could have been the highest-selling and most influential self-released EP of the 1960s. Figures as high as 15,000 copies have been quoted for its total sales, and it was reportedly distributed in underground record stores and head shops well beyond the Bay Area, as far away as Europe. Original copies are now rare and expensive, but fortunately both this and the Fish’s 1965 EP (as well as a less impressive 1971 EP where McDonald was the only remaining musician) were compiled onto the 1980 LP Collectors Items: The First Three EPs.

The Who, Ready Steady Who (Reaction, November 11, 1966). A kind of weird mix of throwaways and quality originals, the inspiration behind the title of this five-song EP would have been mostly unknown in the US, where the UK rock TV show Ready Steady Go! wasn’t broadcast. It might have led fans to think these were performances from that program, but in fact they were studio tracks, not live (or even “live in the TV studio”) recordings. If only in hindsight, side two seems like a vehicle to let Keith Moon get his surf fanaticism out of his system, with a cover of “Barbara Ann” and Jan & Dean’s much more obscure “Bucket T.” Also on side two was a short (one minute and 22 seconds) and strange cover of “Batman,” also done (though briefly as part of a medley) on the live LP the Kinks did in 1967.

Side one, though, had some good Pete Townshend originals. “Disguises” was a really good mod rock tune that, in line with their 1966 UK hits “Substitute” and “I’m a Boy,” were subtle evocations of how things weren’t always what they seemed. It’s not as good as those two hits, but it’s not too far out of that league either. A considerably different version of the good power-popper “Circles” had been on the US version of their debut My Generation LP, and different sources have given different accounts of how the two versions circulated. This is what I can gather: the one on the American My Generation was produced by Shel Talmy. The second one, produced by the Who without Talmy, came out on the B-side of the original “Substitute” single, but had to be withdrawn because the group and Talmy were in a legal dispute.

It seems like this second version is the same as the one on Ready Steady Who, and thus the only one of the five tracks on the EP to have already been available, if briefly. I don’t have that original rare withdrawn 45, and if that’s not accurate, feel free to send in corrections. In any case, I prefer Talmy’s version, which though it has a kind of murky mix, has more energy than the one on the EP. The EP take is considerably cleaner, but more reserved.

“Disguises” was first heard in the US when it made the Magic Bus compilation LP in 1968, which also, kind of inexplicably, included “Bucket T,” one of their strangest early efforts (particularly in John Entwistle’s goofy horn solo). It took a while for the other tracks to become available Stateside, “Barbara Ann” appearing on 1986’s Who’s Missing, and “Circles” coming out on 1987’s Two Missing compilation. “Batman” made it onto the 1995 expanded CD of the Who’s second album (A Quick One), whose bonus tracks also include three other songs from the EP—but not the EP version of “Circles.” Is it any wonder Who fans resorted to bootlegs to get the five tracks, both because it took so long for all of them to appear on US releases, and because even when they did they were scattered here and there?

The Other Half, The Other Half (Vogue, January 1967). Sometimes tracks showed up on foreign EPs for inexplicable reasons that will probably never be known. Such was the case with the Other Half, a very good but obscure California group that bridged the gap between garage rock and psychedelia. Their best known song might be their first single, “Mr. Pharmacist,” the A-side of the only 45 they did for GNP Crescendo (more famous for their Seeds releases). That’s on this four-song French EP, along with its B-side, “I’ve Come So Far.” 

But the EP also has two songs, “I Know” and “It’s Too Hard,” that never came out in the US. Since the Other Half never had anything close to a hit in their home country, it’s kind of baffling as to why Vogue, a very prominent French label, would license unreleased tracks by an unknown American band. It’s a good thing they did, though, since like the ones on the GNP Crescendo, they’re fine if slightly raw moody garage-psych tunes, paced by the brilliant sustain-laden guitar of Randy Holden.

More than even most good obscure bands of the era, the Other Half have had bad luck in getting their legacy properly enshrined on reissues. All four songs from the EP were included on the 1982 French LP Mr. Pharmacist (which also had all the songs from their good self-titled 1968 LP, as well as the non-LP B-side “No Doubt About It”). Most of the CD reissues of this material are designated “unofficial” in discogs.com.

There are other instances, by the way, of tracks mysteriously showing up on French EPs only, most famously (at least among the people who trace this sort of thing) an alternate version of the Who’s “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere.” A French EP by the Belfast Gypsies, a good spinoff group of Them, had an instrumental (“The Gorilla”) not found elsewhere, though it turns out it wasn’t even recorded by the Belfast Gypsies, but by a different unidentified band. And there’s another example in our next entry.

We the People, St. John’s Shop (London, January 1967). We the People were a good, not great, Florida group who put out some pretty good singles that encompossed both gnarly garage rockers and melodic ballads with a Zombies influence. They had some regional success, but never charted nationally. Which makes it all the more mysterious, a la the Other Half EP, why some unreleased tracks of theirs showed up on a French EP. One of these four tracks (“In the Past,” a garage-psych gem that ranks as their best recording) came out in the US on a single near the end of 1966, but the other three didn’t come out on American discs. One, “Declaration of Independence,” was pretty good and about on the level of their better 45s; another, “Lovin’ Son of a Gun,” is a so-so midtempo bluesy rocker.

But the title track is one of their best numbers, with its slightly psych-addled Zombies wistfulness (“you may think his way is way out, but his way is in”). What’s more—at least from what I can gather from what’s been written about We the People—it was a string-less version, minus the orchestral overdubs that diluted the cut when it was issued on a US 45. Here’s guessing it might never have come out had it not leaked onto this French EP. Fortunately all four of the tracks were made widely available on CD decades later.

John Mayall’s Bluebreakers with Paul Butterfield, John Mayall’s Bluebreakers with Paul Butterfield (Decca, January 6, 1967). Pairing good rock musicians with each other doesn’t necessarily result in something twice as good, and in fact often doesn’t result in something as good as what they were doing on their own. Such was the situation with this four-track EP, putting together arguably the most important mid-’60s blues-rock bandleaders of the UK and the US. Both Mayall and Butterfield had made justly famous and influential albums in 1966, but this joint effort is surprisingly ordinary and unmemorable, if competent. There aren’t any major flaws, but there aren’t any huge sparks either.

Some more original material might have helped; just one of the tracks here, Mayall’s “Eagle Eye,” falls in that category. Giving more space to Peter Green for the kind of fiery guitar work found in the 1966 Bluesbreakers album with Eric Clapton, and Butterfield’s 1966 East-West LP with Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop, could have lit some fire too. Note that while this EP is sometimes titled All My Life in discographies, no title is given on the record’s artwork.

Somehow I found an original copy of this EP, which I’d presumed quite rare and hopeless to count on finding, at Rhino Records in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s for just five dollars. I suppose that had something to do with the poor condition of the sleeve (the top had come unglued and there were some stains on the back), though the disc plays well. All four tracks have come out as bonuses on CD reissues of the A Hard Road album, which Mayall had recorded with Green and the Bluesbreakers shortly before cutting this EP.

Mad River, Mad River (Wee, late 1967). If not a name as big as most on this list, Mad River were one of the better San Francisco bands that didn’t make it nationally in the late-’60s, recording two albums for Capitol. The first of these (also, like this EP, self-titled) is odd, tense, dark psych with some gnarly guitar. I don’t like the second, the country-rock-oriented Paradise Bar and Grill, nearly as much, but it has its devotees. Even some psychedelic rock fans who know about both LPs, however, don’t know the group did an earlier three-song EP for a small Bay Area label. 

Its value is diminished a little since two of the three songs, “AGazelle” and “Windchimes,” were redone for their first LP (as “Amphetamine Gazelle” and “Wind Chimes”), though the EP arrangement of “Wind Chimes” has some “hare krishna” chanting that didn’t survive into the later version. But the third track, “Orange Fire,” was not featured on their albums in any guise. While some collectors are prone to saying “and this non-LP cut was their best song” more because it’s rare than because it’s decisively better, in this case, “Orange Fire” was their best song. An eerie folk-rock ballad for the most part, it offered some of the most direct, blunt anti-Vietnam War protest of any rock recording. I say “for the most part” because a couple times it erupts into fierce instrumental breaks with cacophonous crossfire of distorted guitars, as if to sonically mirror the carnage of the Vietnam War.

It’s mystifying as to why “Orange Fire” didn’t find a place on their first Capitol album. While I doubt it was a factor, it can be pointed out that some of the chording in the instrumental sections strongly recalls riffs that have a prominent role in the Yardbirds’ psychedelic classic “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.” The original EP, though it got some local sales and airplay, is impossible to find. Fear not—like a couple other Bay Area rarities discussed in this post, it’s on the CD compilation The Berkeley EPs.

The Move, Something Else from the Move (Regal Zonophone, June 21, 1968). This five-song disc had a significant plus and minus. The plus was that none of the five, all recorded live at London’s Marquee club (though some had “new live vocals…recorded at Marquee studios”), appeared in any version on their studio LPs and singles. The minus was that they’re not as interesting as their many good studio tracks, in part because they’re all covers.

At least it’s certainly not a run-of-the-mill choice of material, including the Byrds’ “So You Want to Be a Rock’n’Roll Star,” Love’s “Stephanie Knows Who,” Eddie Cochran’s “Something Else,” Jerry Lee Lewis’s “It’ll Be Me,” and Spooky Tooth’s “Sunshine Help Me.” The Love cover’s the best, but generally they’re sort of undistinguished versions, and it’s kind of like hearing a BBC session where a group takes the opportunity to do favorites by others they’re not intending to do in the studio. (The group did quite a few of those on the radio too, as heard on some archival releases.)

Surprisingly, the EP wasn’t hard to get as a twelve-inch reissue back in the early 1980s. A 1999 reissue added bonus tracks from the same event, again all covers, including “Piece of My Heart,” Jackie Wilson’s “Higher and Higher,” a second version of “Sunshine Help Me,” and–most surprisingly—”Too Much in Love,” from an obscure 1968 Denny Laine single. A 2016 expanded CD puffed it up more with live 1968 Marquee versions of their UK hits “Fire Brigade” and “Flowers in the Rain,” a cover of the Everly Brothers’ “The Price of Love,” and a very brief “Move Bolero.”

Frumious Bandersnatch, Frumious Bandersnatch (Muggles Gramophone, June 1968). One of many San Francisco-area psychedelic bands who barely or never got the chance to record, Frumious Bandersnatch did put out a three-song seven-inch—not skimping on running time, with fourteen minutes of music—in mid-1968. More so than most of the entries on this list, it had an “easily the highlight” track in the dramatic, captivating “Hearts to Cry,” with excellent Quicksilver Messenger Service-like guitar, haunting vocal harmonies, and a midsection raveup. On the basis of this track alone, they seemed to have potential that was deserving of at least a full album. The other two tracks were not as memorable, but not dispensable either.

Pressed on purple vinyl with a picture sleeve, this is mighty rare in its original incarnation. Fortunately this, like Country Joe & the Fish’s second EP and Mad River’s EP, is on the 1995 CD The Berkeley EPs, which also includes a less impressive rare EP from the region by Notes from the Underground. That collection (along with Country Weather’s one-sided LP) serves as evidence that the San Francisco psychedelic scene, and particularly bands that were sometimes based in the East Bay, generated more in the way of notable EPs than anywhere else in the US. Fortunately much other Frumious Bandersnatch material, which was unreleased at the time, became available on the 1996 CD compilation A Young Man’s Song. “Hearts to Cry” still stands out as their best song by far, however.

The Rolling Stones, “Brown Sugar”/”Bitch”/”Let It Rock” (Rolling Stones, April 26, 1971). One anomalous early-’70s/maxi-single entry tops off this list. On their own, “Brown Sugar”/”Bitch” made for a tremendous double-sided single. In the UK, a live cover of Chuck Berry’s “Let It Rock” was added to make it a three-song “maxi-single.” That cover’s a reliably decent Stones interpretation of a Berry standard, though not one of Berry’s greatest songs or among the Stones’ best Berry covers. 

And an honorable mention for the most interesting unreleased EP:

The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine album is justly considered the least essential LP they released while active that was centered around “new” material. Released in January 1969, this soundtrack to their animated feature actually only contained four previously unreleased Beatles songs, and even those were leftovers from sessions in 1967 and early 1968. Side one of the LP was filled out with “Yellow Submarine” and “All You Need Is Love” (both of which were featured in the movie), neither of which were hard to get elsewhere then or since. Side two had instrumental George Martin music for the film score that might have defenders here and there, but realistically, few listeners have played that side more than once or twice.

At the time and since, the Beatles and EMI have been criticized for putting so much filler on a full-length (and full-price) LP. A subsequent CD reissue titled Yellow Submarine Soundtrack improved matters by getting rid of the Martin score and adding nine actual Beatles songs that had been used in the film soundtrack (although all of those, like “All You Need Is Love” and “Yellow Submarine,” had been previously available on other discs).

What could and should have been done at the time of the film’s premiere in July 1968 was to put out an EP of the four previously unreleased songs, adding another outtake. In fact such an EP was given initial preparation for release, though not until March 13, 1969. On that date, a master tape for a five-track EP was compiled and banded at EMI. Side one would have featured “Only a Northern Song,” “Hey Bulldog,” and “Across the Universe.” Side two would have presented “All Together Now” and “It’s All Too Much.”

“Across the Universe” actually hadn’t been on the Yellow Submarine album or soundtrack. It would find a home on the No One’s Gonna Change Our World various-artists charity album in December 1969. With some overdubs, a different Phil Spector-produced version would appear on Let It Be.

The release of this five-track EP back in March 1969 would have made perfect sense, though it might have ticked off the millions of fans who’d already paid full price for the Yellow Submarine LP sans “Across the Universe.” Actually it would have made yet more perfect sense to put out the EP back in July 1968, though that might have ticked George Martin off. This would-be EP, incidentally, was mastered in mono, though that format was going into obsolescence by early 1969.

So was the EP format itself, but actually the Beatles had used it for a new release fairly recently. Magical Mystery Tour was released as a double EP in the UK. In the US, it came out as an LP with the six songs from the UK double EP (all of which had been on the TV program’s soundtrack) and the five songs from 1967 singles that hadn’t been on LP. In that case, the full-length LP presentation actually made more sense, even if it had five songs that weren’t on the soundtrack.

If the Beatles ever get on board Record Store Day’s fashion for vinyl releases of classic material, don’t be surprised if that canceled Yellow Submarine EP finally sees the light of day. In mono, of course.

In my previous post, I wrote about some of my favorite records that were written by famous artists, but first released on discs by others. It’s a huge subject that would take several books to fully document, if someone wanted to do reference volumes going through every example. I limited that list to my very favorites, but there are many other instances that have interesting stories behind them, even if the music wasn’t always brilliant. Here are a few, starting with perhaps the most famous that didn’t make my first list:

Scott McKenzie/The Mamas & the Papas, “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair).” How did John Phillips give away one of his biggest hits, instead of having his own hugely successful group do it? The story’s been told pretty often, but McKenzie and Phillips had been friends for a long time before the Mamas & the Papas formed, playing together in an also-ran folk revival group that made some records, the Journeymen. “San Francisco” was meant as a kind of welcome to everyone coming to Northern California for the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, which Phillips co-produced with Mamas & the Papas producer Lou Adler. It was also a way of helping out an old friend, and it would be McKenzie’s only hit.

For such a gentle, rather innocuous song, “San Francisco” has stirred its share of rage among some of the very San Franciscans it might have been intended to honor. Some felt it was an inappropriately wimpy anthem for their city. Some rock critics past and present, whether from San Francisco or not, deride it as sappy hippy naiveté. Some also accused Phillips, and indeed the whole Monterey Pop Festival organization, of exploiting the San Francisco scene, both for using it as the trendy subject for a hit single and for having a lot of emerging San Francisco bands on the Monterey bill to enhance its credibility. The Mamas & the Papas were based in Los Angeles, not San Francisco, giving more ammunition to those who saw them as bandwagon-jumping carpetbaggers.

I can’t get that angry about something that’s just a song, and though I’m not a huge fan of it, I think it’s okay. Judging from the singalong reaction of many students (usually now senior citizens) in my adult community education classes when I show a clip of McKenzie miming the tune, lots of people still think it’s more than okay.

The Acid Gallery/The Move, “Dance Round the Maypole.” When people hear this obscure late-1969 UK single, they often mistake it for the Move, with its catchy British pop tune, lumpy hard rock arrangement, playful lyrics, and foggy vocals and backup harmonies. There’s a good reason for that. This was written and produced by main Move songwriter Roy Wood. And the backing vocals were by Wood and fellow Moveman Jeff Lynne.

This would have worked fine as filler on an early Move LP, though maybe Wood felt it wasn’t heavy enough for what they were getting into by 1969. It wasn’t a hit, and the Acid Gallery made just this one single. They weren’t done with the record business, however, as guitarist Vic Elmes and drummer Mike Blakely (drummer of the Tremeloes’ Alan Blakely) were soon in Christie, who had a big 1970 hit with “Yellow River.”

The Barron Knights/The Who, “Lazy Fat People.” Pete Townshend didn’t make writing for other artists nearly as much of a sideline in the mid-1960s as Lennon-McCartney, Jagger-Richards, and Ray Davies did. He did place some compositions with other artists, including an early version of “Magic Bus” with the Pudding, whose single came out in 1967, a year before the Who had a hit with the same song. Far more obscure was this weird donation to the Barron Knights, a British group known more as a comedy outfit than a serious musical enterprise. It has more of a black-comic vaudeville feel than a rock one, complete with vocals producing fake trumpet sounds. Townshend’s demo of the song has been bootlegged, and while it’s more palatable, it’s not great in that guise either. It’s really kind of an ill-advised stab at a novelty song, though I once read it was aimed at man-with-a-cigar greedy music biz tycoons.

The Searchers/The Everly Brothers/The Hollies, “Have You Ever Loved Somebody.” A typically catchy and effervescent Hollies pop-rock original, “Have You Ever Loved Somebody” was done twice before the Hollies’ own version came out on their 1967 Evolution LP. The Searchers did a very good, hard-charging, slightly fuzz-tinged arrangement on a 1966 single that just dented the UK charts at #48. The Everly Brothers did a good one on their Two Yanks in England album that same year. Both of these recordings are superior to the relatively ordinary, relatively heavier one on Evolution.

At first glance, the Two Yanks in England album almost looks like an LP stuffed with Hollies giveaways, as eight of the twelve tracks were penned by the group. But although the album’s worthwhile, and did mark the debut of some of the songs on disc, none of these were exclusives. The Hollies had already issued their own version of five of the numbers, and the others would all appear on Hollies releases in the near future, whether on B-sides or LPs.

Dusty Springfield/The Zombies, “If It Don’t Work Out.” Although the Zombies had two excellent songwriters in Rod Argent and Chris White (who wrote separately), they barely got involved in the game of having other artists do songs that didn’t find a place on their own records. One exception was Argent’s “If It Don’t Work Out,” which got a spot on Dusty Springfield’s late-’65 UK LP Ev’rything’s [sic] Coming Up Dusty. She does a good enough job on a tune that shows a greater soul influence than most of the Zombies’ work, but it’s only acceptable filler, not something with hit single potential. 

Both the Zombies and Springfield, however, rated it more highly than I do. In the liner notes to the box set Zombie Heaven, Zombies guitarist Paul Atkinson told Alec Palao, “We rehearsed it a lot but [Rod] said ‘I’m going to give it to Dusty.’ I was upset about that, because I thought it could be a hit for us.”

Elaborated Argent in the same notes, “We were on tour with Dusty and she said to me ‘I’m recording at the moment, will you write something for me?’ So I wrote her a song over the weekend which was ‘If It Don’t Work Out,’ and that was quite good really because I had her voice in mind. I played the song to her in the studio and she loved it.”

Said Dusty in 1965 (according to Paul Howes’s book The Complete Dusty Springfield), “That tambourine is fantastic. Rod was there on piano. I asked him, on tour, to write something for me—this is it! The strength of the brass is lovely.” According to that book, it was planned as a single, though it ended up as an LP track. The Zombies did their own adequate version in July 1965, but it didn’t come out (with some overdubs in December 1968) until 1969, after the group had broken up.

Yellow Hand/Buffalo Springfield, Yellow Hand. On their sole album, 1970’s self-titled Yellow Hand, this unknown group somehow got hold of half a dozen songs by Neil Young or Stephen Stills that had been recorded or demoed back in their Buffalo Springfield days, but were never released by that great group. These included Young’s “Down to the Wire” and “Sell Out,” and Stills’s “Neighbor Don’t You Worry,” “We’ll See,” “Come On,” and “Hello I’ve Returned.” All of these songs are on the Buffalo Springfield self-titled box set in Springfield/demo versions except “Sell Out,” which is on Young’s Archives Vol. 1 box.

While these songs generally aren’t up to what the Springfield put on their LPs, they have their merits, and are sometimes about as good as some of their deep album cuts. Yellow Hand’s versions are substantially different than the ones in circulation by the Springfield, having been recorded considerably later, and arranged based on demos that were made available to the group.

Butch Engle & the Styx/The Beau Brummels, most of The Best of Butch Engle & the Styx: No Matter What You Say. “The best of” is an odd title for a Marin County group that had only three singles, none of which were close to being a hit. With the addition of almost a dozen outtakes, Beat Rocket/Sundazed put out a full CD of their 1964-67 recordings in 2000. All but two of the tracks were written or co-written by Ron Elliott, lead guitarist and main songwriter of the Beau Brummels. Elliott also co-produced the recordings, making the band almost a minor league affiliate of sorts to the Brummels. 

The Beau Brummels were an excellent and underrated group, and the thought of lots of otherwise unavailable Elliott songs naturally piques the interest of any fan. Unfortunately, however, most of these are subpar castoffs that aren’t nearly on the level of what he reserved for his own band. Since they unsurprisingly have a similar minor-based melodic sense and moodiness, they almost sound like the work of an act trying to imitate the Beau Brummels. Although “Hey, I’m Lost” (one of their singles) is a fairly good and tough number, otherwise it’s an unexpectedly underwhelming mid-‘60s garage-pop-folk-rock collection. Beau Brummels fans will want it, but they’ll probably be disappointed to at least some degree.

Georgie Fame/John Mayall, “Something.” Strange but true: Mayall never got into the charts with any of the numerous singles he wrote for his band the Bluesbreakers. But he did with a song he co-wrote with guitarist Jon Mark, an accomplished folk guitarist who’d play in Mayall’s group in the late 1960s. In late 1965, the Mayall-Mark composition “Something” was a mild UK hit for Georgie Fame, peaking at #23. It’s an amiable good-natured effort with more of a soul-pop feel than the usual blues, or blues-rock, in which Mayall specialized. It doesn’t scream “hit,” and probably got as high as it did owing to Fame’s track record, as he’d topped the UK charts (and almost gotten into the US Top Twenty) a year before with “Yeh Yeh.”

Jim & Jean/David Blue, “Strangers in a Strange Land.” Jim & Jean’s 1966 album Changes was almost an exercise in digging for then-unreleased songs by significant folk-rock songwriters. These included Eric Andersen’s “Tonight I Need Your Lovin’” (which Andersen would never put on his own discs) and Bob Dylan’s “Lay Down Your Weary Tune,” which the composer had recorded in 1963 at the sessions for his third album, but which would not be issued until the mid-‘80s. There were also a couple songs by Jim Glover’s buddy Phil Ochs, “Crucifixion” and “Flower Lady,” that wouldn’t become part of Ochs’s discography until his 1967 album Pleasures from the Harbor. “Crucifixion” is a standout as it’s a straightforward, haunting interpretation that doesn’t have the musique concrete effects that some fans feel mar Ochs’s arrangement.

Also haunting, and yet better, is their version of David Blue’s “Strangers in a Strange Land.” Blue is most notorious for his 1966 self-titled Elektra album, on which he seemed determined to sound (and, on the cover, look) as much like early electric Dylan as possible. “Strangers in a Strange Land,” however, wasn’t at all like Dylan. Its beguiling, winding melody was well suited toward Jim & Jean’s close harmony, as well as the economic but biting folk-rock backing track. Indeed, “Strangers in a Strange Land” was better and more original than any of the songs Blue placed on his own 1966 debut LP, though Blue never released his own version anywhere.

The Changes album also includes a couple other Blue compositions, though these (“Grand Hotel” and “About My Love”) were also on the David Blue album. Incidentally, “Strangers in a Strange Land” is an entirely different song than “Stranger [singular] in a Strange Land,” a superb David Crosby-penned early folk-rock single by the male-female San Francisco duo of Blackburn & Snow.

The Fresh Windows, “Fashion Conscious.” This is kind of an honorable mention because actually this wasn’t written by a member of a famous group. But some collectors assumed it was, because this obscure 1967 UK single bears the songwriting credit Barrett. And as it’s a really cool mod rock number about a too-cool trendy-following dolly bird with mild psychedelic touches and an acidic satiric vocal, it seems like it might, just about, have been a composition by original Pink Floyd leader Syd Barrett. It’s rather more straightforward than his Pink Floyd songs, but there’s some similarity in the songwriting and the very British, measured vocal.

It turns out, however, that there’s no known connection between this Barrett and Syd Barrett. Rumors were fueled, perhaps purposely, when it was given a credit of “S. Barrett” on the inner label of one of the first and best (if unauthorized) compilations of rare ‘60s British psych, Chocolate Soup for Diabetics. In fact, virtually nothing is known about this group. “Fashion Conscious” has never been reissued again to my knowledge, despite its considerable quality.

Throughout rock history, songwriters who are star recording artists in their own right have always “given” songs away to other acts. Or, at least, other acts have often recorded compositions that the songwriters haven’t released themselves, whether the composers directly gifted the songs to them or not. The Beatles famously gave away some Lennon-McCartney tunes to others, especially other people managed by Brian Epstein, and especially early in their careers. But many other stars did this too, maybe more during the British Invasion than some other periods, though this was happening and still happens all over the world.

Assembling a list of all the interesting instances when this occurred would fill up a book. I don’t have time to write that, unless someone pays me well to do so. However, I can offer some of my favorites from rock’s early years, along with some such items that might not have been great tunes, but have interesting stories behind them. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some, including maybe some of your favorites. Keep in mind this isn’t meant to be a definitive or comprehensive list, just a group of some I want to blog about.

I also didn’t want to get into the nuances of ranking them in order. So I’ll go kind of in chronological sequence, listing the artist and then the composer, or the artist and the group from which the composers came.

The Everly Brothers/Roy Orbison, “Claudette.” Orbison didn’t get his first big hit until 1960 with “Only the Lonely,” though he’d made some fair rockabilly records starting in the mid-1950s, usually for Sun. Perhaps not unreasonably considering his early lack of major success, he considered concentrating on songwriting rather than performing. His one major triumph in landing a hit with someone else was this 1958 B-side to the chart-topping “All I Have to Do Is Dream.”

“Claudette,” a much harder-rocking number that verged on rockabilly, was a pretty substantial hit in its own right, reaching #30. Inspired by Orbison’s first wife Claudette, it had furiously scrubbed chords and a chorus with much different, more irregular rhythms than the fairly conventional verses. The Everlys put their usual high-powered infectious harmonies into the performance. Orbison eventually recorded his own version on his 1965 album There Is Only One Roy Orbison, but the Everlys’ remained definitive.

This is the only 1950s entry on this list, and I’m aware there are others. Maybe the most famous is Buddy Holly’s “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” written by Paul Anka, and a pretty big hit. But I don’t think it’s a great song, and a worrisome indication that Holly might have gotten into tamer orchestrated pop arrangements had he survived. As an interesting side note, however, Holly had written a song with Bob Montgomery (“Wishing”) in hopes that the Everlys would record it. They didn’t, but fortunately Buddy cut a version (not released until 1963, with posthumous overdubbing) that’s among his best recordings, though it’s not too well known.

The Crystals/Gene Pitney, “He’s a Rebel.” Pitney had a lot of hits, but he didn’t write most of them. And he couldn’t have released his own version of “He’s a Rebel” in 1962, at least not without changing it to “She’s a Rebel,” which wouldn’t have had much of a chance in those pre-feminist times. But write it he did, and it was taken to #1 by the Crystals, though the lead vocal was actually done by a singer not in the Crystals, Darlene Love—something that’s fairly well known now, but was unknown then. Another peculiarity about this recording was that it had to fight off another version by Vikki Carr, which it did, pretty easily. Carr’s rendition is pretty stiff, and the Crystals’ (or Love’s, if you prefer) was far more soulful, as well as benefiting from one of Phil Spector’s definitive Wall-of-Sound productions.

This wasn’t the only hit Pitney wrote for someone else, as he also co-penned “Hello Mary Lou,” a big rockabilly-pop single—and one of the best and hardest-rocking—for Ricky Nelson. Yet “Hello Mary Lou” was a B-side to Nelson’s #1 “Travelin’ Man,” although it became almost as big a hit, reaching #9 on its own. Pitney put out his own version a little later as an album track, and while it’s okay, it’s not a match for Nelson’s, which benefits from a sparkling James Burton guitar solo.

Getting back to “He’s a Rebel,” while it could be naturally assumed that Spector’s production was the key to making the song a hit, his touch wasn’t infallible. There was another instance where a Spector-produced original version was the relatively stiff flop, and a much different arrangement a huge classic hit. Spector produced the original, forgotten version of “Twist and Shout” by the Top Notes. But it took the Isley Brothers’ vibrant cover to make it a hit (and of course the Beatles’ sensational version was an even bigger one).

Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas/The Beatles, “Bad to Me.” Speaking of the Beatles, as previously mentioned, John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote quite a few songs that the Beatles didn’t put on their own discs, but which found a home on other releases. When asked about such gifts in their early years, they’d diplomatically reply that they simply felt that a few of the songs they’d written weren’t suitable to do themselves and would be better handled by others. In truth, they were probably limiting the giveaways mostly to castoffs that weren’t as good as, and were more lightweight than, what the Beatles were reserving for themselves. That principle probably holds true for many giveaways by many songwriters throughout rock history.

Still, most of those semi-rejects are fun and catchy enough to hear, if hardly on the level of what the Beatles were putting on their own records. Kramer was one of the most frequent beneficiaries of Lennon-McCartney surplus, and “Bad to Me” was the best of their Merseybeat-styled extras. Unlike most of them, it was just about good enough to imagine as filler on one of their 1963 LPs. A very basic acoustic demo of the Beatles (probably Lennon solo, possibly with a little help from McCartney) doing their own version finally came out on iTunes a half dozen years ago (after being bootlegged for many years). Despite the rudimentary recording quality, it’s much better than Kramer’s anodyne interpretation.

Jan & Dean/The Beach Boys, “Surf City.” I didn’t hear “Surf City” until around 1973, since I was only a year old when it first came out in 1963. I was well aware of the Beach Boys by 1973, however, and when I first heard “Surf City” on an oldies station, I was sure it was the Beach Boys. I’d be surprised if some of you reading this didn’t have the same reaction, whenever you first heard it. There was a good reason for this: Brian Wilson co-wrote the song with Jan Berry. “Surf City” was a huge hit, reaching #1 before the Beach Boys themselves had any #1 singles.

A few years ago, I asked Dean Torrence of Jan & Dean whether Wilson didn’t realize how big “Surf City” could be before letting Jan & Dean work on it. “He think he saw the potential,” Dean responded. “Brian probably very rarely worked on something that had no potential. But I sure think he, in comparing the two, just thought ‘Surfing USA’ had a lot more potential. And so did we. I mean, it was perfect. It was kind of a simpler song. It’s in E, and it’s Chuck Berry. We certainly loved Chuck Berry; obviously Brian did too as well. He couldn’t go wrong by liking Chuck Berry and being influenced by Chuck Berry. And ‘Surfing USA’ is just a straight old backbeat. ‘Surf City’ was kind of a shuffle, and was a little bit more complicated. 

“I think creative people can kind of lose interest in a creative piece that they’re working on, and not be as motivated by that particular project, because you got something else in your mind that you’re also tinkering with. I’m sure he knew there’s potential, or he would have been embarrassed even to give it to us. So I’m sure he knew it was good. 

“What we did to it, though, was we took it ten or fifteen levels above just the pure song in terms of cutting a track, and discovering the Wrecking Crew and all that. I think the tracks and the recording techniques that we used for [1963] were pretty unbelievable. The song was kind of a good song, and a Brian Wilson song, again, it’s always gonna be good. But the production that Jan put in relationship to the song really pushed it over the top.

“Even Brian, when he heard it, was blown away. Maybe at that point, he probably realized, this is really, really good. But it wasn’t as though he was gonna ask for it back or anything. As a songwriter, he was probably thrilled. That’s the way he looked at it—‘This is a song I didn’t finish, and I am a songwriter. I’ll get credit on it anyway. And I got a publishing company. So I’m doing exactly what I should be doing at my age, being a songwriter. And record producer.’”

I think this is the very best recording on this list, and certainly it’s one of the most successful. The Beach Boys probably missed out on a big hit, but they’d have plenty others over the next few years, and Jan & Dean did as good a job on the song as the Beach Boys probably would have. So to use a cliché that wasn’t in use in 1963, “It’s all good.”

Mary Wells/Smokey Robinson, “My Guy.” Smokey Robinson wrote so many songs for other Motown artists that it’s really grounds for an entire article in itself, if not a book. Plenty of songs he wrote for others, rather than his own band the Miracles, were big hits, especially for Mary Wells and the Temptations. As a #1 single, “My Guy” is hardly an obscure pick, but I think it’s the best of the lot. It’s also not something he could have sung with the Miracles, at least without changing the title to “My Girl.” And that would have meant he couldn’t have co-written the #1 song he actually did title “My Girl” for the Temptations.

This entry also gives me cause to note that while historians often speculate about what might have happened had legends like Janis Joplin, Buddy Holly, and Otis Redding not died young, they don’t always often discuss other what-ifs that weren’t death-related. Robinson wrote (or co-wrote) and produced a number of hits for Wells, also including “Two Lovers,” “The One Who Really Loves You,” and “You Beat Me to the Punch.” It was a great artist-producer team, and when Wells left Motown after “My Guy,” she couldn’t work with Robinson anymore, or record his fresh compositions. She lived for another few decades, but none of her post-Motown records were big hits or, more importantly, nearly as good.

It’s an artistic tragedy that the partnership was cut off. In an alternate universe, what would have happened if she’d stayed at Motown and, most likely, kept working with Robinson? We don’t know, but I bet there would have been a series of hits to come, and that she’d be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — which she deserves to enter anyway, based on the run the pair did have.

Peter & Gordon/The Beatles, “World Without Love.” I think this is clearly the best of the Beatles’ giveaways. Whatever anyone’s opinion, it was certainly the most successful, getting to #1 in the UK and US (where P&G were the first British Invasion act to top the charts after the Beatles). It’s now well known that Peter & Gordon got access to this, as well as several other Lennon-McCartney extras, since Paul was going out with Peter’s sister, Jane Asher, and living in the Asher household. Peter & Gordon’s Lennon-McCartney covers were really McCartney covers, as he was the dominant and indeed possibly sole writer of all of them. John Lennon didn’t like “World Without Love” because of the lyrics, especially the opening line “please lock me away.” But while it’s hard to figure where the Beatles might have placed it on their own releases, it’s certainly a good early British Invasion-style tune, with fine Peter & Gordon harmonies and a somewhat more forceful arrangement than most of the early Lennon-McCartney donations.

Of course Lennon and McCartney gave away quite a few other songs in the ‘60s. If you want to read about all of them in detail, I’ll take a second to plug my book The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film, which has a whole lengthy chapter dedicated to the subject. For the past few years, Peter Asher’s been presenting a combination music/storytelling show in New York, San Francisco, and London where he talks about getting “World Without Love,” and plays McCartney’s brief, primitive solo demo of the song. He also tells the story of how the duo got access to another composition by a different star…

Peter & Gordon/Del Shannon, “I Go to Pieces.” Del Shannon had already recorded a version of his composition “I Go to Pieces,” and produced an unreleased version by obscure soul singer Lloyd Brown, before Peter & Gordon became aware of it. As Asher tells it in his show, Shannon offered it to the Searchers during an Australian tour, but they turned it down. Peter & Gordon were also on that tour, and let Shannon know they’d like to do it. It became their first hit (at least in the US) not bearing a Lennon-McCartney composer credit. Shannon’s own version came out on one of his albums a little later, and while it’s not too different from P&G’s’, I prefer it, since it’s not as heavily orchestrated, though it’s missing the dual vocal harmonies of the Peter & Gordon arrangement. The Lloyd Brown version, by the way, has since circulated, and has a gentler slightly jazzy soul-pop feel, though it’s not as good as either Shannon’s or Peter & Gordon’s.

The Toggery Five/The Rolling Stones, “I’d Much Rather Be with the Boys.” The Rolling Stones, or more properly Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, wrote quite a few songs given to other artists, even if these haven’t gotten nearly as much attention as the Lennon-McCartney giveaways. In part that’s because not many of these Jagger-Richards compositions were hits, “As Tears Go By” (Marianne Faithfull’s debut single) being a notable exception; Gene Pitney also had a British hit with their “That Girl Belongs to Yesterday” in early 1964, before the Stones had even entered the US charts under their own name. But also it’s in part because most of the songs weren’t that good, and were not only more lightweight than what the Stones recorded themselves. Most of these surplus items date from the mid-‘60s, when Jagger and Richards were first starting to write. They usually weren’t much like what the Stones were doing on their own, with an ersatz Merseybeat feel. Numerous demos of these (most or all apparently only with Jagger and Richards’ participation) are on the Rolling Stones’ outtake compilation Metamorphosis, which didn’t come out until 1975.

One of those Metamorphosis tracks, “I’d Much Rather Be with the Boys”—actually bearing the unusual songwriting credit of Keith Richards and manager/producer Andrew Oldham, sans Jagger—was done back in 1965 by a British group that never had a hit, the Toggery Five. To my mind it’s the best of the Stones’ giveaway covers, and actually considerably better than the Metamorphosis demo. It might not be the greatest of songs, but it’s fairly catchy in a sort of Merseybeat-meets-the-Drifters way, the tempo and tune owing a lot to Drifters hits like “Under the Boardwalk” (which the Stones, of course, covered in 1964). Also, however, the Toggery Five attack the song with real rock zest, in contrast to the Metamorphosis version, which like many early songs on that LP has wimpy orchestrated pop production. The harmonies are real good too, and the cut’s executed with the kind of polish that makes you think the group were certain they had a hit in the can. They didn’t, and the Toggery Five were forgotten (and only got to do a couple singles total), though fortunately their version has been reissued a few times.

By the way, the Rolling Stones themselves didn’t forget about the song after they were done with it. In the expanded DVD version of the 1965 Charlie Is My Darling documentary, there are scenes of Mick and Keith busking through the song acoustically in what looks like a hotel room, during the end credits. It’s hard to tell whether they’re doing it because they like it or they’re making fun of it, but it’s an interesting and unexpected bonus.

Trevor Gordon/The Bee Gees, “Little Miss Rhythm & Blues.” The Bee Gees, and especially Barry Gibb, wrote lots of songs in their early days they didn’t manage to jam onto their own prolific releases. Even before they moved from Australia to England in 1967, they’d already placed a lot of songs with other artists, primarily in Australia. Most of them aren’t so memorable, but Trevor Gordon’s Barry-written “Little Miss Rhythm & Blues” stands out both for its relative quality and an almost earthy rock and roll style that’s not associated with the Bee Gees. Sort of like Jerry Lee Lewis meets Merseybeat, it’s quite cool, if a bit underproduced, with the Bee Gees themselves contributing enthusiastic background vocals. Gordon would also go to England and have a British hit as part of the Marbles with the Brothers Gibb-penned “Only One Woman,” though it didn’t catch on in the States.

While not exactly the kind of thing to win them points for retroactive hipness, Barry Gibb also managed to place a song with an American star a couple years before leaving Australia. In November 1964, Wayne Newton recorded his melodramatic, somewhat Gene Pitney-esque ballad “They’ll Never Know,” which was on Newton’s Top Twenty LP Red Roses for a Blue Lady the following year. This was the first song written by any of the Bee Gees to be released outside of Australia and New Zealand.

The Thoughts/The Kinks, “All Night Stand.” There were quite a few Ray Davies songs (and even one Dave Davies song) that weren’t released by the Kinks, but issued by others. I know this might be starting to sound like a broken record, but it’s unsurprising the Kinks didn’t cut most of them on their own, because they weren’t as good or gutsy as the Davies songs they did lay down. Nor were they that successful, with the exception of the placid ballad “This Strange Effect,” a huge hit for Dave Berry in Holland, though it only made #37 in his native UK. (The Kinks did record a version of “This Strange Effect” for the BBC that eventually found release, but did not put it on their studio discs.) The eerie “I Go to Sleep” is pretty good, but I much prefer the Kinks’ sparse demo (eventually released as well after getting bootlegged) to the one by the artist who was able to record it back in the mid-‘60s, Peggy Lee.

An exception in both quality and energy is “All Night Stand,” a fairly penetrating look at the troubling undercurrents of Swinging London. It’s got the same kind of peppy brashness as numerous 1966 Kinks songs like “Dedicated Follower of Fashion”—not as raunchy as their first big singles with a modified power-chord arrangement, but not as subdued as what they’d get into by 1967 and 1968. While the Thoughts don’t put much personality into it, it probably doesn’t sound much different than how the Kinks would have done the tune. Of course it would have had much more personality with a Ray Davies vocal, as you can hear on a demo that found release after doing the rounds on bootleg.

“All Night Stand” seems like a reasonable contender for release on their 1966 LP Face to Face. Why didn’t it make it? Maybe it was considered too downbeat or serious for a collection that, for all the satirical sophistication of most of its songs, usually had a fairly cheery wit. Thematically it might have fit in better than the one song, the closing cut “I’ll Remember,” that seemed like a throwback to the earlier Kinks in its standard romantic lyrics. Which brings me to a question I’ve never read posed: was the use and placement of “I’ll Remember” on Face to Face deliberate, almost like it was a tongue-in-cheek farewell (thus the phrase “I’ll remember”) to the more standard, simpler romantic pop lyrics Davies used on the Kinks’ earlier records?

The Sons of Adam/The Other Half/Love, “Feathered Fish.” Here for a change we have a way-obscure song done by two groups that never came close to a hit, written by the leader of a band that, though very famous, never quite got beyond cult status. “Feathered Fish” was written by Love’s Arthur Lee, and has the kind of manic energy and weird free-associating lyrics of some of Love’s hard-rocking early songs, like “Stephanie Knows Who.” Why Love themselves didn’t issue a version isn’t clear. It would have fit in fairly well on the first side of their second LP, Da Capo, but maybe it wasn’t considered quite as strong as the six excellent songs that did make it on side one. Had Love decided to make a whole LP of real songs instead of devoting side two to the long jam “Revelation,” it certainly should have made it. But that might have meant padding the album with slightly lesser songs. That would have worked better than putting an interminable blues jam in their place, but what’s done is done.

Lee liked a fellow Los Angeles band, the Sons of Adam, who featured terrific guitarist Randy Holden and drummer Michael Stuart, whom Lee would poach for Love in autumn 1966. Before that, Lee offered the group “Feathered Fish.” According to Sons of Adam rhythm guitarist Jac Ttanna, Arthur actually offered them three songs, one of which, “Seven and Seven Is,” would become Love’s only Top Forty hit. Oddly, neither Stuart nor Holden would be in the band by the time Sons of Adam finally got around to recording “Feathered Fish” on their third and final single in 1967, shortly before they split. It’s a good garage-psych performance, with constant stop-start tempos and the kind of breezy raw early psychedelia that peaked in L.A. for just a magic year or so from around mid-1966 to mid-1967.

Holden did record “Feathered Fish,” however, as part of his next band, the Other Half, one of the most underrated psychedelic late-‘60s outfits. Included on their sole LP (whose label mistakenly credited the composition to Country Joe, sans McDonald), it’s a starker yet more powerful version, with almost shouted menacing vocals and thrilling yelping, sustain-heavy Holden guitar. Randy nonetheless told Ugly Things that “Other Half didn’t do it as well as Sons of Adam,” and noted in the same interview that he’d cut a much better version with them while he was still in the band.

Manfred Mann/Bob Dylan, “The Mighty Quinn.” This is hardly an obscure song, or hit cover. And there were a lot of Dylan compositions in the ‘60s that he didn’t put on his records, but were recorded by someone else. In fact, Manfred Mann had already had a #2 UK hit with one of them, “If You Gotta Go, Go Now,” in 1965.

Some Dylan fanatics have a hard time accepting the possibility that other artists might have performed any of his compositions better than Dylan himself did. But I’m siding with the masses on this one. Manfred Mann’s “The Mighty Quinn,” which made #1 in the UK and the Top Ten in the US, is much better than the original, which Dylan cut with the Band as part of a massive collection of “Basement Tapes” in 1967. That original—the second of the two takes was finally released in 1985, and both takes are now on The Basement Tapes Complete—is skeletal. Manfred Mann made it much more tuneful and fun, emphasizing a catchy-as-hell chorus, great soaring harmonies at the end of the verses, and Klaus Voormann’s unforgettable interjections of pennywhistle. When I play the versions back to back in rock courses I teach, students virtually unanimously prefer the Mann cover.

Should this be considered a giveaway? Sort of, because although Dylan didn’t write it with Manfred Mann in mind, it was on a fourteen-song publishing demo of Basement Tapes recordings meant to solicit cover versions. Take one by Dylan and the Band did soon appear on the first popular Dylan bootleg, Great White Wonder, but not until 1969, more than a year after Manfred Mann’s hit.

If Manfred Mann’s polishing of Dylan songs is considered sacrilegious, it’s worth considering Mann’s comments to me from an interview nearly twenty years ago. He saw the strengths of his group’s Dylan covers as “the ability to change it, because it always seemed as if the original version was very personal to him. It didn’t seem like a definitive version, in some funny way. I don’t mean that in any way as an insult, ’cause I absolutely loved the original versions. But it just seemed that there was space there to do something, and make it different. Which you couldn’t do with Elton John—he seems to have done it in the standard way. Dylan did it in a very idiosyncratic way. And therefore, there was the space to do it in a different way. I almost feel that I straightened them out in a way.

“We approached it without any respect for the original. That’s absolutely essential. You can’t go around with so much respect for the original that you can’t function. It was quite simply, ‘What can we do with this?’ And my general thing was to have it in music form, in front of me in paper, and just play it and play it and play it until in the end I wouldn’t refer to the original record, after I knew it. If you play it long enough, you find you’re playing it your way.” His way would extend to taking liberties that some Dylanologists would see as heresy, though they ruffled Mann not at all: “I would cut sections out if I needed to. In ‘Just Like a Woman,’ I cut out the whole middle bridge. We didn’t want to do it, and we just didn’t do it.

“We had the songs that everybody else had missed, where the original versions were sometimes quite idiosyncratic and a bit left-field. But I could use it. I was simply a bit of a predator, looking for material.”

Jefferson Airplane/The Byrds, “Triad.” “Triad” is pretty infamous in the Byrds’ history, as one of the straws that broke the camel’s back in leading to David Crosby’s departure (or, more precisely, firing). This song about a ménage a trois was recorded during the sessions for their fifth album, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, but not used. Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman, who’d jointly fire Crosby in late 1967, didn’t like the song, to the frustration of the composer, who felt what he was writing was good enough to get released. And certainly better than Carole King and Gerry Goffin’s “Goin’ Back,” which did make the album, although Crosby had no enthusiasm for its inclusion.

In Johnny Rogan’s Byrds: Requiem for the Timeless: Vol. 1, both clarified that “Triad” wasn’t the leading factor in their decision. “We didn’t like the song at the time,” Hillman told Rogan, adding, “I don’t think it was a moral decision. The song just didn’t work that well. David was drifting and bored and wanted to do something else, and that song just added fuel to the fire.” McGuinn agreed: “‘Triad’ wasn’t the crux of it, that was nothing really. It was just a song that I didn’t think was in particularly good taste.”

Crosby found a home for the song, however, with his friends Jefferson Airplane, who included it on their 1968 album Crown of Creation. “What is he saying that is bad?,” said Grace Slick in Jeff Tamarkin’s Got a Revolution! The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane. “If the two women want to live there, and he wants to live there, who cares? His band wouldn’t let him and, yeah, I’ll sing it! I wouldn’t do that [a threesome] personally, but I don’t have a moral issue with it.”

The controversy has added luster to a song that actually isn’t that great. The Byrds’ languid version, now available as a bonus track on The Notorious Byrd Brothers, wouldn’t have stood out as a good addition to the album; in fact, it wouldn’t have fit that well. And it’s not as good as “Goin’ Back,” which is the kind of sparkling folk-rock at which the Byrds excelled. I like Jefferson Airplane’s version of “Triad” better, and though it wasn’t among their best tracks, it fit in better on Crown of Creation.

Fairport Convention/Joni Mitchell, “Eastern Rain.” In their early days, prior to their heavy emphasis on rocked-up British folk, Fairport Convention excelled at well-chosen covers of American folk-rock songs. Some of them hadn’t been released by the composers when they recorded them for their first two albums, or their late-‘60s BBC sessions. One such highlight was Joni Mitchell’s “Eastern Rain,” from their first album with Sandy Denny as woman vocalist, What We Did on Our Holidays (titled simply Fairport Convention in the US). It’s given a beautiful delicate folk-rock arrangement, from the rain-mimicking guitar plucks to the rich vocal harmonies and Denny’s own characteristically glowing lead singing.

Mitchell did perform a solo folk version live in the late-‘60s, as you can hear on bootleg, but did not put it on her official discs. Fairport did a couple then-unreleased-by-Mitchell songs on their 1968 debut album, but Joni did put both of those on her second album, Clouds, in 1969. As Fairport’s Iain Matthews confirmed when I interviewed him for my book Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock’s Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock, producer Joe Boyd “had a direct line to her publishing demos and supplied us with whatever we could handle.”

Fairport, by the way, were another act that put out then-unreleased Dylan songs in the ‘60s, like The Basement Tapes’ “Million Dollar Bash,” which is on their third album, Unhalfbricking. That LP also includes a considerably older Dylan song that the composer had not issued on his records, “Percy’s Song.” Although it’s not too well known, I’d go as far as to say Fairport’s BBC version is one of the best Dylan covers, and only outclassed by Manfred Mann’s “The Mighty Quinn” as the finest of a composition not yet released in Dylan’s official catalog, though his 1963 outtake made it onto 1985’s Biograph box.

Marianne Faithfull/The Rolling Stones, “Sister Morphine.” Although “Sister Morphine” is one of the better known songs from the Rolling Stones’ 1971 album Sticky Fingers, it’s still not too widely recognized by the general public that the first version came out on a rare Marianne Faithfull single in 1969. Its status as a “giveaway” is a little diluted by the composer credits, which Faithfull herself shared with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Sticky Fingers only credited Jagger and Richards, but as Faithfull explained in the liner notes to the 2018 compilation Come and Stay with Me: The UK 45s 1964-1969:

“Mick is mean. He’ll always be a student of the London School of Economics! Keith Richards wrote to [Stones publisher] Allen Klein and told him that I’d written the lyrics. Jagger and I had split up, very bad blood and all that. Keith Richards told him that I did write the words and I needed the money. So now and again, I get a royalty check for ‘Sister Morphine.’ I’ve been living off ‘Sister Morphine’ for years. I just got one today. £485!”

The Rolling Stones’ version of this downer drug song is pretty good, but I’d give Faithfull’s the edge, if only a slight one. This is the point where her voice started to lower and become more earthy, in contrast to the angelic, virginal tone of her mid-‘60s hits. She really sounds like she’s living the lyric, not just singing it, though the worst of her drug problems were yet to come. As she herself states in the aforementioned liner notes, “I was the character in the song.”

Why aren’t more people aware of Faithfull’s version of “Sister Morphine,” although it’s been reissued a few times? Because of its controversial subject matter, the single was withdrawn by Decca Records in the UK, where only 500 copies are reported to have been issued. But I haven’t read that it was censored in the US or other countries, and in any case, it was the B-side to the relatively innocuous Gerry Goffin-Carole King composition “Something Better.” Despite its quality, “Sister Morphine” was simply unlikely to get airplay anywhere in 1969.While that finishes my list of selected favorites in this niche category, there were quite a few other oddball entries that are worth discussing, even if they were of uneven or even unimpressive quality. I’ll write about some of those in my next post.

One of my recent blogposts covered, in part, how disputes over a couple of songs—specifically “Triad” and “Goin’ Back”—helped lead to David Crosby getting fired from the Byrds. It was by no means the only factor, but it certainly played a strong part. Were there any other instances from the era in which a song, a couple songs, or a specific block of material played a major role in a band’s breakup, or at least in changing a band’s lineup?

There were quite a few, and no doubt there were more—perhaps some never reported—than the ones I’ve listed here. But here’s a summary of some of the more notable ones, some of which have been written about for pages, not just paragraphs.

The Byrds, “Triad” and “Goin’ Back.” To recap, David Crosby wanted more songs on the Byrds albums, and specifically wanted his ballad about a ménage a trois, “Triad,” on their fifth album, The Notorious Byrd Brothers. The other Byrds, specifically Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman, objected, and not just because they didn’t think the song was in great taste. They preferred a classy Gerry Goffin-Carole King composition, “Goin’ Back,” which they gave a typically glowing folk-rock treatment with ringing guitars and soaring harmonies. Crosby didn’t like “Goin’ Back,” both because he felt the band should be doing their own (and his) material, and because he thought the song was too lightweight. 

“Goin’ Back” did come out well, but without help from Crosby, who didn’t offer his full or enthusiastic participation. Before The Notorious Byrd Brothers was completed, McGuinn and Hillman drove to Crosby’s home in autumn 1967 to fire him, finishing the LP without him. You can read a fuller account in my blogpost. But it’s worth noting that in his interview presented as a bonus feature to the DVD of the documentary David Crosby: Remember My Name, McGuinn admitted, “It was a mistake to fire him. To fire the best harmony singer in the world. It was the best sound we ever had vocally…never got that good again. We missed David. David was an essential part of the Byrds.”

The Beatles, “The Long and Winding Road.” Probably the most famous example of a song playing a key role in a group’s breakup. The story’s been told many times, but basically Paul McCartney was furious at Phil Spector’s overdubs of strings and a choir on “The Long and Winding Road.” He maintained this had been done without his knowledge, and announced his departure from the Beatles shortly afterward, on April 10, 1970. It’s uncertain how soon he made up his mind after hearing the track, but it couldn’t have been too long before April 10, since the overdubs were recorded on April 1.

It’s never been completely established whether McCartney (then busy wrapping up his first solo album) was completely unaware of Spector’s overdubs on the song. An April 14, 1970, telegram from Paul to Allen Klein reprinted in The Beatles Anthology states, “In future no one will be allowed to add to or subtract from a recording of one of my songs without my permission,” implying the mix was done without his approval. In the Evening Standard, he added, “I was sent a remixed version of my song ‘The Long and Winding Road,’ with harps, horns, an orchestra and women’s choir added. No one had asked me what I thought. I couldn’t believe it. I would never have female voices on a Beatles record.” (Although there actually had been female voices on Beatles records on occasion, most recently at the January 1970 overdubs for the “Let It Be” single, which included harmonies by Linda McCartney; Mary Hopkin also recalled singing on this session.)

Ringo Starr, however, told Melody Maker, “He heard it. I spoke to him on the phone and said, ‘Did you like it?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, it’s okay.’ He didn’t put it down. And then suddenly he didn’t want it to go out…two weeks after that, he wanted to cancel it.”

Contended Spector in the 2009 documentary The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector (in an interview filmed shortly before he began serving a prison sentence for murder), “Paul loved, he said, ‘The Long and Winding Road’ when it was done. … It was a terrible recording when I heard it. John was playing bass on it with all the wrong notes, there was no snare drum on it. I had to get Ringo in to play. It was bass, drum, and piano. It was really awful. … I had to do everything I could to cover up the mistakes. And I even called Paul to ask me who he’d recommend as arranger. And I used an arranger that Paul recommended.”

For his part, George Martin told Melody Maker, “John insisted that [Let It Be] was going to be a natural album, a live album, and he didn’t want any of the faking, any of the Pepper stuff, any production. … When the record came out, I got a hell of a shock. I knew nothing about it, and neither did Paul. All the lush, un-Beatle-like orchestrations with harps and choirs in the background—it was so contrary to what John asked for in the first place.”

Yet this is what came out, and history generally accepts the overdub of “The Long and Winding Road” as one of the last straws that finally led Paul to throw in the towel and quit the group on April 10, 1970.

The Yardbirds, “For Your Love.” Although they were already a great R&B-blues-oriented group, and had already issued a couple fine singles and recorded an exciting live album, the Yardbirds didn’t have a hit as 1965 dawned. They took a chance on a decidedly non-R&B-blues song, Graham Gouldman’s “For Your Love.” Guitarist Eric Clapton seemed disgusted by the move, as he wanted to play blues and viewed it as a sellout, though he does play in the boogie bridge. He might have been wanting out of the group anyway, but he left shortly after it was recorded.

Actually, this worked out well for everyone. Clapton got to play the blues he wanted in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. “For Your Love”—hardly a sellout, but a radically different kind of pop-rock song, with harpsichord, bongos, an ominous melody, and unpredictable tempo changes—was the big hit the Yardbirds were gunning for, in both the UK and US. And Clapton’s replacement, Jeff Beck, was not only just as great a guitarist, but more amenable to the non-blues risk-taking at which the band would excel for the year and a half he was in the Yardbirds.

Clapton’s sometimes painted as the heroic figure who refused to be compromised by commercial considerations, but that wasn’t necessarily the case. “Eric didn’t like the change of policy towards getting hits,” Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty told Chris Welch for the liner notes of the 1977 double-LP compilation Shapes of Things. “I thought that was a bit strange, because he got a bit commercial afterwards didn’t he? I just think he didn’t like ‘For Your Love.'” And while he might have played the noble purist, Clapton was quite soon going into some non-blues directions—much to his musical benefit—starting with Cream and on through Derek & the Dominos, though not so much to his musical benefit (and much more commercially) in his post-Layla career.

McCarty has a humorous insight along the same lines in his fine recent memoir, Nobody Told Me! “Years later,” he notes in the book, “I read an interview with Eric where he complained that we’d seen the Stones come out of the Crawdaddy, score a few hits and become international superstars, and we wanted to follow them. It’s true! We did, and I don’t see anything wrong with that. We saw how others were going to America and making out like bandits. Why shouldn’t we do the same?

“And another thing. Yes, ‘For Your Love’ was a pop song. But had there ever been another one that sounded like that? And that, in turn, was what the Yardbirds had been all about, back when we first got together. Take something ‘normal’ and give it a twist. A unique Yardbirds twist.”

The Beach Boys, “Surf’s Up.” The Beach Boys were probably never in serious danger of breaking up in the 1960s, but Brian Wilson’s ambitious (and ultimately unfinished) Smile project certainly put them to the test. A whole book’s been written about it, and it also takes up chunks of some documentaries and other Wilson/Beach Boys books. But it usually comes down to this: the other Beach Boys, but most particularly singer Mike Love, to varying degrees did not understand and thus did not fully support the rather avant-garde album Brian had in mind. In particular, it’s been reported that Love could not get to grips with some of Van Dyke Parks’s lyrics, especially the “columnated ruins domino” phrase in “Surf’s Up.” That might not have doomed the Beach Boys, but it certainly seemed to play a part in dooming Smile, though much of what was recorded for the album is now commercially available—much of it on a box set, even.

Mike Love is one of the least popular rock stars, at least among a major band’s core fanbase, and his widely reported opposition to Smile is part of the reason. It should be pointed out, however, that Love has sometimes maintained he wasn’t opposed to the project, at least to the extent that’s often perceived. In his recent memoir Good Vibrations: My Life As a Beach Boy, he admits he had concerns about the record, mostly to do with the impenetrable lyrics. Yet he also writes, “We all had questions, but we did what Brian wanted, and we worked harder on those vocals than on any others in the history of the band.”

The Kinks, “Days.” Compared to Ray Davies and Dave Davies, original Kinks bassist Pete Quaife wasn’t at the forefront of the band’s creativity. Still, he was part of the group’s original and best-loved lineup before leaving in 1969. In an interview with Disc & Music Echo around that time, he explained, “I’m sick of standing onstage and just playing two notes per bar…I was fed up playing pretty bubblegum music.”

Few if any others would call the Kinks’ late-’60s records bubblegum. But they were certainly more subdued than their raunchy British Invasion hits of the mid-’60s, and maybe Quaife found their new material too staid and boring in comparison, at least for a non-writing/non-singing bassist. He might have especially had one song in mind. According to Ray Davies, Pete wrote the word “Daze” on a tape box of their 1968 single “Days,” although that’s one of their more beloved songs, and not one that was especially languid in mood, at least relative to their other discs of the period.

Again this is a story that was challenged by one of the participants. “That is so not true,” Quaife told Neil Rosser years later. “Ray always insisted that we be in the studio whether we were involved or not. I think he looked upon us as his courtiers who had to sit around watching the master working. He loved that. So we had to sit there with nothing much to do but listen to the music. It would have been interesting if we knew what the goal was, but we didn’t.

“I’d spend my time casually sketching little figures, having always been a cartoonist. I drew this little man with a raincoat and a hat. It was just on the side of one of the boxes of tape. Ray, who often did this, found something to make a huge fuss about and assert his authority. He started yelling and screaming that he was doing all the work and all I was doing was sitting around drawing stupid pictures. Years later he came out with the story that I wrote ‘Daze’ on the box. I never did.”

Pink Floyd, “Have You Got It Yet?” Such was Syd Barrett’s instability around the start of 1968 that his departure from Pink Floyd couldn’t be attributed to any one song or incident. But this particular composition seemed to tax the other guys’ patience to the breaking point, Syd changing the melody and chord progression each time they tried to rehearse it. Calling the song (which never has been released or otherwise circulated) “a real act of mad genius,” Roger Waters told ZigZag in 1973, “I stood there for an hour while he was singing….trying to explain that he was changing it all the time so I couldn’t follow it. He’d sing ‘Have you got it yet?’ and I’d sing “No, no!'”

Not long afterward, the other four (David Gilmour having recently temporarily made the Floyd a quintet) determined they couldn’t go on with Barrett, even if he took a Brian Wilson-like role of restricting his activities to the studio and songwriting while leaving the others to play live. We’ll never hear “Have You Got It Yet?,” though indications are that like some of his final Floyd compositions—”Vegetable Man,” “Scream Thy Last Scream,” and “Jugband Blues”—they reflect a considerably confused state of mind, teetering on madness.

The Velvet Underground, “Sweet Jane” and “New Age.” This is a bit of an outlier, since this is more something that could have broken up a group than actually did. By the time the Loaded album with these songs came out in fall 1970, Lou Reed had quit the Velvet Underground — actually he left in late August, near the end of their residency at New York’s Max’s Kansas City club. That meant he might not have had a voice in the final shape of Loaded, but that didn’t keep him from complaining about it after its release, singling out a few songs in particular.

“Toward the end [of ‘Sweet Jane’], just before it gets heavier, it had a minor melody,” Reed complained in an interview with Karin Berg, “but they edited it out. That was sheer stupidity.” The final part of “New Age,” he noted, “was supposed to go on for a full minute, that was the powerful part of the song, they have it go on for one chorus – how could anyone be that stupid? They took all the power out of the song.” In an April 1977 ZigZag interview, Reed added another grievance: “The guitar solo on ‘Train Coming Round the Bend’ was fucked around with and inserted.”

Reed was also angry that the songs were sequenced without his input. “The thing is I always took great care in putting the songs in order so they made sense,” he told Tony Stewart in a June 1972 New Musical Express interview. “One character would say one thing, and another character in another song would answer it. There was reason why they were put together in a certain way. But that’s not true on Loaded, because I left long before the mixing even. So Loaded doesn’t make sense. I didn’t like the production. Like with the vocals, sometimes they didn’t use the right mics.”

Added Lou in ZigZag, ”Loaded was a rock and roll album that I thought was badly produced. I don’t like the sound. I left before the editing and all that, and they just butchered two of my songs. I was very displeased about that.” “In Creem, Reed maintained, “I left before the thing was even mixed. They took me out of a lot of it.”

As usual, there are different points of view on what actually transpired. In his 1995 interview with Pat Thomas, Doug Yule—bassist in the Velvets by this time, who also plays other instruments on Loaded—recalls that all of the Loaded mixes, including the “Sweet Jane” and “New Age” edits, were done by Reed himself.

The Rolling Stones, “Time Waits for No One.” Considering he’s had more than 45 years to talk about it, Mick Taylor’s never been too forthcoming or specific about why he left the Rolling Stones in late 1974, after five years in the group. It’s often been speculated, however, that one of the principal reasons was his failure to gain songwriting credits for material in which his contribution was substantial. One example might be the extended instrumental tag to “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” whose Latin (almost Santana-esque) flavor was quite a departure for the Stones, and quite a good one. Another might be the less famous “Time Waits for No One,” heard on their 1974 album It’s Only Rock and Roll. Its fluid guitar lines, again especially on the instrumental tag, aren’t much like what Keith Richards played, or what Richards and Mick Jagger wrote.

Taylor wasn’t the only Rolling Stone not to get songwriting credits for songs in which contributions by members other than Mick or Keith might have been substantial. Most famously, Bill Wyman doesn’t have a co-credit for “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,”  although he’s remembered coming up with the main guitar riff. Here we do get into the very broad and controversial subject of what exactly constitutes a contribution that entitles you to a co-credit. Some people are awarded co-credits for a word or two or a lick; more often, it’s considered that if you didn’t write most or all of the melody and lyrics, you’re not entitled to one.

The Who, “Substitute.” Here we have a song, or certainly record, that threatened the livelihood of a band known for quarreling viciously among themselves. Roger Daltrey had even been fired for a bit (and subsequently rehired) not long before this classic was recorded. But the problems the song caused had nothing to do with interpersonal tensions within the Who. Instead, they arose because they’d recorded it without the producer to whom they were contracted, Shel Talmy, who produced all their 1965 recordings, including three British hit singles and their debut LP.

When the dispute went to court, the Who were prohibited for recording for almost half a year—nothing in twenty-first century terms, but a huge gap in the 1966 singles-oriented market for a band hungry to establish themselves as stars. It’s a tribute to their perseverance, in spite of their frequent conflicts with one another, that the group stuck together until they could enter the studio again later that year. Many if not most bands much less renowned for fighting with each other might have broken up in the face of such a huge obstacle.

There were other times when the Who were reported to be on the verge of breaking up or fighting so hard that their very existence was threatened. That was sometimes reported to be the case whether it was most of the guys and their managers trying to understand what Pete Townshend was doing with the uncompleted early-’70s opera Lifehouse, or Daltrey punching and injuring Townshend in a heated argument in late 1973, apparently exacerbated by a Quadrophenia mix that didn’t make the vocals as prominent as Roger would have liked.

As the Who stayed together with the same four guys from 1964 to 1978, verging on splitting eventually seemed more like the normal state of things than something ever likely to happen, at least while Keith Moon was still alive. It really took an external circumstance to threaten their career. It’s been reported that Moon and John Entwistle might have considered trying to join or form another band around then, though typically nothing ultimately came of it.

The Hollies, Hollies Sing Dylan. Graham Nash had been growing apart from the Hollies, musically and personally, for some time before he left at the end of 1968. Basically he wanted to get hipper and write more sophisticated material, though his cause was hurt when the ambitious “King Midas in Reverse” wasn’t a big hit in 1967. Also the Hollies didn’t want to do “Marrakesh Express,” which would be a popular track (and a modest hit) off Crosby, Stills & Nash’s first album.

Nash probably would have left the Hollies to join CSN no matter what. But the point of no return was marked by the Hollies Sing Dylan album. He was plain enough about the matter to Melody Maker in mid-1969: “I quit the Hollies because of the Sing Dylan album. It was just that I knew they would turn his songs into big commercial rock-riffed, hit single-type album tracks. I dig Dylan, man, but this—to me—is not how you treat his songs.”

The Hollies offered this rebuttal, also in Melody Maker: “All of Graham’s songs are very slow, and very boring. He wants to go all soppy, artistic and beautiful. But we just want to stay as the Hollies.” Everyone got their wish in the end, most likely. The Hollies did record their erratic album of pop-rock Dylan covers, which made #3 in Britain. Nash was free to chase his more esoteric pursuits (which, in truth, were not that far-out) with Crosby, Stills & Nash (and later Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young).

The Doors, “Riders on the Storm” and “L.A. Woman.” This classic hit single and the title track from their final album with Jim Morrison didn’t break up the group, but they did play a big part in breaking them up with their longtime producer. Paul Rothchild had produced all their previous records, but bowed out before the L.A. Woman sessions after hearing some of the material. As James Riordan & Jerry Prochnicky’s Break on Through: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison notes, according to Rothchild, “the entire group had been lazy and had developed only rough versions of four or five songs.” Rothchild is quoted as follows in the book:

“The most complete were ‘L.A. Woman’ and ‘Riders on the Storm,’ both of which I thought were great songs, but I couldn’t get the group to play either of them decently. There was simply nothing there, no energy. We rehearsed and rehearsed, but it didn’t get any better. I figured I’d do it like the last few—patch together the best stuff.

“We went into the studio and it was dreadful. Jim got into his spoiled brat thing and dragged everything down deliberately. I worked my ass off for a week, but it was still just fucking awful. Hoping to make them angry enough to do something good I’d tell them, ‘This isn’t rock’n’roll, it’s cocktail lounge music!’ But they just didn’t have the heart anymore. You know, it got so bad that for the first time in my career I found myself drifting off to sleep, putting my head on the console and nodding off. It was just BAD.”

L.A. Woman ended up being produced by the Doors with their longtime engineer, Bruce Botnick. At least the album, if not the Doors story, had a happy ending. L.A. Woman was a good record, and “Riders on the Storm” and “L.A. Woman” were the highlights. We don’t know how they sounded when Rothchild heard early versions, and if they were as bad as he says. Maybe a fresh production team was needed to get the album in shape, especially if Rothchild’s initial reaction was so negative.

The Everly Brothers, “Temptation.” While this single didn’t break up the Everly Brothers, it did have a long-range damaging effect on their career. Not because of a dispute between Don and Phil Everly, but the ruckus it caused between them and their manager, Wesley Rose. Rose didn’t like how the duo had arranged this standard, possibly at least in part because he didn’t have the publishing. 

“I woke up one day and I said I wanted to do this song this way,” Don Everly told Gavin Martin for the liner notes of a CD reissue combining the Everlys’ It’s Everly Time! and A Date with the Everly Brothers albums, adding bonus tracks (“Temptation” among them). “I had this idea with this beat and these voices and stuff. Wesley made it as difficult as possible. We cut it like twice. He would just be sitting there shaking his head. It’s really hard to work when somebody’s supposed to be nurturing and for them to walk around going, ‘Oh God, I can’t believe how terrible this is.’ You know, that kind of thing. But, if he’d have been publishing it, it would have been a different story.”

After “Temptation” was recorded in November 1960, the Everlys split from Rose. Unfortunately, that cut off their access to songs by Felice & Boudleaux Bryant, who’d written many of their hits (and some other good compositions they’d put on disc). The Everlys did record a good deal of fine music in the 1960s, much of it unheard beyond devotees. But they’d never make as consistent records, or score as consistent hits, again.

As we get on in the 21st century, boxed sets are appearing that would have seemed unimaginable even ten years ago, let alone pre- CD era. The Cherry Red group have been at the forefront of this, whether it’s a four-CD set on a cult band that never put out an LP  (the Action) or triple CDs on obscure corners of UK late-‘60s/early-‘70s folk-rock. Still, I never expected there to ever be a three-CD set for the Honeycombs, which appeared early this year on Cherry Red’s RPM imprint.

The Honeycombs are often thought of as a one-hit group, particularly in the US, where their 1964 stomper “Have I the Right” was their only high-charting single (though another, “I Can’t Stop,” fell not too short of the Top Forty). It made #5 in the States in 1964 when the British Invasion was gathering unstoppable steam, and #1 in their native UK, where they did manage to land another Top Twenty entry with “That’s the Way.” Along with the Tornados’ 1962 instrumental chart-topper “Telstar,” it was the only production by the legendarily eccentric Joe Meek to hit big in the US, though Meek was some other hits (and numerous notable and not-so-notable flops) in his native Britain.

Because of the peculiar compressed crunch of “Have I the Right,” its eerie high-pitched male vocal, and the presence (very rare in ‘60s rock) of a woman drummer, the Honeycombs have sometimes been  kind of dismissed as a gimmicky fluke act. That’s especially the case since, unlike most notable British Invasion groups, they wrote almost none of their material, most of which was composed by their managers and (more occasionally) Meek. They projected little in the way of image, other than the immediately distinctive visual  trademark of a woman drummer. What relatively little has been written about them doesn’t lend much insight into the group’s musical motivations and aspirations, even in the 24-page booklet of liner notes in this new anthology.

Yet the Honeycombs recorded a lot more than most people realize, even among British Invasion fans. Have I the Right: The Complete 60s Albums & Singles has 79 tracks, including their three albums. Yes, they had more LPs than they had big US/UK hits. And they had a lot of non-LP singles: eight, which together with the decent non-album B-side of “Have I the Right” (“Please Don’t Pretend Again”) adds up to more than another LP’s worth of sides on their own. Throw in a German-language version of both sides of the “Have I the Right” single; a couple songs broadcast on 1965 radio programs of uncertain origin (the bass on the radio take of “That’s the Way” is unexpectedly powerful, by the way); five previously unreleased studio outtakes; and some post-Honeycombs solo singles from singer Denny D’Ell and original guitarist Martin Murray, and you have enough to fill almost four hours.

Wise guys would counter that’s almost four hours too many, but in fact, there’s a fair amount of really good material here, almost all of it virtually unknown beyond Meek geeks. There’s a lot of silly, even puerile stuff too. Not infrequently, those qualities are mixed together. Their body of work is among the most peculiar of any ‘60s group to make a significant mark on the rock world.

If you’ve gotten this far, you’re almost certainly familiar with “Have I the Right,” the one song that’s familiar to almost everyone in the UK and North America. Many of its attributes (some would say annoyances) are found throughout their records. Dennis D’Ell had a  weird, whiny waver of a voice that could sound like Gene Pitney speeded up from 33 to 45. (Maybe that inspired Brian Jones, as has sometimes been reported, to call an Australian radio station while on tour Down Under to play the disc at 78.) Whether played by Honey Lantree or reinforced by the other Honeycombs and other feet and hands, there was often a floorboard stomp to the rhythm, perhaps influenced by the then-huge success of the Dave Clark Five.

As with many Meek productions, there was an eerie almost outer space shimmer to the hissy compression and sped-up-sounding vocal and instrumental tones. Less noted—actually, I’ve never seen it noted—was the distinctive piercing, curling, needle-prick guitar, which like D’Ell’s voice often teetered on the edge of the note. Since similar spooky guitar is heard on some other Meek productions, it wouldn’t surprise me if the producer manipulated the sound of the instrument in the studio.

Honeycombs managers Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley were responsible for writing the bulk of the group’s repertoire (though they’re more famous for doing the same thing a bit later for Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, who had a long string of UK smashes without breaking through in the US). Even by the standards of early British Invasion lyrics, their Honeycombs songs were twee in the extreme. Early Beatles songs like “Love Me Do” might have banal words on paper, but they were delivered with sincerity and soul. The Honeycombs bore, in keeping with their name, rather sickly sweet sentiments, accentuated by a voice (D’Ell’s) that almost seemed about to run away and hide in the corner out of nervous embarrassment.

What saved the best of their recordings—indeed, sometimes made them exhilarating—were of course the production, but also some haunting melodies, surprisingly effective unearthly background vocals, and a certain sense of manic ebullience that transcended the source material. Sometimes “deep” Honeycombs cuts could be surprisingly spooky, like soundtracks for walks through a moonlit cemetery. From their first LP, “Without You It Is Night” and “This Too Should Pass Away” (both enhanced by ethereal organ) certainly qualify on those grounds, even if the songs are pretty much alike. The non-hit single “Eyes” is too, building to a suspenseful climax and perpetually restless in its key shifts and fractured waltz tempo.

“Something I Got to Tell You” (buried on their second LP, 1965’s All Systems Go!) was, along with the bouncily innocuous “That’s the Way,” the only song on which Honey Lantree sang lead. With a fairly pleasing and far more conventional voice than D’Ell’s, she was underutilized in this role, and “Something I Got to Tell You” was  more mature than most of songs that surrounded it. But still spooky, with its pensive melody and, more notably, faint swirling backup vocals that seem to have floated up from the bottom of a fish tank. This sounds like it just could have been a hit, but its prospects probably would have been doomed by the unusual use of “hell” (“something’s giving me hell, baby”) in the lyric, which was rarely heard on AM radio in 1965. A far more chipper, and much inferior, version was produced by Meek for another of his clients, Glenda Collins.

The Honeycombs’ finest moment, however, was “I Can’t Stop,” a US-only follow-up single to “Have I the Right” that actually made it up  to #48 in the American charts. With infectious stop-start stomps, downward glissando sweeps, and nearly crazed yelps and screams, it was one of Meek’s finest productions, though I’ve never seen it hailed as such elsewhere. Such was its idiosyncrasy that even though I heard it on oldies radio just once as a young adolescent in the mid-1970s, I never forgot it. 

Warning: the version of “I Can’t Stop” on All Systems Go! is an entirely different remake, and a ghastly one. I can think of no other remake done relatively shortly after the original that is so inferior. Everything about the 45 is right; everything about the LP counterpart is wrong, plodding around without the vocal yelps, glissandos, machine-gun drumming in the bridge, punchy sonics, or general sense of out-of-control euphoria. I keenly recall my disappointment at finally finding the track on a best-of LP around the late 1980s, and my horror when realizing I was hearing a poor substitute. Its existence (especially as it’s the first cut on All Systems Go!) is inexplicable, though a fellow collector speculated the original wasn’t used as guitarist Martin Murray left the band in December 1964 under somewhat less than amiable circumstances, receiving a substantial cash settlement. “I Can’t Stop” might have been redone so Murray wouldn’t get paid for a performance by a different lineup.

Getting back to the Honeycombs’ catalog, another highlight is All System Go!’s “Love in Tokyo,” with its otherworldly electronic keyboard glow and typically spectral Howard-Blaikley tune. Alas, another warning is needed: the version on the new CD box has a defect, skipping a whole second (which includes part of a vocal) around the 22-second mark. So for all its breadth, this three-disc comp is still the Incomplete 1960s albums and singles, if only by the slimmest of margins. (The original, defect-less version did appear on the expanded All System Go! CD on Repertoire in 1990.)

Yet another warning: the second LP was coveted by some non-Honeycombs fans for its inclusion of a rare Ray Davies composition the Kinks never recorded, “Emptiness.” But—in common with most of the songs great British Invasion bands like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Who “gave away” for other acts to do—it’s not that good, and certainly not in the same league as what the songwriters were holding back for their own groups. The Honeycombs also tried one of the Kinks’ better early songs, “Something Better Beginning,” though the Kinks’ version is way better.

Back to more positive notes, a good number of Honeycombs tracks—the majority, I’d say—have something to recommend them in the way of odd production and appealing strange melody, even if a good number of these are kind of variations of a formula. An obscure standout is their final single (from September 1966), “That Loving Feeling.” Almost sounding as if the group’s fighting to be heard from behind a closet in its dense compressed clutter, it also has the feeling of a band sensing their end is near. That’s not referred to at all in the lyrics, but there’s a desperation to the gloomy melody and combination of lead and backup vocals, as if the group knows the time for their sound is fast running out.

That same vibe also comes through in a more muted way on the B-side, the Meek-penned “Should a Man Cry,” with an unexpectedly guttural fuzzy guitar solo. Time really was running out for Meek. The Honeycombs might have ended their recording career, but they didn’t die. Meek did in on February 3, 1967, killing himself after shooting his landlady.

In a different way, however, “That Loving Feeling” could have pointed to the future. It was one of just two original compositions the band managed to release, the other being the Murray’s lightweight “Leslie Anne” on their debut LP. “That Loving Feeling” was the work of Colin Boyd, part of the much-altered lineup of the Honeycombs’ final year or so. Boyd also wrote two neat (and yet more muffled-sounding) outtakes that make their first appearance on this compilation, indicating he could hit the right kind of haunting Honeycombs tone with his compositions had he been given more opportunities. “Tell Me Baby” in particular has the kind of mix of melancholy and exuberance heard in some of their best material, with a somewhat more mature air than Howard-Blaikley’s ditties. But that wasn’t to be, the group petering out not long after Meek’s death.

For all my enthusiastic championship of the Honeycombs’ work as worthy of reexamination despite its extremely unhip reputation, even a fan like me has to admit there’s a fair amount of guff in their discography. Some Howard-Blaikley constructions could be sugary in the extreme, starting with the leadoff cut from their first LP, “Colour Slide” (though that song does have its devotees). All Systems Go! has some treacly oldies covers, like their take on the Platters’ “My Prayer.” The rare Japan-only LP (issued in late 1965), In Tokyo (Live), is mostly comprised of mediocre covers of American rock hits. And the solo singles by Martin Murray (one, from 1966) and Denny D’Ell (two, from 1967) that close the box are undistinguished pop, and not produced by Meek. Who was going to listen to a cover of Bobby Vee’s “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes” in the summer of 1967, which D’Ell put on the B-side of his final 45?

Even after digesting this quite hefty box (and even though I already had most of the tracks elsewhere), some puzzles about the Honeycombs remain. How much of their records was down to Meek and Howard-Blaikley, and how much to them? There are few other hitmaking bands from the time that played their own instruments that seemed so dependent on their producer and a specific outside songwriting team for whatever distinctive sound they managed. How did they feel about the process, in which some might view them as mere vehicles for the others who did the creative grunt work?

Also: was Meek trying to do something particularly special for the Honeycombs in the studio, in contrast to his numerous other clients? Why were so many Honeycombs discs released in the wake of “Have I the Right,” including a second studio LP, at a time when even some UK groups with big hits never got the chance to do more than one longplayer in their home country? Why in the world wasn’t the single version of “I Can’t Stop” issued in the UK? How did the group’s early singles end up on the little known Vee-Jay subsidiary Interphon in the US—making the Honeycombs the only British group besides the Beatles to have American hits on Vee-Jay?

The sources that would seem most likely to contain some insight—the 24-page booklet of liner notes with this anthology, and John Repsch’s biography The Legendary Joe Meek—offer disappointingly little in that regard. The chapter on Howard-Blaikley in Johnny Rogan’s Starmakers and Svengalis doesn’t offer much either, but does contain this interesting passage:

“Reviving the chart fortunes of the Honeycombs proved immensely difficult, particularly as the group seemed relatively unconcerned about their status in the pop world. According to Howard, they preferred singing in pubs to appearing on television and reacted to their chart-topping achievement with humble satisfaction rather than awe-inspiring egomania. Their lack of ambition was also reflected in lackluster live performances which often ended in jeers from over-expectant members of the audience. In desperation, their managers temporarily sent them abroad where pop-starved fans were less discriminating.” (Indeed, according to the liner notes, much of their final year was spent in Israel.)

With some of the Honeycombs now gone and little interest in investigating their work among mainstream rock historians, we’ll probably never wholly know what made them and their team tick. Their story is in some ways as mysterious as their music.

Hard as it is to believe, we’re one-fifth into the twenty-first century. Maybe even harder to believe, plenty of material continues to surface on rock reissues. Often these aren’t reissuing official recordings, but unearthing half-a-century-or-so-old items often not even suspected to exist. Most of the really fine LPs from the time have been re-released (sometimes several times), and virtually all of the really fine acts who recorded a good amount of fine music have been honored by compilations.

As I already have a lot of those, most of what I’m getting on reissues these days tends to be studio outtakes, live concerts, and radio recordings, often circulating for the first time anywhere. Otherwise they tend to be bulky boxes containing much or all of what a significant artist did in their entire career, or at least the peak (or one of the peaks) of it. Just one of my best-of picks from the 2019 litter is a straight album reissue, and even that album was barely distributed upon its original release.

So it’s boxes and vault rarities—which sometimes fill up boxes on their own—that dominate my best-of list. It just about made a round twenty in number, throwing in a couple 2018 releases I’d missed at the end. I heard a good number of other reissues, but these are the ones about which I got enthusiastic, or at least somewhat enthusiastic. Although the chart-topping winner has plenty of merit, I had more negative comments about the way the music was released than I ever expected to put into any review of a #1 pick.

1. David Bowie, Conversation Piece (Parlophone). As a five-CD compilation of material Bowie recorded in 1968 and (more often) 1969, this box has great musical value. It’s not such great economic value for the kind of dedicated Bowie fans most likely to want it, since the majority has been previously released. Even most of the material unavailable before 2019 had been issued before this box came out in November. First I’ll focus on the enormous musical positives, and then get into the troubling part of how this stuff was dispensed to the marketplace.

The most significant disc by far is titled The ‘Mercury’ Demos. I’ve been touting these early-’69 demos (almost certainly done around late winter or early spring) as a major body of unreleased music since I first found it on bootleg (minus one song, though this LP has all ten) in the late 1980s. As I wrote on my blog a few years ago: 

“Unusually, this captures Bowie at a point in his career where he was a folky, or at least folk-rocky, singer-songwriter. As hard as it might be to believe, he—with backing by second guitarist/harmony singer John Hutchinson—sounds something like a British Simon & Garfunkel here. The songs, of course, are quite different from those of Paul Simon even at this early stage in Bowie’s development, and include acoustic versions of highlights from his 1969 and 1970 releases like ‘Space Oddity’ (with a primitive Stylophone effect), ‘Conversation Piece,’ ‘Janine,’ ‘Letter to Hermione,’ and ‘An Occasional Dream,’ the last of which is one of the greatest unreleased Bowie performances (and most overlooked Bowie songs, period) of all.

Other songs aren’t as impressive, and some, particularly ‘When I’m Five’ and ‘Ching-A-Ling,’ are kiddie-like leftovers from his overly theatrical phase. But even the minor tunes include some neat oddities, like a cover of Lesley Duncan’s ‘Love Song’ (done slightly later by Elton John on Tumbleweed Connection) and the haunting ‘Lover to the Dawn,’ which never made it onto a Bowie release, though it evolved into a song that did, ‘Cygnet Committee.’ And you get to hear Bowie and Hutchinson unexpectedly segue into the chorus of ‘Hey Jude’ near the end of ‘Janine.’

Aside from being the only document of that brief period in which Bowie and Hutchinson worked as a duo, I find this of even greater importance for capturing what might have been the true personal Bowie—or at least as personal a Bowie as he could summon given his chameleonic nature. Sincerity is not a quality we usually associate with him, but if there was any time where he meant what he sang, instead of writing as a character (or writing about other characters), this might have been it.”

There you have my musical assessment. What specifically about this official release of the tapes, however? The good news is that this does definitely sound better than the numerous bootlegs of the material, all of which had a lo-fi, muffled, and sometimes wobbly sound. This isn’t super hi-fi, but it’s much clearer, whether they used a different better tape source, did a lot of sonic cleanup, or some combination of the two. Many Bowie fans have known about this stuff for a long time, but they’ll be pleased to have it in significantly more listenable form. This is the disc on the box that makes it an important release, and would have been #1 on its own if it had been issued as a standalone CD without the other material.

Another disc in the box of 1968-69 home demos is also quite valuable and interesting, if not nearly on the musical level of the Mercury demos. The best are eight songs (actually just six different ones, as there are three versions of “Space Oddity”) recorded in December 1968 and January 1969 on a Revox reel-to-reel tape recorder in Bowie’s London flat. If nothing else, these clear up something that’s always been uncertain to me: the exact source of the two demos of “Space Oddity” and “An Occasional Dream” that were bonus tracks on the 40^th anniversary edition of 1969’s David Bowie/Space Oddity album. According to the liner notes for this package, they came from these sessions (and are not the fairly similar demo versions recorded about a couple months later in 1969, which have long been bootlegged). This also includes earlier versions of a few other songs that are on those slightly later demos (“Ching-a-Ling,” “Lover to the Dawn,” and “Life Is a Circus”), along with one that isn’t (“Let Me Sleep Beside You,” which Bowie had already recorded for Decca in September 1967).

On to the music itself: these are sparse, folky acoustic performances with Hutchinson on second guitar and backup (and occasional lead) vocals, and some Stylophone on “Space Oddity.” They show Bowie developing into a far more interesting and idiosyncratic singer-songwriter than he had been on his earlier, official 1964-68 studio recordings, especially on “Space Oddity” and “An Occasional Dream.” There is both a tender melodicism and a feeling that Bowie’s not only gotten more personally expressive, but is about as genuinely personal as he’d ever get, given his subsequent taste for genre-jumping and character-assuming.

The performances on the Mercury demos just a couple months later are a little bit less inhibited and more assured, and for that reason (along with the bonus of interesting lighthearted between-song banter), I’d give them the edge. These are still interesting to hear, though, and in pretty good quality considering the fairly primitive circumstances of the original recordings.

There are also fifteen Hutchinson-less 1968-69 demos (if any are from 1969, they’re probably from early in that year) of more historical than purely musical interest. Bowie wouldn’t put most of those songs on his studio releases, and while they show him fitfully developing a more mature, rockier singer-songwriter (and less annoyingly theatrical) style than what he’d done in his Decca son-of-Anthony Newley phase, the compositions aren’t that great or memorable. Exceptions are an early version of the 1970 B-side “Conversation Piece” and a different version of his kiddie tune “When I’m Five” that, relatively speaking, is far gutsier and more listenable.

The final three discs on the box are steadily less interesting, mostly because most of the tracks have long been available. One’s largely devoted to 1968-69 BBC sessions (all previously released) that offer worthwhile variations of late-‘60s studio recordings, with marginal bonuses of a couple mono mixes of 1969 studio tracks and an inferior alternate studio arrangement of “Space Oddity” when Hutchinson was still aboard. Disc four has his 1969 album David Bowie aka Man of Words, Man of Music aka Space Oddity, which as the “aka”s alone signify has been reissued more times than anyone cares to count, with bonus tracks of early mixes and the full length version of his Italian-language rendition of “Space Oddity.”

Disc five, the least essential, has a 2019 Tony Visconti mix of the album, with the original 45 versions of “Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud” and “Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Sala,” as “Space Oddity” was titled in Italian. The 120-page book of liner notes is pretty good, with detailed annotation and lots of rare photos, as well as some particularly interesting repros of period memos, press releases, gig posters, and newspaper clippings.

Now for my value-for-money rant. Most of the previously unissued tracks on this package were issued in three separate, expensive vinyl boxes earlier in 2019. That included two sets of demos on seven-inch singles that were about $35 each after tax, and the Mercury demos as a vinyl LP  selling for $69.98 at my favored local independent store. These prices are extortionate. Yes, the Mercury demos LP comes in a big box reproducing the typed and handwritten lettering on the original tape box, with a photo of Bowie and Hutch, a couple contact sheets of more photos, and liner notes. That doesn’t justify charging triple or so the rate for the usual new vinyl album. And while the liner notes are pretty good, they’re on six stapled pages with small, faint type, and no illustrations.

Worse, at no time to my knowledge was it announced that all of the tracks on those expensive vinyl releases would be later made available on CD as part of the Conversation Piece box, and soon. And I get press releases from the label who put all these Bowie projects out. I certainly would have been willing to wait to save $150. 

So the way these cuts were doled out checks all of my boxes of showing disrespect for the fans that have made such archive projects possible, and profitable. Overpriced packaging. No advance notice that the music on those overpriced vinyl sets would soon be made available in one place on a more reasonably affordable CD box. Only a dozen tracks on that five-CD box that were previously unavailable, some of which are not-so-interesting alternate mixes. And one disc almost wholly devoted to a 2019 remix of an album, which I find, like most remixes, unnecessary (and actually here, in the case of the remixed “Space Oddity,” notably inferior). Even if it was done by Bowie’s most important producer.

I honestly don’t know the expenses involved and profit margins for packages like this. But I do know that many fans would much prefer to buy this material all at once as a standard-priced CD, and not feel like they’ll risk being able to hear it at all if they don’t buy the expensive vinyl boxes as soon as they appear. I only hope that some of the money goes to John Hutchinson, as I think he can use it much more than the Bowie estate.

2. The Beatles, Abbey Road 50th Anniversary Edition (Apple/Universal). This would top this list based on the original 1969 Abbey Road album at the core of this four-disc box. But a reissue list, or at least my reissue lists, judge releases like this by what they add to the original, not by ballyhooed new mixes. In this case, this box falls short of the fiftieth anniversary box of The White Album, and maybe even of the fiftieth anniversary box of Sgt. Pepper. Sure it’s still worth getting for Beatles fans, but it’s overpriced. So was the Sgt. Pepper box, and arguably The White Album box, but this is more so.

The positives are mostly to be found in the two CDs of session outtakes. The compilers, however, faced a challenge as there weren’t nearly as many outtakes as there were for The White Album sessions; what outtakes were generated weren’t as interesting; and some of the best such outtakes were already used on Anthology 3. And in case you were hoping that some previously unheard original compositions might have been discovered, that’s not the case. In fact, just a couple of these (Paul McCartney’s long-bootlegged home demo of a song given to Mary Hopkin, “Goodbye,” and his demo of “Come and Get It,” made into a hit by Badfinger) were not released in a different form by the Beatles in 1969. All of the other tracks are alternate versions, including alternates of every Abbey Road song and both sides of the “Ballad of John and Yoko”/“Old Brown Shoe” single.

Alternate versions can be pretty interesting, as much of the White Album box demonstrated. I’m glad to hear them here, but nothing really blows me away. George Harrison’s solo demo of “Something”—not the same as the one on Anthology 3, as this has two piano parts in the mix—is the best of the batch. The differences among the other alternate versions are minor, and sometimes very minor. The version of the side two medley (here titled “The Long One”) differs in the edit and mix, not the performances. The take of “Something” that isolates the strings, and the “strings & brass only” one of “Golden Slumbers”/ “Carry That Weight,” are of primarily academic interest.

And the package is also missing some outtakes that have been documented (most thoroughly in Mark Lewisohn’s Beatles Recording Sessions) and sometimes even bootlegged. Most notable among the absentees is the different version of “Something” with a long, doom-laden piano-led instrumental tag, with a tune later recycled by John Lennon for “Remember” on Plastic Ono Band. This is even referred in the box’s book of liner notes, making its failure to appear here all the more irritating. Maybe the feeling was that multiple versions of alternate takes shouldn’t be used, though there were some on the White Album box, and no one minded to my knowledge.

To the displeasure of some readers and acquaintances, I’m generally unenthused about new mixes and blu-ray audio, which take up the other two discs. The same holds true here—there wasn’t anything wrong with the original, and I find the differences both minor and inconsequential. One consequence, however, can’t be ignored: it shoves the list price into the three figures. The package does include a 100-page book with plenty of interesting text and illustrations, but even this isn’t quite as good or big as the books with the White Album and Sgt. Pepper boxes. Don’t forget, too, that the Sgt. Pepper box came with a DVD of a twenty-fifth anniversary documentary. Maybe it’s unfair to chide a box for not having as much bonus material to draw from, but that does make the Abbey Road fiftieth anniversary edition less worthwhile than its counterparts.

3. Craig Smith/Maitreya Kali, Apache/Inca (Ugly Things). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were a good number of obscure, often privately pressed acid folk albums, where the performer (usually a solo artist) seemed lost between reality and fantasy. Most of them weren’t very good, and certainly not as good as the standard bearer for the genre, Skip Spence’s Oar. Apache/Inca, credited here to singer-songwriter Craig Smith and his alter ego Maitreya Kali, is an exception. It’s very good, and in some ways spookier even than Oar, which is saying something. The original double LP, which appeared in the early ‘70s, was also quite haphazardly assembled. It mixes well-produced Buffalo Springfield-meets-the-Monkees late-‘60s recordings by his group the Penny Arkade with later spare, haunting solo performances reflecting his descent into mental turmoil, even madness.

The later material, dating from when he adopted the name Maitreya Kali, is usually folky, acoustic, and swathed in reverb. The sentiments are a long way from the good-time folk-rock he’d delivered with the Penny Arkade. “Love and pain are the same,” he crooned on “Old Man,” echoing the similarly creepy sentiments in Charles Manson’s deranged songs of the late ‘60s, though with far greater melodicism and musical skill. On “Love Is Our Existence,” he gave his vocal such a tinny fishbowl effect that it was all but indecipherable; “Revelation” was hardly any easier to make out, but couldn’t quite bury a dynamite folk-rock riff, as well as some intriguing lyrics both glorifying and questioning the validity of Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, and other deities. Other songs were more straightforward, if exceptionally haunting, folk ballads. Yet they always gave the impression of a seeker questioning reality, and not quite finding satisfactory alternatives.

This CD marks the first official reissue of Apache/Inca, embellished by 32 pages of liner notes from Mike Stax. The original master tapes have disappeared, but this has been, to quote the liner notes, “restored and mastered…from the cleanest vinyl source available.” Although the juxtaposition of Matireya Kali and Penny Arkade tracks can be incongruous, those Penny Arkade cuts (none issued back in the late 1960s) are among the finest obscure Los Angeles folk-rock of the period. For a full Penny Arkade CD with all of the tracks by the group used on Apache/Inca and more, look for Sundazed’s Not the Freeze compilation. For more on Smith, check out Stax’s fine biography Swim Through the Darkness. 

4. The Artwoods, Art’s Gallery (Top Sounds). Not to be confused with their 1966 album Art [no ‘s] Gallery, this is a collection of previously unreleased 1965-66 BBC performances by the British R&B band featuring singer Art Wood (older brother of Ron), drummer Keef Hartley, and a pre-Deep Purple Jon Lord. Since sixteen other BBC tracks were included on the three-CD set Steady Gettin’ It: The Complete Recordings 1964-67, you might wonder how essential another set of BBC cuts might be, especially for a hitless British Invasion band who were decent but not great. Maybe it’s not essential unless you’re a big Artwoods fan or a huge British Invasion fan in general. But it is highly worthwhile, for a few reasons.

First, just a couple of the songs (“She Knows What to Do” and “Smack Dab in the Middle”) are represented by BBC versions—completely different ones—on The Complete Recordings. Second, seven of the thirteen tracks weren’t done by the Artwoods on their studio releases. Third, the sound quality, while not brilliant as these are not the original broadcast tapes, is quite acceptable. And most importantly, these are for the most part really good slabs of mid-‘60s British R&B/rock, with a more prominent organ (by Lord) than most such outfits boasted. I don’t find Art Wood a great singer, but he doesn’t get in the way of the instrumentalists’ cool grooves.

And while a few of the rarities are average, there’s some really good stuff here that stands up to their best studio work—a dynamite organ-paced instrumental soul-jazz-rock version of “Comin’ Home Baby,” a jazzier instrumental in Les McCann’s “That Healin’ Feelin’,” and a certainly-good-enough workout on James Brown’s “Out of Sight.” While the BBC versions of songs also found on their studio releases might be less eye-catching, some of them are fine supplements to the studio takes, like a moody treatment of Lee Dorsey’s “Work, Work, Work” (“just a tad slower” than the studio track, accurately state the liner notes); the Bobby Blue Bland raveup “Don’t Cry No More”; and two peppy versions of their best song, “Oh My Love.” On the whole I find these significantly better than the numerous BBC tracks on The Complete Recordings—whose title is no longer accurate now that these additional radio tapes have surfaced.

The Artwoods were never going to be a top-tier British R&B act, owing both to Art Wood’s relative shortcomings as a singer and their near-absence of any original material. But does it matter so much when you can enjoy a collection like this over and over? I didn’t expect it to rate so high on this list, but that’s what it comes down to in the end. 

5. The Yardbirds, Live and Rare (Repertoire). The Yardbirds released quite a bit of material in the five years they were active – about four or five albums’ worth, if spread among a wealth of LPs, singles, and EPs in several countries that would have been difficult to track down in total even back in 1968. Since then, however, their catalogue has multiplied several times over with archival live recordings, BBC sessions, outtakes, and even commercials. Even for fanatics, it’s hard to keep track of what’s come out where.

So a new five-disc box of Live and Rare cuts can understandably be greeted with some skepticism as to whether it has much, or anything, you don’t already have somewhere or other. It’s certainly likely to duplicate a good amount of stuff in your collection if you care enough about the Yardbirds to consider buying a five-CD rarities box in the first place. 

That’s the case with Live and Rare, but it still has some vital things going for it that make it worth your attention whether you’re a completist or just want to start rounding out your Yardbirds library. Unlike some such anthologies, it has decent annotation, including overview notes by UT’s own Mike Stax (though the disc-by-disc liners are by veteran UK rock journalist Chris Welch). And if you want a kind of multi-disc best-of-the-rare, it’s a decent survey, taking in many of their better BBC/TV sessions and non-Five Live Yardbirds live recordings.

But to skip to the chase, the main reason for hardcore fans (and I’m one) to pick this up is the DVD, which has 21 songs spanning 1964-1968 with the Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page lineups (and even the Beck-Page one). Much of this has circulated unofficially or semi-officially for years, especially the March 1967 appearance on the German Beat! Beat! Beat! TV program. But here you have it in bulk, with quality likely to better (or certainly at least equal) other sources. 

The big find is a windy, outdoor seven-song Paris performance from April 30, 1967 that hasn’t shown up anywhere else, at least to my knowledge. Here are the only live clips of “Mr. You’re a Better Man Than I,” “My Baby,” and the unlikely Dylan cover “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)” from anywhere, as well as the only Page-era one of “Heart Full of Soul.” Half a year after Beck’s departure, Page is in fine form. In all honesty—and this coming from someone who’s a fan of lead singer Keith Relf, not just the Yardbirds as a group—the same can’t be said of Relf, who sometimes wanders off-key or even off-mike, even as he prowls the stage with commanding enthusiasm.

Yet there are good-to-great features of all the other live clips, though Relf’s vocals sometimes aren’t a match for either the studio versions or the sheer volume of Beck and Page. The  takes of “Louise” and “I Wish You Would” from British TV in July 1964 are the only surviving ones with Clapton, and the three songs from a June 1966 French TV spot the only ones of the Beck-Page lineup besides their Blow-Up bit. (Warning, however: this dates from the time Page was still on bass, not yet sharing lead guitar with Beck.)

Sadly, both numbers (“Shapes of Things” and “Train Kept A-Rollin’”) from the May 1966 NME Poll Winners Concert are incomplete, though you can hear the audio in its entirety on one of the CDs. It’s even sadder that the best of their live TV performances, on Shindig in 1965 with Beck, aren’t here, though most of you probably have or know how to see them anyway.

The three-song March 9, 1968 appearance on the French TV program Bouton Rouge is of special note not just as the last time they were filmed live, but also as the best evidence of the Jimmy Page lineup at its best. “Goodnight Sweet Josephine” (their final 45) might not have been much of a song, but they storm through “Train Kept A-Rollin’” and, more notably, offer a tour de force “Dazed and Confused,” complete with violin-bowed Page solo and Page-Relf harmonica raveup. And here Keith is in fine vocal form. It’s the best glimpse of what could have been had the group stayed together (or even managed to lay down “Dazed and Confused” in the studio), but wasn’t.

The audio for all the video can be found on the other discs, but the CDs have a lot more material, going back to seven tracks attributed to the 1964 National Jazz & Blues Festival. Know this, however: though these include a couple Chuck Berry numbers of which no other Yardbirds versions have circulated (“Little Queenie” and “Carol”), the first three songs (including “Queenie”) almost certainly don’t feature Relf on vocals. Expert listeners are pretty sure this is Mick O’Neill substituting for an ill Relf, and frankly he doesn’t come off too well, with a gruff delivery ill-suited for the band’s style. 

Even if the CDs don’t offer a lot of surprises (or perhaps any, if you’ve kept up with everything in the by-now-massive Yardbirds oeuvre), certainly there are a lot of highlights, with even the lower lights never less than interesting. The radio broadcasts focus on some of the songs and versions less likely to make Yardbirds BBC collections, including storming versions of “I’m Not Talking” (two of that song, actually) and tunes that didn’t make their studio releases, like the melancholy folk lament “Hush-A-Bye” and the blues classics “Spoonful,” “Bottle Up and Go,” and “The Stumble.” The Page lineup usually came off better live than in the studio, and that’s amply represented by the two discs of 1967-68 recordings, including BBC versions of the two best songs from their waning days, “Think About It” and “Dazed and Confused.”

There’s a bit of the fill-in-the-blanks feel to the 1966 disc, most of which is given over to studio rarities, including their notorious Italian pop single; commercials for Great Shakes and Maclean’s toothpaste; and mono versions of “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago,” its B-side “Psycho Daisies,” the “Stroll On” cut from the Blow-Up soundtrack, and everything from Relf’s pair of solo singles (including the alternate version of “Shapes in My Mind” that starts with a horn instead of an organ). Like almost any multi-disc Yardbirds compilation of bits and pieces, however, it all goes to show that even at the margins of their recorded work, they were usually much better than most other bands were at their best. (This review previously appeared in Ugly Things magazine.)

6. The Searchers, When You Walk in the Room: The Complete Pye Recordings 1963-67 (Grapefruit). While the Searchers made some records here and there for fifteen years after the mid-’60s, their legacy rests firmly on the wealth of material they cut for Pye Records from 1963-67. This six-disc, standard CD-sized box is likely the last-word package on that body of work. There are stereo and mono versions of all five of their UK Pye LPs; sixteen bonus tracks culled from outtakes and French/German-language versions; and an entire CD of non-LP singles, which throws in the EP-only cut “The System.” Add a 36-page photo/memorabilia-jammed booklet with a thorough history by UK rock scholar David Wells, and what’s not to like?

Nothing of consequence as regards the way this was assembled, certainly. (Although hard-to-pleasers will note the absence of stereo versions of two songs from their first album, “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” as sources don’t exist for those.) But though they were the best Liverpool group besides the Beatles, and at their finest one of the best early British Invasion outfits, they certainly didn’t boast the consistent high quality or songwriting talent of their finest rivals. In fact, their LPs were pretty patchy, as those hoping to unearth hidden gems might find to their disappointment.

The gap between their uniformly fine 1963-66 singles — most of them UK hits, and several of them fairly big US ones — and most of their LP cuts, to be brutal, is almost huge. There are a wealth of mediocre covers of American rock’n’roll standards that are not only way less memorable than the originals, but also quite a few leagues below the best ones by their peers. Compared to the Beatles’ knocked-out-of-the-park interpretations, their takes on “Money” and “Twist and Shout” (both from their 1963 debut Meet the Searchers) are anemic. That might be an unfairly high bar for anyone to match, but generally their LP tracks—as was standard before the Beatles started to change the rules in that regard—suffered from thin, rushed-sounding production, contrasting poorly with the generally fine and full treatment afforded their 45s.

The Searchers didn’t write anything on their first three LPs, and while cover-dependent albums were common at the onset of the British Invasion, their interpretations were frustratingly erratic. Many are simply unmemorable or unimaginative, and sometimes unwisely chosen attempts at massive familiar American hits like “Be My Baby” and “Stand By Me.” Aside from their surprisingly great raveup treatment of the Coasters’ “Ain’t That Just Like Me” (which gave them a small US hit, and destroys the Hollies’ tamer UK hit version of the same tune), they just weren’t cut out for the kind of ferocious covers many of their peers mastered. Some of them—”Farmer John,” “One of These Days,” “Tricky Dicky,” “Alright,” and “Hungry for Love” (which was a British hit for Johnny Kidd)—have an engaging nervous, hyper-tempo Merseybeat, but lack the dangerous edge of the more R&B-oriented bands that would soon threaten the whole Merseybeat movement.

If it seems like I’m down on the Searchers, let me hasten to clarify that’s not at all the case. I’m a big fan of their best stuff, and some of that’s on these spotty LPs. When they slowed down a bit for more measured, taut R&B covers spotlighting their fine vocal harmonies, they scored deserved pulled-for-the-US-market hits with the Coasters’ “Love Potion No. 9” and LaVern Baker’s “Bumble Bee.” When they branched into folk standards and near-folk-rock, they hit on a wistful sensitivity whose strength they might not have fully realized at the time. That’s heard to excellent effect on their fine, if sparely arranged, covers of “All My Sorrows,” “Four Strong Winds,” and Jackie DeShannon’s yearning “Each Time,” as well as the group-penned “Too Many Miles.”

Indeed, “Each Time” sounds like it might have been considered for a single, boasting as it does more sonic depth than most of their LP-only efforts. And while some of their British hit 45s weren’t on their UK albums, the singles that did find a place on them—”Sweets for My Sweet,” “Sugar and Spice,” “Don’t Throw Your Love Away,” “Take Me for What I’m Worth,” and above all “Needles and Pins”—amply illustrate just why the Beatles cited them and the Rolling Stones when a teenager asked the Fabs to name their favorite British groups on a June 5, 1964 Dutch TV program. They had gorgeous vocal harmonies; they had finely sculpted, if restrained, arrangements; and, above all, they had ringing guitars that anticipated one of folk-rock’s trademarks. 

And those five albums were hardly all there was to the Searchers’ discography. The sixth disc—devoted solely to 26 non-LP tracks—is so strong that they no longer sound like a middling band who managed enough great and good songs to make a fine best-of. Suddenly, they sound like a near-major act—which, of course, they were, but not on the strength of their longplayers. All of the hit singles that didn’t find a way onto their UK albums are here—”Someday We’re Gonna Love Again,” “When You Walk in the Room,” “What Have They Done to the Rain,” “Goodbye My Love,” and their moody original “He’s Got No Love.” So are some just-about-as-fine low-charting UK entries, like their covers of Jagger-Richards’ “Take It or Leave It,” the Hollies’ “Have You Ever Loved Somebody,” and Bobby Darin’s “When I Get Home.”

Most notably, so are a clutch of generally fine B-sides mostly known only to Searchers fanatics, many of which gave them a chance to write their own material. The delicate folk ballad “‘Til I Met You,” the peppy “This Feeling Inside,” the Buddy Holly-meets-formative-folk-rock of “So Far Away,” and the uncommonly mordant, grim-and-bear-it “Don’t Hide It Away” (with equally uncommon jazzy piano solo) are all among their best work—which, when you’re talking about the Searchers, is very good indeed. As Searchers guitarist John McNally lamented to me when I interviewed him nearly twenty years ago, “If you’d had said, like Andrew Loog Oldham did to the Stones, ‘go and write some songs and don’t come out ‘til you’ve written ‘em’ to us, we’d have been a much better act.” Some momentum was lost on their final three, not-so-impressive singles (all from 1967), but these at least seal the “complete” in the box set’s title.

It could be that for most Searchers fans, a best-of or at most double CD are enough. But it’s unlikely any selection would corral all of anyone’s individual favorites, so the Pye box it is if you want to dig deep. And be aware that while it’s the complete Searchers at Pye, it’s not the complete ‘60s Searchers, as no less than four other compilations—Live at the Star-Club Hamburg, the pre-Pye 1963 demos The Iron Door Sessions, BBC Sessions, and Swedish Radio Sessions—offer a wealth of worthwhile radio, live, and demo recordings. (This review previously appeared in Ugly Things.)

7. Family, At the BBC (Madfish). Although they never quite broke into the rank of the top British bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Family were nevertheless fascinating during their five-year-or-so-run. They unpredictably mixed various shades of blues, funky jazz, pastoral folk, and even country into their sorta-prog rock, though without melodic hooks as memorable as another group with slightly similar eclectic blends, Traffic. Roger Chapman’s bleating vocals were never going to have the mass appeal of Stevie Winwood, but certainly projected a distinctive personality, even if some would find them an acquired taste. Family were also quite capable at matching their intricate studio arrangements in concert, as this mammoth eight-disc set proves.

Even given that Family were far more successful in the UK (where they had four Top Ten albums and three Top Twenty singles) than in the US (where they barely charted), it’s amazing how often they played on the BBC. This box features 95 tracks from no less than 20 different Beeb broadcasts, spanning November 1967 to May 1973. Many of them have come out on CD before, but twenty make their first appearance here. And a DVD presents nine performances from five different programs in 1969-1971, mostly in color.

The songs that will arouse most interest among hardcore Family fans are those that didn’t appear on their official studio releases. “Bring It On Home” isn’t the famous Sam Cooke soul hit, but the Willie Dixon song that Sonny Boy Williamson recorded at Chess. “I Sing ‘Em The Way I Feel,” issued by bluesman J.B. Lenoir on an obscure 1963 single, is an even greater testament to the depth of their blues collection. “Blow By Blow” is a six-minute jam with some similarity to “A Song for Me.” A 1973 concert-closing “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu,” however, falls into the category of “must have been fun to play,” but hardly indicative of the band’s core strengths.

All of those tracks have appeared on previous Family archival releases, which makes the twenty that are available for the first time of special note. Of particular value are Top Gear sessions from November 1967 and April 1968 predating the release of their debut album Music from a Doll’s House, including not just previews of six songs from that LP, but also their beguiling 1967 non-LP debut psychedelic single, “Scene Through the Eyes of a Lens.” While the fidelity on these two sessions and some other early broadcasts are obviously “off-air,” they sound fine and perfectly listenable, the whole box benefiting from considerable sonic cleanup.

Two other sessions—five songs from Colour Me Pop in May 1969, and another five from the Bob Harris Show in October 1972—also make their first appearance here. Family remained respectable to the end, but it’s a fair bet that UT readers will find the earlier half or so of this box the best. That’s the stuff that captures both Chapman and Family at their most sinister and haunting.

Although Family worked their way through much of their catalog on these broadcasts, inevitably this means there are multiple versions of many tunes—five apiece of “The Weaver’s Answer” (one of their best songs) and “Processions,” in fact. In common with most BBC performances, they’re not so drastically different that they redefine the compositions, but have a good live feel at times looser and more spontaneous than the studio counterparts. As some of the BBC takes preceded the official vinyl versions, arrangements could be in the process of getting refined. The March 1969 rendition of “Holding the Compass,” for instance, is electric, though the one surfacing a year and a half later on their 1970 LP Anyway would be acoustic.

The DVD is not a superfluous throw-in; in fact, much of it’s spectacular. With the exception of the earliest clip (“Dim,” from March 1969), it’s in vivid color and looks great. True, the wildly gyrating blonde girl dancer and period solarization effects on the Top of the Pops “The Weaver’s Answer” are a little distracting, but very much in the spirit of period fun.

Gearheads will thrill to the sight on some numbers—seldom duplicated by other bands, as far as I know—of two double-necked guitars in the same lineup (combining standard electric six-strings, a twelve-string, and a bass into two instruments). While he was in the group, also cool were the unusual contributions of Poli Palmer, whose electric vibraphone and flute added exotic instruments rarely employed in rock music. Strictly speaking, the four songs from a 1970 appearance on Doing Their Thing don’t belong here as that was broadcast on ITV rather than the BBC, but no one’s complaining.

For all its bulk, Family at the BBC doesn’t include everything they did on radio and film. Twenty-one songs from eight separate 1967-72 broadcasts (all detailed in the liner notes) haven’t survived, or been found. There’s also some other Family footage, such as their spots on the German TV show Beat Club, and their appearance in Stamping Ground, the obscure concert documentary of the 1970 Kralingen Music Festival in Holland. And while the group worked their way through much of the material on their albums over the course of the broadcasts compiled on this box, of course the studio recordings remain more definitive—and numerous, with plenty of bonus tracks augmenting their LPs on various compilations.

But for serious Family fans, this is a worthwhile if hefty investment that’s a significant supplement to their primary body of work. Packaging-wise, it could hardly be bettered, with a bound-in 52-page hardback book of liner notes that include meticulous details on the sessions; a Family family [sic] tree; and plenty of photos, along with a repro poster of their September 15, 1969 concert at London’s Royal Festival Hall. It’s a testament to the live sound of the band that, as John Peel notes in his introduction to their January 1970 session, was “one group that I would travel continents to see.” (This review previously appeared in Ugly Things.)

8. Various Artists, Diggin’ in the Goldmine: Dutch Beat Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the Dutch Beat Era and Beyond (Pseudonym). Astonishing in its size and scope for such a niche genre, this eight-CD box of 1965-70 Dutch rock surveys arguably the most productive ‘60s scene from a non-English speaking country. Nor does it even stick with the most well known tracks and acts, offering many rarities that had seldom or never been heard even by Dutch beat collectors, whether by the “big names” like the Outsiders or no-names who made just one or two 45s that are impossible to find.

As the box shows, derivative as many Dutch acts may have been of overseas rock trends (especially British Invasion bands), they also developed a distinctly regional sound that wasn’t mere imitation British R&B. The Dutch groups added a distinctively morose, sullenly rebellious attitude that carried a massive chip on its shoulder. Bluesy guitar and harmonica riffs were twisted into something strangely sinister, as was the English language, even if that might have had as much to do with writing in English as a second-language as deliberate lyricism.

While the box isn’t as strong or consistent as the two Nuggets boxes that are the kind of standard-bearers for the ‘60s garage/freakbeat genres, they document a vibrant scene that wasn’t just raw punk and freakbeat by the likes of the Outsiders, Les Baroques, and Q65, though it’s heavily represented. Acid folk, blue-eyed soul, guitar pop, hard rock, and other offshoots are also on board, testifying to the incredible productivity of a country that didn’t really get its rock into gear until 1965 or 1966.

Some standouts fall well outside the Dutch beat stereotype, like Nona’s weird folk “The Other Side of the Mountain”; Roek’s Family’s “Get Yourself a Ticket,” which is slightly risqué pop that’s almost like a more rock-oriented “Je T’Aime…Moi Non Plus”; and Phoenix’s very credible Hendrix tribute/emulation “Ode to Jimi Hendrix,” the last track on the box. Dream’s hard rock “Rebellion” has some killer organ and guitar. There’s breezy pop that owed more to Merseybeat than freakbeat by acts like the Golden Earrings (before their name change to Golden Earring). 

The box is enhanced by a 204-page hardback book of photos, memorabilia, and liner notes by Mike Stax, editor and publisher of the top ‘60s rockzine, Ugly Things. Besides track-by-track descriptions, it even includes rarity values for the original discs on which the tracks appeared, some of which are in the several hundreds of Euros. There’s much more Dutch beat elsewhere by the best acts represented on this anthology, but this has a representative span of much of the best and rarest, without duplicating a lot of what’s available on the more high-profile reissues. You can read more about the box in my interview with Mike Stax for the pleasekillme.com site.

9. Fleetwood Mac, Before the Beginning: 1968-1970 Rare Live & Demo Sessions (Sony). This peculiar release has three CDs, and three and half hours, of recordings from the Peter Green era of Fleetwood Mac that hadn’t been officially released. Despite “demo” getting equal billing with “live sessions” in the subtitle, almost all of it’s live. Presumably all of it’s from 1968-1970, but despite fine and detailed liner notes in the 44-page booklet, the exact sources of the tracks aren’t cited. In fact, those are about the only details not specified in the liner notes, which otherwise comment at length about all of the songs and performances, as well as giving a good deal of historical context for the Peter Green period.

Gleaning what you can from the cloudy clues in the packaging, it seems like a good deal of the earlier material hails from a summer 1968 concert, or concerts, on their first US tour. A good deal of the later material seems to come from the US tour spanning December 1969 to February 1970. Only three tunes are represented by multiple versions (and then just twice each). The four tracks (there are only four) identified as demos are only referred to as “studio quality recordings” with little info, though they certainly sound like performances that have been bootlegged (in worse fidelity) on compilations of Fleetwood Mac BBC tracks. These and three of the live cuts on disc three are described in the notes as originating from 1968 “recordings done for different promotional shows,” one of the vaguest labels I’ve ever read applied to rarities. Also vague: a “horn-like harmonica player” is praised for contributions to a couple live numbers, but not identified, or even acknowledged as unknown.

According to the superdeluxeedition.com site, “the recently discovered recordings [for the collection] date from 1968 and 1970 and were discovered unlabeled in the US, so not much is known about them other than they have been authenticated by experts and approved for released by Fleetwood Mac.” It’s almost as if there’s a reason someone’s hiding or deliberately failing to disclose the origins of the material. Its the kind of thing associated with gray area releases, except that this was approved by the band (according to superdeluxeedition.com), “lets us re-live the power of the original Fleetwood Mac on stage with material personally selected by Peter Green” (according to the liner notes), has those lengthy in-depth liner notes, and has come out on a major label.

That long-winded explanation of why I can’t give you more precise source notes out of the way, the music is on the whole worthwhile, if (like all of the Peter Green-era catalog) uneven. The sound quality’s good, and the performances generally very good, avoiding the kind of too-long jams heard on some of the other early live Fleetwood Mac that has made it into official or unofficial circulation. Overall I prefer it to the most well known such material, that being several albums worth of early 1970 Boston recordings that have been packaged under numerous different titles. There’s a mix of some of their most famous songs (“Oh Well (Part 1,” “Rattlesnake Shake,” “The Green Manalishi,” “Albatross”), quite a bit of the straight blues at the base of their early repertoire, some of the mediocre rock’n’roll oldies they could never resist inserting into their sets, and some songs that didn’t make it onto the three late-‘60s LPs with Green. The distance between their very best stuff and their lesser output was wider with early Fleetwood Mac than with almost any other major rock group, but the best of this batch is very fine, and most of the rest at least satisfactory.

Highlights include a nine-minute version of B.B. King’s “Worried Dream,” which doesn’t get dull and features some magnificent slow-sad Green blues riffs. The performance of “Albatross,” not much different from the hit single, is very good too, and the cover of Otis Rush’s “Homework” sensational (I think the latter might be from a French TV program). It’s good to have a longer, live take on one of Green’s best obscure originals, “I Loved Another Woman,” though this and a few other cuts have some periodic faint vocals. “Before the Beginning,” another of Green’s best not-so-famous compositions, is rendered with despondent eloquence, though it ends rather abruptly. If you want real long variations, “Shake Your Money Maker” is eight minutes, Danny Kirwan’s “Coming Your Way” eleven minutes, “The Green Manalishi” almost twelve, and “Rattlesnake Shake” thirteen (though there are much longer versions of “Rattlesnake Shake” around). Too bad, though, that the first part of “I Need Your Love So Bad” is missing.

Although they’re a minor part of the set percentage-wise, the tracks tagged as demos (though I believe they’re from the BBC) are some of the best. In fact, one of them’s the very best cut – a version of Willie Dixon’s “You Need Love,” originally recorded by Muddy Waters in the early 1960s, and the basis for key parts of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.” It’s a terrific version, with dual guitar riffing, a jittery propulsive beat, and one of Peter Green’s best vocals, alternately commanding and playful. And it sounds much clearer here than it has on bootlegs. The demo (again, I think, BBC) cover of T-Bone Walker’s “Mean Old World” is a really good blues shuffle, and the other two demo/perhaps BBC numbers are solid enough as well. “You Need Love” alone justifies this set’s release—and if you’ve had enough of such clichéd boasts in reviews by writers who get some stuff free (though I did pay $14.99 for a used copy), you’ll be relieved to know this three-CD set was selling for a reasonable $18.98 at my local large indie store.

As a final note, fewer bands have been as heavily documented on above-ground and underground discs as early Fleetwood Mac, considering they only put out three proper LPs with Green. In my collection, I count, besides those three LPs, an official two-CD set of BBC broadcasts; about eight or nine official CDs’ worth of studio outtakes; seven official CDs or so worth of live recordings; one unofficial CD of BBC recordings; and seven CDs of unofficial live recordings. There’s even more out there. And maybe even more will come out officially, though for the time being, it’s hard to imagine too many fans craving additional helpings. 

10. Manfred Mann, Radio Days Vol. 1-4 (East Central One Limited). Since Manfred Mann were one of the more popular British bands of the ‘60s, and still had sizable (if more sporadic) success going into the ‘70s, it’s not a surprise they recorded plenty of BBC sessions. The sheer bulk of this new series still takes you aback. The eight discs span 1964-1973, and take in not just many hits, but also lots of lesser-known B-sides and album tracks. There are also a good number of covers, and even some originals, they never put out on their studio releases. And the third volume digs beyond the BBC vaults to unearth more than a CD’s worth of soundtrack recordings and commercial jingles, throwing in some outtakes and a non-LP 45. It’s maximum Manfred.

Manfred himself is the only guy to appear on all four sets, and while it’s probably not the intention of this series, cumulatively they illustrate how his group changed more than almost any other over the course of that decade. And not just via their numerous personnel changes, in which Mann was the only constant presence, and the outfit’s very name changed from Manfred Mann to Manfred Mann Chapter Three and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. Each of the four comps might almost have been recorded by different bands, so drastic were his gear shifts. Fleetwood Mac might have been the only comparably popular outfit who changed so much in their first ten years, to the point where they and the Manfreds were almost unrecognizable from when they started.

Each volume covers a distinct phase of Manfred Mann, volume one documenting the Paul Jones era. Even then Manfred Mann were kind of several bands in one, handling jazzy R&B and classy pop-rock with ease, and taking odd detours into other areas with less success. There’s no “Doo Wah Diddy Diddy” here, as sadly several sessions spanning late 1963 to late 1964 don’t survive. Their other 1964-66 hits are represented, along with some standout LP/EP outings like “Groovin’,” “What Am I To Do,” “Look Away,” “Machines,” and “The One in the Middle.” In one of the many brief interview segments (from the original broadcasts) interspersed throughout the CDs, Jones discusses how he wrote “The One in the Middle” for the Yardbirds, who turned it down as “Keith Relf said that’s not my sort of personality.” There are two versions of a half dozen numbers, including a cool “Sha La La” where they throw in a deliberately subdued chorus that builds back to a full-throated finale.

As (in line with the great majority of BBC sessions from the era) the radio arrangements don’t vary enormously from the studio versions, the most curiosity will be aroused by the songs that aren’t otherwise available, particularly three penned by Paul Jones, though these are in some ways the most disappointing. Jones wrote some good tunes, but his compositions “That’s the Way I Feel” and “It Took a Little While” are by-numbers R&B workouts; “You Better Be Sure” is a bit livelier, and might have made acceptable filler on one of the later LPs he cut with the Manfreds. Weirder, though not good, is their unlikely novelty cover of the Hollywood Argyles’ “Long Hair, Unsquare Dude Called Jack” (co-written by Kim Fowley), dating from the brief period when Jack Bruce was in the group.

Volume two spotlights the Mike d’Abo era, in which Jones’s replacement sang a series of big UK hits from 1966-69, though only “The Mighty Quinn” also hit it big in the States. All of those are here (sometimes twice), along with some strong originals that many singles-buyers never heard, like “Each and Every Day” and “Cubist Town.” They also took the opportunity to play some covers that never made it onto this version’s ‘60s vinyl, like “Mohair Sam,” “Wang Dang Doodle,” “Hound Dog,” “The Letter,” “Fever,” “Abraham, Martin & John,” “She’s a Woman,” and “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man,” the last of which was the only song performed by both the Jones and the d’Abo lineups. Note that some of the versions of the hits use previously recorded backing tracks – sometimes taken from the official release — with vocal and instrumental overdubs. That might have saved time back in the day, but makes them less interesting than many another BBC session, whether by the Manfreds and countless other acts.

As the BBC-exclusive covers wouldn’t have been highlights of their records, the big attractions are a few originals that didn’t see the light of day at the time, some of which are rather different to what the d’Abo lineup were usually doing. The d’Abo-composed “Handbags and Gladrags” became far more famous via covers by Chris Farlowe and, more notably, Rod Stewart. Its failure to make a Mann LP (or even single) is vexing, and though d’Abo put it on his 1970 debut solo album, a fine full Manfred Mann BBC version is a highlight of this collection.

Also notable are two good Mike Hugg compositions the Manfreds never placed on their official discs, the pensive “So Long” (not the same as their cover of Randy Newman’s “So Long, Dad,” which is also here) and melodic ballad “Clair” (sung by Hugg himself, with bassist Klaus Voormann on flute). D’Abo’s to the fore on the pleasantly poppy “Oh What a Day” (also resurfacing on his 1970 LP, though Manfred Mann didn’t release a version). He previewed his solo career with his ballad “The Last Goodbye,” on which he sings and plays piano without backup from the rest of the group.

There was a significant gap between the almost bubblegum pop of some of their late-‘60s hits (a la “Ha! Ha! Said the Clown”) and the more serious work on some of their LPs of the time. That disappeared when Mann and Hugg reorganized the band as Manfred Mann Chapter Three, whose work occupies the third volume. Arguably they got too serious, their records offering a sort of turgid early progressive rock with pop/R&B speckles, albeit in an oft-intriguingly gritty way that could verge on the grimy. Some of it almost sounds like Dr. John gone prog, though Hugg isn’t in the same league as a vocalist.

This has versions of a few of the songs from their pair of LPs on both the BBC and Swedish radio, as well as enough rarities to confuse discographers for years to come. Hugg’s “Breakdown” (from the 1970 Swedish broadcast) isn’t available elsewhere, as far as I can tell. Neither is the go-go-flavored instrumental “Bluesy Susie,” a live version of which plays behind a fairly entertaining interview with Manfred’s wife (“my wedding night was spent going with a boyfriend to see Manfred play”). There are also different 45 versions of “Happy Being Me” and “Devil Woman”; mono demo versions of “Konekuf” and “Time” that are different from the ones on the first Chapter Three LP; three tracks from Chapter Three’s unreleased third album (the burbling circular riffs of “So Sorry Please,” recorded July 1970, vaguely anticipating some of the synthesizer riffs on 1971’s Who’s Next); and a song they contributed to the soundtrack of the B-movie Swedish Fly Girls.

And that’s just disc one of the third volume. Disc two has their pretty snazzy 1969-70 jingles for Michelin, Maxwell House, and ski fitness, as well as background music for a 1968 BBC play. Most of the CD, however, is devoted to their soundtrack to the 1969 sexploitation movie Venus in Furs. The film had no relation to the Velvet Underground classic, and neither did Mann and Hugg’s music, which was an eerie mix of avant-garde horror and downbeat jazz. There are too many repeated motifs, and the sound too lo-fi, to make this something you’ll spin often. But in a way it’s the most fascinating section of this whole series, uncovering a side of Manfred Mann’s music unlike most of the other work in his voluminous catalog.

Mann overturned his personnel, and his sound, yet again in the early ‘70s with Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. Although he’d ultimately return to the top of the charts under this billing, their 1970-73 BBC sessions comprise the fourth and least interesting volume of this series. At least as determinedly prog-rock as Chapter Three, it wasn’t as eccentric, and pretty unlike Manfred’s ‘60s work, though there were links to the past in the choice of covers, particularly Randy Newman’s “Living Without You” and Bob Dylan’s “Get Your Rocks Off.” Dylan’s “Father of Day, Father of Night” gets a couple extended workouts (its studio counterpart would be one of the Earth Band’s most heavily played early-‘70s cuts on FM radio), and “Mighty Quinn” is revisited a couple times too. Leadbelly’s “Big Betty” had actually been recorded (as “Black Betty”), but not released, by the d’Abo lineup, and “Dealer” was a revamp of an LP track (“Dealer, Dealer”) from the d’Abo days.

It could be that prog-heads find volume four of this series the best of the lot, and have the least use for the Paul Jones days – and that British Beat fans feel exactly the opposite. You’d need to have very broad taste to like all four volumes more or less equally. But as they’ve been released separately, that’s not an issue if you want to give one or more a pass. The sound quality is usually good-to-excellent, and though some off-air recordings and soundtracks are not up to usual release standard, these are detailed as such in Mann biographer Greg Russo’s extensive liner notes. (This review previously appeared in Ugly Things.)

11. John Renbourn, Unpentangled: The Sixties Albums (Cherry Tree). He was one of the finest British folk guitarists, but John Renbourn was overshadowed by both his band and the other guitar player in that band. With Bert Jansch, he gave Pentangle the best acoustic guitar team in the country. But his own records weren’t as exciting or groundbreaking as his group’s. Nor were his own records as exciting as Jansch’s, since he wasn’t quite as creative a guitarist, and more decisively not as good a singer or songwriter. Despite his unquestioned virtuosity and eclectic mastery of folk and blues styles, his best contributions were as part of a unit, not as the focus of a spotlight.

That doesn’t mean his ‘60s work outside Pentangle wasn’t worthwhile. And while none of the six albums on this box set are that hard to get elsewhere, it’s handy to have all of them in one place, with a 24-page illustrated booklet of historical liner notes. Each of the albums is housed in a sleeve replicating the original front and back covers, and all but one has bonus material, though not so much that it’s an automatic acquisition for Renbourn fans.

The heart of the CD-sized box is in the three solo albums: the 1966 self-titled debut, the follow-up Another Monday (from later in ’66), and the tongue-twistingly titled Sir John Alot of Merrie Englandes Musyk Thyng & Ye Grene Knyghte, issued in 1968 almost simultaneously with Pentangle’s debut LP. There’s also 1966’s Bert and John, which isn’t so much a dry run for Pentangle as a kind of capstone for Jansch and Renbourn’s pure folk era. Filling out the set are the two albums he did with expatriate American singer Dorris Henderson (1966’s There You Go and 1967’s Watch the Stars), which were sought-after rarities for many years, but made easily available on CD quite some time ago.

That’s quite a productive three-year run, considering he was also busy cementing folk-rock-pop stardom of sorts with Pentangle from 1967 onward. If these LPs weren’t on the level of Pentangle or Jansch’s, they have their pleasures, if fairly modest ones. The first two solo outings make for highly agreeable low-key, cool-out listening as he fluidly ambles between folk, blues, and various combinations of the two. Another Monday holds additional interest for the presence of a pre-Pentangle Jacqui McShee on low-profile vocals for a few tracks. If Renbourn’s singing was pretty faceless compared to Jansch or McShee, and not even quite as imbued with character as adequate British folk singers like Davy Graham, it doesn’t drag things down either.

Sir John Alot (as everyone refers to it for convenience) finds him branching out a bit, if not hugely, with some ventures into medieval-flavored music. There’s also some modest backing from other musicians, including hand drums by Pentangle’s Terry Cox, though it stops well short of the more-or-less folk-rock Pentangle themselves were generating at the same time. Mostly instrumental, Bert and John might have been taken as the ultimate British folk guitar summit meeting at the time, and was certainly appreciated by some rock musicians, Jimmy Page likely among them.

Renbourn takes a more secondary role on Henderson’s records, but he’s not an incidental accompanist. His guitar work is arguably more interesting than the vocals, which are okay but not up to the standard of McShee’s, to take an obvious comparison. The sole bonus cut to Watch the Stars, however, is an interesting oddity on a couple grounds. Her cover of “Message to Pretty” on a non-LP 1967 single, if indeed Renbourn is playing on it (the liners have no specific comments about the personnel), is the only time this set gets into pure electric folk-rock, done fairly well in this instance. It must also be one of the few Love covers by British artists of the time. Was it perhaps even the first to make it onto disc?

Other bonus cuts include a couple alternate versions from Sir John Alot; a song apiece from Jansch’s It Don’t Bother Me and Jack Orion albums (as Renbourn played on those tracks); and outtakes from John Renbourn, including the blues “Can’t Keep from Crying” and Jackson C. Frank’s “Blues Run the Game.” Renbourn went on to make many more albums, but these are his most notable ones outside Pentangle, and worth attention by both Pentangle completists and ‘60s British folk fans in general. (This review originally appeared in Ugly Things.)

12. Bob Dylan, Travelin’ Thru, 1967-1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 15 (Sony Legacy). This might be stating the obvious, but this three-CD set would rank higher if I was more of a Dylan fan, or even more of a fan of this era of Dylan. Basically it focuses on John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline outtakes, with four tracks he performed with Earl Scruggs in 1970 for a Scruggs documentary. Which means the years in this package’s title should really have been 1967-1970, but no refunds are likely if you complain about the inaccuracy.

The highlights are the alternate takes of seven John Wesley Harding songs. While overall they’re not terribly different from the ones used on this quickly recorded LP, sometimes they’re a tad rockier than the ones selected, especially on a much faster “I Pity the Poor Immigrant.” Conversely, the alternate “As I Went Out One Morning” has a much slower, more irregular beat, and isn’t as good as the official version, but is at least different. Never having liked Nashville Skyline much, I wasn’t too interested in the alternates for that LP, the exception being “Take 2” of “Lay Lady Lay.” Though hardly inadequate, it’s inferior to the hit single in every way, particularly as Kenneth Buttrey had yet to play his cowbell and bongo percussion. Technically speaking, it’s not previously unreleased, as it was available “as a digital download with iTunes pre-orders of Together Through Life.”

Almost twenty Dylan-Johnny Cash duets from February 1969, many of them long bootlegged, take up about half the collection. It’s nice to have these in better sound quality, including a few tracks (like “Wanted Man”) that haven’t shown up on bootlegs I’ve seen. But while the rockabilly-cum-country-rock treatments are fun to hear, they still sound rushed and ragged, with Cash’s vocals and songs far more to the foreground than Dylan’s. Filling out the set are the audio from a few songs Dylan did on Cash’s TV show in 1969; a couple Self-Portrait outtakes from May 1969; and the folky, and marginally interesting, Scruggs-Dylan collaborations. The annotation’s decent (though not exhaustive), but it’s one of the less essential installments in Dylan’s Bootleg Series, even as it diligently documents the leftovers from his Nashville country-rock phase. 

The Self-Portrait outtake of “Folsom Prison Blues,” by the way, starts accelerating like an out-of-control locomotive near the end. It’s worth reviving Paul Cable’s observation on this cut in his book Bob Dylan: His Unreleased Recordings: “All Dylan can find to do with it is speed it up to a ludicrous rate as the end of the song approaches. If this was not the musicians playing a joke on him it must have been Dylan deciding he wanted to get this whole Nashville bit out of the way as soon as possible.”

13. Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & the Trinity, This Wheel’s on Fire: The Lost Broadcasts (Vogon). There are no liner notes, or annotation as to when and where these tracks were recorded, on this gray area-looking release (nice color cover photo, though). That diminishes its value somewhat. But if you can cope with the absence of context, it’s a solid collection of late-‘60s-sounding radio and/or TV broadcasts, with pretty good sound that never has lo-fi bootleg quality. Besides featuring this British soul-rock/jazz/slightly psych act’s sole big hit, “This Wheel’s on Fire,” it also has some of their better known songs (a cover of David Ackles’s “The Road to Cairo,” “Save Me,” “A Kind of Love-In,” “Why Am I Treated So Bad”) and less traveled items like “Shadows of You” (a really swinging treatment that’s the disc’s highlight) and “I’m Going Back Home.” There’s also a song from Driscoll’s 1969 solo album, “A New Awakening” (no details about whether this version was cut with Auger, natch). Also present are some instrumentals spotlighting Auger’s organ (again, no info on whether these were done with the Trinity), including an almost unrecognizable arrangement of “A Day in the Life.” I find Auger’s organ more impressive than Driscoll’s singing, but their combination was unusual and interesting, if not destined to last considering their individual ambitions. 

Also out this year on the London Calling label is a less impressive collection of a dozen Driscoll/Auger/Trinity live/TV recordings, Live on Air 1967-68. A problem is that they didn’t vary their repertoire too much for these performances, which include three versions of “Save Me,” two of “Season of the Witch,” two of “Tramp,” and two of “Red Beans and Rice.” At least it has an orchestrated cover of Nina Simone’s/the Animals’ “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” that’s not found on their studio releases. It also has basic liner notes that at least give dates and locations for all of the tracks, though on the whole it’s not as impressive or adventurous in its material and execution as The Lost Broadcasts.

14. Tim Buckley, Live at the Electric Theatre Company Chicago, 1968 (Manifesto). Can you have too much previously unreleased live Tim Buckley? Not if you’re as much of a fan like I am, but even I have to concede some of those archive recordings aren’t for everyone, or even for frequent listening by fans. This double CD of live recordings from May 1968 falls into this category, as indeed does much of his posthumous live discography, which now include about a dozen discs’ worth. When you add on a few CDs of studio outtakes, there’s now way more posthumously issued stuff in Buckley’s catalog than what he managed to put out while he was alive—and he was fairly prolific in generating official albums when he was alive.

This isn’t everyone’s opinion, but I find most of Buckley’s live tapes markedly inferior to his studio output. He really did benefit from good production and full arrangements, which fortunately he often had. Outside the studio his songs, particularly on his more acoustic-oriented sets, were more bare-bones, and tended much more to sound like each other. That’s true of these performances, on which he’s backed only by Carter C.C. Collins on congas and an unidentified bass player. And like plenty of artists in concert, he often went on for too long.

So what’s this doing on this list, if near the bottom? His voice was so good it’s always good to hear it, even if it’s often more interesting here than the material. The songs include a good number of pieces he didn’t put on his studio albums, among them the largely instrumental “Look Out Blues” and, more interestingly, “The Father Song,” though that was heard in the obscure film Changes. Among the covers are Johnny Cash’s “Big River,” which he somehow stretches to almost eight minutes in a nearly unrecognizable interpretation. Much more satisfying is Fred Neil’s “Dolphins,” sung and played well here, and the definite highlight of the set. Add good liner notes with comments by Buckley songwriting collaborator Larry Beckett and sideman Lee Underwood, and there’s enough here to make this worthwhile for Buckley collectors, though it’s not a place to start even in his posthumous catalog.

15. Janis Joplin, The 1969 Transmissions (Leftfield Media). No big surprises here on what looks like a gray area release, as it’s not on Sony, which handles Joplin’s solo catalog. This 76-minute CD simply presents good-sounding live performances from Amsterdam on April 1, 1969, and the Texas International Pop Festival on August 30 of the same year. A note on the back says this is from FM broadcasts, and while I’m not sure about that, the fidelity’s very good, about up to official release quality. It’s not much different from official live material that’s come out from other Joplin performances from that year, and doesn’t have any big surprises in the set list. But her singing’s good and the backup decent (though not as inspired, if more polished, than Big Brother & the Holding Company). Plenty of her favorites are here, sometimes in multiple versions, like “Summertime,” “Combination of the Two,” “Ball and Chain,” “Piece of My Heart,” and “Try (Just a Little Bit Harder).” There’s more from Amsterdam than Texas, the Amsterdam set getting the edge. A good supplement to your Joplin collection if you’re a big fan, though not absolutely vital.

16. Various Artists, Land of 1000 Dances: The Rampart Records 58^th Anniversary Complete Singles Collection (Minky). Where do you list a four-CD box set in which just one of the discs is really good, and only about three-quarters of that one disc at that? Here, I guess. Rampart Records was one of several imprints run by Eddie Davis. It specialized for the most part in the kind of soul-pop-rock-Latin hybrids generated by numerous East Los Angeles acts in the 1960s and early ‘70s, most of them by Latino artists (as well as a few African-American ones). Spanning the singles issued on Rampart from 1961 to 1968, the first two CDs are kind of so-so. The two actual hits (Cannibal & the Headhunters’ “Land of 1000 Dances” and the Blendells’ “La, La, La, La, La”) are by far the best tracks.

Yet, at least relatively speaking, most of disc three catches fire, at least for the first fourteen of its eighteen tracks. Featuring 1968-72 singles, none by well known names, these are really fine soul-pop-Latin confections. Sometimes they have a gauzy production that helps make them sound about five years older than they actually were, but that’s part of what makes them cool. Even the cover versions—of “Evil Ways” and Bobbie Gentry’s “Mississippi Delta” by the Village Callers, and “Crystal Blue Persuasion” by the Invincibles—are worth hearing. You wouldn’t think Tommy James’s “Crystal Blue Persuasion” a logical choice for a soul harmony group cover, but the Invincibles pull it off very convincingly and well. There’s a dreamy production to some of the sweet romantic tunes that’s unlike most of the other soul of the era, and some Latin-rock toughness to the more uptempo arrangements. The Hummingbird 4’s 1972 instrumental “Cho Cho San” is guaranteed to hit the spot for anyone who liked El Chicano’s somewhat similar hit “Viva Tirado.”

Unfortunately, the last four songs on CD three, and most of CD four (which has 1976-1991 recordings), are kind of terrible, with a lot of space for mediocre disco. The value’s enhanced by a good book of detailed liner notes (most by the late Don Waller) and fine photos, and if CD three was a standalone disc that cut off the four late-‘70s disco numbers, it would have made the top ten. It’s not, so it’s kind of in the honorable mention/just-sneaked-into-the-bottom part here.

17. Booker T. & the MG’s, The Complete Stax Singles Vol. 1 (1962-1967) (Real Gone). The best early Booker T. & the MG’s singles, like “Green Onions,” “Soul Dressing,” and “Hip Hug-Her,” tend to make it onto their best-of compilations. They’re also quite a bit better than most of their other singles, whether tracks from the A-sides and B-sides. Still, it’s neat to have everything from their first five years of 45s on one 29-track CD. The playing’s always sharp and often stellar, even if some of the material is run-of-the-mill R&B. There are also some good cuts that aren’t well known, like their moody-verging-on-spooky interpretation of the oft-covered “Summertime” and the delicately minor-keyed “Winter Snow,” one of those rare Christmas-affiliated discs that wholly avoids sappiness. I don’t have too much more to say about this collection, but there’s plenty about their early years in the 16-page booklet.

18. Jimi Hendrix, Songs for Groovy Children: The Fillmore East Concerts (Legacy). Back in 1970, six songs from Hendrix’s January 1, 1970 show at the Fillmore East comprised the Band of Gypsys album. Since then, additional material from all four of the sets he did at the Fillmore East on December 31, 1969 and January 1, 1970—with Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on drums—has come out on an assortment of subsequent releases, and sometimes only on concert film, or in edited versions. This five-CD box presents, for the first time, everything from all four of the sets. Seven of the tracks haven’t been available anywhere. So for these reasons alone, it’s an historic document. 

But what about the listening experience? Opinions on Hendrix’s catalog vary strongly, and one school feels this more R&B-oriented, post-Experience approach with African-American musicians is what he should have followed, or even been following all along. Mine is that this trio wasn’t nearly as good as the Experience with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding. They don’t do the Experience-era songs as well, and the more recent compositions by Hendrix weren’t as good as his earlier ones. And despite the skill of the players, plenty of the tunes meander or go on too long.

As this is Hendrix (with Buddy Miles taking vocals on a few songs), this is still worth hearing. “Machine Gun” alone, heard in three separate versions, validates this era, even if none of his other newer compositions were up to that epic. Billy Cox’s liner notes are interesting, and the booklet has plenty of cool photos. But I can’t say I’ll pull this out for nearly as much listening as my favorite Hendrix recordings, accounting for its low slot on this list.

Getting honorable mentions, as well as fulfilling the all-important task of padding this list into a round number of twenty, are two albums that were released in 2018, but which I didn’t get to hear until 2019:

1. David Bowie, The Lost Sessions (2018, Leftfield Media). While this double CD is almost certainly an unauthorized release, that hasn’t kept it from being sold online through the most mainstream commercial outlets, or in fact from being stocked by a public library in my area. Nonetheless, it’s a useful supplement to the official Bowie at the Beeb compilation, gathering 1967-71 radio sessions (as well as a couple stray outtakes, a brief 1966 interview, and a 1972 TV appearance) that didn’t make it onto that two-CD collection. There’s nothing in the way of songs unavailable in any form elsewhere, except the unexceptional 1970 studio outtake “Tired of My Life.” But there are a good number of performances of relatively obscure items from his catalogue, like “Little Bombardier,” “When I Live My Dream,” “Width of a Circle,” and “Amsterdam.” The sound’s usually pretty good, but only fair on the eight tracks from February 5, 1970. Other strikes against it: five other tracks from that February 5, 1970 broadcast have long been available on bootleg, but are not present here. And the liner notes are almost nonexistent, although at least the dates and sources of the original broadcasts are listed.

2. The Beach Boys, Wake the World: The Friends Sessions & I Can Hear Music: The 20/20 Sessions (2018, iTunes). It’s hard to say whether these things qualify as “albums” these days, since they’re only commercially available as downloads from iTunes. Still, they do add up to three CDs of outtakes from late-‘60s Beach Boys LPs, issued just in time to extend their copyright, a la some other iTunes-only releases by big acts. Maybe they should be considered as two reissues, but I’m combining them into one review here as the batch came out all at once, and almost everything was recorded pretty close to each other.

I’m not nearly as big a fan of Friends or 20/20 (or for that matter any of their post-Smile recordings) as some other Beach Boys cultists are. Here we have leftovers and works-in-progress from LPs that weren’t among their best, or even particularly great. The modest hit singles from these albums—“I Can Hear Music,” “Do It Again,” and “Friends”—are still by far the most memorable tracks. Some of the covers are really ill-suited for the group, whether tunes that ended up coming out on the albums like “Bluebirds Over the Mountain” or “Cottonfields,” or weird choices that didn’t (“My Little Red Book”). Like the 1967 Beach Boys outtakes that came out recently, a lot of these are fragments, or have a backing track/incomplete feeling, like the almost grim instrumental version of Buffalo Springfield’s “Rock and Roll Woman,” though original material dominates.

So what’s the good news? It’s still almost always nice to hear their harmonies, which still sound identifiably Beach Boys and like no other group, even when their material had changed enormously from just two or three years before these sessions. The arrangements and melodies might not be a match for that classic era either, but they’re often eccentric enough to keep your interest. They frequently hit a weird zone between the almost experimental and a desire to be accessible that just can’t be suppressed. Even some of the incomplete-sounding compositions are considerably attractive, above all “Been Too Long” (also known as “Can’t Wait Too Long”). It sounds like a nice hook in search of some more lyrics to fill out verses, or a chorus in search of the rest of the song. So you can file this in the “good to have” section if you’re a big Beach Boys fan, with the caution that it’s even more peripheral than many such outtake collections are.