Category Archives: favorite bands

Favorite Bands: Electric Light Orchestra (Part III)

Posted on by
Reply

ELO effectively broke up in July of 1986 once Jeff Lynne’s contractual obligations were over, and he spent the next several years working closely with many of his musical friends as a producer. His biggest project was with ex-Beatle George Harrison on his 1987 comeback album Cloud Nine. George himself hadn’t released a record in five years (the last being 1982’s meandering Gone Troppo) and what better than to introduce his new sound with someone who knew exactly how his former band sounded? It definitely has Lynne’s signature sound all over it, but it only complements Harrison’s new fresh sound. It was a huge hit and remains a favorite — and its first single “Got My Mind Set On You” still gets occasional airplay. Its second single, a nod to Harrison’s younger years in the Beatles, is a perfect mix of Harrison psychedelia and Lynne dreaminess.

Harrison enjoyed the success of his album and had been planning to record a b-side with a few of his musician friends, including Lynne, but the end result was so fun and radio-friendly that they made a full album together under the name The Traveling Wilburys alongside Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison. Lynne and Petty were the youngest in the group and it must have blown their minds to be working so closely with their musical heroes. They would record two records together.

But Lynne was only getting started. He’d also worked with Orbison solo on his Mystery Girl album, Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever, and wrote several songs for others. And in 1990 he released his first solo album, Armchair Theatre, and in 1991 he worked with Petty again with the Heartbreakers album Into the Great Wide Open, which became one of the band’s biggest sellers.

And then he got to work with the Beatles, his favorite band ever.

In 1994, when Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr reconvened to work on the Anthology project, they’d had in mind that they’d record some new music under the hallowed name — the first new music by the band in twenty-five years — and Lynne was a perfect choice. He knew and understood their sound and could co-produce it without stepping on anyone’s shoes, history or egos. The plan was to take three songs that John Lennon had written and recorded in rough demo form in the late 70s, with Yoko Ono’s blessings. Two songs were recorded, “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love”, and both were huge hits and added to the official discography.

Lynne would keep busy through the rest of the decade continuing his production and songwriting work, with the likes of Tom Jones, Roger McGuinn, Joe Cocker, and Paul McCartney on his Flaming Pie record.

Meanwhile…the rest of the band did not disappear from view. Drummer Bev Bevan, bassist Kelly Groucutt and violintist Mik Kaminski created their own version of the ELO brand with Electric Light Orchestra Part II, with vocals provided by Eric Troyer. While not exactly a chart success, they did retain the classic pop-with-strings ELO sound, and the albums are worth checking out. Bevan would leave the line-up after the second album, but Troyer and Kaminski have continued the project under its new name, The Orchestra, which is still alive and thriving as a touring band.

*

Coming soon: Part IV, in which Lynne revives the ELO name once again, with several compilations and new recordings!

Favorite Bands: Electric Light Orchestra (Part II)

Posted on by
Reply

…not to be confused with the Lynne-less ELO Part II, led by longtime drummer Bev Bevan, of course…more on that in a few. ANYWAY!

After the middling success of Discovery — while a strong and solid album, many critics felt it was a bit too poppy and dance-friendly — Jeff Lynne and the band were asked to write several songs for what was initially a lower-budget roller-disco movie somewhat inspired by an old classic called Down to Earth, about an otherworldly muse that comes down from the heavens to inspire a down-on-his-luck artist. After several rewrites, the addition of Olivia Newton-John in the muse role and Gene Kelly as the artist’s mentor and friend, Xanadu dropped in late June 1980 as a fun cheeseball summer flick. The movie bombed severely for many reasons (an extremely wobbly script for one, and supremely cheesy effects for another), but its soundtrack, featuring ONJ songs on one side and ELO songs on the other, remains a classic. And yes, it is considered a so-bad-it’s-great cult classic. You’ve got to love the terrible 80s-ness of it all:

…although there is the saving grace of a wonderful Don Bluth-animated sequence!

Regardless of its utter cheesiness, nine-year-old me was utterly obsessed with the movie and the soundtrack. Its magical-girl-from-another-world story fascinated me and even then inspired me to want to write a story like that. It would take me multiple decades to do so, of course, but that was one of the many movies that jumpstarted my interest in writing fiction.

So. What do you do to follow up something like that? Well, you return to your classic prog tendencies and write another concept album, of course! Time was Lynne’s foray into pure science fiction, about a man wakes up to find himself over a hundred years into the future with no way of returning, and trying to make sense of the world he’s been sent to. It’s not a weird album compared to other ELO records, but it definitely stuck out from most other records of the era. It’s not the most popular, but it’s universally loved by many fans. And if anything, it’s got a hell of a great rockin’ first single, “Hold On Tight”.

Its second single, “Twilight”, stalled in the mid-30s on the UK and US charts, but two years later it would reach cult status as the unauthorised soundtrack for the opening animation for DAICON IV, a science fiction convention in Osaka, Japan. [The fledgling animators themselves, including Hideaki Anno of Evangelion fame, would soon create the well-known anime studio Gainax.] This film has become so iconic and popular that in 2005 for the TV version of the popular Densha Otoko (Train Man), the animated opening credits is a nod to the original.

[As I’ve mentioned before, both Xanadu and Time were a major influence and inspiration for my novel In My Blue World. Part of the idea for it came from my melding the two album’s themes together — the magical girl changing fate and the mental strain of time travel — and both albums got significant play while I wrote it. If you are interested, the e-book is available at Smashwords.]

In 1983, Lynne wished to release a double album, but the US label (CBS) nixed the idea and released the one-disc Secret Messages instead. This is a very underrated album in that it doesn’t get nearly as much love as most of ELO’s earlier albums, but it is extremely enjoyable and contains quite a few strong tunes such as “Rock ‘n’ Roll Is King” and the title song. I highly suggest checking out the 2018 reissue that returns the album to its double-disc original idea and gives it an even stronger flow.

Lynne would then spend the next couple of years working as a producer for other musicians and bands, including Dave Edmunds (including his surprise hit “Slipping Away”), the Everly Brothers and ABBA’s Agnetha Fältskog, as well as providing music for another quirky film called Electric Dreams, before reconvening with ELO on 1986’s Balance of Power. Essentially a contractual obligation album for his label, it’s not one of their strongest records and is often overlooked due to its slick sound and lack of popular singles, but it does contain the catchy single “Calling America”, which did get considerable airplay regardless.

ELO, for all intents and purposes, disbanded at the end of 1986 after a minor tour. Lynne jumped full-time into music production…and unexpected major success working with one of his childhood heroes on not one but three projects!

*

Coming next Tuesday: post-ELO solo and production work, revisiting old classics, and rebuilding the band – twice!

Favorite Bands: Electric Light Orchestra (Part I)

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve spoken about this band many times before and I’m sure I’ll do it again, but ELO remains one of my favorite bands from my childhood that Wasn’t The Beatles (well, almost not the Beatles, anyway…heh). And while its singer Jeff Lynne celebrates the band’s 50th anniversary with multiple Apple and Spotify playlists, it’s interesting to see how this band evolved over its long career. And since it is a long career, it’s gonna take a few posts to check it all out!

The idea of ELO was actually not Lynne’s but of singer Roy Wood, who at the time was the leader of The Move. He’d been the one to come up with the idea of mixing strings and classical elements with the rock format, and Lynne was more than delighted to join in on this project. As it happened, Wood only remained for the band’s self-titled 1971 debut (renamed ‘No Answer’ in the US due to a communication misunderstanding) and the mood seems very proggy here, but you can already hear the seeds of Lynne’s ‘Beatlesque’ pop style of songwriting.

Their second album, simply entitled Electric Light Orchestra II and released in 1973 after a significant lineup change, suffered from similar prog meanderings, though it did score a surprise hit with a rocking cover of “Roll Over Beethoven”, featuring a clever insertion of the opening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

Album three, On the Third Day (also from 1973), showed they were almost there. The extended prog ideas were slowly phased out to focus more on tighter and shorter melodies (but not without a few fun forays into classical, including an interesting take on Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King”). The single “Showdown”, added to the US editions of the album, ended up breaking them towards a wider mainstream audience.

Now album four, 1974’s Eldorado, was where they really hit their stride. An odd yet extremely entertaining concept album about a daydreamer with an eye-catching cover still from The Wizard of Oz, it features their next big single, “Can’t Get It Out of My Head” which became a rock and pop radio staple. I distinctly remember hearing this on the local AM pop station as a kid. [Also worth checking out is one of my favorite ELO deep cuts, “Mister Kingdom”, which ended up being the song I used as Krozarr’s theme in In My Blue World.]

They followed it up one year later with Face the Music in 1975, and by this time Lynne and the band had perfected their odd hybrid and started having numerous hit singles and radio hits through the rest of the decade.

In 1976 they dropped A New World Record, which sounded even more Beatlesque than anything else they’d done previously. Gorgeous ballads like “Telephone Line” hinted at McCartney’s best on Abbey Road, “Livin’ Thing” hinted at the complex experimentation of Sgt Pepper, and the silly yet fun “Rockaria!” harkened back to the hard-rocking covers of Beatles for Sale.

And then, in 1977, they dropped their double album opus, Out of the Blue, which many still consider to be their crowning achievement. It featured several hit singles, it was a multi-platinum seller, and it even features a weather-themed four-song concerto! There are so many famous and well-loved songs on this one that if you had to buy only one ELO record, this would definitely be the one. [This was one of two of their albums that influenced and inspired my novel In My Blue World. The title of the novel itself comes from the single and opening track “Turn to Stone”.]

And of course, the massive hit single and fan favorite “Mr. Blue Sky” was used to absolutely hilarious effect as the opening credits for 2017’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2.

They’d bring the seventies to a close with a bright and shimmery album called Discovery in 1979. It was by far their most commercial sounding record, with the strings mostly sliding into the background and the danceable rock melodies coming to the fore, including radio favorites “Don’t Bring Me Down” and “Shine a Little Love”. Interestingly, the band created promotional videos for every single track on the album, which are available on YouTube.

*

So what would the 80s bring this band…? More hits, a killer half-soundtrack to a lemon of a movie, a cult-classic concept album about time travel, and eventually dissolution. But Lynne didn’t necessarily stop there, nor did he drop off the face of the earth! Stay tuned!

Favorite Albums: Nation of Language, ‘A Way Forward’

Posted on by
Reply

Yeah, I know…it’s not often I label a brand spankin’ new album a favorite, but I’m willing to make exceptions. Interpol’s Turn On the Bright Lights, Failure’s Fantastic Planet, Beck’s Morning Phase, and so on…they’re the records where every single song captures my attention in that whoa what am I hearing?? sort of way.

Nation of Language is a Brooklyn trio that has been getting some serious airplay on KEXP and I’m sure is capturing the attention of Spotify listeners as well. Their influence is obvious: early Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (we’re talking way before “If You Leave” here). They capture OMD’s fragile synth melodies and moods perfectly while bring their own spirit into the mix. Their debut album Introduction, Presence came out in May of last year, and they’ve just dropped their new one, A Way Forward, earlier this month.

Every track on this album is well worth checking out, as are their low-budget yet enjoyable videos!

On the Shopping List: The Clockworks

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been hearing songs from this band on KEXP for a while now and I know almost nothing about them other than they’re originally from Galway, Ireland but relocated to London, and that they were signed to Alan McGee’s Creation23 Records a short while back. And hot damn if I REALLY want them to come out with an album soon!!

They definitely check a hell of a lot of my favorite alt-rock tick-boxes when it comes to their style: bright and jangly sound, intelligent yet often witty lyrics, catchy-as-hell melodies, and a consistently driving energy behind the songs that makes you believe they’d kick all kinds of ass live.

As far as I know, they’ve dropped a handful of singles — they only have one listed in Discogs, but Amazon does carry some their tracks — but yeah, I need an album from this band as soon as possible.

Go check them out!

Spare Oom Playlist, October 2021 Edition, Part II

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s the second half of October’s playlist as promised! Only two all-caps names this time, heh. Have fun and enjoy!

FINNEAS, Optimist, released 15 October. Billie Eilish’s brother comes out from behind the instruments and laptops and releases his own solo album. Like Billie, he’s a super-soft singer, but it works with the ballads and ponderings he’s featured here. As I’d hoped, his songwriting is just like on his sister’s album: the closer you listen to it, the more creative it is.

Deerhoof, Actually, You Can, released 22 October. They’re definitely your classic weirdo alt-rock band on par with Liars and Animal Collective that aren’t always easy on the ears, yet somehow you can’t stop listening to them. You never quite know where the songs are going to go next.

Clinic, Fantasy Island, released 22 October. This is another odd band, this time with one foot firmly entrenched in a Silver Apples-like motorik synthesizer sound. They’re definitely a ‘critic fave’ sort of band that never gets airplay, but they’re worth checking out.

Black Marble, Fast Idol, released 22 October. They’re part of the current wave of synth bands recapturing that UK synthpop sound (think super early OMD, well before their hit song), and they’re so much fun to listen to, especially for a GenXer like me. It’s like listening to college radio again!

Duran Duran, Future Past, released 22 October. This album is definitely a change from their previous record, 2015’s Paper Gods, in that they’ve moved slightly away from the dance grooves and headed towards inventive rock territory — sort of like 1988’s Big Thing in a way, come to think of it. It’s got some truly odd moments but it’s a a super fascinating listen.

La Luz, La Luz, released 22 October. Quirky lofi-ish indie pop that hints at garagey surf rock with maybe even a pinch of Stereolab. Bouncy, light fun.

RUFUS DU SOL, Surrender, released 22 October. I do loves me some epic-sounding moody electronica, especially for writing sessions! This is a relatively new band find for me, and I’m quite digging this record.

Parquet Courts, Sympathy for Life, released 22 October. This is another one of those weirdo bands I didn’t think I’d get into, but they keep coming out with great alt-rock gems that get stuck in my brain for hours at a time. They never really take themselves all that seriously, which makes their songs even more fun!

The The, The Comeback Special, released 29 October. Matt Johnson surprised everyone a while back by staging a comeback tour (including a stop in San Francisco, which I was able to catch!) in addition to releasing several of his Radio Cineola projects and soundtracks for his brother’s films. This record is pretty much a single entire show from start to finish, and it just shows how many amazing songs he’s written over the last several decades.

Billy Bragg, The Million Things That Never Happened, released 29 October. Still going strong since the 80s, he still writes the great troubador folk songs (now in the form of catchy alternapop these days) that are intelligent, catchy, and quite often amusing. And it sounds like he’s not going to quit any time soon.

Tori Amos, Ocean to Ocean, released 29 October. Another great songwriter releases a quiet and moody lockdown album inspired in part by her Cornwall surroundings and also the US Capitol riots.

Geese, Projector, released 29 October. This NYC band sounds like they dug deep in their local inspirations, as they definitely have that arch No-Wave sound similar to Television. There’s a hint of grooviness, a hint of jam-band meandering, and college radio moodiness on this record that really makes this band fascinating.

*

Whew! That was a lot for the last half of October, and it looks like November’s going to have an overflow of great records as well! Not going to complain, of course…

Spare Oom Playlist, October 2021 Edition, Part I

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been one hell of a busy October musicwise here in Spare Oom. Not only did we have the long-awaited return of Outside Lands, but there was all sorts of great music that dropped, and this is only the first half of it!

POND, 9, released 1 October. I jumped in on this one unheard essentially due to having heard about them and reading rave reviews, and I wasn’t let down. It’s got that early 00s alt-dance-rock thing going with a bit of post-punk skitteriness to it as well. A really fun listen!

Brandi Carlile, In These Silent Days, released 1 October. I’ve been meaning to listen to more of Brandi’s stuff because she’s a musician that all the critics love but nobody (apart from KEXP) ever seems to play her stuff. And this is an absolutely lovely album worth checking out.

JOHN, Nocturnal Manoeuvres, released 8 October. Also known as JOHN (TIMESTWO), this is yet another band I found thanks to KEXP during one of their music festival broadcasts a few years back. Loud and growly (and indeed played by two guys named John), they’re up there with Idles as a band that’s really fun to listen to loud.

BADBADNOTGOOD, Talk Memory, released 8 October. Yet another capitalized band name! You may know them as the band behind the super-groovy remix of Future Islands’ “Seasons” a few years back, their new record is a fun album of funky and poppy jazz.

Johnny Marr, Fever Dreams Pt 1 EP, released 15 October. Marr drops the first of multiple EPs that will create a full album that’ll be released later in 2022. This particular EP sounds a lot like his work with Bernard Sumner in Electronic.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Georgia Blue, released 15 October. During the November Presidential election last year, Isbell tweeted that if Biden won the state of Georgia, he’d record a full album of songs from bands from that state. Biden won, and Isbell made good on it, releasing an absolutely amazing record of songs from REM, Cat Power, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Indigo Girls, The Black Crowes, and more. Highly recommended!

The Beatles, Let It Be Super Deluxe, released 15 October. This had to have been the toughest Beatles album for Giles Martin to work on, considering its source material and its history as a solid but admittedly spotty-sounding record. Still, he manages to improve on the Spectorized flourishes (dialing back the schmaltz a bit and making it less muddy) and even include the original Glyn Johns attempt when it was still known as Get Back. He did a fine job and of course we’re going to get Disney+ just so I can watch the Peter Jackson documentary!

Coldplay, Music of the Spheres, released 15 October. Their 2019 album Everyday Life was a huge favorite of mine and a very dark and inventive record for them, so I was expecting they’d follow their usual pattern of following it up with a radio-friendly poppy album. I didn’t quite expect…a space-themed concept album? It’s definitely a bit odd and weird in places, but it actually expands on the experimentation of Everyday Life, and that’s definitely a plus in my book.

ONETWOTHREE, ONETWOTHREE, released 15 October. This was one of those records I checked out purely because of the AllMusic review. It’s a fascinating record featuring three female bassists from three separate Swiss post-punk bands (Klaudia Schifferle from Kleenex/LiLiPUT, Madlaina Peer from Noknows and Sara Schaer from TNT/Souldawn) and it certainly sounds like a record that came out in 1981 and loved by college radio deejays. It’s a really fun listen.

*

More to come!

Spare Oom Playlist, September 2021 Edition

Posted on by
Reply

After all that fun with 1991, it’s time to return back to the present! Here’s some tunage that’s been on my radar since last month.

Radiohead, “If You Say the Word” single, released 3 September. One of the unreleased tracks for the upcoming KID A MNESIAC set due in November. To be honest I kind of like this one better than some of the tracks that made it to the two releases, but I’m not complaining.

Motorists, Surrounded, released 3 September. Kind of nerdy and goofy in that mid-90s slacker sort of way, but super enjoyable! They remind me a bit of Parquet Courts with their wonky-clunky melodies and Television-like vocal delivery.

Amyl & the Sniffers, Comfort to Me, released 10 September. Definitely in that Courtney Barnett pothead-punk type of sound but I love that they completely embrace that style and run with it. Props for having a great name that would make the 70s punk scene proud.

Andrew WK, God Is Partying, released 10 September. Andrew fully embraces…death metal? Didn’t see that coming at all, but hey, I rarely expect anything less than something bizarre and possibly somewhat destructive whenever he’s involved. It’s definitely a weird album even by his standards, but he pulls it off!

Low, HEY WHAT, released 10 September. Following up from their previous record, they once again add overmodulated distortion to their classic slowcore sound. It does take some getting used to, but it does work well with their style.

Saint Etienne, I’ve Been Trying to Tell You, released 10 September. It’s wild that I’ve been a fan since 1992’s Foxbase Alpha, and they’ve gone through so many different song styles between then and now, and yet they still come up with something new. This particular record leans heavily on meandering mostly-instrumental electronica that’s both relaxing and intriguing.

Sneaker Pimps, Squaring the Circle, released 10 September. This was definitely a “wait–when did they release this???” album that very nearly escaped my notice until I happened to hear KEXP playing one of its tracks one morning. This one may not have the 90’s triphop or the 00’s twitchiness of previous albums, but it’s just as dark and unsettling.

Sleigh Bells, Texis, released 10 September. I do loves me some Sleigh Bells, because they’re such a fun band to listen to with the volume pumped up! Guitar crunch so processed it’s crackling, perky vocals hiding darker images, and super catchy melodies.

José González, Local Valley, released 17 September. “El Invento” is such a lovely acoustic track that it completely sold me on checking out the rest of José’s album, and it most definitely delivers. He’s an amazing guitarist and a wonderful songwriter. Highly recommended!!

Public Service Broadcasting, Bright Magic, released 24 September. This time out PSB turns towards retro-disco and classical, and the end result is surprisingly entertaining and fascinating. It almost sounds like they’ve channeled Air on this album, and that’s certainly not a bad thing.

Film School, We Weren’t Here, released 24 September. This is a band I never quite get around to collecting and I’m not sure why. They’re a California shoegaze band heavily leaning towards early Ride; sometimes dreamy and light and other times loud and powerful, but always interesting.

*

This was definitely a laid-back start to a fourth quarter, but then again, a lot of music this past year and a half has definitely been recorded piecemeal at separate home studios, incomplete due to temporary studio closures, and any other Covid-related reason. But I’m also starting to see a lot of releases — many singles and EPs at that — where things are slowly but surely returning to normal for musicians. Either way, glad to hear it all!

ABBA Returns!

Posted on by
Reply

If you haven’t heard already, last week’s huge music news was that everyone’s favorite Swedish pop group from the 70s and 80s has reunited! Not only with one but two new songs, with a new album coming in early November!

So let’s take a quick listen to the two new songs that are already getting airplay and millions of YouTube plays:

“I Still Have Faith in You” is an absolutely lovely ballad that, no lie, actually made me think, Wow, this could be a great solo centerpiece for a jukebox musica– oh. OH. Right. [It took me a moment to remember Bjorn and Benny pretty much instigated the modern stage musical style in the first place with Chess! Heh.] [ANYWAY.] This is my favorite of the two, as it really sets the tone of not only “hey, we’re back!” but “it’s been so long, can we still do this”. And they pull it off PERFECTLY. From the quiet and plaintive beginning to the determined finale with its breathtaking layered vocals, this song is absolutely flawless. And it’s definitely going to be used for stage auditions, no doubt.

The video for this one’s interesting in that it starts off as a chronological montage of the band members from their childhoods to starting the band to their worldwide success. We’re treated to wonderful (and lovingly remastered) footage of backstage preparations, meeting fans, recording in the studio, and even snippets of some of their iconic music videos. And right about 3:30 in, the song breaks down to a quiet solo refrain (“do I have it in me?”), as we see footage of the foursome once again heading towards the stage…only to see what is a stellar use of amazing computer-enhanced imagery, with the foursome on a new stage, singing this new song while appearing as themselves at their commercial peak. This hints at what will be a special London show, where they’ll be performing songs old and new while being motion-captured as their younger selves. It’s extremely joyful and reverent, especially as we realize the song isn’t just about the band themselves but their own fans.

And the other new song, “Don’t Shut Me Down”:

Okay, just in case you’d forgotten this is the ABBA we all know and love, we’re treated to a nice little musical prologue that sets the scene…only to hit us broadside with a piano glissando and a groovy mid-tempo disco beat right out of “Dancing Queen.” This one is proving to be the radio hit due to its more classical pop format, and also that it really does sound like a song from Arrival or The Album. It’s super catchy and danceable and lyrically clever without being a pastiche, further proving just how strong Benny and Bjorn’s songwriting chops truly are.

If these two songs are any indication of what the new album Voyage will sound like, sign me up because I’m already a fan. Well, I’ve been an ABBA fan since I was a kid, having constantly borrowed the albums from my older sister who was an even bigger fan back in the day. [For the record, my favorite album of theirs is Arrival and song is “SOS”. That song just has the most amazing chord progression.] I’m definitely looking forward to it.

Letting It Be

Posted on by
Reply

So this year’s Super Deluxe Beatles Reissue box set will be their final released album, Let It Be. It’s one of the most written-about, bootlegged and debated projects of their entire career, and that’s a hell of a lot for a project that lasted less than a month.

For years I only knew about the Beatles discography in a chronological order, and even though I knew this project took place before the recording and release of Abbey Road, there was a sense of finality to this record that was hard to miss. It wasn’t until I did the Blogging the Beatles series a few years back that I really took the event chronology seriously and revised my thoughts about the record.

I first saw the film back in the early 80s over my cousin’s house when it was on The Movie Channel, and like Yellow Submarine, I’d recorded it onto cassette so I could listen to it again at a later time. I’d bought the record at the local department store not that long before so I knew the songs. By the mid-80s I knew about the numerous bootlegs that had come from those sessions, thanks to Charles Reinhart’s You Can’t Do That!: Beatles Bootlegs and Novelty Records 1963-80, which I’d bought around the same time.

But what about the whole Get Back/Let It Be project, anyway? Is it really as bad as John Lennon made it out to be in his 1971 bile-fueled Rolling Stone interviews (“[Phil Spector] was given the shittiest load of badly-recorded shit with a lousy feeling to it ever, and he made something of it”)? Well, in all honesty, I think it was an interesting project that could have been a lot better and helped turn the corner in their career as a band…if they and those around them had given the band a decent hiatus. And I’m not talking a few weeks off, I’m talking maybe a few years, like most bands do nowadays between records. Give them time to be people. Do a solo record or two. Learn how to be human again instead of an icon. Sure, it was a different time and a different place and expectations were absurdly high. They’d just finished recording and releasing The Beatles just a few months earlier just after their India trip, along with the release of the Yellow Submarine movie, and by all accounts they should have taken that overdue vacation.

And yet, only months later they were back together, kicking out all sorts of ideas to top themselves once more. A return to touring? Their semi-live performances of “Hey Jude” and “Revolution” for their proto-music videos had inspired Paul and John more than they’d expected. But Ringo was already starting his film career, working with Peter Sellers in The Magic Christian (thus their hanging out at Twickenham), and George wasn’t keen on being shifted around all over the place like a few years earlier. Eventually they decided to have themselves filmed to perhaps be used as a television special.

The recordings from the Twickenham Studios are loose and meandering due to the soundtrack being recorded on a Nagra tape deck instead of a professional studio one and left running all day long. They were only there for two weeks, but most of the bootlegged material seems to stem from that time. Some of it is well-known: the “Commonwealth”/”Enoch Powell”/”No Pakistanis” riff that morphed into “Get Back”, the countless oldies covers they played to pass the time, and of course That Argument between Paul and George. Thanks to the Let It Be movie, we’re kind of led to believe it was a tense and angry time, though to be honest that tension rarely shows in the music itself, and Peter Jackson’s upcoming miniseries promises to show there were a lot of happy times as well.

Unhappy with the chilly and cavernous film studio, they took a week off, met with each other at George’s house to talk out some personal issues, and headed to their newly-complete Apple Studios on Savile Row. These recordings comprise the tighter, more complete songs that made the final album, as well as the famous rooftop performance that took place on the next-to-last day of the project.

The Super Deluxe box, which drops October 15, has been a source of a lot of debate between music blogs, Beatle podcasters, and even fans. For a project that had a ridiculous amount of source material, the box set remains conservative: A 2020 remix/remaster done by Giles Martin, the first producing attempt by Glyn Johns (he did two), an EP of related non-album remixes for completeness, and two cds of sessions and outtakes. Some feel they should have provided so much more, considering.

My take? I think it’s just the right size. I haven’t heard every single Nagra/Apple recording out there, but I’ve heard enough to know that, like the previous special editions, there’s a point where some of it really is not worth the effort. Never-completed songs that last less than thirty seconds, loosely played covers, and a lot more talking than you think. I mean, if you’re really hankering for that uber-completeness, look for the insanely involved A/B Road, an 83-cd bootleg from Purple Chick that features nearly a hundred hours of recordings.

Perhaps John wasn’t too far off when he called it “badly recorded shit”, but perhaps it was actually because so much of it essentially a weeks-long jam session with very little aim or reason to it. The Beatles were insanely creative and productive when they put their minds to it, but they (especially John) could be insanely lazy and dithering when they weren’t in the mood, especially by that point in their career. And they really were desperate to take a long overdue break by then.

Listening to the original 1970 album now, it still feels like it has a bit of finality to it, but a positive finality, of wanting to end on a high note, even if they had to dig through the source tapes to find it. While Abbey Road was the proper send-off on a high-quality, high-moment note, Let It Be was the final relaxed exhalation.