The Rolling Stones 2. Musical evolution.

The Rolling Stones

2. Musical evolution.

The Rolling Stones are notable in modern popular music for assimilating various musical genres into their recording and performance, ultimately making the styles their very own. The band's career is marked by a continual reference and reliance on musical styles like American blues, country, folk, reggae, dance; world music exemplified by the Master Musicians of Jajouka; as well as traditional English styles that use stringed instrumentation like harps. The band cut their musical teeth by covering early rock and roll and blues songs, and have never stopped playing live or recording cover songs.

2.1. Infusion of American blues.

Jagger and Richards shared an admiration of Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters and Little Walter, and their interest influenced Brian Jones, of whom Richards says, "He was more into T-Bone Walker and jazz-blues stuff. We'd turn him onto Chuck Berry and say, 'Look, it's all the same shit, man, and you can do it.'"^[4] Charlie Watts, a traditional jazz drummer, was also turned onto the blues after his introduction to the Stones. "Keith and Brian turned me on to Jimmy Reed and people like that. I learned that Earl Phillips was playing on those records like a jazz drummer, playing swing, with a straight four..."^[103]

Jagger, recalling when he first heard the likes of Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Fats Domino and other major American R&B artists, said it "seemed the most real thing"^[104] he had heard up to that point. Similarly, Keith Richards, describing the first time he listened to Muddy Waters, said it was the "most powerful music [he had] ever heard...the most expressive."^[105]

2.2. Early songwriting.

Despite the Rolling Stones' predilection for blues and R&B numbers on their early live setlists, the first original compositions by the band reflected a more wide-ranging interest. The first Jagger/Richards single, "Tell Me (You're Coming Back)," is called by critic Richie Unterberger a "pop/rock ballad... When [Jagger and Richards] began to write songs, they were usually not derived from the blues, but were often surprisingly fey, slow, Mersey-type pop numbers."^[106] "As Tears Go By," the ballad originally written for Marianne Faithfull, was one of the first songs written by Jagger and Richards and also one of many written by the duo for other artists. Jagger said of the song, "It's a relatively mature song considering the rest of the output at the time. And we didn't think of [recording] it, because the Rolling Stones were a butch blues group."^[107] The Stones did later record a version which became a top five hit in the US.^[108]

On the early experience, Richards said, "The amazing thing is that although Mick and I thought these songs were really puerile and kindergarten-time, every one that got put out made a decent showing in the charts. That gave us extraordinary confidence to carry on, because at the beginning songwriting was something we were going to do in order to say to Andrew [Loog Oldham], 'Well, at least we gave it a try...'"^[109] Jagger said, "We were very pop-orientated. We didn't sit around listening to Muddy Waters; we listened to everything. In some ways it's easy to write to order... Keith and I got into the groove of writing those kind of tunes; they were done in ten minutes. I think we thought it was a bit of a laugh, and it turned out to be something of an apprenticeship for us."^[109]

The writing of the single "The Last Time," The Rolling Stones' first major single, proved a turning point. Richards called it "a bridge into thinking about writing for the Stones. It gave us a level of confidence; a pathway of how to do it."^[44] The song was based on a traditional gospel song popularised by The Staples Singers, but the Rolling Stones' number features a distinctive guitar riff (played on stage by Brian Jones).

Studio - 4. Five Bridges 1. History, 5. References.

Studio - 4. Five Bridges

1. History.

The work was commissioned for the Newcastle Arts Festival and premiered with a full orchestra conducted by Joseph Eger on October 10, 1969 (the recorded version is from October 17 in Croydon's Fairfield Halls). The title refers to the city's five bridges spanning the River Tyne (two more have since been built over the river), and the album cover features an image of the Tyne Bridge.

The five movements are:

5. References.

1. ^ ^{a b} "Nice, The - Five Bridges (LP) at Discogs". www.discogs.com. http://www.discogs.com/Nice-Five-Bridges/release/496187. Retrieved 2009-10-03.
2. ^ "allmusic ((( Five Bridges > Overview )))". www.allmusic.com. http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:d9fuxqe5ld6e. Retrieved 2009-10-03.
3. ^ "Chart Stats - The Nice - Five Bridges". www.chartstats.com. http://www.chartstats.com/albuminfo.php?id=2636. Retrieved 2009-10-03.

• Fantasia - orchestra with solo piano interludes by Keith Emerson
• Second Bridge - trio without orchestra
• Chorale - Lee Jackson's vocals with orchestra, alternating with piano trio interludes
• High Level Fugue - piano with accompanying cymbals
• Finale - a restating of the Second Bridge with additional jazz horn players.

The most elaborate orchestral writing is the Fantasia, but even this is fairly rudimentary, which is understandable as it was Emerson's first foray into this medium. Emerson credits Friedrich Gulda for inspiring the High Level Fugue, which uses jazz figures in the strict classical form. Individually, the movements are not worthy of special notice, but the suite as a whole is remarkable for its successful integration of the disparate materials. The ambitious nature of the production is also laudable - the entire suite was recorded at a concert performance and meetings of pop groups and orchestras were not at all commonplace.

Also included on the Five Bridges album were live performances from the same Fairfield Hall concert of the Sibelius Intermezzo and a movement from Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony. Both involved the orchestra playing the "straight" music juxtaposed with the trio's interpretations. Newly discovered material from this concert was later issued as part of a 3-CD set entitled Here Come The Nice.

The Five Bridges album also included a blending of Bob Dylan's Country Pie with Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 (with a quote of Coleman Hawkins' jazz line Rifftide as well) and a studio recording of the original One of Those People.

Studio - 5. Bringing It All Back Home 4. Charts, 5. Outtakes, 6. Aftermath, 9. References.

Studio - 5. Bringing It All Back Home

4. Charts.

4.1. Album.

Year	Chart	Position
1965	Billboard 200	6
1965	UK Top 75	1

4.2. Singles.

Year	Single	Chart	Position
1965	"Subterranean Homesick Blues"	Billboard Hot 100	39
1965	"Subterranean Homesick Blues"	UK Top 75	9
1965	"Maggie's Farm"	Billboard Hot 100	Didn't chart
1965	"Maggie's Farm"	UK Top 75	22

5. Outtakes.

The following outtakes were recorded for possible inclusion to Bringing It All Back Home.

• "California" (early version of "Outlaw Blues", circulating)
• "Farewell Angelina"
• "If You Gotta Go, Go Now (Or Else You Got to Stay All Night)"
• "I'll Keep It With Mine"
• "Sitting on a Barb Wire Fence"
• "You Don't Have to Do That" (titled "Bending Down on My Stomick Lookin' West" on recording sheet)(fragment)

The raunchy "If You Gotta Go, Go Now (Or Else You Got To Stay All Night)" was issued as a single in Europe, but it would not be issued in the U.S. or the UK until The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991. An upbeat, electric performance, the song is relatively straightforward, with the title providing much of the subtext. Fairport Convention recorded a tongue-in-cheek, acoustic French-language version, "Si Tu Dois Partir," for their celebrated third album, Unhalfbricking.

"I'll Keep It With Mine" was written before Another Side of Bob Dylan and was given to Nico in 1964. Nico was not yet a recording artist at the time, and she would eventually record the song for Chelsea Girl (released in 1967), but not before Judy Collins recorded her own version in 1965. Fairport Convention would also record their own version on their critically acclaimed second album, What We Did on Our Holidays. Widely considered a strong composition from this period (Clinton Heylin called it "one of his finest songs"), a complete acoustic version, with Dylan playing piano and harmonica, was released on 1985's Biograph. An electric recording exists as well - not of an actual take but of a rehearsal from January 1966 (the sound of an engineer saying "what you were doing" through a control room mike briefly interrupts the recording) - was released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991.

"Farewell Angelina" was ultimately given to Joan Baez, who released it in 1965 as the title track of her album, Farewell, Angelina. The Greek singer Nana Mouskouri recorded her own versions of this song in French ("Adieu Angelina") in 1967 and German ("Schlaf-ein Angelina") in 1975.

"You Don't Have to Do That" is one of the great "what if" songs of Dylan's mid-1960s output. A very brief recording, under a minute long, has Dylan playing a snippet of the song, which Dylan abandoned midway through to begin playing the piano.

"Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence", first recorded during this album's sessions, would later be revisited during the Highway 61 Revisited sessions (later issued on The Bootleg Series Vol 1-3).

6. Aftermath.

The release of Bringing It All Back Home coincided with the final show of a joint tour with Joan Baez. By now, Dylan had grown far more popular and acclaimed than Baez, and his music had radically evolved from their former shared folk style in a totally unique direction. It would be the last time they would perform extensively together until 1975. (She would accompany him on another tour in May 1965, but Dylan would not ask her to perform with him.) The timing was appropriate as Bringing It All Back Home signaled a new era.

One of Dylan's most celebrated albums, Bringing It All Back Home was soon hailed as one of the greatest albums in rock history. In 1979 Rolling Stone Record Guide, critic Dave Marsh wrote a glowing appraisal: "By fusing the Chuck Berry beat of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles with the leftist, folk tradition of the folk revival, Dylan really had brought it back home, creating a new kind of rock & roll [...] that made every type of artistic tradition available to rock." Clinton Heylin later wrote that Bringing It All Back Home was possibly "the most influential album of its era. Almost everything to come in contemporary popular song can be found therein." In 2003, the album was ranked number 31 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Before the year was over, Dylan would record and release another album, Highway 61 Revisited, which would take his new lyrical and musical direction even further.

9. References.

1. ^ Williams, P. (2004). Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, 1960-1973 (2nd edition ed.). Omnibus Press. p. 138. ISBN 9781844490950.

Studio - 5. Bringing It All Back Home : 1. Cover art, 2. Recording sessions, 3. The songs,

Studio - 5. Bringing It All Back Home

1. Cover art

The album's iconic cover, photographed by Daniel Kramer, features Sally Grossman, the wife of Dylan's manager Albert Grossman, lounging in the background, while artifacts scattered around the frame include LPs by The Impressions (Keep on Pushing), Robert Johnson (King of the Delta Blues Singers), Ravi Shankar (India's Master Musician), Lotte Lenya (Sings Berlin Theatre Songs by Kurt Weill) and Eric Von Schmidt (The Folk Blues of Eric Von Schmidt). Visible behind Sally Grossman is the top of Bob Dylan's head on the cover of Another Side of Bob Dylan, and under her right arm is the Time (magazine) with Lyndon B. Johnson (Jan. 1, 1965) and a harmonica resting on a table with a fallout shelter (capacity 80) sign leaning against it. Above the fireplace on the mantle directly to the left of the painting is the Lord Buckley album The Best Of Lord Buckley. Dylan sits forward holding a cat and has an opened magazine featuring an advertisement on Jean Harlow's Life Story by the columnist Louella Parsons resting on his crossed leg. The cufflinks Dylan wears in the picture are a gift from Joan Baez, as she later wrote in her autobiography.

2. Recording sessions.

Dylan spent much of the summer of 1964 in Woodstock, a small town in upstate New York. Dylan was already familiar with the area, but his visits were becoming longer and more frequent. Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, also had a place in Woodstock, and when Joan Baez went to see Dylan that August, they stayed at Grossman's house.

Baez recalls that "most of the month or so we were there, Bob stood at the typewriter in the corner of his room, drinking red wine and smoking and tapping away relentlessly for hours. And in the dead of night, he would wake up, grunt, grab a cigarette, and stumble over to the typewriter again." Dylan already had one song ready for his next album: "Mr. Tambourine Man" was written in February 1964 but omitted from Another Side of Bob Dylan. Another song, "Gates of Eden," was also written earlier that year, appearing in the original manuscripts to Another Side of Bob Dylan; a few lyrical changes were eventually made, but it's unclear if these were made that August in Woodstock. At least two songs were written that month: "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" and "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)."

During this time, Dylan's writing became increasingly surreal. Even his prose grew more stylistic, often resembling stream-of-consciousness writing with published letters dating from 1964 becoming increasingly intense and dreamlike as the year wore on.

Dylan eventually returned to the city, and on August 28, he met with The Beatles for the very first time in their New York hotel (during which Dylan reportedly turned the band on to marijuana), a meeting which would bring about the radical transformation of the Beatles' writing to a more introspective style. Dylan would remain on good terms with The Beatles, and as biographer Clinton Heylin writes, "the evening established a personal dimension to the very real rivalry that would endure for the remainder of a momentous decade."

Dylan and producer Tom Wilson were soon experimenting with their own fusion of rock and folk music. The first unsuccessful test involved overdubbing a "Fats Domino early rock & roll thing" over Dylan's earlier, acoustic recording of "House of the Rising Sun," according to Wilson. It was quickly discarded, though Wilson would more famously use the same technique of overdubbing an electric backing track to an existing acoustic recording with Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence". In the meantime, Dylan turned his attention to another folk-rock experiment conducted by John Hammond, an old friend and musician whose father, John Hammond, originally signed Dylan to Columbia. Hammond was planning an electric album around the blues songs that framed his acoustic live performances of the time. To do this, he recruited three members of a Canadian bar band he met sometime in 1963: guitarist Robbie Robertson, drummer Levon Helm, and organist Garth Hudson (members of The Hawks, who would go on to become The Band). Dylan was very aware of the resulting album, So Many Roads; according to his friend, Danny Kalb, "Bob was really excited about what John Hammond was doing with electric blues. I talked to him in the Figaro in 1964 and he was telling me about John and his going to Chicago and playing with a band and so on..."

However, when Dylan and Wilson began work on the next album, they temporarily refrained from their own electric experimentation. The first session, held on January 13, 1965 in Columbia's Studio A in New York, was recorded solo, with Dylan playing piano or acoustic guitar. Ten complete songs and several song sketches were produced, nearly all of which were discarded. None of these recordings would be used for the album, but three would eventually be released: "I'll Keep It With Mine" on 1985's Biograph, and "Farewell Angelina" and an acoustic version of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" on 1991's The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991.

Other songs and sketches recorded at this session: "Love Minus Zero/No Limit," "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream," "She Belongs To Me," "Sitting On A Barbed-Wire Fence," "On The Road Again," "If You Gotta Go, Go Now," "You Don't Have To Do That," and "Outlaw Blues," all of which were original compositions.

Dylan and Wilson held another session at Studio A the following day, this time with a full, electric band. Guitarists Al Gorgoni, Kenneth Rankin, and Bruce Langhorne were recruited, as were pianist Paul Griffin, bassists Joseph Macho, Jr. and William E. Lee, and drummer Bobby Gregg. The day's work focused on eight songs, all of which had been attempted the previous day. According to Langhorne, there was no rehearsal, "we just did first takes and I remember that, for what it was, it was amazingly intuitive and successful." Few takes were required of each song, and after three-and-a-half hours of recording (lasting from 2:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.), master takes of "Love Minus Zero/No Limit," "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Outlaw Blues," "She Belongs To Me," and "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" were all recorded and selected for the final album.

Sometime after dinner, Dylan reportedly continued recording with a different set of musicians, including John Hammond, Jr. and John Sebastian (only Langhorne returned from earlier that day). They recorded six songs, but the results were deemed unsatisfactory and ultimately rejected.

Another session was held at Studio A the next day, and it would be the last one needed. Once again, Dylan kept at his disposal the musicians from the previous day (that is, those that participated in the 2:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. session); the one exception was pianist Paul Griffin, who was unable to attend and replaced by Frank Owens. Daniel Kramer recalls "the musicians were enthusiastic. They conferred with one another to work out the problems as they arose. Dylan bounced around from one man to another, explaining what he wanted, often showing them on the piano what was needed until, like a giant puzzle, the pieces would fit and the picture emerged whole...Most of the songs went down easily and needed only three or four takes...In some cases, the first take sounded completely different from the final one because the material was played at a different tempo, perhaps, or a different chord was chosen, or solos may have been rearranged...His method of working, the certainty of what he wanted, kept things moving."

The session began with "Maggie's Farm": only one take was recorded, and it was the only one they'd ever need. From there, Dylan successfully recorded master takes of "On The Road Again," "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," "Gates Of Eden," "Mr. Tambourine Man," and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," all of which were set aside for the album. A master take of "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" was also selected, but it would not be included on the album; instead, it was issued as a single-only release in Europe, but not in the U.S. or the UK.

Though Dylan was able to record electric versions of virtually every song included on the final album, he apparently never intended Bringing It All Back Home to be completely electric. As a result, roughly half of the finished album would feature full electric band arrangements while the other half consisted of solo acoustic performances, sometimes accompanied by Langhorne, who would embellish Dylan's acoustic performance with a countermelody on his electric guitar.

3. The songs.

The album opens with "Subterranean Homesick Blues," a romp through the difficulties and absurdities of anti-establishment politics that was heavily inspired by Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business." Often cited as a precursor to rap and music videos (the cue-card scene in Dont Look Back), "Subterranean Homesick Blues" became a Top 40 hit for Dylan.

"Snagged by a sour, pinched guitar riff, the song has an acerbic tinge...and Dylan sings the title rejoinders in mock self-pity," writes NPR's Tim Riley. "It's less an indictment of the system than a coil of imagery that spells out how the system hangs itself with the rope it's so proud of."

"She Belongs to Me" extols the bohemian virtues of an artistic lover whose creativity must be constantly fed ("Bow down to her on Sunday / Salute her when her birthday comes. / For Halloween buy her a trumpet / And for Christmas, give her a drum.")

"Maggie's Farm" is Dylan's declaration of independence from the protest folk movement. Punning on Silas McGee's Farm, where he had performed "Only a Pawn in Their Game" at a civil rights protest in 1963 (featured in the film Dont Look Back), Maggie's Farm recasts Dylan as the pawn and the folk music scene as the oppressor. Rejecting the expectations of that scene as he turns towards loud rock'n'roll, self-exploration, and surrealism, Dylan intones: "They say sing while you slave / I just get bored."

"Love Minus Zero/No Limit" is a low-key love song, described by Riley as a "hallucinatory allegiance, a poetic turn that exposes the paradoxes of love ('She knows there's no success like failure / And that failure's no success at all')...[it] points toward the dual vulnerabilities that steer 'Just Like A Woman.' In both cases, a woman's susceptibility is linked to the singer's defenseless infatuation."

"Outlaw Blues" explores Dylan's desire to leave behind the pieties of political folk and explore a bohemian, "outlaw" lifestyle. Straining at his identity as a protest singer, Dylan knows he "might look like Robert Ford" (who assassinated Jesse James), but he feels "just like a Jesse James."

"On the Road Again" catalogs the absurd affectations and degenerate living conditions of bohemia. The song concludes, "Then you ask why I don't live here / Honey, how come you don't move?".

"Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" narrates a surreal experience involving the discovery of America, the cast of Moby Dick and numerous bizarre encounters. It is the longest song in the electric section of the album, starting out as an acoustic ballad before being interrupted by laughter, and then starting back up again with an electric blues rhythm. The music is so similar in places to Another Side of Bob Dylan's "Motorpsycho Nitemare" as to be indistinguishable from it but for the electric instrumentation.

Written sometime in February 1964, "Mr. Tambourine Man" was originally recorded for Another Side of Bob Dylan; a rough performance with several mistakes, the recording was rejected, but a polished version has often been attributed to Dylan's early use of LSD, although eyewitness accounts of both the song's composition and of Dylan's first use of LSD suggest that "Mr. Tambourine Man" was actually written weeks before. Instead, Dylan said the song was inspired by a large tambourine owned by Bruce Langhorne. "On one session, Tom Wilson had asked [Bruce] to play tambourine," Dylan recalled in 1985. "And he had this gigantic tambourine...It was as big as a wagonwheel. He was playing, and this vision of him playing this tambourine just stuck in my mind." Langhorne confirmed that he "used to play this giant Turkish tambourine. It was about [four inches] deep, and it was very light and it had a sheepskin head and it had jingle bells around the edge - just one layer of bells all the way around...I bought it 'cause I liked the sound...I used to play it all the time." In addition to inspiring the title, Langhorne also played the electric guitar countermelody in the song, the only musician to play on the song besides Dylan.

A surrealist work heavily influenced by Rimbaud (most notably for the "magic swirlin' ship" evoked in the lyrics), Heylin hailed it as a leap "beyond the boundaries of folk song once and for all, with one of [Dylan's] most inventive and original melodies." Riley describes "Mr. Tambourine Man" as "Dylan's pied-piper anthem of creative living and open-mindedness...a lot of these lines are evocative without holding up to logic, even though they ring worldly." Salon.com critic Bill Wyman calls it "rock's most feeling paean to psychedelia, all the more compelling in that it's done acoustically."

Almost simultaneously with Dylan's release, the newly-formed Byrds recorded and released an electrified, abbreviated treatment of the song which would be the band's breakthrough hit, and would be a powerful force in launching the Folk Rock genre.

"Gates Of Eden" builds on the developments made with "Chimes of Freedom" and "Mr. Tambourine Man."

"Of all the songs about sixties self-consciousness and generation-bound identity, none forecasts the lost innocence of an entire generation better than 'Gates of Eden,'" writes Riley. "Sung with ever-forward motion, as though the words were carving their own quixotic phrasings, these images seem to tumble out of Dylan with a will all their own; he often chops off phrases to get to the next line."

One of Dylan's most celebrated and ambitious compositions, "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" is arguably one of Dylan's finest songs. Clinton Heylin wrote that it "opened up a whole new genre of finger-pointing song, not just for Dylan but for the entire panoply of pop," and one critic said it is to capitalism what Darkness at Noon is to communism. A fair number of Dylan's most famous lyrics can be found in this song: "He not busy being born is busy dying"; "It's easy to see without looking too far / That not much is really sacred"; "Even the president of the United States / Sometimes must have to stand naked"; "Money doesn't talk, it swears"; "If my thought-dreams could be seen / They'd probably put my head in a guillotine." In the song Dylan is again giving his audience a road map to decode his confounding shift away from politics. Amidst a number of laments about the expectations of his audience ("I got nothing, Ma, to live up to") and the futility of politics ("There is no sense in trying"; "You feel to moan but unlike before / You discover / That you'd just be / One more person crying"; "It's easy to see without looking too far / That not much / Is really sacred", Dylan tells his audience how to take his new direction:

"So don't fear if you hear / A foreign sound to your ear / It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing."

The album closes with "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", described by Riley as "one of those saddened good-bye songs a lover sings when the separation happens long after the relationship is really over, when lovers know each other too well to bother hiding the truth from each other any longer...What shines through "Baby Blue" is a sadness that blots out past fondness, and a frustration at articulating that sadness at the expense of the leftover affection it springs from." Heylin has a different interpretation, comparing it with "To Ramona" from Another Side of Bob Dylan: "['Baby Blue' is] less conciliatory, the tone crueler, more demanding. If Paul Clayton is indeed the Baby Blue he had in mind, as has been suggested, Dylan was digging away at the very foundation of Clayton's self-esteem." However, the lyric easily fits in with the main theme of the album, Dylan's rejection of political folk, taking the form of a good-bye to his former, protest-folk self, according to the Rough Guide to Bob Dylan. According to this reading, Dylan sings to himself to "Leave your stepping stones [his political repertoire] behind, something calls for you. Forget the dead you've left [folkies], they will not follow you...Strike another match, go start anew." The only musician besides Dylan to play on the song is Bill Lee on bass guitar.^[1]

Van Morrison and his band, Them, released their own version of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" in 1966; a dramatic re-arrangement featuring a repeating, low-key Mellotron pattern, it's often hailed as one of the best Dylan covers ever recorded. Later, Beck used a sample of this version of the song as the basis for his single Jack-Ass which appeared on his critically-acclaimed Odelay album in 1996. Another underground version was famously done by Roky Erikson's 13th Floor Elevators on their 1967 album Easter Everywhere.

The Nice : 5. Discography. 5.1. Albums,

The Nice

5. Discography.

5.1. Albums

• The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack (Immediate, 1967)
• Ars Longa Vita Brevis (Immediate, 1968)
• Nice / Everything As Nice As Mother Makes It (Immediate, 1969)
• Five Bridges (Charisma, 1970)
• Elegy (Charisma, 1971)
• America - The BBC Sessions (Receiver, 1996)
• The Swedish Radio Sessions (late 1967) (Sanctuary, 2001)
• BBC Sessions (Sanctuary, 2002)
• Vivacitas (Sanctuary, 2004)
• Live At The Fillmore East December 1969 (Virgin, 2009)

Keith Emerson with The Nice (Japan) (1972).

Everything As Nice As Mother Makes It is the U.S. version of Nice after Immediate's distribution changed from Columbia to Capitol. Nice had been initially released in the U.S. with a slightly longer version of Rondo 69 not available on the UK or on the Capitol distributed U.S. versions. The first U.S. version of Nice was briefly reissued in 1973 by Columbia Special Products. Both Five Bridges and Elegy were released in the U.S. by Mercury and in Germany by Phillips. Both albums were reissued as a two record set in both the U.S. and Germany in 1972 as Keith Emerson and The Nice (see compilations). On the U.S. reissues of Five Bridges from the 1980s, "One Of Those People" features a noticeably different mono mix in place of the stereo mix on the original issue.

5.2. Singles.

• "The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack"/"Azrial (Angel Of Death)" (Immediate, November 1967)
• "America"/"The Diamond Hard Blue Apples Of The Moon" (Immediate, 1968)
• "Brandenburger"/"Happy Freuds" (Immediate, 1968)
• "Diary Of An Empty Day"/"Hang On To A Dream" (Immediate, 1969)
• "Country Pie/Brandenburg Concerto No.6"/"One Of Those People" (Charisma, 1969)

The singles listed here are the original releases. Many of the singles were re-released throughout the 1970s with different B-sides.

5.3. Compilations.

• The Best of The Nice (EMI/Immediate, 1971)
• Keith Emerson with The Nice (Mercury, 1972)
• In Memoriam (Immediate, 1973)
• Autumn '67 - Spring '68 (Charisma, 1972, UK), released as Autumn to Spring (Charisma, 1973, USA)
• Hang On To A Dream (EMIDisc, 1974)
• The Immediate Years (2-LP set) (Sire, 1975)
• Amoeni Redivivi (NEMS/Immediate, 1976)
• Greatest Hits (NEMS/Immediate, 1977)
• Greatest Hits (Big Time, 1988)
• The Immediate Years (3-CD Boxed Set) (Charly, 1995)
• Here Come The Nice - The Immediate Anthology (3-CD Boxed Set) (Castle Communications, 2002)

Keith Emerson with The Nice was reissued on CD in 1990 as a single disc, eliminating "Country Pie/Brandenburg Conc.#6" and "One Of Those People" from Five Bridges and "Pathetique" from Elegy. The Immediate Collection contains all three albums and all the singles originally released by Immediate records along with several unreleased recordings. Some of the compilations listed (namely Autumn to Spring, Hang On To A Dream and In Memoriam) feature slightly different mixes than originally released on the albums. Due to Immediate Records' dissolution in 1970, the recordings of The Nice (along with other artists on the Immediate label) were leased out to many record companies, resulting in a high number of compilation albums (many of which are not listed here) with different packaging, but similar track listings.

3. Studio/Live- Nice (The Nice album)

Infobox Album
Name = Nice
Type = Studio Album
Artist = The Nice

|thumb|200px
Released = 1969
Recorded = 1969
Genre = Progressive rock
Length = 43:46
Label = Immediate Records
Producer = The Nice
Reviews = *Allmusic Rating|4.5|5 [http://wm01.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:j9fyxqe5ld6e link]
Misc = Extra album cover 2
Upper caption = Alternative cover
Type = album

|thumb|200px
Lower caption = US album cover
Last album = "Ars Longa Vita Brevis" (1968)
This album = "Nice" (1969)
Next album = "Five Bridges" 1970

"Nice" was the third album by The Nice; it was titled "Everything As Nice As Mother Makes It" in the U.S. after Immediate's distribution changed from Columbia to Capitol. "Nice" had been initially released in the U.S. with a slightly longer version of "Rondo 69" not available on the UK or on the Capitol distributed U.S. versions. The first U.S. version of "Nice" was briefly reissued in 1973 by Columbia Special Products.

Continuing "The Nice"'s fusion of jazz, blues & rock, this album consists of studio (1 - 4) and live (5 - 6) tracks, the latter having become firm favourites in the band's live performances.

The album achieved number 3 in the UK Album charts [http://www.chartstats.com/artistinfo.php?id=2031] .

Track listing

ide One

#"Azrael Revisited" (5:52) (Keith Emerson, Lee Jackson)
#"Hang On to a Dream" (4:46) (Tim Hardin)
#"Diary of an Empty Day" (3:54) (Emerson, Jackson)
#"For Example" (8:51) (Emerson, Jackson)

ide Two

#"Rondo '69'" (7:53) (Emerson, Jackson, Brian Davison)
#"She Belongs to Me" (12:15) (Bob Dylan)

Notes

The UK version of the album came in a gatefold sleeve, showing photographs of the band relaxing at an unknown location, the interior of which featured handwritten notes by Keith Emerson:

Azrael was the first thing I wrote with Lee - now revisited it relates to the Angel of Death. The 5/4 riff revolves round in a circular motion rather like the birth, life & death cycle, and proves to be an interesting medium to improvise in. The verses are taken in common time ("4/4"). The quote from Rachmaninoff's Prelude (in) C# Minor is intentional as when it was written. Rachmaninoff had Edgar Allan Poe's vision of a man coming back to life in the coffin after burial.

For the number I detuned the strings on the piano slightly to give it a "honky-tonk" effect which helped in creating an air of something ageing. I'd like to apologise to Amen Corner for not retuning the piano afterwards. They had to use the same piano after our session, unfortunately they didn't need a "Winifred Atwell's Other Piano" sound.

"Azrael" had been the B-side of Nice's first UK single release, "Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack". As well as the Rachmaninoff quotation, the track relied on Lennie Tristano's "Turkish Mambo". The album version is lighter in tone than the original, and taken at a slightly faster pace, but retains the menace of the original.

On "Hang On To A Dream" we have Duncan Browne to thank for the choir.

At one of our London Concerts I had the pleasure of performing Lalo's "Symphonie Espaniol" ("sic") with violinist John Mayer who also leads Indo-Jazz Fusions [who had appeared on the same bill as The Nice at the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival] . We all thought the main riff too good to be forgotten after (a) one performance and set about giving it a new treatment. The words were written on a very dull journey from Newcastle to Birmingham and it became "Diary Of An Empty Day".

People often ask us "why don't you play Blues". The Blues to us is a Universal language. Musicians from different speaking countries on first meeting will know exactly where they are on the basic blues structure. Brian, Lee and I have all been through this grounding and have said what we wanted to say in the blues for the time being through other groups. At rehearsals we'll usually warm up with a "twelve bar". That's how the opening of "For Example" happened. However we didn't leave it there. The B minor blues moves into its relative major of D for the main theme then back again. The movement in E which follows is rather Hendrix-inspired after which the original D major theme is given a "Gregorian" feel and a 6/8 jazz waltz treatment in F. It is as the title says an Example.

The track added jazz players (including Joe Newman and Pepper Adams) with musical figures reminiscent of the work of Oliver Nelson as well as a section inspired by Gregorian chant and fleeting references to The Beatles' Norwegian Wood.

Side 2 [tracks 5 & 6] was recorded on our first live appearance in New York at Fillmore East. Here we have Rondo '69. After the performance an urgent telegram was sent back to England- "please send more trousers".
She once belonged to Bob Dylan. She now belongs to you, me and anyone else who cares to listen. Keith Emerson.

Quotes of the theme to the film "The Magnificent Seven" can also be heard.

The live version of "Rondo" was also performed by Emerson, Lake and Palmer at the Isle Of Wight Festival in 1970.

Personnel

* Keith Emerson - keyboards
* Lee Jackson - bass guitar, vocals
* Brian Davison - drums

The Nice : 5. Discography. 5.1. Albums, 5.2. Singles. 5.3. Compilations.

The Nice

5. Discography.

5.1. Albums

• The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack (Immediate, 1967)
• Ars Longa Vita Brevis (Immediate, 1968)
• Nice / Everything As Nice As Mother Makes It (Immediate, 1969)
• Five Bridges (Charisma, 1970)
• Elegy (Charisma, 1971)
• America - The BBC Sessions (Receiver, 1996)
• The Swedish Radio Sessions (late 1967) (Sanctuary, 2001)
• BBC Sessions (Sanctuary, 2002)
• Vivacitas (Sanctuary, 2004)
• Live At The Fillmore East December 1969 (Virgin, 2009)

Keith Emerson with The Nice (Japan) (1972).

Everything As Nice As Mother Makes It is the U.S. version of Nice after Immediate's distribution changed from Columbia to Capitol. Nice had been initially released in the U.S. with a slightly longer version of Rondo 69 not available on the UK or on the Capitol distributed U.S. versions. The first U.S. version of Nice was briefly reissued in 1973 by Columbia Special Products. Both Five Bridges and Elegy were released in the U.S. by Mercury and in Germany by Phillips. Both albums were reissued as a two record set in both the U.S. and Germany in 1972 as Keith Emerson and The Nice (see compilations). On the U.S. reissues of Five Bridges from the 1980s, "One Of Those People" features a noticeably different mono mix in place of the stereo mix on the original issue.

5.2. Singles.

• "The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack"/"Azrial (Angel Of Death)" (Immediate, November 1967)
• "America"/"The Diamond Hard Blue Apples Of The Moon" (Immediate, 1968)
• "Brandenburger"/"Happy Freuds" (Immediate, 1968)
• "Diary Of An Empty Day"/"Hang On To A Dream" (Immediate, 1969)
• "Country Pie/Brandenburg Concerto No.6"/"One Of Those People" (Charisma, 1969)

The singles listed here are the original releases. Many of the singles were re-released throughout the 1970s with different B-sides.

5.3. Compilations.

• The Best of The Nice (EMI/Immediate, 1971)
• Keith Emerson with The Nice (Mercury, 1972)
• In Memoriam (Immediate, 1973)
• Autumn '67 - Spring '68 (Charisma, 1972, UK), released as Autumn to Spring (Charisma, 1973, USA)
• Hang On To A Dream (EMIDisc, 1974)
• The Immediate Years (2-LP set) (Sire, 1975)
• Amoeni Redivivi (NEMS/Immediate, 1976)
• Greatest Hits (NEMS/Immediate, 1977)
• Greatest Hits (Big Time, 1988)
• The Immediate Years (3-CD Boxed Set) (Charly, 1995)
• Here Come The Nice - The Immediate Anthology (3-CD Boxed Set) (Castle Communications, 2002)

Keith Emerson with The Nice was reissued on CD in 1990 as a single disc, eliminating "Country Pie/Brandenburg Conc.#6" and "One Of Those People" from Five Bridges and "Pathetique" from Elegy. The Immediate Collection contains all three albums and all the singles originally released by Immediate records along with several unreleased recordings. Some of the compilations listed (namely Autumn to Spring, Hang On To A Dream and In Memoriam) feature slightly different mixes than originally released on the albums. Due to Immediate Records' dissolution in 1970, the recordings of The Nice (along with other artists on the Immediate label) were leased out to many record companies, resulting in a high number of compilation albums (many of which are not listed here) with different packaging, but similar track listings.

The Nice-Davey O'List Interview 1992

Saturday, 10 January 2009

The Nice-Davey O'List Interview 1992

That long-lost London scene of 1967 increasingly seems, from this gloomy and distant vantage point, to have been a magical, almost mythical, place to have been part of. The Beatles were ensconced in Abbey Road conjuring up Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and the Stones were at Trident with Her Satanic Majesty. At the Midnight Court and at Blaises you could watch the likes of Tomorrow, the Move, Traffic and the Pink Floyd doing their psychedelic thing whilst rubbing shoulders with Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and John Lennon.For a few short years everything seemed possible and probable, and indeed in musical terms everything was. It's very easy when walking around present day London to believe that those golden days are built on myth more than memories. And yet, when you get the chance to talk to someone that was actually there in Swinging London during the late Sixties, you can see the excitement in their eyes and hear the magic in their voices as they look back with joy and sometimes longing for a time that they can hardly believe actually happened. Davey O'List is one such person. The guitarist in the original Nice, his brilliant axe-work is spattered all over their first (and best) album, and his untimely departure from the band was a mistake from which that fine combo never really recovered as they spiralled down into the dead end of pomp-rock and circumstantially classic overkill. The damage done to the Nice was only equalled by the damage done to the confidence of the young and self-effacing guitarist and songwriter O'List, and he was never again to fulfil the potential shown on 'Everlist Davjack'. A few years later O'List had another chance to shine when he became a fundamental component of the formation of Roxy Music. His influence on the music and form of that fine progressive outfit has long been underestimated; yet anyone who heard the John Peel sessions he did with them will vouch that his part 'in shaping Roxy Music is an important one. Again, Davey was at a genuine loss to understand why he was dropped by Roxy Music just prior to their recording debut. The following interview was the result of a very pleasant evening in the company of O'List, who now devotes much of his time to art and multi-media exhibitions. Whilst his musical outings during the Eighties might not be of much interest to the average Terrascope reader, there's always the possibility that he will again move back into the musical fields of our taste, for he's still playing guitar in private and keeping a weather eye upon the scene in general. This then is his story...




Let's go back to the start of your career.

Right, in 1964 I was in an R&B band called Little Boy Blues. The other guitarist's father owned a pub and he would let us rehearse upstairs, eventually allowing us to play a couple of times in the pub itself on a small stage. It went down quite well, and led to a gig at a South Kensington youth club called The Crypt Club. The whole club turned out to see us, it was a huge audience and it was from their reaction to us that we started to develop and improve. A band definitely needs feedback from an audience to gauge how good it is. I was more or less forced to leave them by my old man though because he wanted me to go to the Royal College of Music and study properly, so I did that for a year. I had a Saturday job in Sainsburys, and I met a bass player there who was in a group. He invited me down to see them and to take my trumpet along. I didn't say anything about being a guitarist to him, I thought they'd already have guitarist but probably not a trumpet player. The band were called The Soul System and they played quite good soul music, but with a rock guitar base to it. So I started playing trumpet with them. One night though I started playing guitar and they could immediately see that I was a better guitarist than the guy who was already with the band.





The lead singer, Richard Shirman (who looked a bit like Mick Jagger), really wanted to go places - he took me to one side and said that the guitarist wasn't really interested in taking things further and eventually talked me round into being the lead guitarist, although I really didn't want to usurp the other guy's position in the band. Soon after we signed to Don Arden's agency and we were working two or three times a week from that point. The management got us a deal with Decca, and we went into a studio with a new name - The Attack -and knocked out our first single `Try It', which got a few radio plays and was quite popular for a while.





Really though, we were best playing live, we just got better and better. Decca put us into the studio to do another record, we were given this song `Hi Ho Silver Lining to do and we really thought we had a potential hit record. Unfortunately though, Jeff Beck had also picked up on the song. His version came out just before ours and he had the hit.





Although people appreciated our version, it was totally overshadowed by Jeffs. Then John Peel started playing the B-side, 'Any More Than I Do', which I had written with Richard Shirman. John Peel used it as the signature tune for his pirate radio show, which was the biggest break I've ever had - a lot of established musicians would listen to John Peel. One day John Mayall 'phoned me up and offered me a job with The Bluesbreakers - I was stunned, at that time the Bluesbreakers were one of my favourite groups. I told him I would need a few days to think it over, it was an unbelievable offer for me to take in.





The very next day, Keith Emerson 'phoned and offered me a job backing this girl singer P.P. Arnold, who had been in the Ike & Tina Turner revue, in this new band he was putting together. I met up with Keith and found that the ideas he had for the band were very close to my own. I realised that if I joined John Mayall, we would he playing his music and the idea of my own band, with Keith doing the music I would be playing, appealed far more. I had all these ideas about fusing classical and rock music, changing the rhythms, coming at the audience from'a completely different angle - and Keith was such a good organist, a very rare thing in those days. So I stuck with Keith Emerson and let the Mayall offer go; whether I made the right decision or not I shall never know. I felt guilty about leaving The Attack, I thought I'd really let them down, but what could I do? The band split up and Richard Shirman had to put a whole new band together using the same name. Anyway, we were put on a weekly wage which made things easier, and we set out backing P.P. Arnold.




The first thing people tend to recall about the Nice is when you played the Plumpton Festival, you were playing in a side tent which got filled to capacity with people getting blown away at what you were doing.
We didn't think we'd be doing our own spot, but P.P. came up and said we could do this set in one of the side tents. We knew we'd have to come up with some way of pulling the audience away from the main stage and into our tent. Keith and I were both into being theatrical with the band so we brought some doves along, let smoke bombs off all around the tent, set the doves off and started playing. People came over to see what all the commotion was about and before long the place was packed. We had Sandy Sargeant who was a really good dancer and well known from 'Ready Steady Go' up on stage doing her stuff, , so even though we were unknown there was someone people could recognise. Keith was doing all the stuff we'd talked about doing, using knives and whips on the keyboards, and the whole thing went down very well. We got a review in the Melody Maker and the day was a real success!







So, what songs were you doing at the time?
Most of the tracks that appeared on the first LP, plus stuff like Vanilla Fudge's 'You Keep Me Hanging On'. We also did a version of 'A Day In The Life' which people said couldn't be done live; we did it, and I think we did it really well.




This would have been with the original drummer?

The drummer with the P.P. Arnold band wasn't really good enough to do the things we wanted to do, he was alright to play on P.P. Arnold's stuff but it was obvious he wasn't good enough for us. Brian Davidson had played with The Attack and the Mark Leeman Five, and Chris Welch suggested we use him - and he was just perfect.





Where did the name of the band come from?
P.P. Arnold came up with the name 'The Nazz' for us, it's an American term for God and we liked the sound of it but were a bit uneasy about being called'God', so `The Nice' was derived that. P.P. Arnold was managed by Andrew Loog Oldham and he put us into a studio to do some demos. We did the whole of album in demo form, it was all done live, recorded through one
microphone. We plugged two 8-track desks together and recorded in 16 track from, which was unheard of in those days. It took us three weeks to record. We did one side in a week at Olympic Studios and then did the other side the next week at Pye Records' studios.



You didn't record any extra tracks?
The only other thing we did was'Azrial' which turned up on a B-side.
And that then was The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack', which most people consider to be the best Nice album.






I don't like the later Nice stuff. It's not that I'm personally biased against it, I just didn't like the direction it went in - the production was crap. I couldn't stand it. After a while I went to see them live and I couldn't understand how they were still popular, the quality had dropped so. It was all Emerson on the middle and high keyboard going all over the place, Brian just following him, and Lee merely standing there going 'ding ding ding'!





It was just gone, all the spirit and ideas and essence of what was originally envisaged for the band; Keith had carried it off into his own direction.



So, let's talk about the famous tour with Hendrix and the Floyd.
This was the most exciting period of my life, 1967/68. I'm always thinking about it. Things would happen out of the blue, and everything seemed to be working out really smoothly. Straight after the album we set out on this tour with the Floyd and Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix used to stand at the side of the stage and watch me play - I was so daunted by it and shy, all the girls would be screaming and I'd have to hold it all together with the mind-blowing prospect of Hendrix watching me play!






I used to watch the Floyd every night, I was really interested in them - technically they weren't so great, but what they were doing meant so much - they were incredible. Every night I'd get out into the audience and watch them. I learned their set off by heart doing this. One night, I think it was in Liverpool or Manchester, the band came in and asked me to play with them because Syd had thrown a wobbly and not turned up. I don't know how they knew I knew their set. I was a bit daunted by the idea because all the girls in the audience would be there waiting for Syd to do'See Emily Play', whereupon they would scream the house down. The Floyd said not to worry, if you wear Syd's hat and keep your face- down nobody will notice! And that's what happened. It was amazing playing with Roger and Nick, I would have loved to have joined the Floyd but I was too shy to say anything to them. I was still very young in those days and not very good at putting my point across. Anyway, the next night Syd had heard that the band had played without him anyway, and he got out of his sulk and turned up. That was that.





We went to America after that for our first US tour. That was incredible. like being in a film or something. I have so many vivid memories of it - every second was exciting. We played in The Scene club in New York and Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground turned up to watch us; one night we met Judy. Garland, both she and Keith were wearing hats so they swapped - for the rest of that tour and for about three years afterwards Keith wore Judy Garland's hat, a black thing with metal rings around it. We played the Fillmore West in San Francisco with Big Brother & The Holding Company as well.





I wish I'd stayed in America but we had an outstanding contract to play the Marquee, so we came back for that. We recorded 'America' as a single when we got back and played that live a lot. Soon afterwards Tony Stratton Smith became involved, he started following me around the clubs pretending to be friendly but as it turned out he was trying to elbow me out of the band. He'd seen us play quite a lot and saw the attention Keith was getting with his onstage antics, and mistakenly thought that Keith was the centre of the band. What he didn't understand was that -a lot of the theatrical ideas came from me, I was the one whose parents were from a theatrical background. I suggested right at the start that Keith shouldn't sit down at the keyboards but stay standing. Stratton-Smith started accusing me of taking drugs all the time which was ludicrous - I wasn't taking LSD, I'd never even seen Cocaine and I didn't know what Heroin was -honestly, I was really green about it all. He was still trying to pull that one on me though. Two or three times he took me out to dinner and started needling me, 'we don't like what you're playing, we don't like what you're doing on stage, we don't like how you behave, don't you think you should see a psychiatrist and perhaps leave the band. Who was this bastard? For two years I'd put my whole life into this band, invested everything. It really upset me, because he said he represented the views of the whole band.



If I'd been older I'd have been able to see that this wasn't really the case, but at the time I thought it was and I was too upset to go to Keith and ask if all this nonsense was real. So that was it, I left the band and waited for Keith to get in contact. I shouldn't have, I should have gone straight to Keith, but I didn't.




Steve Howe joined in my stead - I was friends with him from Tomorrow days and I later foundo ut that one of the reasons he quit the Nice after only one day was that he couldn't see how a guitarist could feel safe in a band that had fired me - I thought that was a very nice thing of him to say. Actually, I got the original Yes a residence at the Marquee, which was instrumental in making them successful. I really enjoyed being part of the London scene, knowing people like Jimi Hendrix and Noel Redding. I think a lot of people were taken aback when I was pushed out of the Nice by Stratton-Smith.




Jethro Tull immediately got in contact, they'd supported us quite a bit so I knew them. Mick Abrahams had just left, so I rehearsed with them, but I couldn't get the Nice out of my system - I was emotionally strung out on their music, it was the Nice I wanted to be playing with and not Jethro Tull. I couldn't get my head into it. I tried to form my own band and that didn't really work out so I joined an outfit called Opal Butterfly for a while. They had a black singer, Ray Owen, who was very influenced by Jimi Hendrix. Then Ray and I and the drummer joined the Misunderstood. We did this film called, I think, 'Super Group Session' with Led Zeppelin, Roland Kirk and The Cream. I recorded a couple of tracks with them, `Little Red Rooster' and 'Tough Enuff.



So what happened to the band, did they split soon after?
Certain members got very big-headed about the group, they really thought the Misunderstood were going to be huge, the name was going to be changed to Juicy Lucy - but in the end Glen Campbell left England to get married and the band folded, leaving me high and dry.




I put an advert in 'Melody Maker', and one of the calls I got was from this singer Bryan Ferry, he had a band called Roxy Music who were at the time totally unknown. Ferry had had the band going fora while, and. wanted to turn professional.
When they played live at the time, I believe they were billed as `Davy O'List's Roxy Music

Well yes, I was still famous, a hot property, and my standing was seen as a definite asset to the band. I was able to get us things like a John Peel session, which in those days was a big thing - any band that did a Peel session became a known band overnight. We did lots of great gigs, we were toying with the idea of a girl drummer and we did get one for a while but it didn't work out. So then Bryan suggested we get in Brian Davidson, which I didn't think was a good idea - but we went round to see him and sat in his flat playing the Roxy tape and he didn't like it at all - so that was that. We put an advert in 'Melody Maker' and ended up with Paul Thompson. I didn't particularly rate him as a drummer, he was very basic, although he did get better in time. After we did the radio session we took it to E.G. Management, who offered us a deal. We spent weeks rehearsing the album and just before we went into the studio to record it, the original guitarist Phil Manzanera decided he wanted to rejoin. So they dropped me.
You must have been pretty unhappy about that turn of events?
I was stunned. I listen to that first album now and because Phil joined just before the recording, he had to copy a lot of my guitar work note for note. About a third of the arrangements on the album are mine! I've never had any credit or recompense for it, either. I did play on a couple of Bryan Ferry solo albums later on which was great, I have a lot of respect for Bryan and what he does. We did have a couple of Top Ten hits; 'Me In Crowd' and 'Let's Stick Together'.

check out David's latest news here.

http://www.davidolist.talktalk.net

Posted by jay strange at 18:03