[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

The guys at ICE must be fans...




News from ICE, 4/95:



%One of this month's hot topics was MCA's reissue of The Who's Live At
Leeds. While most correspondents took pains to praise the overall look
and sound of the package (John Gaylord even E-mailed us to commend MCA
for its whimsical "Crackling Noises Have Been Corrected" notation on
the disc), the musical contents raised some questions.

Gregg Milan of East Chicago, IN, writes, "It's been stated that the
title 'Shakin' All Over' has been amended to 'Shakin' All
Over/Spoonful' and contains an extra minute of music. Well, according
to what I've heard and seen on the time counter on my CD player, the
song is no different than the original vinyl version of 4:15 in length
(and the title wasn't corrected, either). Can you explain what
happened?" Via E-mail, David C. Olstein added, "The disc runs 17
minutes, so admittedly it would have been a tight squeeze, but it was
definitely within the realm of possibility (the Who rarities CD runs
over 79 minutes)." Brian Portner of Corning, NY, adds some other
points: "The CD liner notes state 'Magic Bus' is longer than the
original version. It clocks in at the same time on both the original
and reissue. Also, the three cassettes, two vinyl albums, and CD of
Live At Leeds I've owned before this include a long 'Wow!' from Roger
Daltrey about 20 seconds into 'My Generation.' Where is it now?"

For some answers, we turned to the album's compiler and annotator,
veteran British journalist/Historian Chris Charlesworth, who started
with the nonappearance of"Spoonful." "We kept it out because it's not
very good," he says candidly. "I know fans have the Lifehouse To Leeds
[bootleg], which is probably the most common version of that
untruncated [version] making the rounds. But if they listen to it
seriously, Roger sings off-key. We could have improved it, but we
didn't really want to. We thought the group slackened off the pace of
the song doing that, and Roger's singing wasn't very tuneful. So we
kept it out-as had been Pete [Townshend] and Roger's decision way back
in 1970. They said no, we still don't want it in. The decision rests
with the artist, after all. I thought the [time] would be much better
used up with 'Amazing Journey' from Tommy, in which the playing is
infinitely superior. If fans who have Lifehouse To Leeds go back and
listen to ['Spoonful'] and think seriously about it, I'm sure they'll
admit that they don't miss it a lot."

Charlesworth also contends that the CD was stretched to the max. "We've
really crammed in-just like we did on the box set-absolutely as much as
we can. Good value for the money." In fact, MCA's Andy McKaie tells ICE
that the new Live At Leeds is the longest CD that the label has ever
issued. "There are other companies that might go further, but most of
them have their own [pressing] plants," he says.

Charlesworth refutes speculation in some circles that "Spoonful" (a
Willie Dixon composition most famously recorded by Howlin' Wolf and
Cream) had been left off because it would have required additional
royalty payments. "That was never the issue," he says. "If they'd
included it, they would have given it to Willie Dixon's lestate]. I
mean, there's enough money going out to Eddie Cochran's estate now [for
'Summertime Blues'], isn't there? The Who have done cover versions
galore over the years and always paid out; that's not been an issue."

Discussing the other discrepancies, Charlesworth tells ICE, "It's quite
possible that there are fairly small differences in the timings. I'm
not exactly sure what extra there may be on 'Magic Bus'; [it was]
possibly faded out a bit earlier on the first one, again purely for
time considerations. There are other ones as well. There's a little bit
more toward the end of 'My Generation,' actually Pete just playing with
the volume control on his guitar-which I imagine the fans will note-a
bit like what he did years before on 'Anyway Anyhow Anywhere.' We
thought it sounded good so we shoved it in, and Pete didn't have any
objections.

"In case anybody wonders," he adds, "the reason there isn't the usual
solo and false ending on ' Substitute' is that it was a mistake by the
band going back to 1970. For some reason they just forgot to do the
solo; they just went straight into 'Happy lack' instead. I often
wondered about that one." Addressing earlier fan complaints about the
omission of the group's performance of Tommy at the Leeds show,
Charlesworth says, "The reason why Tommy wasn't on was essentially
because the record company wanted a single album, and Pete felt there
were enough Tommys on the market... although I feel the best Tommy
hasn't appeared yet. There are too many inferior Tommys out." And as to
why there's no British equivalent to MCA's deluxe special edition of
the reissue, he explains, "They didn't feel there was a market for it
here. There might have been for a couple of thousand, but I don't think
it's worthwhile doing that [few]. The Who seem to be respected more in
America today than they are in the U.K.; the market in America is much
bigger for them."
------------------------------------

WHO'S NEXT UP: While discussing The Who's Live At Leeds for this month's
CD Watchdog commentary (see Page 2), reissue producer Chris
Charlesworth took a moment to fill ICE in on other upcoming Who
projects, including the new discovery of the earliest known recordings
by The High Numbers-later to become The Who.

"We're working on The Who Sell Out now," Charlesworth says (also see
ICE #96). "We've increased the fadeouts on some of the tracks a little
bit; they might be 10 or 15 seconds longer. We have the whole 'Jaguar'
now instead of the edit that appeared on the box set, which was
something a lot of fans wrote in about, saying it was a pity that we
edited it. We did that simply because we wanted to make room [on the
box] for something else.

"I think fans will be particularly delighted with the version of 'The
Hall Of The Mountain King' that we've unearthed for Sell Out, which
goes on for a long time, to say the least. And we've got something
really rare for Sell Out: 'Glittering Girl,' which is previously
unreleased. It was written by Ray Davies, so it's The Who covering The
Kinks... not that The Kinks ever recorded it either.

"We've actually [arrived at] the mastering stage on Sell Out, which is
now 70-odd minutes long with 10 extra tracks and five eDxtra adverts.
The diehard collectors will be familiar with everything, but they
certainly won't have heard it in this condition.

"The next one up will probably be Who's Next and then A Quick One. They
should be out sometime in June-July. We're not rushing; if you take
your time, you get them right."

We asked Charlesworth if bonus tracks had been selected for those
albums yet. "Not really," he says. "There was a much bigger choice for
Sell Out than there is for the other two. There are a lot more outtakes
in the '67-'68 era in The Who's career than there are from any other
era. From the point of view of outtakes, Live At Leeds was the easiest,
because it was a whole show, and Sell Out was the next easiest for
interesting outtakes. Generally speaking, the longer The Who's career
goes on, the fewer outtakes there are."

Regarding the availability-and suitability- of tracks from Pete
Townshend's Lifehouse project, which became Who's Next in drastically
amended form, Charlesworth says, "There is and there isn't; there are
the same songs in other versions. I would prefer to put different songs
on; I don't particularly want to put two versions of 'Won't Get Fooled
Again' on Who's Next. We'll come up with something. We found 'Time Is
Passing' [released in a solo version on Townshend's Who Came First
album], but there's a track missing; we may have to doctor it. Some of
these tapes were lost, you know; nobody really looked after this stuff.
It's a problem not just with The Who, but with so many other
people-apart from The Beatles. EMI had the good sense to lock away
every Beatles master tape in a vault 50 feet below the ground and make
sure nobody had keys. Unfortunately with The Who, that wasn't the case;
nobody really hung on to the masters or looked after them, with any
sense of history, anyway.

"We're still negotiating with [early Who producer] Shel Talmy to get
hold of the original masters for the first album. That's a problem at
the moment. We don't really want to do the first album unless we've got
the master tapes. Talmy has some tapes of stuff The Who recorded for
that album that never went on it.

"Have you heard the story about the demo we found from 1964 for Pye
Records? A version of 'Baby Don't You Do It' [a Marvin Gaye song later
recorded in 1972 as the B-side of 'Join Together'] and 'Leaving Here,'
the Eddie HolIand tune. In my opinion, 'Leaving Here' is more
interesting than the version on the box set, because they 'go for it'
more; Keith Moon's drums are a lot more up in the mix. Unfortunately,
all we've got is a scratchy acetate; some fans found it in a junk shop
or something. So I don't know quite what we'll do with it; we'll do our
best [to clean it up] and stick it on the first album, if and when we
can do it. I wish we'd had this for the box set, because it would have
been the perfect opening track: the earliest known recording by them.
The band themselves had forgotten all about it."

Tantalizing as that prospect is for Who fans, they should hear about
the ones that got away. Charlesworth reports that EMI staff producer
John Burgess, who wrote a rejection letter rep roduced in the Live At
Leeds packaging, "apparently took The High Numbers into EMl's studios
and recorded them doing all sorts of stuff, Beatles songs included...
but no one knows where the tape is. Burgess says that, to the best of
his knowledge, it probably got wiped. What a shame! There were probably
half a dozen songs, done in the studio in four-track, that just got
wiped."

Further news from the Who front: PolyGram in the U.K. will be reissuing
Roger Daltrey's self-titled solo album and his McVicar sound track in
April. 

-------that's it.