I've been seeing a lot of constructions of the abandoned Who album that became Quadrophenia, so I thought I would look at it from a different angle. What if instead of The Who recording Long Live Rock, Pete released it as a solo album?
Side One
01 Relay
02 Get Inside
03 Riot In A Female Jail
04 Love Reign O'er Me
05 Long Live Rock
Side Two
01 Is It In My Head_
02 Put The Money Down
03 Can't You See I'm Easy
04 Join Together
Reality Notes
Not a lot of imagination went into this. As I said, it fell together almost effortlessly. Even so, I am finding this comp to be very enjoyable to listen to. Editing was limited to making sure that the beginnings and endings were smooth and a bit of volume matching.
All of the songs except one are found on the five disc Genuine Scoop bootleg. Get Inside was finally released on the Director's Cut edition of Quadrophenia along with Is It In My Head? and Love Reign O're Me. Some of these can also be found on the official Scoop series.
The piano track on this version of Love Reign O're Me was reused on the final recording. According to Pete's notes, Pete was concerned that they would not be able to recreate it so they just transferred it to a 2 inch multitrack tape and rebuilt the song around it.
I got the track list from the Wiki article which states that a tape of Pete's demos was compiled so consider this a reconstruction of that demo reel. The timing of that tracklist splits nicely between songs five and six for vinyl purposes and the songs flow nicely so I felt no need to rearrange anything.
There is another song, Ambition, that according to the Wiki article was recorded during the Rock Is Dead sessions but at this time it does not circulate in any form outside of a live version Pete performed on The Attic, a weekly webcast that originates from Pete's London studio.
For the cover I used the painting that was used for the cover of Pete's third official demo collection, Scooped 3. I'm sure that it doesn't fit the timeline but I like it and it works.
Sources
The Genuine Scoop (bootleg)
Quadrophenia: The Director's Cut
[Update]
After seeing a picture of the demo reel box I see that I have Riot in a Female Jail and Love Reign O're Me switched around. (I have it as Wiki listed the track order. Wiki is sometimes wrong? Who Knew?) Feel free to adjust your downloads if you want but I'm keeping it as it is.
Interesting idea. As I think you've seen already, I have a new blog, Albums That Should Exist, but I just moved it to a new location today. Here's the new URL:
ReplyDeletehttps://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/
Anyway, I've got a version of this exact album that I want to post eventually, except I try to use the Who versions as much as possible. As you know, that means I've got to resort to the Townshend demos for about half the songs.
One suggestion for you though: why not include "Ambition" as well? I know it's not kosher to include a song recorded so much later, but when it comes to just Townshend playing a song on a guitar, I don't think it sounds much different from one decade to the next. I don't know about today (I haven't heard anything from him recently), but in 2005 his voice was still in fine form.
Thanks, I will update your link.
ReplyDeleteI didn't include Ambition for the simple reason of not having a copy of it. I actually never knew the song existed until I read about it on the wiki page.
I've seen quite a few reconstructions and while each was a good listen, none of them really held my interest beyond a few spins. Some managed to avoid using demos by looking at the album from different points in the timeline.
Sonic, over at Albums That Never Were is very good at giving detailed histories of lost albums. He went in a very different direction choosing a later point in the timeline just before it morphed into Quadrophenia.
http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-who-rock-is-dead-long-live-rock.html
I wanted to avoid mixing demos with finished tracks (although Pete's demos are polished enough to use and blend nicely) and having a bit of a lazy streak, I took the easy way and went with an early point in the timeline and just used all demos.
Looking forward to hearing yours.
Yeah, mixing demos with Who tracks is kind of ugly. Your way is probably better. It's just that I want to hear the Who's version of this ablum, dangit! ;)
DeleteI have Pete's performance of Ambition. I can email it to you if you want, but I don't know your email address.
I would love to hear Ambition. You can send it to
Deleteuncadanb at yahoo dot com
I totally understand wanting to hear a Who version. We do this first for our own satisfaction, then we share. Many of my constructions start with a desire to gather related tracks from many different places into one cohesive listen.