The Double Album that should have happened?

"If they had actually broken up in 1969, what would their solo careers look like?"

 

I remember reading somewhere that Tommy Bolin's "Private Eyes" was originally supposed to be a double album. Would have been great, but I think all of the material that didn't make it has come out on posthumous releases over the years.

 

Yes... I have always thought they were the closest two Rush albums content wise, mood, writing, etc... They are also my two favorites; musically Rush is at the height of their powers here.

 

It is and I enjoy it very much !

 

Like this?
Albums Back from the Dead: Eagles - "The Long Run" (double album version)

 

Good old opportunism!
Just kidding, I myself am guilty of doing the same thing all the time. And make sure to check out The Reconstructor!

 

Of course, then you wouldn't have had the great cliffhanger! (well, only long enough to change records, from side 2 to side 3)

 

The Beatles' White Album.

Legend has it that they had enough songs to make a double album but
George Martin convinced them to whittle down to one LP. It most likely would have been a sprawling classic
double album but George had to have his way.
Oh well.

 

the 2004 crosby*nash album was a double, but clocked in well under 80 minutes and should/could have easily been a single disc.

 

Pink Floyd- The Division Bell. I enjoy The Endless River, but what could have been.....

 

If you mean a studio version of 'Groove' was intended to be recorded for LZII - maybe, but if you're referring to the one released on Coda, those liner notes that claim it was a studio recording are a lie, and (as proven once and for all by the LZ DVD from earlier this century) it was in fact a live in concert recording, which Page overdubbed extra guitars on (and fudged the liner note credits) to make it appear to be a studio recording while compiling Coda.

Sugar Mama was recorded during the sessions for the debut album, not the second album. It didn't make the cut there, or on Coda either. Page mixed it for inclusion on Coda, but left it off as he considered it too weak to include. That's saying something that he thought making side one of Coda run for only 14 minutes was preferable to boosting the length of that side of the album to a more reasonable seventeen minutes by including 'Sugar Mama'. In essence he decided that even three minutes of dead silence was better than 'Sugar Mama'

 

Black Sabbath

I am going to go slightly off topic but I think Van Halen Aerosmith and Motley Crue should have released double albums that highlighted their more experimtal, or blues based or accoustic sides.

 

Yup, I know that. Song is from the Jan. '70 Royal Albert Hall gig, and received a guitar overdub in 81 or 82 for inclusion on CODA. I considered it fair game exactly because they meant to record it for the second LP but didn't. Just like Since I've Been Loving You

And a while back there was a bit of debate about Sugar Mama being either from the first or second album sessions. Either way, I like it, ignoring Pagey's despise for it

 

I only know one Blue Oyster Cult song. Shoud I know more?

Rush in their prime would have put to gether a great double album. I do agree FTK and Hemispheres would have been incredibly good,

 

None really, as thinking about it, most of the bands that did do a double, did so for a particular and understandable reason.

The Who made two doubles that were story albums that needed that much time to tell the story. Genesis also made one double album for the same reason - and of course there are many other examples of this.

Sometimes a band will make a double album consisting of "themed" sides, like Manassas and Rundgren whose double albums (both released in 1972) each had 4 musically varied/differently themed (and even titled) album sides, creating four very different (mini) album experiences/sides.

Physical Graffiti made sense (to me at least) as probably being a double because of how many (4) new "epic" tracks were recorded for the album (epic in both length - averaging something like 8 minutes plus each, and density - lots of overdubs). If they had released that album as a single, it would probably share the same generally bad reputation as the similar Presence released the following year. Instead he spread out the epics over four sides by using the simpler/less bombastic tracks he had in the vaults to give the epics breathing room. It was a brilliant move, as IMO anyway, the double Physical Graffiti works far better than say:

In The Light
Ten Years Gone
Kashmir
In My Time Of Dying

...and whatever one (or at most two) more new songs from the 1974 sessions that could have been squeezed onto a single slab of vinyl.

Jagger has since criticized Exile as "not having many hits on it" and though he doesn't think it deserves the accolades of being hailed as their best album he has conceded that it definitely as a whole has a cohesive vibe/feel to it that works. I don't know if that was a conscious decision at the time to make up for the supposed "lack of hits" on the album with supposed "quantity over quality" by making it a double, but by design or not it works remarkably well as a very cohesive "greater than the sum of its parts" album experience. Of course it could have also just been a cynical way for them to clear out the tape closet of the leftovers from the last couple years/album sessions - but hey whatever the motivations, you can't argue with the results!

 

GD blues for allah/seastones
hendrix-the album after electric ladyland
the second manassass lp
pink floyd zabriskie point
paul kossof
tommy bolin

 

Well, this DID happen eventually, I believe, but the Rocky Horror soundtrack should've been a 2-LP set. While we're probably lucky to have gotten a soundtrack at all at the time (didn't it come out in America a few years after the fact?), the missing songs were glaring.

 

If you're talking the DLR years of Van Halen (1st six albums) I think its a bit much to ask for a double album from a band who rarely ever bothered to record enough material to properly fill a single album (how many minutes over thirty were any of those albums?)

Nikki Sixx has almost totally dismissed the two albums they made between 'Shout' and 'Feelgood' as being basically just a couple good songs he managed to write during tiny windows of sobriety along with a bunch of tossed off crap he's surprised didn't torpedo their career. So I'd imagine a double album released in that era would have probably been four good songs he managed to write during tiny windows of sobriety along with a bunch of tossed off crap he's surprised didn't torpedo their career.

 

Yeah VH albums were usually barely over 30 minutes in total.....very short!
Aerosmith stuggled to get their albums completed on time and usually waited long periods for Steven Tyler to get the lyrics written.

 

I always think it's funny how some people wish a double album was a stronger single yet others would love to see the might have been a double album have actualy been one.
I for one couldn't cut the White Album down to a single album. McCartney II was a better single album as was RRS. Sandinista however would have been a great double.

 

Erm, Deep Purple have done two studio double albums - their last two (albeit one was 45rpm)...

 

I think all of these bands would have been more than capable of pulling off the studio double album and I am in agreement with your leanings of BOC and Rush. I would have liked to have seen double editions of "Hemispheres" and "Secret Treaties" for example. In Blue Oyster Cult's case, I think it would have been great had they taken on "Imaginos" and actually had done a three part trilogy after "Agents of Fortune"'s issue, but I suppose that's getting a bit off track from the subject matter.

Crimson, of course, wound up releasing all kinds of posthumous live sets from the 70's and 80's and I feel they could have easily released double editions of albums like "Red" and "Starless and Bible Black" during their brief, but compelling creative burst of the Bruford/Wetton era. I would have liked to have seen Deep Purple release a double set during the Hughes/Coverdale era, particularly during the recording of "Stormbringer" as I thought I'd read in Dave Thompson's bio on the band that this was proposed as an idea early in the writing and rehearsal stages of that album. However, Ritchie was already bored with the band by that point and while there's still some good material to be found on its eventual release, the proof's in the band's evolution of events during that time.

Sabbath should have done a double release for Technical Ecstasy and in a similar scenario to Purple and "Stormbringer", it's possible that it would've saved Ozzy from exiting the band prematurely as well as the band's creative morale suffering through an indifference of dysfunction, resulting in uninspiring material. But, then again, who's to say that had they done something along those lines that it would've prolonged the process of transition in revamping the situation with the arrival of Ronnie James Dio? I still think a double "Ecstasy" would've been interesting, nonetheless.

As far as Queen goes, and while I'm admittedly not a big fan, I'm a bit surprised they didn't attempt the double studio album during their creative heights of the mid to late 70's either. In a way, "A Night at the Opera" and "A Day at the Races" would qualify as both are in context within that creative realm and are cut of the same cloth, but that's from an outside observer's opinion. I've never bothered to check out both records front to back, but I would imagine combining the two would've made for an interesting and important release of the time period.

With all of that being said, the one album that I would have liked to have been issued as a double release goes to The Clash's "Combat Rock" album. The things of it is, is that they'd already done "London Calling" and then followed that up with the triple "Sandinista!", so I understood the scaling back idea of the time and it worked for them commercially. On the other hand, Mick Jones' version of the album's tracks and mixes would've further enhanced the group's sound creatively had they not opted for hiring Glyn Johns to shape its release into a formidable standard issue of recording length. I think it clocks in around three quarters of an hour, if memory serves, but I've heard bootleg versions of Jones' mix of the early acetates of the record and it seemed a natural progression from what was offered on the previous "Sandinista!" set in terms of experimentation of styles and sounds adorned to various tracks. But, as has been pointed out, the band were opting for a more simplified, yet direct approach and Johns' mix certainly provided the end result rather nicely. He did quite an amazing job within a short amount of time and it gave The Clash their most commercially viable release within their short but extraordinary career span. I'd still like to see a deluxe edition of Mick Jones' original finished mix set alongside Johns' formal and standard issue as I think it would make for an incredibly interesting comparison among the two.

 

How about this one?

Paul and Linda McCartney
RAM AGAIN

Side One
1) Now Hear This Song Of Mine #1 /
Another Day
2) Now Hear This Song Of Mine #2 /
Get On The Right Thing
3) Now Hear This Song Of Mine #3 /
Rode All Night

Side Two
1) Now Hear This Song Of Mine #4 /
A Love For You
2) Now Hear This Song Of Mine #5 /
Hey Diddle
3) Now Hear This Song Of Mine #6 /
Sunshine Sometime
4) Now Hear This Song Of Mine #7 /
Oh Woman, Oh Why

Side Three
1) Now Hear This Song Of Mine #8 /
Uncle Albert Jam
2) Now Hear This Song Of Mine #9 /
Little Woman Love
3) Now Hear This Song Of Mine #10 /
Little Lamb Dragonfly
4) Now Hear This Song Of Mine #11 /
When The Wind Is Blowing

Side Four
1) Now Hear This Song Of Mine #12 /
The Great Cock and Seagull Race
2) Now Hear This Song Of Mine #13 /
Dear Friend
3) Now Hear This Song Of Mine #14 /
I Lie Around [Paul-only version]
4) Now Hear This Song Of Mine #15 /
Ram On [complete version]

 

Come to think of it, you can, uh..... you can probably leave out the "Now Hear This Song Of Mine"s.

I'm listening to this line-up now, and they're truly invasive.

 

You can also add If You Let Me from Metamorphosis and the the outtake Looking Tired.