It's possible that one of those was routined for "Easy" and scrapped, then re-recorded for "Volume 3".
You wouldn't bring a 12 string guitar to a studio and not use it. There's gotta be an ep track or a b side somewhere. Maybe a Steady On song.
Yeah, an outtake, demo, "shelved" recording... While we know Sad & Lonely & Blue has a 12 string electric, I think (ie wag) the session may be too early.
12-strings came into vogue after George Harrison played one in the film "A Hard Day's Night". After Roger McGuinn played one on "Mr Tambourine Man", everybody wanted one. So I can imagine Harry and George experimenting with them in the studio, whether or not they ended up on the finished result.
Do we know for sure that 'Sad And Lonely And Blue' wasn't recorded during the first album sessions? I read that 'Wedding Ring' was, and like that track, they could have seen single potential for it and held it back?
Moving back to the main story, we enter 1978....... After three covers of "Friday On My Mind", two of "Good Times" and one of "Do You Have a Soul" during 1977, fans were only treated to one cover version during 1978, the peak year of global disco frenzy. Fittingly, it was a rock-disco hybrid, the work of cult French producer Jean-Pierre Massiera. Having been roundly dismissed for years (the reviews in Dag Erik Asbjornsen's "Scented Gardens of the Mind" are particularly scathing), Massiera's work has recently been reassessed thanks tonsome sensible compilations and reissues, and original albums now go for high prices on E-bay. After a stint in the early sixties playing guitar with Mediterranean Shadows-wannabes Les Milords and Les Monégasques, Massiera set himself up as an independent producer in the French city of Antibes, producing such cult favourites as Basile and Ze Pecqu' Nouz Groupe (excellent off beat garage nonsense) and Jocy (whose warped soul-pop "Dans les dix premiers" (a cover of Bunny Shivel's "Top Twenty") was a highlight of the second "Swinging Mademoiselles" bootleg compilation). His real claim to fame though came with a long series of dark, disturbing, post-psychedelic albums released under a wide variety of names - Maledictus Sound, Horrific Child, The Visitors etc - that were essentially Massiera's own work, put together with a regular crew of collaborators. Offering a strangely distorted, alternative vision of what progressive rock could be, these albums are difficult listening even today, and sold poorly at the time, although well enough to keep Massiera in business. By the late seventies though, he was ready to move on and, attracted by the possibilities offered by disco (and by space age disco in particular), he decided that it was time to party. Among his long (and I do mean long!) series of disco projects was the 1978 album credited to (and titled) J. Joyce and Co. (Eurodisc 913 190). J. Joyce, as it turns out, was none other than Jocy, who had appeared on numerous Massiera-helmed projects over the years, and would feature heavily in his disco years (usually as Joyce; sometimes as half of Micky and Joyce). The album, as was common for disco releases, featured only six tracks, all extended for full dancefloor potential. Among the tracks was a 6'24" version of The Easybeats' classic "Friday On My Mind". Spun out over that length, the song lost some of its anthemic quality, but it was by no means the worst disco revival of a classic rock song to grace record racks. The album seems to have sold moderately well - copies seem to pop up fairly regularly - or at least, no worse than Massiera's earlier work. It was also issued in Brazil with the sides reversed, with a different cover and under the title "Friday On My Mind" (Top Tape TT 144), and in Sweden, where it was retitled "French Funk" (Musicon ML 1050). The Swedish version also inexplicably credited "Friday On My Mind" as a songwriting collaboration between Harry Vanda, George Young and Steve Marriott! Some of Massiera's work has been reissued in recent years, although so far the emphasis has been on his prog rock days and not on his disco extravaganzas. The notable exception - the 2007 Canadian "Psychoses: Discoïd" compilation (Mucho Gusto MGLP 009) - featured one track from this album, but it was not "Friday On My Mind", which means that the original album(s) are the only option for fans seeking to pick up a copy.
From Stevie Wright's Facebook page this morning; A big hello everyone! I am doing okay. It's good to be here, it's good to be anywhere! I would like to let everyone know I am reading slowly through my messages, like's, and comments, thank you kindly to all who have written, I am slowly getting back to everyone and I am still reading messages. It means a lot to me to get your messages, especially all the well wishes and thoughtfulness. Love to everyone. Stay kind to one another. Keep Rock'n' Have a musical day and night. SW x
Just posted this image elsewhere so thought I'd post it here as well, for no real reason... Aussie test pressing. One of ten given to EMI employee Alex. I wish I was Alex - he took delivery all the EMI test pressings back then!
Thanks Jae. I love that “behind-the-scenes” stuff and that is something to see! The “XAPAX” number is written in the dead wax on the LP but do you have any idea what “2PX.450” means? Speaking of behind-the-scenes stuff, here’s something which recently turned up on e-bay. “The Gene Pitney Show” for Wednesday, 23rd August 1967, would most definitely have included the entire package tour. Two tickets plus the box office envelope. Various ticket prices for the event seem to have been USD $4.50, 5 and $6. The KRNT Radio Theater (1946-1972), at that time owned by a local radio/TV station, was located in Des Moines, Iowa, much further west than we had known the tour to travel. (Furthest point west previously known was Evansville, Indiana.)
It's the (internal) factory number. Here's the top part of a typical 1960s EMI Australia Acceptance Sheet... (The typing is out of alignment, but you get the idea)
I just wish I had all the Acceptance Sheets for the Easybeats releases. They tell a lot of good stuff.
Er, yeah you could. I did that myself just the other day. I took my 12 string acoustic along to a recording session and tried it out on a song that I thought it would sound great on and it didn't. Subsequently dropped the idea of using it. The same could easily have applied in the Easybeats case. After running through a song (or songs) with it George may have decided it didn't work out and ended up not using it on a recording.
If a disco remake of "Friday On My Mind" was not to everybody's taste, a pub rock take on "Good Times" ought to have been more appealing. Sadly, by the time that The Bishops' "Cross Cuts" LP was issued in the UK (Chiswick CWK 3009) in the spring of 1979, the band were passed their peak. In their previous incarnation as The Count Bishops, they had been the first band to issue a record on the legendary independent Chiswick label, but line-up changes had dampened their fire and the punk uprising had diminished the commercial appeal of their pub rock sound. By now featuring former Buffalo vocalist Dave Tice out front, the band retained a strong live following, but the death of inspirational guitarist Zenon de Fleur in a car accident a few weeks before the release of the album doomed both the record and the band. The album was a decent, workmanlike effort and the band's version of the Vanda and Young classic was a reasonable stab at an already much-covered song, but sales were disappointing. The band toured Australia after its release but without De Fleur the spirit was gone and they disbanded shortly afterward. The album was also issued in France (Chiswick 2S 068 62657), in Germany (Chiswick 0067.066), in Greece (Chiswick 40.004), in The Netherlands (Chiswick 200660) and in Spain (Chiswick 17.1529).
The late spring and summer of 1979 saw the release of two very different covers of "Friday On My Mind". The first appeared in May on the Sawmills label, distributed via Sonet in the UK. A custom imprint for Sawmill Studios in Cornwall, the label was home to the Golant Pistons, a local outfit produced by studio head Tony Cox (no stranger to Vanda and Young songs: see post # 119 on the Solo Years thread for an example). "Friday On My Mind" (Sawmills SON 2184) was the band's third single and being neither new wave nor disco, stood as much chance of becoming a hit as a record of sheep bleating into a bucket (less, actually, given that a variation of the latter HAS made the UK charts). It was probably never intended to fly, and duly bit the dust on release, but you have to give the band marks for doing it their way and giving the song a hard rock makeover.
Equally idiosyncratic was the version unleashed shortly afterward by German flautist Lenny MacDowell. A veteran of progressive rock bands like Hölderlin, MacDowell operated on the fringes where jazz rock and fusion met new age music, and his version of "Friday" was a highlight of his second LP "Flexible" (Harvest 1C 064-45 736). Testament to the band's enduring influence on a generation of European musicians, MacDowell's unique reworking of the song was also plucked from the album for release on a single (Harvest 1C 052-45 485 YZ), although it proved too leftfield a concept for the commercial mainstream and failed to chart.
Gareth’s interesting review above made me curious to hear Lenny MacDowell’s version of ‘Friday On My Mind.’ I found it at Spotify and this link works for me. See if it does for you. Click here -- https://play.spotify.com/trackset/mediabar/13KGhPE2ftEgeRl4CUeOkf,0mk3sBiVf4lIuWO4sTSb3q,3P1gkMETcUDeuRO7NcP82K,08kV9ZslwcUTiLhKfxVt1E,0hzaoEE3bwM22KKOcdscVY,4qox94TJmdjuWqd1l0Y8tk/#/0
Just a random thought, I don't think I've posted this here before. My fave arrangement of this track (although I made my own edit which I prefer)...
For those wondering what the disco version of "Friday On My Mind" mentioned at post #32 of part three of this thread is like, wonder no more:
Heaven & Hell - Aussie promo single. Back in the first part, I posted the below about the Aussie promo "Heaven & Hell" single (The Easybeats: Album by Album Thread) "...the first Aussie promo copies actually carry a local cut of the censored version (see below). It was quickly replaced with the uncensored version, which carries the same matrices as the UK single release." I've since uncovered EMI documentation that clarifies what actually happened. The "censored promo" wasn't released first - the "uncensored promo" was. When radio stations complained and refused to play the track (a period article claims it was banned), EMI Australia "rush pressed" promo copies of the censored mix, meant just for radio play. The standard release was always the uncensored mix.
