The Fab Four fail to hit number one on the UK albums chart
History has repeated itself as the remixed, rejigged and rebooted Beatles compilation 1967-1970 – more commonly referred to as ‘The Blue Album’ – has entered the UK album chart at number two, kept off number one by Taylor Swift whose ‘Taylor’s Version’ edition of 1989 spends a third week at the top. The reason I say history has repeated itself is because in 1973, when this compilation was first released (alongside 1962-1966), it never made it to number one then, either. David Bowie’sAladdin Sane kept 1967-1970 pinned to number two for three consecutive weeks.
Back to 2023 and there’s quite a lot to unpack here. Swift staying at number one for three weeks in a row would have hardly been worthy of comment in the 1980s or 1990s but these days it’s a rare occurrence; in fact it hasn’t happened for almost TWO YEARS, when Adele enjoyed a five-week run at the top at the end of 2021, with her 30 album.
Music Week reported the exact sales figures and you can only conclude it was an unfortunate missed opportunity for Apple Corps and Universal. They’ll perhaps be ruing the decision to issue both vinyl and CD box set editions that brought together both the ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ albums, because the Official Charts Company consider the box a separate release when compared to the individual ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ albums. Swift stayed at the summit with 16,773 sales and the ‘Blue’ album sold 14,954 which is a shortfall of 1,819 units. However, the box set edition sold 3,625 units and so it’s reasonable to conclude that if they hadn’t bothered with the box set then 1967-1970 would have sold the combined figures, giving a tally of 18,579 (14954 + 3,625)- enough to outscore Taylor Swift and secure the number one spot!
Extra salt in the wound comes when you consider that ‘The Red Album’ sold 13,432 to secure number three this week, but again, if those 3,625 box set sales were added to this, then 1962-1966 would also have outsold Taylor Swift with sales of 17,057. The Beatles would have been – really should have been – number one and two on this week’s album chart.
Of course, these product decisions are made well in advance and the album chart is such a lottery these days anyway (who remembers Tears For Fearsnot getting to number one with The Tipping Point on 29k sales?) but even so, you need a strategy that is going to maximise your chances and diluting the sales in this way, by having what the Official Charts Company regard as three distinct releases instead of two, in hindsight, has proved costly. Because it’s viewed as a separate ‘album’, the box set sits at number 33 in the album charts this week.
It will be no consolation to the parties involved that the new/last single, ‘Now and Then’, has remained high in the singles chart at number six, one place above Taylor Swift’s ‘Is It Over Now?’.
Rick sings Yes for Trevor
In other news, the next song from Trevor Horn’s forthcoming Echoes – Ancient and Modern album has been made available. It’s a re-recording of the Yes classic ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’ with Mr Rick Astley on vocals. Have a listen below and let me know what you think, by leaving a comment. Don’t forget that SDE has an exclusive blu-ray audio version of this album available, and Trevor has created a fantastic, dedicated 5.1 mix, which is included in both vocal and instrumental versions. This is in addition to the Dolby Atmos Mix and a hi-res 96/24 stereo mix! Order your copy here.
Earlier this year, a curious thing happened to Black Box Recorder’s back catalogue. The streaming figures for ‘Child Psychology’, a track from their 1998 debut album England Made Me, suddenly went nuts overnight: on Spotify, it currently stands at 25.6m plays, which is 24m more than the band’s solitary minor hit, 2000’s ‘The Facts Of Life’. It transpired that Billie Eilish had posted a video online of herself listening to the song: her fans had subsequently flocked to hear it for themselves. “Child Psychology continues to bring joy to so many new listeners,” commented Black Box Recorder’s former singer Sarah Nixey, dryly, next to a reminder of the song’s mordant chorus: “life is unfair – kill yourself or get over it”.
It’s unclear whether the Eilish connection prompted Chrysalis to release a 25th Anniversary expanded edition of England Made Me – certainly, the song’s title is prominently featured on the sticker on the front of the vinyl edition – but whatever the reason, it’s a welcome reissue, particularly on vinyl. On release, England Made Me didn’t sell very much, and it came out in an era when record labels were wont to press only a nominal quantity of copies on vinyl – there’s a very brisk market indeed in secondhand Britpop-era vinyl – so the original is hard to find and expensive if you do. Moreover, England Made Me is a strange and singular album that deserves exhumation.
As the title suggests, it’s very British, but it’s utterly at odds with the prevalent mood of British alternative rock in the 90s. England Made Me wasn’t uncommercial – it’s big on melodies, its songs have hooks – but in a world of huge singalong anthems, its sound was hushed, subtle and introverted: wiry strands of largely undistorted electric guitar, delicate washes of keyboards, an occasional bit of glockenspiel, the tempos of the songs never breaking a sweat. Nixey’s voice, meanwhile, was unapologetically Received Pronunciation in an era of Mockney dropped aitches. A cover of Althea And Donna’s 1978 number one ‘Uptown Top Ranking’ bore the influence of trip hop in its sampled breakbeat and incessant, hazy loops, but the overall effect is chilling, rather than chilled-out.
The mirror image of Britpop’s jolly flag-waving – Black Box Recorder had to be dissuaded from packaging it in a sleeve featuring a photograph of the England football team giving Nazi salutes at the 1936 Berlin Olympics – its lyrics depict “dear old dismal England” as a world of rain-soaked suburban boredom, familial dysfunction, violence and melancholy. Its closing track, ‘Hated Sunday’, is a brilliant musical evocation of the existential malaise that can grip you somewhere between Songs Of Praise and the Antiques Roadshow: “time stands still, one last drag, it still feels like school tomorrow”. Its notion of “cool Britannia” involves an icily respectable, stiff-upper-lip veneer beneath which all manner of darkness, sadism and discontent seethes: sung in a voice that’s both blank-eyed and cut-glass, the title track depicts a woman progressing from a childhood torturing insects to murder; the eerie mood conjured up on ‘Ideal Home’ somehow suggests the idyllic middle-class life drawn in its lyrics is a sham, covering something rather unpleasant up. It is infinitely more interested in the grimy strangeness of Britain in the early 70s than in the sunlit we-won-the-World-Cup fantasia of mid-60s Swinging London that seemed to lurk behind so much 90s UK pop culture.
With the Berlin Olympics photo nixed, the cover instead features an incredible shot of wrestler ‘Exotic’ Adrian Street – a hulking vision in make-up, platform boots and glam rock finery – standing outside the miner’s cage at the Welsh colliery where he once worked, his coal-dust covered father looking on. ‘Kidnapping An Heiress’ evoked memories of the 1975 abduction and murder of Lesley Whittle; among the extra tracks included on this re-release are covers of ‘Seasons In The Sun’ – the simultaneously weedy and unsettling English-language version of Jacques Brel’s song about a dying man, ‘Le Moribond’, with which Terry Jacks had an unlikely and profoundly depressing Number One in 1974 – and a single by obscure Brighton punk band The Dodgems called ‘Lord Lucan Is Missing’. The additional 10-inch that comes with this reissue is also home to ‘Brutality’, which offers a take on nostalgia that pretty much sums up Black Box Recorder’s sense of humour: “whatever happened to drinking and driving and doing the decent thing / hiding out on the continent getting over a nervous breakdown?”
The grimness and violence lurking around British life, the weirdness of the early 70s, a pitch-black sense of humour: in fairness, these were drums that that Black Box Recorder’s Luke Haines had been beating for some time. His band The Auteurs were supposed to follow tour-mates Suede to mainstream stardom – they were featured in the infamous “Yanks go home!” issue of music magazine Select that’s held to be Britpop’s ground zero – but instead, Haines had become 90s UK alt-rock’s most curmudgeonly refusenik: by the time of the decade’s zenith, The Auteurs were recording Steve Albini-produced songs about child murder and bombing the Columbia Hotel, the London rock and roll hotel that gave its name to a song by Oasis, while Haines was also helming a concept album about early 70s terrorism under the name Baader Meinhof. And they were themes he would continue exploring long afterwards: his provocative and darkly hilarious 2006 solo album Off My Rocker At The Art School Bop comes highly recommended. But it’s questionable whether he ever explored them quite as powerfully or succinctly as he does on England Made Me, an album full of exquisitely nasty, haunting pop gems. The reissue is apparently remastered, although it’s hard to work out whether that constitutes a major improvement, simply because original vinyl copies are so scarce: I confess, I’ve never heard one to compare the new version to. But that scarcity alone makes the reissue worthwhile – that and the fact that England Made Me is so far removed from anything else that was happening in 1998 that it transcends its era: listening to it isn’t a nostalgic experience, its contents feel fresh, relevant, even prescient.
England Made Me is reissued on vinyl today, via Chrysalis.
Features a Steven Wilson Dolby Atmos Mix, unheard instrumental version, rare bonus tracks and more • Quick pre-order link
Def Leppard’s 2022 studio album Diamond Star Halos will be the next release, on blu-ray audio, in the ongoing SDE Surround Series.
The 15-track long-player includes the singles ‘Kick’, ‘Fire It Up’ and ‘Take What You Want’ and features guest vocals from Alison Krauss on two tracks: ‘This Guitar’ and ‘Lifeless’. The album – the band’s 12th – was co-produced by Ronan McHugh and was a critical and commercial success, peaking in the top 10 of both the UK and US album charts.
The new forthcoming SDE-exclusive blu-ray edition will feature a Steven Wilson Dolby Atmos Mix of Diamond Star Halos, which is the first time this spatial audio mix has been available on a physical product. It will also include an exclusive instrumental version, the standard stereo mix and two rare bonus tracks, unreleased physically outside of Japan (‘Angels Can’t Help You Now – Stripped Version (Covent Garden Mix)’ and ‘This Guitar – Joe Only Version’).
Blu-ray content summary:
Steven Wilson Dolby Atmos Mix of Diamond Star Halos
Exclusive Instrumental Mix (48/24 stereo) of Diamond Star Halos
Original Stereo Mix (48/24) of Diamond Star Halos
Two rare bonus tracks in stereo (48/24), previously unreleased outside of Japan
This Def Leppard blu-ray audio is No 16 in the ongoing SDE Surround Series and will be packaged in the same style as previous releases in the series and ships with a free, collectible SDE Surround Series slipcase with the number ’16’ on the spine.
Here’s the now traditional reminder as to why this blu-ray comes highly recommended:
It’s the only way to enjoy the Dolby Atmos mix of the album via a physical product
You don’t need to sign-up to a streaming service such as Tidal or Apple Music to hear the spatial audio mix
The Atmos Mix on the Blu-ray is not compressed due to streaming bandwidth restrictions
You own the product, you are not renting it from a digital service provider
The Blu-ray audio is an excellent format for music and you don’t want to see it die off
Supporting SDE with these initiatives is leading to similar collaborations with labels/artists and we are keen to bring your more in the near future!
The SDE-exclusive Blu-ray Audio of Diamond Star Halos is a limited edition item. It will be pressed based on demand and is available to pre-order for 14 days only. Availability after that cannot be guaranteed, so secure your copy today by pre-ordering at the SDE shop, either directly via this link or using the special SDE shop buy button (‘add to cart’) below.
We ship worldwide and there’s no longer any extra charges to the EU (if the value of your order is less than €150).
This SDE-exclusive blu-ray of Diamond Star Halos will be released on 23 February 2024 (was 12 January) via Mercury/UMR.
TECHNICAL NOTES: This blu-ray audio requires a blu-ray player. Decoding the Dolby Atmos mix requires a Dolby Atmos-certified soundbar or a Dolby Atmos-compatible AV Receiver/Amp. The Dolby Atmos mix will ‘fold down’ to 5.1 or stereo if a Dolby Atmos decoder is not detected.
The SDE Surround Series so far is:
#1 Tears For Fears: The Tipping Point
#2 xPropaganda: The Heart Is Strange
#3 Gilbert O’Sullivan: Driven
#4 Shakespears Sister: Hormonally Yours
#5 Brian Eno: FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE
#6 Orbital: Optical Delusion
#6.5 Various Arists: Concert For George
#7 Ten Years After: A Space In Time
#8 Bob Dylan: Time Out Of Mind (2022 Remix)
#9 Tears For Fears: The Hurting
#10 Mike Oldfield: Tubular Bells
#11 Suede
#12 ABC: The Lexicon of Love
#13 Duran Duran: Danse Macabre
#14 Trevor Horn: Echoes – Ancient and Modern
#15 Soft Cell: Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret
Tracklisting
Diamond Star HalosDef Leppard /
SDE Blu-ray Audio
Diamond Star Halos:| Steven Wilson Dolby Atmos Mix, Instrumental Stereo Mix (48/24) and Stereo Mix (48/24)
Take What You Want 4:14
Kick 3:42
Fire It Up 3:19
This Guitar (featuring Alison Krauss) 3:50
SOS Emergency 3:25
Liquid Dust 4:01
U Rok Mi 3:33
Goodbye for Good This Time 4:27
All We Need 4:46
Open Your Eyes 4:19
Gimme a Kiss 3:12
Angels (Can’t Help You Now) 4:57
Lifeless (featuring Alison Krauss) 4:19
Unbreakable 3:46
From Here to Eternity
Rare bonus tracks (stereo 48/24)
Angels (Can’t Help You Now) (Stripped Version) 4.57
SDEtv takes a look at the SDE-exclusive blu-ray edition of BMG’s new PWLExtended Big Hits and Surprises Vols 1&2. Watch the video…
PWL Extended: Big Hits and Surprises is released on 17 November 2023 via BMG. You can order the SDE-exclusive blu-ray via this link or using the buy button (‘add to cart’) below. These are now in stock and will ship in the next 48 hours.
TECHNICAL NOTES: This blu-ray audio requires a blu-ray player. It will not play on a CD player!
Suede’s 1994 non-album single Stay Together will be released as a limited edition seven-inch picture disc early next year, as part of Demon’s ongoing ‘Suede30’ celebrations.
The song was the last single released by the band while Bernard Butler was still a member and its peak of number three in the UK singles chart felt like some kind of culmination or validation at the time, in what seemed like the inexorable rise of the band after that run of four singles from their debut album.
Commercially, although not critically, things would take a turn for the worse, although that was all in the future at this point and ‘Stay Together’ remains a fantastic piece of work, with a typically strong flipside in ‘The Living Dead’.
This seven-inch picture disc features the edit of Stay Together (the 12-inch and CD singles at the time boasted the long 8.29 version) and ‘The Living Dead’. It’s the fifth in the series of picture discs and it seems that Demon do plan to issue all three singles from the magnificent Dog Man Star in this format next year.
This Stay Together seven-inch picture disc is released on 16 February 2024 via Demon Records. Like the previous four picture discs, you can pre-order from the SDE shop via this link or by using the button below.
NOW That’s What I Call Music continue their occasional limited edition vinyl box set series with NOW Presents Disco.
This is a 5LP set pressed on purple vinyl and features “the greatest 70s Disco tracks ever”. You can decide if you think that’s true, by perusing the tracklistings below.
Certainly, it’s full of timeless classics, by Chic, Sister Sledge, Gloria Gaynor, Village People, Grace Jones, Amii Stewart, Candi Staton, Chaka Khan, LaBelle, Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, Tina Charles, Baccara, Boney M., Lipps Inc., Kool & The Gang and many more!
SDEtv examines the New Order Substance 1987 reissue and finds the package a “perfect 4CD set” and “not fit for purpose” simultaneously. Watch the video to find out more…
Sheryl Crow will release Evolution, her 12th studio album in March next year. The record will feature nine new tracks and has been produced by Mike Elizondo.
This announcement is mildly surprising given that Crow had announced that she would no longer make albums after 2019’s ultra-collaborative Threads. She explains: “Everything has gotten more song oriented with streaming, and making an album is a huge endeavor. I started off sending one song to Mike, which turned into four, and it was going to be an EP. But the songs just kept flowing out of me, four songs turned into nine and it was pretty obvious this was an album.”
The album features the single ‘Alarm Clock’, which Crow premiered on Jimmy Fallon recently, and clocks in at a brief 35 minutes. There’s nothing complicated about the physical formats which amount to a vinyl LP (which may or may not be a coloured vinyl pressing) and a CD. That seems to be it.
Evolution will be released on 29 March 2024 via Big Machine.
Columbia and Sony’s Legacy Recordings issue The Complete Budokan 1978 a new 4CD or 8LP vinyl box that marks the 45th anniversary of Bob Dylan’s 1978 world tour and includes two complete shows from Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan Hall (February 28 and March 1, 1978). Watch SDEtv unbox the 4CD version.
This reissue of Muse’s 2003 album features remastered audio, never-before-released live versions, abd demos. This 3LP+2CD set features the album on one CD and 2LPs with bonus material on the second CD and the clear vinyl 12-inch.
Compare prices and pre-order
Muse
Absolution (20th Anniversary Deluxe CD & Vinyl Boxset) [VINYL]
NOW That’s What I Call Music! 16 features 33 of the biggest chart hits from 1989 on two CDs, including Queen, Tina Turner, Cliff Richard, Deborah Harry, Erasure, Belinda Carlisle, Living in a Box, Tears For Fears, Neneh Cherry, Wet Wet Wet, Cathy Dennis and more. Kate Bush’s ‘The Sensual World’ and Lil’ Louis’ French Kiss were on the original compilation but are MISSING from this reissue.
The first brand new studio album from Classix Nouveaux for 40 years. Battle Cry contains nine tracks including seven brand new compositions plus ‘Never Never Comes’ and ‘Interlude/Inside Outside’ which have been newly re-imagined.
Out today is the reissue of The Beatles ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ albums. SDEtv takes a close look at the two coloured vinyl editions and compares to the originals.
With next year marking the 20th anniversary of their debut Hot Fuss, The Killers have chosen this moment to release a new greatest hits called Rebel Diamonds.
The compilation features 20 tracks, with all the hits and at least one song from each of their seven studio albums. A new number, ‘Spirit’, is also included.
Cream vinyl 2LP is exclusive to indie record shops
Rebel Diamonds is available on CD, 2LP black vinyl with a coloured cream vinyl edition available via indie shops. The band are going to offer a 4LP edition via their channels soon, although this doesn’t seem to be available yet. No extra material, it’s just pressed at 45RPM.
Rebel Diamonds is being released on 8 December 2023, via EMI.
Porcupine Tree’s 2022 tour to promote their Closure/Continuation record is celebrated with a special live album release next month.
Closure/Continuation. Live. documents the reformed band’s triumphant return to the stage via a live recording captured on 7 November 2022 at Amsterdam’s 17,000 capacity Ziggo Dome.
Three physical formats all include the full live show (“no hits” to quote Steven Wilson) and the deluxe edition is a 2CD+2xblu-ray set which feature audio across the two CDs, the filmed show (+ bonus features) on blu-ray and then a second blu-ray with audio streams in Dolby Atmos, 5.1 and hi-res stereo. The four discs are housed in a 60-page hardcover book which slides into a 12-inch slipcase.
The 2CD+2xBlu-ray deluxe edition
There is also a 4LP box set with all the audio pressed on clear vinyl and a blu-ray+DVD edition which just the filmed show – no bonus features or separate audio-only element. The deluxe edition and 4LP versions are not available across all retail.
Closure/Continuation. Live. is released on 8 December 2023, via Music For Nations/Sony. The 4-disc deluxe set is being reprinted for a 15 March 2024 re-release.
Go West’s 1987 album Dancing On The Couch will be reissued in January.
This follow-up to their platinum self-titled debut saw Peter Cox and Richard Drummie continuing to explore their signature pop-soul sound, and includes the singles ‘True Colours’, ‘I Want To Hear It From You’, ‘From Baltimore To Paris’, and ‘The King Is Dead’ (with guest backing vocals from a certain Kate Bush).
The 3CD+DVD deluxe is packaged in a 7″ hardcover book
This new deluxe edition is available as a 3CD+DVD set which includes the original album newly remastered by producer Gary Stevenson; a second CD of B-sides, rarities and previously unreleased material; a third CD featuring the Hammersmith Odeon show recorded on the ‘Runaway Train’ tour in 1987; and a DVD featuring promo videos from the period and the Hammersmith concert (on DVD for the first time). This set is packaged as a seven-inch hardcover book with a 20-page booklet with photos, lyrics and new sleeve notes from the band.
There’s also a 2LP edition pressed on clear vinyl offers a bonus LP of remixes and rarities.
The SDE shop has exclusive editions of both releases which ship with a print of the album cover SIGNED by both Peter Cox and Richard Drummie. The print is the size of a seven-inch single (for both editions). Additionally, the SDE shop has an ultra-limited edition of the Go West single ‘King of Wishingful Thinking’. This is a special Lathe Cut clear vinyl edition is limited to 50 units. It comes in a white sleeve signed (and numbered) by both band members. Strictly limited to ONE per customer.
Dancing on the Couch will be reissued on 26 January 2024, via Chrysalis. The lathe cut vinyl will ship next week if ordered by itself, or in January if ordered with Dancing on the Couch.
Both editions of Dancing On The Couch with the SIGNED prints will be available for to pre-order for one week only, from today. Order all of these exclusives ONLY via the SDE shop using this link or the buttons below
Tracklisting
Dancing on the Couch Go West/3CD+DVD
CD 1: Dancing on the Couch (2024 remaster)
I Want To Hear It From You
Little Caesar
Masque Of Love
From Baltimore To Paris
True Colours
The King Is Dead
Chinese Whispers
Let’s Build A Boat
Crossfire
Dangerous
CD 2: B-sides, Remixes, Rarities
I Want To Hear It From You (A Day In Aarhus)
True Colours (The Snake Charmer Mix)
Masque of Love (Schoolhouse Mix)
The King Is Dead (12″ Long Vibe Piano Mix)*
I’ll Be Waiting / Tears Too Late
True Colours (Demo Mix)*
XL 5
The King Is Dead (Live at Hammersmith
12″ Version)
I’ll Be Waiting (The Skelefocal Mix)*
Don’t Be Afraid Of Your Dreams
Don’t Look Down (The Sequel) [U.S. 7″ Mix]
*Previously unreleased
CD 3: The Runaway Train Tour: Live at Hammersmith Odeon
S.O.S.
True Colours
Chinese Whispers
Eye To Eye
Little Caesar
Missing Persons
Man In My Mirror
I Want To Hear It From You
Call Me
Don’t Look Down
The King Is Dead
We Close Our Eyes
All tracks previously unreleased
DVD: The Runaway Train Tour: Live at Hammersmith Odeon
Suede will release an expanded 3CD edition of their 2022 album Autofiction in December.
The first CD in this set is the standard album, while disc two includes four songs that were only available digitally during the first week following the album’s release (to help get it up the charts via a ‘digital deluxe’). Those are: ‘The Sadness In You, The Sadness In Me’, ‘Days Like Dead Moths’’, ‘The Prey’ and ‘Still Waiting’. The Japanese-only bonus track ‘You Don’t Know Me’ is also included on CD 2 along with an unreleased song from the Autofiction album sessions called ‘There Is No Me If There Is No You’ (a very ‘Suede’ title, I’m sure you’ll agree).
The newly packaged Autofiction: Expanded
The third disc in this newly expanded set features the entire album, in order, played live. These recordings were culled from various Suede shows during the band’s UK tour in March 2023.
Autofiction: Expanded will be released on 8 December 2023, via BMG.
SDE sat down recently with Duane Tudahl who has been working for the Prince Estate for around five years and has recently taken over from Michael Howe. We discuss Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls, his Vault of unreleased material and the approach to putting together the super deluxe edition box sets.
SDE: With Prince you never fail to be impressed with all the music he didn’t release and the quality of it, in particular.
Duane Tudahl: The main thing to me about somebody like Prince is he’s got a whole world of great music that wasn’t released, kind of hidden, that just didn’t fit the project. A lot of his outtakes are what another band or group would be very happy to have on their main album. And they’re complete tracks, because I’m guessing when he was recording them he always “this could be on my album”. He puts a lot of care into every piece of what he does.
Diamonds and Pearls was the first tour that I saw Prince play live, at Earls Court in 1992. I would have been 22 at that point.
That was a great tour to see. Compared to a lot of other bands, Prince puts on a show. A lot of bands would come up and play, but he would actually put on a show. And the nice thing about his concerts is that you could go to several in a row, and they’re all slightly different.
Of course, people will get a feel for this show through the the Glam Slam 92 concert, which forms a large part of this box set
The fact that this is documented on film, is so cool, historically. Because what you’ve got is a guy trying this stuff out, and he’s even trying stuff out for the next album, which is just crazy. He’s already on to the next album, even though he’s just starting to promote this album. But you look up at the stage and you’ve got around 20 people up on this small club stage at one point, doing different things. You don’t even know where to look, sometimes. But it’s a great show.
The thing I always find interesting is that it always looks semi-spontaneous, but when you see the complexity and the detail in the dance routines, and how everyone has to work together on stage, you know it isn’t really like that and there’s been so much rehearsal.
A lot of work goes into making it look easy. Although even though it’s really rehearsed, there’s still an air of spontaneity in there. He’s built it up so high, and they’re all so solid, that he can now do something on top of that. He’s worked the band so hard, to get them to the point where they know everything by rote. They’ve got that down, so now let’s go to the next level! And a lot of bands don’t actually go to the next level.
Duane, we should introduce you to the SDE audience, because I’ve spoken to Michael Howe in the past about Prince’s Sign O’ The Times and 1999 reissues. He’s no longer working with the Prince Estate so you’ve obviously taken over that role and, and are working on this project. How long have you been on board and how has it all been going?
I’ve been with the Prince estate for about five years. I was working with Michael, during that time. So I did work on the Sign O’ The Times box set and the 1999 box. I was the guy who put together the videos for those things as well as curated a lot of the music for it. I come from a TV and documentary background. I worked in television for about 30 years as a writer, director, producer, editor and so I did a lot of reality TV, a lot of documentaries, a lot of films. My official title is the ‘Senior Researcher and Archivist’ for the Vault. So it involves going in there and finding the footage, finding the audio – finding all the options. And, you know, you try to uncover things, and you have to listen to every tape and because sometimes there’ll be something in the middle of a tape.
What have the challenges been with Diamonds and Pearls? As we know with Prince, there is this constant flow of material, new recordings, and one project often meshes into another, so the marker points where one thing starts and another ends might not be so obvious. How do you get going with a project like this?
You start at the beginning, and the biggest thing is figuring out where the beginning is. So for this project, you have songs being recorded during the Nude tour, which is in 1990, in London, and that is really where it started. The tricky thing with Prince is that projects start and end and they overlap quite a bit. So you have to be a little selective about things and you want to make sure you stay within the right parameters. This was started, like I said, in London in July of 1990, during the Nude tour and ended right about when the album’s being released, in October of 1991. So you’ve got a little over a year during that time. Now it’s tricky because, he’s recording for other artists; he’s recording for himself; some of his songs came out on later albums; some of the songs went nowhere… So the challenge is trying to figure out what tells the story the best. The first outtake was called ‘Schoolyard’. The fun thing for me is that the beginning of the album is ‘Thunder’ and the last outtake is the ‘Thunder Ballet’, so it kind of bookends the whole collection. ‘Thunder Ballet’ was done a couple of days after the album came out, so we still think that’s within the range, because sometimes he’ll record a B-side later. But you also want to make sure the songs honour his legacy and do not detract from it; you don’t want to put things on there for numbers.
If you have multiple versions of tracks, is it a case of just making a judgement on the best one?
You have a lot of things you got to think about. First off, you have to think what represents him best. And you look for songs that he’s mixed [himself], so that’s a complete version; the goal is to have as many as many complete versions of what he does as possible. Sometimes you get a song like ‘Cream, take 2’, that was never mixed, because that was an early version of it. So we have to mix that and we have Chris James, who used to work with Prince doing the mixing of that. We try to confer with as many of the engineers and band members as possible. The interesting thing is, sometimes he’ll do a mix of something on the 24-track and then he will go back and change the 24-track. Like he’ll take something out and put another thing in. Sometimes he would go right in the middle of a track where there’s a bass line and he’ll just punch in a guitar lick. So that makes that mix that was done [before] completely unique, because it will never be possible to be recreate it.
You talk about a 24-track tape… Because of the unique way he recorded, do you have evidence of what had gone on in a particular session? Bits of paper that documented it?
There’s often a track sheet which has listed what’s on there, but that doesn’t necessarily mean is exactly what’s on there. Sometimes it says “Sonny bass”, sometimes it just says “bass”. And then you have to actually go to the band and say, “Sonny, what did you play on this?” And sometimes the band members are like, “I don’t remember”. The other part about this is that I’m a writer. I’ve been working on books about Prince’s studio sessions. So I’ve been collecting his work orders for the past 30 years. And so I go into my archive on this stuff and look at what I find on work orders and things that were from this from the studios, whether it’s Paisley Park or Sunset Sound or wherever.
How did you get access to that material, in the first place?
I started writing about Prince about 30 years ago and part of my books are about the studio session, so I went to the studios to talk to them about this stuff. And they said, we’ll tell you what, we’ll give you the work orders and let you make copies of them. Or talk to the engineers, you know, like Michael Koppelman or Susan Rogers; a lot of them have notes about some of their sessions, and they will talk to you about this stuff. Susan Rogers worked on the Sign O’ The Times stuff, but Michael Koppelman worked on Diamonds and Pearls. So I talked to him and other engineers. You build a relationship with these people and you see the paper trail of what was recorded. That is used quite a bit when writing sessionographies in the box sets. It is a bit of a mystery, and like any big mystery, you start talking to the people that were closest to the event
What do you make of the Diamonds and Pearls album? Because, I must admit, as someone who loved Prince in the 80s, you know, Parade, Sign O’ The Times, etc., I remember being a little bit disappointed that he was going down the Rap / Hip Hop kind of route. It felt a little bit to me like he was going to be a follower, not a leader anymore. I was reading the notes in the booklet and there were some interesting conversations at the time around the topic of whether this was going to come across as ‘authentic’ Prince? Are the fans gonna abandon him, will black radio reject him, etc. What’s your take on the direction he was going in?
One of the cool things about Prince is that it’s hard to get bored with him. He’s always gonna throw you a curve. Graffiti Bridge didn’t do that well, and that was basically a Prince solo album, although a lot of that stuff was brought up from The Vault. With this album, he said I’m going to find a new sound by blending Oakland, California, and Minneapolis – put them together and see what happens. But with every Prince project, there’s the risk of liking it or not liking it. And as a fan, you go, I’ll if I don’t like this, I’ll meet you on the next album. I think some of Diamonds and Pearls has aged really well and love the fact that people like Chuck D are coming out and talking about [rapper] Tony M and it’s great that Tony’s getting some love now. The fun thing for me is is when you see the outtakes from this Vault material you see that some of it is not like Diamonds and Pearls [at all]. It just doesn’t fit. There’s a song called ‘I Pledge Allegiance to Your Love’. One of the best songs on the box; it’s a blues song. It could easily be a BB King song. It doesn’t fit on the album but he didn’t try and cram it on there. A lot of artists would cram a great song onto an album where it didn’t belong.
Is it a stretch to say that Prince needed a hit album at this point? Warners were probably thinking along those lines, but do you think Prince stopped and thought, I need to do something different, go in a new direction? Or did that commercial reality never enter his brain?
There’s two different sides of this. The bottom line to me is, when Prince gets pushed into a corner, like when The Revolution was disbanded, he came up with Sign O’ The Times. Kind of like, I’ll show you what I can do. Diamonds and Pearls came right after Graffiti Bridge, which did not do very well. Of course, there’s a competitive side to him, but did he need to do anything? No, Prince wanted to do things, and the only need would be internal. Warner Brothers may have been saying, “we want you to do this”, but Prince is gonna do what Prince does. And that’s one of the coolest things about him; people will look at him for artistic integrity. He goes in so many different directions and each each album or era is just slightly different.
He was already crazily prolific, as everyone knows, but with this band on tap, it would have been an even quicker process to record. He’s not there having to do it one instrument at a time, layering tracks.
I think you’re probably right on that. I mean, he was quick, just by doing himself too, but I think what happened is that these band members really did connect with him. You’re not in Prince’s band, unless he wants you there, because he’s getting something from you, but I think having those great players in the band did make it a little faster, a little richer, maybe. But he was also influenced by these people, so they take him in a direction which just bends slightly, from perhaps what was intended. They’re young, and energetic and excited, and that kept him excited. I think that’s what he did with every band. You’ll find that over the course of his career, he would always have to renew it with fresh blood; new people, new spirits, new outlooks.
And the thing I always find interesting is that Prince wouldn’t waste time for the sake of it. So for example, ‘Thunder’ at the beginning of this record, wasn’t recorded with the NPG but he didn’t re-record it so it sounds a bit more like the rest of the album. Rather like how there’s a live track on Sign O’ The Times. He wasn’t worried about those kinds of details.
And he would go in sometimes with a band recording and overdub some of their stuff. I mean, it’s got to be tricky having a boss that can walk up to you and do your job better than you, at any point.
You mentioned how it started in London. So on a day off from touring, he’d go to the studio for 12 hours and record a few tracks. How did he even secure the studio time at such short notice? Would someone have booked that in advance just to be on the safe side?
By this point, he had a habit of doing that. So I think everybody around him understood that this is going to happen. During that time, during the Nude tour, for quite a while, he stationed himself in London, so I’m sure he set up things way ahead of time. But everybody knew that his his his propensity is to go into the studio and that he had more music than than he had time, if that makes sense.
The notes in the book are brilliant and there’s lots of stuff about how he works with the record label. Everyone always thinks of Prince falling out with Warners and butting heads and stuff like that, but it’s quite pleasing, in a way, to see that they worked together very well on this record. And even though he probably didn’t like it, they would say to him, we need something for black radio and he’d come back with ‘Gett Off’. Was this the last album where that kind of cooperation, or collaboration, worked so well?
Probably. I have a daughter. Early on, our relation was very collaborative. She’s in her teens now, and is branching off and trying things and there’s going to come a point where she’s gonna say, “I don’t need your help anymore”. And I think to a certain extent, it was like that with Prince. And he had hits, so he didn’t have to sit there and think, how can I write a hit? I do think he benefitted from the organisation that that Warner Brothers brought to him, whether it came to selling and promotion and things like this. But this is probably the last time that they really worked really well together. And right after this, was when he did the 100 million dollar contract deal with them and within the next five or six years, they were separating [laughs]. It was a really healthy relationship for a long time, but this is probably the last major album push that they had together.
He was definitely pushing the boundaries, wasn’t he? Because there’s a great story [in the book in the box set] about how he privately presses up 1500 copies of ‘Gett Off’ without officially informing his label. On the one hand, that’s brilliantly creative, but doing those kinds of things was never going to last within the confines and constraints of a major record label.
I’ve always looked at Prince’s career in three stages. In the early stages, he was a rebel, and he was doing what he wanted to get attention. Then, 1999 and Purple Rain came along and he became a superstar, and he stayed superstar for a long time. But I think, a little bit after this album, and maybe even during some of this album, he became the rebel again, saying to himself, you know what, I’m going to take charge this stuff again. That’s such a great story, going behind Warner Brothers’ back to press this song [on vinyl]. To me, that’s the funniest thing ever. Knowing that he actually did that is hilarious, to me. But I don’t think he had the cooperation with with Warner Brothers on an album after this, like he did with Diamonds and Pearls. You’re right, that’s a good point.
Tell us about the Dolby Atmos mix of this studio album. Who did that spatial audio mix and how did that come about?
That was Chris James. He is our main mixer for a lot of stuff. Chris worked with Prince during the last few years of Prince’s life. So he understood what Prince wanted, he had worked intimately in the studio with him. I think you want to have somebody that can refer back to lessons he learned from Prince. That’s really important.
Are there any plans to go back and do Sign O’ The Times or 1999 in Atmos?
I don’t know of anything like that, but I think it’d be cool if we could do something like that. But I don’t have any visibility as far as that is concerned.
What’s the state of Prince’s Vault? This might be a stupid thing to say, because I know it’s massive, but has it all been digitised yet? Or do you just digitise it as and when you need to for what the project you’re working on?
What I can say is that the ball is always in motion. There’s always something going on and you have a 40 year career and you want to make sure you do a proper investigation of each thing. You don’t want to just randomly digitise everything. There’s so much to it, because you have half-inch mixes, quarter-inch mixes, two-inch tapes, one-inch videos tapes, you have 3/4″ videos, you have all these different types of video formats, some of which aren’t even around anymore. You have all these cassettes, you have film, you have stills, you have everything that is basically the collection of a man’s career. So it’s gonna take a little time to make sure you get everything done. The priority is getting it done right, and not right now. Curation is very important because you want to be as meticulous as possible, and make sure that you connect the dots. For example, on the box set there’s a song called ‘Dark Side’ and there’s also a song called ‘Blood on the Sheets’. ‘Dark Side’ is the early version of ‘Blood on the Sheets’ and they’re both instrumentals, but they both on here to hear how his sound changes over time. The first one is recorded in Japan and the second one is recorded at Paisley Park, a few months later, and it’s much harder sound. And that to me is fun. Because when you get to see and hear the progress of a song. To me, it’s like going back to Rembrandt drawing sketches, where you can say, okay that’s what he started with. You go to his notebooks, and you see these little sketches. I think it’s a great lesson for anybody who studies music, or anybody who’s in a band to see, basically, how the sausage is made.
But there isn’t too much of that, though, to be fair, because if you think of The Beatles, and a song like ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, one of the box sets has quite a few different versions of that song but you’re not really giving us that with these Prince box sets…
I love the Beatles’ boxsets. But the Beatles didn’t have nearly the kind of vault that Prince did. And they recorded for eight years, so they didn’t have this deep reservoir of music. With the Prince box sets you may not see the individual tracks doing that, because he didn’t really do demos that much, but you see it in what he did, because there’s dozens of songs on these box sets that tracks his emotions. What we do is we try to make sure that the Vault songs are in chronological order. So they tell the story of what Prince is going through at the time. Each song is really like a Polaroid photo where he is at that moment. Happy, sad, angry, whatever it is, and he may do the song in a few hours. That’s a great snapshot of exactly what he’s doing at that moment. So when you do the box sets, you want to honour Prince by making sure you allow him to tell his story, via his music, in chronological order. Towards the end, there’s a song called in ‘A Letter for Miles’. And that was really important because it came right after Miles Davis died. So the story is not necessarily being told by having 15 versions of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, which I admit is still cool, but there’s not really 15 versions of anything. Okay, you do have 15 versions of ‘Gett Off’ but those are remixes.
Thanks to Duane Tudahl who was talking to Paul Sinclair for SDE. The Diamonds and Pearls box sets are available now.
The Black Crowes’ 1992 album The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion has been remastered and expanded for CD and vinyl reissues next month. The reissue has been overseen by Chris and Rich Robinson and album producer George Drakoulias.
A 3CD super deluxe edition box set features 14 unreleased tracks including two studio recordings,a live February 1993 concert, and the never-before-heard live in-studio performances at the end of the Southern Harmony session – along with B-sides and the original album (which was remastered from the original 1/4″ production master tape). This box also comes with ‘stuff’ which includes a “hymn book” with insights from both Chris and Rich Robinson, sheet music and four lithographs.
The 3CD super deluxe of The Southern Harmony… (click image to enlarge)
There’s also a 2CD deluxe which features the original remastered album with the bonus ‘Best Of The Box’ highlights disc with nine rare and unreleased selections from the super deluxe.
In terms of vinyl, there’s a single remastered black vinyl edition as well as a 4LP super deluxe which repeats the content on the 3CD set. Sadly, there appears to be no ‘cheap’ 3CD edition, which fans had the option of buying for the Shake Your Money Maker reissue of 2021.
The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion will be reissued on 15 December 2023 via UMR.
1962-1966 and 1967-1970, the two classic Beatles compilations – better known as the ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ Albums – are newly remixed and expanded with the notable inclusion of ‘Now and Then’ the first ‘new’ song from the Fab Four since ‘Real Love’ in 1996.
Standard CD and vinyl editions of the 2018 concert performance from London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall that features full orchestral re-imaginings of Roxy Music tracks as performed on stage by Roxy Music legends Andy Mackay & Phil Manzanera
The full audio for the much hyped ‘last’ Beatles song Now and Then has been made available. Have a listen below and let us know what you think. Do you like it and does it live up to expectations? Leave a comment!
Now and Then is officially released on 3 November 2023 with various vinyl editions available, along with a CD single. It also features on the new ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ albums which are released on 10 November.
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