In a previous post, I wrote about notable EPs of the (mostly) 1960s. I’m not a big EP collector by any means, but there are some EPs I have outside of that time frame that aren’t discussed too much, and are pretty interesting. Some of them are from later than the 1980s, and some are reissues or first-time issues of ‘60s material that didn’t come out until decades later. Some of them are rare, too, but that’s not the main reason I have them in my collection.

Here are ten of them, not ranked in order of quality, and not meant to be a best-of list of any sort. It’s just a survey of some interesting and fairly obscure releases in a format that’s never caught on like the album or single. 

Various Artists, Folk Rock E.P. (sic) (Moxie, 1981). Back in the stone age of 1960s reissues, the Moxie label was one of the few companies generating vinyl compilations of mid-‘60s garage rock. There were plenty of things to pick on about their anthologies if you were so inclined. The sound quality was, to put it mildly, uneven, especially as it seemed that all of the tracks had been dubbed from vinyl copies, some of which had a lot of surface noise. Sometimes you could even here brief bursts where someone seemed to have dropped and lifted a needle. The graphics were crude enough to have been etched by an actual stone age transplant. 

Moxie’s most well known products were found in their series of Boulders ‘60s garage rock anthology LPs. They also did some EPs, including this six-track seven-inch of mid-‘60s folk-rock rarities. Maybe as a concession to polished marketing, it was pressed on yellow vinyl. Below the Moxie logo, the inner label proclaims, “‘The Times They Are A Changin’ presents the first folk rock E.P.” No picture sleeve, though.

Precisely because the overwhelming majority of garage-rock comps focus on rather similar-sounding raunchy sounds that are often cruder variations of the British Invasion, this release marks a refreshing departure from the formula. What’s more, none of the songs have been reissued much, though this came out back in 1981. As far as I can tell, the Bats’ “Nothing at All” and Beer’s “Anymore” haven’t been reissued anywhere else, though it’s hard to keep up with this kind of thing.

While much of the EP has a slightly raw adolescent feel, all of the tracks have their merits. In fact, the Avengers’ “Open Your Eyes” is one of the very best obscure folk-rock cuts, with fine Byrds-ish harmonies, chiming guitars, and a touch of eerie psychedelia. Boo Boo & Bunkie’s “Turn Around” is an amusing Sonny & Cher takeoff; the Black Sheep’s “It’s My Mind” a solid harmony folk-rocker; the Bees’ “Leave Me Be” an archetypal sullen teen rejection ode; and the Bats’ “Nothing At All” an enticingly sluggish number with mournful melodic harmonies. The closer, by the oddly named Beer, is more like teen garage lament with folk-rockish guitars than classic folk-rock, but still an affecting listen, like the rest of this EP.

The Plagues, Through This World (Quarantined, 1987). This obscure Lansing, Michigan garage rock outfit put out three rare singles in 1965 and 1966. In 1987, some devoted soul put out five of the six tracks on this seven-inch. The graphics were basic in the extreme, with a crudely photocopied picture of the group on a pink background.

Their story is probably much like thousands of other garage bands that didn’t make it big, but the music isn’t exactly like most of them. “That’ll Never Do” is such a downer take on typical lovelorn teen garage rock that it almost sounds like K Records post-punk alternative rock act Beat Happening would have in the mid-‘60s.  The father-of-Calvin Johnson-like vocal verges on deliberate parody of the form. The drumless “Through This World” nearly seems like a garage Herman’s Hermits, in the best sense of that phrase. Sure it’s primitive, but it’s pretty catchy, too.

While things get more upbeat, full-bodied, and typically garage on side two, these cuts have their strengths too. “I’ve Been Through This Before” is a haunting but forceful blast of disappointed romance (there were many such garage-rock songs) with the kind of fuzz guitar garage rock fanatics treasure. “Tears from My Eyes” is the kind of folk-rock-influenced brooding garage that could have fit onto the above-listed Moxie Folk Rock E.P. “Why Can’t You Be True” is more formulaic “done-me-wrong” garage, but again shows their knack for fairly catchy minor-keyed melodies, which lifts into unpredictably jubilant Merseybeat-ish mode in the bridge.

Incidentally, this doesn’t include one of the sides from their three singles, their initial B-side “Badlands.” It’s a garage-surfish instrumental that’s not bad, but not as interesting as their other efforts.

Various Artists, The Magic Cube (no label, 1982). This nine-song nine-inch flexidisc – you read that right, nine inches – isn’t really a standout for the music, though it’s decent. It’s a mid-‘60s garage rock compilation, some with an ominous psychedelic tinge. Some of the tracks are fairly off the beaten path, though the Rising Storm’s “Frozen Laughter” has been easily available on reissues of their LP, and the Unrelated Segments’ “Cry, Cry, Cry” has shown up on numerous collections. 

What really makes this stand apart is the oddball packaging. It’s strange enough to have a nine-inch EP, or a flexidisc garage comp. It’s yet stranger to have both at once. It was enclosed in a cover more like a business envelope than a record sleeve, with a blurry purple-tinted cover of a city skyline, over which a cube hovers. The tracks are listed on a traffic signal-shaped arrow that folds out into a three-dimensional cube, should you be so inclined to make one. 

For what it’s worth my favorite track – a garage-frat take on Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” by Kenny & His Fiends – does not seem to have been reissued anywhere else. For all its obscurity, The Magic Cube itself has been reissued on CD and vinyl, though that vinyl measures ten inches, not nine.

The Byrds, Another Dimension (Sundazed, 2005). In truth this could have been a standard LP instead of a double EP, as it has twelve tracks. Alone among the items on this list, these are ten-inch discs – a measurement that was uncommon at any time in the record business history. And these alternate versions/outtakes from the sessions for the Byrds’ third LP, Fifth Dimension, are the kind that will only generate enthusiasm among fanatics, since they’re more like mix variations than unreleased material. “Instrumental tracks,” “long version, partial alternate vocal,” “long version instrumental without sound effects,” “no string overdubs” are some of the subtitles, to give you an idea.

Still, if there groups worthy of official releases of the kind of tinkered variations that show up on bootlegs, the Byrds are one of them. In no cases do the alternate versions match the released ones, but it’s kind of neat to hear “John Riley” and “Wild Mountain Thyme” without strings, a slightly longer version of “I See You,” and “2-4-2 Fox Trot (The Lear Jet Song)” without sound effects. Not to mention “version 2” of “John Riley” as a faster-paced, jazzy instrumental; “version 1” of this instrumental, as you’ll surely remember, was a bonus track on the expanded Fifth Dimension CD. I don’t think any of these variations had been officially released elsewhere, though again it’s hard to keep up with things like that.

What really puts this double EP on this list, however, is the packaging, featuring a gatefold sleeve with alternate color cover shots. Best of all, the inner gatefold has the transcript of their March 1966 New York press conference, where Roger McGuinn and David Crosby speak at interesting length about the “Eight Miles High/Why” single and raga rock (and press officer Derek Taylor gives a long answer to the question about Gene Clark’s departure). It’s a rare example of valuable historical documentation being presented on archival releases – not just on reissue EPs, but on reissues in general.

The Left Banke, “Things Go Better/Hertz Rent-A-Car/Toni Hairspray” (Winfield, undated). The Left Banke didn’t record much in their brief lifetime, leaving behind less than thirty tracks (not counting reunions). This unauthorized three-song seven-inch is a scant supplement to their scant legacy, with commercials they did for Coke, Hertz, and Toni hairspray. The tunes aren’t much – are jingles ever that substantial? But they sing very well, in their usual style of backing Steve Martin’s superb lead vocals with sort of New York Beach Boys harmonies.

The tracks flash by in a mere three minutes or so, and the exact same recordings grace each side. The packaging won’t win any awards, setting text against a color photocopy of graphics from their first LP, and snapshots of the group in performance on the back cover.

Syd Barrett, Vinyl Sessions (Octopus, 1986). The release of the Barrett outtakes compilation Opel a couple years after this four-song, unauthorized seven-inch would seem to have eliminated any need to track this EP down. Not so, since the version, or at least mix, of “Milky Way” — a song that did not appear on Barrett’s two early-‘70s LPs — on the EP is different. And, to my ear, better, starting with the “1-2-3-4” spoken countoff that doesn’t make the officially released counterpart. The Vinyl Sessions version also has some almost sitarish buzz to some of the background guitar that gets lopped off the one on Opel.

More notable are the differences on “Dark Globe,” which had been on his debut album The Madcap Laughs. The alternate take on Opel (mysteriously retitled “Wouldn’t You Miss Me (Dark Globe)”) has a single-tracked vocal. The one on Vinyl Sessions is doubled tracked, a ghostly and slightly out-of-sync vocal shadowing the main one. That ghostly shadow enhances the woozy mystique of the recording considerably, and is entirely missing from the Opel counterpart. Both the Opel and Vinyl Sessions versions, incidentally, are far superior to the haphazard one on The Madcap Laughs, which is so strained and out of tune that its selection as the final take seems like deliberate sabotage.

The differences between the Vinyl Sessions “Word Song” and “Birdy Hop” and Opel’s seem minimal, if they’re even different takes at all. The EP’s certainly worth hearing, however, for the different version of “Dark Globe” alone. In line with many of the entries on this list, the packaging is threadbare, the front cover displaying a photocopied picture of Barrett against a faint pink backdrop; a drawing of an octopus adorns the back. It also didn’t take long before the tracks appeared with others on a Barrett bootleg LP (1987’s Vegetable Man Where Are You?), and of course in the current era they probably circulate on other physical product and online guises.

Start, Tales of Glory (L-Ert, 1981). Since I get a lot of grief for not liking many cult acts/records as much as their fans do (or not liking those records at all), it’s refreshing to have some groups I like to which almost no one else seems to pay any attention. One is the obscure early-‘80s Lawrence, Kansas indie rock group Start, aptly described in one review as having a sort of Doors-meet-the-Jam sound. That didn’t fit in with the usual barometer of what was hip in either the underground or the mainstream at the time, and Start got little notice to my knowledge, putting out an eight-song mini-LP and this yet scarcer three-song seven-inch.

Should that 1983 mini-LP Look Around get reissued on CD (it hasn’t), these three tracks would be worthy and indeed essential bonus cuts. On side one, “Let’s Dance” is a catchy if throwaway number, while the eerie organ-led instrumental “Tales of Glory” is something like an early-‘80s indie rock counterpart to the surf classic “Pipeline.” The B-side’s “(No More) Living in the Past” is a more heavyweight entry, and a match for anything else in their slim legacy, with a lean, moody melody; tough vocal; odd background bits that sound like blends of yelping sung notes and outer-space blips; and forceful anti-nostalgia lyric (“maybe we all live in the past when modern times move too fast”). The performance has an unusually live one-take feel, and is all the better for it.

This isn’t a bootleg, but the cover art isn’t much more elaborate than what’s found on the unauthorized releases detailed in this post, with black type set against a basic pale blue background. Here’s something I didn’t know until writing this entry: the producer, James Grauerholz, was a personal assistant to William Burroughs, becoming his business manager and now his literary executor. Grauerholz had been recommended to Burroughs by Allen Ginsberg, which probably explains how Ginsberg does a spoken word cameo on a track from Start’s mini-LP, “Little Fish/Big Fish.”

Shonen Knife, Yama-no Attchan (Zero, 1984). The music on this release is good catchy pop-punk, similar to if not quite as brash as their 1983 release Burning Farm. What makes it stand out more, especially if you’re the kind that covets discs as much or more for their appearance as their music, is the unusual shape and artwork. Like Burning Farm, this is an eight-inch disc – a format I don’t think I’ve seen elsewhere, though Burning Farm (which I don’t have in its original form) was also an eight-inch. That’s enough to accommodate ten songs, which probably wouldn’t be possible on a seven-inch, at least without notable loss of fidelity.

The cover has hand-drawn images of the three Shonen Knife women, as well as handwritten song titles, some in Japanese, some in English. The pink insert also mixes Japanese and English, to the extent that you don’t get quite all the lyrics and recording information, at least if you’re an English reader/speaker. I guess another bonus for future estate appraisers, unique to my copy, is a handwritten January 1986 reply (in English) to my interview questions from Shonen Knife’s Naoko Yamano.

The Corsairs, Today (Music Rage, 1984). I’m not much for retro-‘60s sounds cut after the 1960s. This six-song twelve-inch – the twelve-inch becoming a more common form for EPs starting around the late 1970s – is an exception. The Corsairs played with melodic mod rock punch, and also paid more attention to crafting a well-balanced, imaginatively flavored recorded sound than most acts of the era that took their inspiration from the mid-‘60s. The driving, dramatic title track alone would qualify this as a notable release, with powerhouse bass, glittering vocal harmonies, and unpredictable song construction that doesn’t fall into derivative clichés. 

While the other tracks aren’t up to “Today”’s standards, they’re good solid British mod-style rock, more on the Beatles side than the Who’s. Alan Shalby, the singer and songwriter, had some flair for compositions with more ambivalent, sometimes darker nuance than most ‘60s revivalists on “Today” and some other numbers, like “Never Listen.” The Corsairs didn’t attract much attention even within the ‘80s-‘60s scene, and had just one other release, a 1986 single. I’ve been made aware of some additional unissued studio recordings, and a CD compilation would make for a worthwhile project.

Degenerazione Musicale, “Nord/Sud/Est/Ovest” (Crazy Mannequin, 1988). One of the weirdest releases I’ve come across, on an EP or anything else, is this four-track seven-inch by an Italian act. The music’s strange enough – a college of white noise that segues into garage-surf guitar and whispered weeping; a jazzy instrumental with munchkin giggles; hysterically overwrought operatic singing backed by synthesizers and psychedelic swoops; and industrial grinds while discordant guitars clang and a woman whisper-moans. Shards of mirror glass are glued onto the sleeve, at least on my copy.

What really makes this hard to play on the radio – even underground college radio – are the tiny holes drilled into the vinyl. Not in the center label, but in the grooves themselves. Each of the four, fairly brief tracks is separated by the kind of blank extended bands that usually (well, virtually always) are placed at the end of the last track on vinyl sides. And there’s a tiny hole drilled into each of those, so your needle can’t help but get stuck in them if you just let the disc spin. Maybe that can damage your needle permanently – I’ve never tried to let the EP spin uninterrupted.

Some collectors will get enraged by this act of hubris. Even if your needle doesn’t get damaged, you’ll have to keep getting up and down to pick up your stylus so it doesn’t get stuck in that rut. But by strategically placing these holes so they’re impossible to avoid, the Crazy Mannequin label is subverting the very act of playing records, thus shaking us out of our collector complacency. Rather like Christian Marclay’s artworks that have spotlighted (and even released) vinyl that’s impossible to avoid scratching or even walking upon, it knocks these supposed holy relics off their pedestal and cuts them down to size. For Degenerazione Musicale, that size happens to be a seven-inch EP.

As an honorable mention, here’s a recent EP reissue I reviewed for my best-of 2016 list. I’ll reprint it here:

Jesse Fuller, Working on the Railroad (Mississippi/Secret Seven, 2016). This six-song, ten-inch vinyl reissue is of considerable historical importance. Cut just north of Berkeley, California in El Cerrito in 1954, these were the first recordings by major folk-blues singer and one-man band Jesse Fuller, including his first version of the well-known “San Francisco Bay Blues.” But it’s also musically impressive as well. I’m not much for most recordings from the very early folk revival, of which these just about qualify, being geared more toward specialized folk fans than the commercial market. However, these recordings are rich and full, with some pretty amazing instrumental work (more so on guitar than kazoo) considering it’s all by one guy. Most of these songs (“San Francisco Bay Blues,” “John Henry,” “Lining Up the Tracks,” “Railroad Work Song”) would be overdone in the ensuing ten years of the folk revival. Yet as these are the first or among the first versions, they have a powerful freshness most interpretations lack.

The EP, or extended play, record has been around in some form about as long as records have. In rock music, they’ve been issued in several formats over the years, from seven-inches and twelve-inches to ten-inches, CDs, and bonus seven-inches with full twelve-inch LPs. Back in the 1960s, they were usually four-song compilations of tracks that were also and/or previously available on singles and albums. They didn’t take off to a meaningful extent in the US (though that changed a bit in later decades), but were a popular medium in the UK and numerous other countries. In fact, for quite a few years they were the primary format in France, which issued more Beatles EPs than Beatles singles before 1967.

The most interesting EPs—certainly if you weren’t living in the countries of their origin—were those that presented material that had not been available on singles or LPs. These days, just about all of the songs that were exclusive to certain rock EPs are available on reissues. But it’s neat to look back at the ones that used the EP as a vehicle for fresh sounds, not as a marketing tool for recycling or repurposing songs that ultimately made more sense to buy on singles and albums, if you had the budget.

Here’s an opinionated summary of the most noteworthy ’60s EPs, most of them from British acts, and most of them UK releases. It was relatively rare for US artists to issue EPs that unveiled new material, but there are a few of those too. All of these are seven-inches. Some purists might question whether a few three-song seven-inches are more properly classified as “maxi-singles,’ as the term was sometimes given in the UK press, but I’ve put them on too. I haven’t tried to rank them in quality, instead listing them in the order in which they were released.

The Big Three, At the Cavern (Decca, November 1963). It’s a little strange to lead off this list with one of the least musically interesting items, but we’re going in chronological order. The Big Three were one of the most popular Liverpool groups, and occasional comments in oral histories from those who were there suggest they were on par with, or even better than, the Beatles live. That assertion certainly isn’t borne out from their small official discography, which is energetic but mundane Merseybeat fare. They could play forcefully and had some of the top instrumentalists on the Merseyside. But when you don’t write many songs, and what little original material you have is weak, you certainly can’t bear comparison to the Beatles even if you did blow them off the stage at the Cavern (which I doubt happened, but no matter). 

The Big Three never released an album, but they did manage to put out four singles and an EP that was, as the title says, actually recorded at Liverpool’s most famous club. As the only disc by a Merseybeat band taped at the Cavern, it’s of notable historical interest for that alone. The audience noise and introduction by compere Bob Wooler (famed for his role in the early Beatles’ career as fan and general advisor) add to the atmosphere. Musically it’s a truer representation of their sound than their studio 45s, where they were given some inappropriately lightweight pop material. But let’s be real here — it’s competent but not great, in part because two of the tunes are overdone rock classics (“What’d I Say” and Chuck Berry’s “Reelin’ and Rockin'”), and the other a not-so-great version of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.” The one group original, “Don’t Start Running Away,” is just passable.

There could have been a much more famous recording made at the Cavern in 1963. As many Beatles fans know, George Martin was considering taping the Beatles’ first album there, but then figured they could re-create their live excitement in the studio. Which they did, magnificently, for their debut LP Please Please Me.

The tracks on the Big Three’s Live at the Cavern EP—fairly successful in the UK, by the way, where it reached #6 on the EP charts—haven’t been hard to find since 1982, when they were on the Cavern Stomp compilation, which gathered all thirteen of the cuts they released in the ’60s. It includes a cover of “Bring It On Home to Me” from the 1964 various-artists compilation At the Cavern, also recorded at the club, and also with an introduction by Bob Wooler.

The Rolling Stones, The Rolling Stones (Decca, January 17, 1964). The Rolling Stones took more advantage of EP opportunities than most of their British Invasion rivals, issuing three of new material in the mid-’60s (and a maxi-single in the early ’70s). They could have used more imagination for the title of their first EP, but it was a good sampling of their early R&B repertoire, preceded by only two actual UK singles. The highlight, easily, was their soulful interpretation (complete with wavering but haunting background harmonies) of Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On,” the track primarily responsible for propelling this to #1 on the UK EP chart. As Roy Carr speculated in The Rolling Stones: An Illustrated Record, “Had it been released as a single, it may have well reached the very top.”

Also good was “Bye Bye Johnny,” a reliably energetic Chuck Berry cover. Less impressive was their rather murkily recorded version of “Money,” which was far inferior to the Beatles’ classic interpretation, and a routine run-through of the Coasters’ hit “Poison Ivy.” Perhaps these were attempts to be accessible to listeners likely to be more familiar with those songs than the relatively arcane blues that still featured in much of their repertoire. It wasn’t until late 1965 that “You Better Move On” came out in the US (on the December’s Children LP), and not until 1972 that “Bye Bye Johnny” and “Money” finally did so on the More Hot Rocks compilation.

“Poison Ivy,” meanwhile, didn’t come out in the US until the expanded CD version of More Hot Rocks in 2002. Note that the version of “Poison Ivy” on the 1972 More Hot Rocks collection (also included on the expanded CD) is a different, somewhat less impressive take, easily distinguished from the other by the presence of a guiro’s scraped percussive noises. It also fades out, where the harder-rocking EP version comes to a “cold” ending with a drum flourish. The weaker alternate version of “Poison Ivy” had first come out, I’m guessing by sloppy accident, on a UK various-artists sampler LP, Saturday Club. 

The Downliners Sect, Nite in Gt. Newport Street (Contrast Sound Productions, January 1964). It was pretty rare that British Invasion bands released independent live EPs. Maybe there were some private pressings of such items here and there, but this four-songer is certainly the most widely known. Not that the Downliners Sect are too widely known–they never had a British or American hit. But they did put out three albums and a bunch of singles, and as something of a yet rawer Pretty Things (who themselves were something of a rawer Rolling Stones), they have their cult followers.

All four songs on Nite in Gt. Newport Street were American R&B covers, including routine workouts on Jimmy Reed’s “Shame, Shame, Shame” and Chuck Berry’s “Beautiful Delilah.” “Green Onions” doesn’t actually sound too much like the Booker T. & the MG’s classic, and hits a nice, slightly menacing loping groove. Their take on Bo Diddley’s “Nursery Rhyme” is really cool, laying down a solid Diddley beat behind effectively restrained vocals. I’m aware I’m not as much of a Downliners Sect fan as some other ’60s/British Invasion fanatics, but I think “Nursery Rhyme,” as early as it is in their career, is their best track, except maybe for “Sect Appeal” from their first LP.

This is a mighty rare disc, but all four cuts have long been easily available, as they were part of the 1994 compilation The Definitive Downliners Sect: Singles A’s & B’s. Not so for an unissued follow-up EP they recorded for Contrast Sound Productions. The four tracks (including covers of “Rock and Roll Music” and Jimmy Reed’s “Brite [sic] Lights—Big City”) came out in 2011 on the Brite Lights—Big City EP, which itself is now very hard to find.

Georgie Fame, Rhythm & Blue-Beat (Columbia, May 1964). Fame debuted a higher percentage of his output on EPs than most British Invasion stars, and maybe a higher one than anyone. Three EPs in 1964-65 presented a dozen tracks that hadn’t been available elsewhere—a whole album’s worth. Since he was a pretty big star in the UK after “Yeh Yeh” topped the British charts in January 1965, it’s strange he didn’t put out an LP that year. The same could be said of the Yardbirds, who had no British albums (although two were issued in the US) in 1965 either.

Rhythm & Blue-Beat is the first of those EPs, and is exactly what the title promises: Fame’s brand of jazzy R&B, married to a ska beat. It’s okay, but not up to the standard of his best mid-’60s work, and has a sort of novelty feel, especially on his adaptation of the “Humpty Dumpty” nursery rhyme (a live version of which had already come out on his debut album). He’d do another thematic EP of sorts in May 1965 with Fats for Fame, featuring four Fats Domino covers. In November of the same year, Move It on Over didn’t have a theme, though aside from the title track, it was devoted to R&B standards that were rather overdone by then (“Walking the Dog,” “High [sic] Heel Sneakers,” and “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu”).

The dispersal of numerous Fame tracks on EPs and non-LP singles, along with the usual discrepancy between his British and American discography, made assembling a complete collection of his pre-1967 material a difficult task indeed for decades. That was finally solved in 2015 by the expensive five-CD box The Whole World’s Shaking: Complete Recordings 1963-1966, which has everything from these EPs.

The Beatles, Long Tall Sally (Parlophone, June 19, 1964). Lots of Beatles EPs came out in their homeland in the first three years of their career, some of them big UK sellers. But Long Tall Sally was the only time they included tracks not previously available on UK albums or singles. It was a stormer, too, particularly the title cut, which had been a staple of Beatles shows almost since they began, and would be the last song they played at their last official concert (at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966). The other three tracks were hardly slouches, with John Lennon’s vocal pacing a terrific cover of Larry Williams’s “Slow Down” and Ringo taking one of his infrequent leads on Carl Perkins’s “Matchbox.” Rounding out the seven-inch was the sole original, “I Call Your Name,” a characteristically decent second-tier Lennon-McCartney tune.

Technically speaking, this didn’t mark the debut of all the tracks. Capitol Records, hungry for Beatles product after they invaded the US in early 1964, put “I Call Your Name” and “Long Tall Sally” on The Beatles’ Second Album, which had come out two months earlier. Also “I Call Your Name” had been the B-side of a Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas single back in July 1963, though the Beatles’ own rendition slays it.

Even if you were one of the (likely very few) British residents who had The Beatles’ Second Album, however, on its own merits this was arguably the finest EP of the British Invasion. Perhaps it was an excuse to get some of their covers on disc without jamming up their albums with too much non-Lennon-McCartney material, but it’s none the worse for that. Likely they could have filled up several more EPs with more great covers if they’d had the inclination, but luckily quite a few of those were cut at their BBC sessions, and are now widely available on CD.

The Merseybeats, On Stage (Fontana, July 1964). Throughout early rock history, there were a bunch of releases by high-profile acts that gave the false impression they were recorded live. This is one of the more obscure ones, actually recorded in the studio, though the idea was to capture them more like they were on stage than their poppier singles did. The opportunity to record them in their native Liverpool’s Cavern Club was not taken advantage of, and it was, according to the Merseybeats’ Billy Kinsley, cut in a mere 25 minutes. All of the songs were covers, including “Long Tall Sally,” “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry Over You” (which Elvis Presley had recorded early in his career), Jimmy Reed’s “Shame, Shame, Shame” (here just titled “Shame”), and Bo Diddley’s “You Can’t Judge a Book By Its Cover” (written by Willie Dixon). It was a major commercial success, making #2 on the British EP charts, on which it stayed for 25 weeks.

It would be great to report this shows the Merseybeats could have been a tough rock/R&B act given the chance, but in fact the results are mostly mediocre. Actually, “Long Tall Sally” and “Shame” have terrible throaty, rasping lead vocals, a kazoo (!) on “Shame” adding another irritant. Perusing the detailed liner notes of a couple Merseybeats reissues doesn’t reveal who was responsible, though according to Spencer Leigh’s It’s Love That Really Counts: The Billy Kinsley Story, it’s drummer John Banks on “Long Tall Sally,” and (the text seems to infer) Aaron Williams on “Shame.” As the Beatles’ own ace version of “Long Tall Sally” had come out only slightly earlier, the one by the Merseybeats can’t help but sound ghastly in comparison.

“I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry Over You,” at least, is fairly good—not nearly as good as the Beatles’ terrific 1963 BBC version, but then that would not have been available for contrast back then. “You Can’t Judge a Book By Its Cover” is fair at best, and no match for the best Diddley covers by the likes of the Rolling Stones and Pretty Things. In truth the Merseybeats were really more suited for pop-rock, and made some fairly good (though hardly great) singles in that vein, though they never had US success.

All four tracks from this EP, and everything else they did in the ’60s, are on the 2002 Bear Family compilation I Think of You: The Complete Recordings. According to the Merseybeats’ Tony Crane, On Stage was the third best-selling British EP of 1964, “only beaten by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones,” though I have a hard time believing there weren’t more than a couple Beatles and Stones EPs that outsold it.

The Rolling Stones, Five By Five (Decca, August 14, 1964). Having cut some fine sides at Chess Records’ studios during their first US tour, the Stones were eager to get some of them out before their second full-length UK album. Devoted mostly to covers, 5 X 5—with, as the title suggested, five tracks rather than the more common four—was a fine dish of those, from the time they were still a very R&B-oriented band. Their rendition of Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around” (the very first song Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had performed in public) was the most popular. But the instrumental “2120 South Michigan Avenue” (named after the address of the Chess studios) was the best, as kind of a more rock-oriented take on Booker T. & the MG’s with a compelling riff and great Ian Stewart organ (and some of Bill Wyman’s best bass).

Also on the EP were a contemporary soul cover (of Wilson Pickett’s “If You Need Me”) and a slow blues (“Confessin’ the Blues”), both well done. Their songwriting was still in a relatively primitive stage on the one original, “Empty Heart,” but even that had some cool irregular rhythms and wayward backing vocals. American fans wouldn’t miss out on these cuts for long, as they formed the backbone of their second US album, 12 X 5, just a couple months later. To quote Roy Carr’s The Rolling Stones: An Illustrated Record again, “Along with the Beatles’ Long Tall Sally four-tracker, Five By Five is unquestionably the first and last great EP. They really don’t make records like these any more.”

Another collectors’ note: a longer version of “2120 South Michigan Avenue” came out on a German LP compilation, with markedly more guitar soloing by Keith Richards. That was finally made available in the US on the 2002 CD of 12 X 5.

The Rolling Stones, Got Live If You Want It! (Decca, June 11, 1965). The Rolling Stones’ first live release had rather lo-fi recordings from their March 1965 UK tour. If not the Stones as their early very best, it’s still a fun and atmospheric (for the wild screaming) listen. Three of the songs (“Route 66,” “Pain In My Heart,” and a very abbreviated “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”) had been on their first couple British LPs in different studio versions. But the two others, Bo Diddley’s elemental “I’m Alright” and Hank Snow’s “I’m Moving On,” were not otherwise issued by the Stones. “I’m Alright” is exciting and “I’m Moving On” is easily the EP’s high point, with fine slide guitar and harmonica, in a hard-driving arrangement not too similar to either Snow’s country original or Ray Charles’s soul cover.

Got Live If You Want It! caused more than its share of discographical confusion among collectors. First, the US album Got Live If You Want It!, issued in 1966 (and not issued in the UK), is an entirely different recording. It does have a lamer version (with the original backing track, but re-recorded vocals) of “I’m Alright,” which had appeared in its original EP version on the American 1965 album Out of Our Heads. Two of the other tracks, “I’m Moving On” and “Route 66,” found their way onto the grab-bag late-’65 American Stones LP December’s Children. “Pain in My Heart” and “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love,” meanwhile, didn’t get released in the US until the 2004 box set Singles 1963-1965 (although these had been on an EP, not a single).

Finally, “We Want the Stones,” listed as a “song” on the original release, is in fact nothing more than a crowd chanting “we want the Stones,” lasting thirteen seconds (and credited to the band’s pseudonym for group compositions, Nanker Phelge). That’s on Singles 1963-1965 too. As for the title, “Got Live If You Want It” is a pun on the Slim Harpo blues classic “Got Love If You Want It,” which had already been covered by the Yardbirds and the Kinks, though the Stones never put out a version.

Manfred Mann, The One in the Middle (HMV, June 18, 1965). Manfred Mann utilized the EP format to debut tracks more than most major British Invasions did. I’m just choosing one here since some of them weren’t that interesting (particularly the EPs of instrumentals), and/or the tracks often soon appeared on other releases. For the record, the January 1965 EP Groovin’ with Manfred Mann had a dynamite Ben E. King cover in the title track and a couple fair R&B rockers with “Did You Have to Do That” and “Can’t Believe It,” But all were on the US The Five Faces of Manfred Mann LP a couple months later, and the fourth track on the EP was “Do Wah Diddy Diddy,” which had already been a #1 single.

The One in the Middle was their most interesting EP, though one track, “Watermelon Man,” had been on the American LP The Five Faces of Manfred Mann. “The One in the Middle,” a self-referential Paul Jones composition detailing the roles of the Manfreds (though he originally intended it for Yardbirds lead singer Keith Relf), was the song most responsible for the disc topping the British EP chart. Quite possibly it could have been a hit British single on its own, though Manfred Mann were in the midst of a lengthy bunch of those. Just as notable was their cover of Bob Dylan’s “With God on Our Side,” which had an almost orchestral buildup (without orchestral instruments) that gave it a power and feel quite unlike the plaintive folk original.

In this company, their cover of the Paris Sisters’ “What Am I To Do” was lightweight, though it’s worth noting that it’s not only a catchy pop-rocker, but is also far better than the timorous original. It, “With God on Our Side,” and “The One in the Middle” all appeared Stateside in October 1965 on the My Little Red Book of Winners LP.

The Kinks, Kwyet Kinks (Pye, September 17, 1965). Contrary to the title, the four songs on this EP weren’t that much quieter than the Kinks’ usual early fare. Most of them were folkier, though, and one in particular marked the first major departure of main singer-songwriter Ray Davies into social commentary. That was “A Well Respected Man,” which became a deserved big US hit when it was issued in the US the following month. It’s a rare example of a British Invasion band and/or label misjudging the singles market, since it was–to this day, to the surprise of some British Invasion fans—not issued as a 45 in their home country.

The other songs on this EP might not have been up to that level, but a couple were certainly good. Dave Davies had his first major outing for his folky tendencies as singer and songwriter of the pleasing midtempo “Wait Till the Summer Goes Along,” which had a rambling country-folk feel. Ray Davies had a decent, and still largely overlooked, folk-rockish outing with “Don’t You Fret,” which almost sounded like a Scottish or Irish ballad given a couple tense rave-up accelerations. “Such a Shame” was much more ordinary (if rather downbeat) British Invasion pop, but three out of four on an EP of previously unavailable originals is pretty good.

Part of the reason this EP doesn’t get much comment outside of the UK is that all of the tracks were quickly available on US releases. “Such a Shame” showed up on the B-side of the American “A Well Respected Man single, and all four songs were on the US Kinkdom album just a couple months after the EP came out across the Atlantic.

Country Joe & the Fish, Talking Issue #1 (Rag Baby, October 1965). Distributed with the underground Rag Baby magazine, this might be of more historical importance than musical brilliance, but its position in Bay Area rock history is notable. This early version of Country & the Fish—Joe McDonald and guitarist Barry Melton were the only musicians who’d go on to the fully electric Fish—was more jugband folk than rock, though Melton did play electric guitar. Also, this EP has just two tracks (all of side one) by the group on the disc. The flipside has two forgettable folk songs by Peter Krug, who wasn’t in the Fish.

But the two Fish songs are early versions of a song that would feature in a full rock arrangement on their first album (“Superbird”) and, more notably, an early version of their most famous number, “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag.” These are barer and considerably less effective than the re-recordings. Yet they’re among the earliest relics of Bay Area protest rock, which would grow more psychedelic as folkies like McDonald and Melton made the transition to loud electric instruments. They did so fully by the time of their second, far more impressive EP in 1966, also listed here.

Country Joe & the Fish, Country Joe & the Fish (Rag Baby, July 1966). While this features a slightly different lineup than Country Joe & the Fish would have slightly later when they recorded their debut album, this is all-out electric rock that counts among the first truly psychedelic recordings from the San Francisco Sound (though to be technical, the Fish were based in Berkeley). All three of the songs would be re-recorded for their first LP, and all are in somewhat less polished state here, though not much if at all to their detriment. These include “Thing Called Love,” which would be retitled “Love” on the album, and “Bass Strings.” 

But the piece de resistance of the EP—if not of the Fish’s whole career—is the nearly seven-minute instrumental “Section 43.” It’s one of the greatest psychedelic instrumentals, blending hypnotic Asian-influenced melodies, spooky ethereal organ, fiercely distorted electric guitar, and even a bit of bluesy raveup and jugband hijinx. The remake on the debut Electric Music For the Mind and Body album is similar, but not as good or spontaneous. Country Joe & the Fish can also be seen performing this, to great effect, in the Monterey Pop movie.

It will never be possible to get accurate statistics, but this could have been the highest-selling and most influential self-released EP of the 1960s. Figures as high as 15,000 copies have been quoted for its total sales, and it was reportedly distributed in underground record stores and head shops well beyond the Bay Area, as far away as Europe. Original copies are now rare and expensive, but fortunately both this and the Fish’s 1965 EP (as well as a less impressive 1971 EP where McDonald was the only remaining musician) were compiled onto the 1980 LP Collectors Items: The First Three EPs.

The Who, Ready Steady Who (Reaction, November 11, 1966). A kind of weird mix of throwaways and quality originals, the inspiration behind the title of this five-song EP would have been mostly unknown in the US, where the UK rock TV show Ready Steady Go! wasn’t broadcast. It might have led fans to think these were performances from that program, but in fact they were studio tracks, not live (or even “live in the TV studio”) recordings. If only in hindsight, side two seems like a vehicle to let Keith Moon get his surf fanaticism out of his system, with a cover of “Barbara Ann” and Jan & Dean’s much more obscure “Bucket T.” Also on side two was a short (one minute and 22 seconds) and strange cover of “Batman,” also done (though briefly as part of a medley) on the live LP the Kinks did in 1967.

Side one, though, had some good Pete Townshend originals. “Disguises” was a really good mod rock tune that, in line with their 1966 UK hits “Substitute” and “I’m a Boy,” were subtle evocations of how things weren’t always what they seemed. It’s not as good as those two hits, but it’s not too far out of that league either. A considerably different version of the good power-popper “Circles” had been on the US version of their debut My Generation LP, and different sources have given different accounts of how the two versions circulated. This is what I can gather: the one on the American My Generation was produced by Shel Talmy. The second one, produced by the Who without Talmy, came out on the B-side of the original “Substitute” single, but had to be withdrawn because the group and Talmy were in a legal dispute.

It seems like this second version is the same as the one on Ready Steady Who, and thus the only one of the five tracks on the EP to have already been available, if briefly. I don’t have that original rare withdrawn 45, and if that’s not accurate, feel free to send in corrections. In any case, I prefer Talmy’s version, which though it has a kind of murky mix, has more energy than the one on the EP. The EP take is considerably cleaner, but more reserved.

“Disguises” was first heard in the US when it made the Magic Bus compilation LP in 1968, which also, kind of inexplicably, included “Bucket T,” one of their strangest early efforts (particularly in John Entwistle’s goofy horn solo). It took a while for the other tracks to become available Stateside, “Barbara Ann” appearing on 1986’s Who’s Missing, and “Circles” coming out on 1987’s Two Missing compilation. “Batman” made it onto the 1995 expanded CD of the Who’s second album (A Quick One), whose bonus tracks also include three other songs from the EP—but not the EP version of “Circles.” Is it any wonder Who fans resorted to bootlegs to get the five tracks, both because it took so long for all of them to appear on US releases, and because even when they did they were scattered here and there?

The Other Half, The Other Half (Vogue, January 1967). Sometimes tracks showed up on foreign EPs for inexplicable reasons that will probably never be known. Such was the case with the Other Half, a very good but obscure California group that bridged the gap between garage rock and psychedelia. Their best known song might be their first single, “Mr. Pharmacist,” the A-side of the only 45 they did for GNP Crescendo (more famous for their Seeds releases). That’s on this four-song French EP, along with its B-side, “I’ve Come So Far.” 

But the EP also has two songs, “I Know” and “It’s Too Hard,” that never came out in the US. Since the Other Half never had anything close to a hit in their home country, it’s kind of baffling as to why Vogue, a very prominent French label, would license unreleased tracks by an unknown American band. It’s a good thing they did, though, since like the ones on the GNP Crescendo, they’re fine if slightly raw moody garage-psych tunes, paced by the brilliant sustain-laden guitar of Randy Holden.

More than even most good obscure bands of the era, the Other Half have had bad luck in getting their legacy properly enshrined on reissues. All four songs from the EP were included on the 1982 French LP Mr. Pharmacist (which also had all the songs from their good self-titled 1968 LP, as well as the non-LP B-side “No Doubt About It”). Most of the CD reissues of this material are designated “unofficial” in discogs.com.

There are other instances, by the way, of tracks mysteriously showing up on French EPs only, most famously (at least among the people who trace this sort of thing) an alternate version of the Who’s “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere.” A French EP by the Belfast Gypsies, a good spinoff group of Them, had an instrumental (“The Gorilla”) not found elsewhere, though it turns out it wasn’t even recorded by the Belfast Gypsies, but by a different unidentified band. And there’s another example in our next entry.

We the People, St. John’s Shop (London, January 1967). We the People were a good, not great, Florida group who put out some pretty good singles that encompossed both gnarly garage rockers and melodic ballads with a Zombies influence. They had some regional success, but never charted nationally. Which makes it all the more mysterious, a la the Other Half EP, why some unreleased tracks of theirs showed up on a French EP. One of these four tracks (“In the Past,” a garage-psych gem that ranks as their best recording) came out in the US on a single near the end of 1966, but the other three didn’t come out on American discs. One, “Declaration of Independence,” was pretty good and about on the level of their better 45s; another, “Lovin’ Son of a Gun,” is a so-so midtempo bluesy rocker.

But the title track is one of their best numbers, with its slightly psych-addled Zombies wistfulness (“you may think his way is way out, but his way is in”). What’s more—at least from what I can gather from what’s been written about We the People—it was a string-less version, minus the orchestral overdubs that diluted the cut when it was issued on a US 45. Here’s guessing it might never have come out had it not leaked onto this French EP. Fortunately all four of the tracks were made widely available on CD decades later.

John Mayall’s Bluebreakers with Paul Butterfield, John Mayall’s Bluebreakers with Paul Butterfield (Decca, January 6, 1967). Pairing good rock musicians with each other doesn’t necessarily result in something twice as good, and in fact often doesn’t result in something as good as what they were doing on their own. Such was the situation with this four-track EP, putting together arguably the most important mid-’60s blues-rock bandleaders of the UK and the US. Both Mayall and Butterfield had made justly famous and influential albums in 1966, but this joint effort is surprisingly ordinary and unmemorable, if competent. There aren’t any major flaws, but there aren’t any huge sparks either.

Some more original material might have helped; just one of the tracks here, Mayall’s “Eagle Eye,” falls in that category. Giving more space to Peter Green for the kind of fiery guitar work found in the 1966 Bluesbreakers album with Eric Clapton, and Butterfield’s 1966 East-West LP with Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop, could have lit some fire too. Note that while this EP is sometimes titled All My Life in discographies, no title is given on the record’s artwork.

Somehow I found an original copy of this EP, which I’d presumed quite rare and hopeless to count on finding, at Rhino Records in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s for just five dollars. I suppose that had something to do with the poor condition of the sleeve (the top had come unglued and there were some stains on the back), though the disc plays well. All four tracks have come out as bonuses on CD reissues of the A Hard Road album, which Mayall had recorded with Green and the Bluesbreakers shortly before cutting this EP.

Mad River, Mad River (Wee, late 1967). If not a name as big as most on this list, Mad River were one of the better San Francisco bands that didn’t make it nationally in the late-’60s, recording two albums for Capitol. The first of these (also, like this EP, self-titled) is odd, tense, dark psych with some gnarly guitar. I don’t like the second, the country-rock-oriented Paradise Bar and Grill, nearly as much, but it has its devotees. Even some psychedelic rock fans who know about both LPs, however, don’t know the group did an earlier three-song EP for a small Bay Area label. 

Its value is diminished a little since two of the three songs, “AGazelle” and “Windchimes,” were redone for their first LP (as “Amphetamine Gazelle” and “Wind Chimes”), though the EP arrangement of “Wind Chimes” has some “hare krishna” chanting that didn’t survive into the later version. But the third track, “Orange Fire,” was not featured on their albums in any guise. While some collectors are prone to saying “and this non-LP cut was their best song” more because it’s rare than because it’s decisively better, in this case, “Orange Fire” was their best song. An eerie folk-rock ballad for the most part, it offered some of the most direct, blunt anti-Vietnam War protest of any rock recording. I say “for the most part” because a couple times it erupts into fierce instrumental breaks with cacophonous crossfire of distorted guitars, as if to sonically mirror the carnage of the Vietnam War.

It’s mystifying as to why “Orange Fire” didn’t find a place on their first Capitol album. While I doubt it was a factor, it can be pointed out that some of the chording in the instrumental sections strongly recalls riffs that have a prominent role in the Yardbirds’ psychedelic classic “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.” The original EP, though it got some local sales and airplay, is impossible to find. Fear not—like a couple other Bay Area rarities discussed in this post, it’s on the CD compilation The Berkeley EPs.

The Move, Something Else from the Move (Regal Zonophone, June 21, 1968). This five-song disc had a significant plus and minus. The plus was that none of the five, all recorded live at London’s Marquee club (though some had “new live vocals…recorded at Marquee studios”), appeared in any version on their studio LPs and singles. The minus was that they’re not as interesting as their many good studio tracks, in part because they’re all covers.

At least it’s certainly not a run-of-the-mill choice of material, including the Byrds’ “So You Want to Be a Rock’n’Roll Star,” Love’s “Stephanie Knows Who,” Eddie Cochran’s “Something Else,” Jerry Lee Lewis’s “It’ll Be Me,” and Spooky Tooth’s “Sunshine Help Me.” The Love cover’s the best, but generally they’re sort of undistinguished versions, and it’s kind of like hearing a BBC session where a group takes the opportunity to do favorites by others they’re not intending to do in the studio. (The group did quite a few of those on the radio too, as heard on some archival releases.)

Surprisingly, the EP wasn’t hard to get as a twelve-inch reissue back in the early 1980s. A 1999 reissue added bonus tracks from the same event, again all covers, including “Piece of My Heart,” Jackie Wilson’s “Higher and Higher,” a second version of “Sunshine Help Me,” and–most surprisingly—”Too Much in Love,” from an obscure 1968 Denny Laine single. A 2016 expanded CD puffed it up more with live 1968 Marquee versions of their UK hits “Fire Brigade” and “Flowers in the Rain,” a cover of the Everly Brothers’ “The Price of Love,” and a very brief “Move Bolero.”

Frumious Bandersnatch, Frumious Bandersnatch (Muggles Gramophone, June 1968). One of many San Francisco-area psychedelic bands who barely or never got the chance to record, Frumious Bandersnatch did put out a three-song seven-inch—not skimping on running time, with fourteen minutes of music—in mid-1968. More so than most of the entries on this list, it had an “easily the highlight” track in the dramatic, captivating “Hearts to Cry,” with excellent Quicksilver Messenger Service-like guitar, haunting vocal harmonies, and a midsection raveup. On the basis of this track alone, they seemed to have potential that was deserving of at least a full album. The other two tracks were not as memorable, but not dispensable either.

Pressed on purple vinyl with a picture sleeve, this is mighty rare in its original incarnation. Fortunately this, like Country Joe & the Fish’s second EP and Mad River’s EP, is on the 1995 CD The Berkeley EPs, which also includes a less impressive rare EP from the region by Notes from the Underground. That collection (along with Country Weather’s one-sided LP) serves as evidence that the San Francisco psychedelic scene, and particularly bands that were sometimes based in the East Bay, generated more in the way of notable EPs than anywhere else in the US. Fortunately much other Frumious Bandersnatch material, which was unreleased at the time, became available on the 1996 CD compilation A Young Man’s Song. “Hearts to Cry” still stands out as their best song by far, however.

The Rolling Stones, “Brown Sugar”/”Bitch”/”Let It Rock” (Rolling Stones, April 26, 1971). One anomalous early-’70s/maxi-single entry tops off this list. On their own, “Brown Sugar”/”Bitch” made for a tremendous double-sided single. In the UK, a live cover of Chuck Berry’s “Let It Rock” was added to make it a three-song “maxi-single.” That cover’s a reliably decent Stones interpretation of a Berry standard, though not one of Berry’s greatest songs or among the Stones’ best Berry covers. 

And an honorable mention for the most interesting unreleased EP:

The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine album is justly considered the least essential LP they released while active that was centered around “new” material. Released in January 1969, this soundtrack to their animated feature actually only contained four previously unreleased Beatles songs, and even those were leftovers from sessions in 1967 and early 1968. Side one of the LP was filled out with “Yellow Submarine” and “All You Need Is Love” (both of which were featured in the movie), neither of which were hard to get elsewhere then or since. Side two had instrumental George Martin music for the film score that might have defenders here and there, but realistically, few listeners have played that side more than once or twice.

At the time and since, the Beatles and EMI have been criticized for putting so much filler on a full-length (and full-price) LP. A subsequent CD reissue titled Yellow Submarine Soundtrack improved matters by getting rid of the Martin score and adding nine actual Beatles songs that had been used in the film soundtrack (although all of those, like “All You Need Is Love” and “Yellow Submarine,” had been previously available on other discs).

What could and should have been done at the time of the film’s premiere in July 1968 was to put out an EP of the four previously unreleased songs, adding another outtake. In fact such an EP was given initial preparation for release, though not until March 13, 1969. On that date, a master tape for a five-track EP was compiled and banded at EMI. Side one would have featured “Only a Northern Song,” “Hey Bulldog,” and “Across the Universe.” Side two would have presented “All Together Now” and “It’s All Too Much.”

“Across the Universe” actually hadn’t been on the Yellow Submarine album or soundtrack. It would find a home on the No One’s Gonna Change Our World various-artists charity album in December 1969. With some overdubs, a different Phil Spector-produced version would appear on Let It Be.

The release of this five-track EP back in March 1969 would have made perfect sense, though it might have ticked off the millions of fans who’d already paid full price for the Yellow Submarine LP sans “Across the Universe.” Actually it would have made yet more perfect sense to put out the EP back in July 1968, though that might have ticked George Martin off. This would-be EP, incidentally, was mastered in mono, though that format was going into obsolescence by early 1969.

So was the EP format itself, but actually the Beatles had used it for a new release fairly recently. Magical Mystery Tour was released as a double EP in the UK. In the US, it came out as an LP with the six songs from the UK double EP (all of which had been on the TV program’s soundtrack) and the five songs from 1967 singles that hadn’t been on LP. In that case, the full-length LP presentation actually made more sense, even if it had five songs that weren’t on the soundtrack.

If the Beatles ever get on board Record Store Day’s fashion for vinyl releases of classic material, don’t be surprised if that canceled Yellow Submarine EP finally sees the light of day. In mono, of course.

In my previous post, I wrote about some of my favorite records that were written by famous artists, but first released on discs by others. It’s a huge subject that would take several books to fully document, if someone wanted to do reference volumes going through every example. I limited that list to my very favorites, but there are many other instances that have interesting stories behind them, even if the music wasn’t always brilliant. Here are a few, starting with perhaps the most famous that didn’t make my first list:

Scott McKenzie/The Mamas & the Papas, “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair).” How did John Phillips give away one of his biggest hits, instead of having his own hugely successful group do it? The story’s been told pretty often, but McKenzie and Phillips had been friends for a long time before the Mamas & the Papas formed, playing together in an also-ran folk revival group that made some records, the Journeymen. “San Francisco” was meant as a kind of welcome to everyone coming to Northern California for the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, which Phillips co-produced with Mamas & the Papas producer Lou Adler. It was also a way of helping out an old friend, and it would be McKenzie’s only hit.

For such a gentle, rather innocuous song, “San Francisco” has stirred its share of rage among some of the very San Franciscans it might have been intended to honor. Some felt it was an inappropriately wimpy anthem for their city. Some rock critics past and present, whether from San Francisco or not, deride it as sappy hippy naiveté. Some also accused Phillips, and indeed the whole Monterey Pop Festival organization, of exploiting the San Francisco scene, both for using it as the trendy subject for a hit single and for having a lot of emerging San Francisco bands on the Monterey bill to enhance its credibility. The Mamas & the Papas were based in Los Angeles, not San Francisco, giving more ammunition to those who saw them as bandwagon-jumping carpetbaggers.

I can’t get that angry about something that’s just a song, and though I’m not a huge fan of it, I think it’s okay. Judging from the singalong reaction of many students (usually now senior citizens) in my adult community education classes when I show a clip of McKenzie miming the tune, lots of people still think it’s more than okay.

The Acid Gallery/The Move, “Dance Round the Maypole.” When people hear this obscure late-1969 UK single, they often mistake it for the Move, with its catchy British pop tune, lumpy hard rock arrangement, playful lyrics, and foggy vocals and backup harmonies. There’s a good reason for that. This was written and produced by main Move songwriter Roy Wood. And the backing vocals were by Wood and fellow Moveman Jeff Lynne.

This would have worked fine as filler on an early Move LP, though maybe Wood felt it wasn’t heavy enough for what they were getting into by 1969. It wasn’t a hit, and the Acid Gallery made just this one single. They weren’t done with the record business, however, as guitarist Vic Elmes and drummer Mike Blakely (drummer of the Tremeloes’ Alan Blakely) were soon in Christie, who had a big 1970 hit with “Yellow River.”

The Barron Knights/The Who, “Lazy Fat People.” Pete Townshend didn’t make writing for other artists nearly as much of a sideline in the mid-1960s as Lennon-McCartney, Jagger-Richards, and Ray Davies did. He did place some compositions with other artists, including an early version of “Magic Bus” with the Pudding, whose single came out in 1967, a year before the Who had a hit with the same song. Far more obscure was this weird donation to the Barron Knights, a British group known more as a comedy outfit than a serious musical enterprise. It has more of a black-comic vaudeville feel than a rock one, complete with vocals producing fake trumpet sounds. Townshend’s demo of the song has been bootlegged, and while it’s more palatable, it’s not great in that guise either. It’s really kind of an ill-advised stab at a novelty song, though I once read it was aimed at man-with-a-cigar greedy music biz tycoons.

The Searchers/The Everly Brothers/The Hollies, “Have You Ever Loved Somebody.” A typically catchy and effervescent Hollies pop-rock original, “Have You Ever Loved Somebody” was done twice before the Hollies’ own version came out on their 1967 Evolution LP. The Searchers did a very good, hard-charging, slightly fuzz-tinged arrangement on a 1966 single that just dented the UK charts at #48. The Everly Brothers did a good one on their Two Yanks in England album that same year. Both of these recordings are superior to the relatively ordinary, relatively heavier one on Evolution.

At first glance, the Two Yanks in England album almost looks like an LP stuffed with Hollies giveaways, as eight of the twelve tracks were penned by the group. But although the album’s worthwhile, and did mark the debut of some of the songs on disc, none of these were exclusives. The Hollies had already issued their own version of five of the numbers, and the others would all appear on Hollies releases in the near future, whether on B-sides or LPs.

Dusty Springfield/The Zombies, “If It Don’t Work Out.” Although the Zombies had two excellent songwriters in Rod Argent and Chris White (who wrote separately), they barely got involved in the game of having other artists do songs that didn’t find a place on their own records. One exception was Argent’s “If It Don’t Work Out,” which got a spot on Dusty Springfield’s late-’65 UK LP Ev’rything’s [sic] Coming Up Dusty. She does a good enough job on a tune that shows a greater soul influence than most of the Zombies’ work, but it’s only acceptable filler, not something with hit single potential. 

Both the Zombies and Springfield, however, rated it more highly than I do. In the liner notes to the box set Zombie Heaven, Zombies guitarist Paul Atkinson told Alec Palao, “We rehearsed it a lot but [Rod] said ‘I’m going to give it to Dusty.’ I was upset about that, because I thought it could be a hit for us.”

Elaborated Argent in the same notes, “We were on tour with Dusty and she said to me ‘I’m recording at the moment, will you write something for me?’ So I wrote her a song over the weekend which was ‘If It Don’t Work Out,’ and that was quite good really because I had her voice in mind. I played the song to her in the studio and she loved it.”

Said Dusty in 1965 (according to Paul Howes’s book The Complete Dusty Springfield), “That tambourine is fantastic. Rod was there on piano. I asked him, on tour, to write something for me—this is it! The strength of the brass is lovely.” According to that book, it was planned as a single, though it ended up as an LP track. The Zombies did their own adequate version in July 1965, but it didn’t come out (with some overdubs in December 1968) until 1969, after the group had broken up.

Yellow Hand/Buffalo Springfield, Yellow Hand. On their sole album, 1970’s self-titled Yellow Hand, this unknown group somehow got hold of half a dozen songs by Neil Young or Stephen Stills that had been recorded or demoed back in their Buffalo Springfield days, but were never released by that great group. These included Young’s “Down to the Wire” and “Sell Out,” and Stills’s “Neighbor Don’t You Worry,” “We’ll See,” “Come On,” and “Hello I’ve Returned.” All of these songs are on the Buffalo Springfield self-titled box set in Springfield/demo versions except “Sell Out,” which is on Young’s Archives Vol. 1 box.

While these songs generally aren’t up to what the Springfield put on their LPs, they have their merits, and are sometimes about as good as some of their deep album cuts. Yellow Hand’s versions are substantially different than the ones in circulation by the Springfield, having been recorded considerably later, and arranged based on demos that were made available to the group.

Butch Engle & the Styx/The Beau Brummels, most of The Best of Butch Engle & the Styx: No Matter What You Say. “The best of” is an odd title for a Marin County group that had only three singles, none of which were close to being a hit. With the addition of almost a dozen outtakes, Beat Rocket/Sundazed put out a full CD of their 1964-67 recordings in 2000. All but two of the tracks were written or co-written by Ron Elliott, lead guitarist and main songwriter of the Beau Brummels. Elliott also co-produced the recordings, making the band almost a minor league affiliate of sorts to the Brummels. 

The Beau Brummels were an excellent and underrated group, and the thought of lots of otherwise unavailable Elliott songs naturally piques the interest of any fan. Unfortunately, however, most of these are subpar castoffs that aren’t nearly on the level of what he reserved for his own band. Since they unsurprisingly have a similar minor-based melodic sense and moodiness, they almost sound like the work of an act trying to imitate the Beau Brummels. Although “Hey, I’m Lost” (one of their singles) is a fairly good and tough number, otherwise it’s an unexpectedly underwhelming mid-‘60s garage-pop-folk-rock collection. Beau Brummels fans will want it, but they’ll probably be disappointed to at least some degree.

Georgie Fame/John Mayall, “Something.” Strange but true: Mayall never got into the charts with any of the numerous singles he wrote for his band the Bluesbreakers. But he did with a song he co-wrote with guitarist Jon Mark, an accomplished folk guitarist who’d play in Mayall’s group in the late 1960s. In late 1965, the Mayall-Mark composition “Something” was a mild UK hit for Georgie Fame, peaking at #23. It’s an amiable good-natured effort with more of a soul-pop feel than the usual blues, or blues-rock, in which Mayall specialized. It doesn’t scream “hit,” and probably got as high as it did owing to Fame’s track record, as he’d topped the UK charts (and almost gotten into the US Top Twenty) a year before with “Yeh Yeh.”

Jim & Jean/David Blue, “Strangers in a Strange Land.” Jim & Jean’s 1966 album Changes was almost an exercise in digging for then-unreleased songs by significant folk-rock songwriters. These included Eric Andersen’s “Tonight I Need Your Lovin’” (which Andersen would never put on his own discs) and Bob Dylan’s “Lay Down Your Weary Tune,” which the composer had recorded in 1963 at the sessions for his third album, but which would not be issued until the mid-‘80s. There were also a couple songs by Jim Glover’s buddy Phil Ochs, “Crucifixion” and “Flower Lady,” that wouldn’t become part of Ochs’s discography until his 1967 album Pleasures from the Harbor. “Crucifixion” is a standout as it’s a straightforward, haunting interpretation that doesn’t have the musique concrete effects that some fans feel mar Ochs’s arrangement.

Also haunting, and yet better, is their version of David Blue’s “Strangers in a Strange Land.” Blue is most notorious for his 1966 self-titled Elektra album, on which he seemed determined to sound (and, on the cover, look) as much like early electric Dylan as possible. “Strangers in a Strange Land,” however, wasn’t at all like Dylan. Its beguiling, winding melody was well suited toward Jim & Jean’s close harmony, as well as the economic but biting folk-rock backing track. Indeed, “Strangers in a Strange Land” was better and more original than any of the songs Blue placed on his own 1966 debut LP, though Blue never released his own version anywhere.

The Changes album also includes a couple other Blue compositions, though these (“Grand Hotel” and “About My Love”) were also on the David Blue album. Incidentally, “Strangers in a Strange Land” is an entirely different song than “Stranger [singular] in a Strange Land,” a superb David Crosby-penned early folk-rock single by the male-female San Francisco duo of Blackburn & Snow.

The Fresh Windows, “Fashion Conscious.” This is kind of an honorable mention because actually this wasn’t written by a member of a famous group. But some collectors assumed it was, because this obscure 1967 UK single bears the songwriting credit Barrett. And as it’s a really cool mod rock number about a too-cool trendy-following dolly bird with mild psychedelic touches and an acidic satiric vocal, it seems like it might, just about, have been a composition by original Pink Floyd leader Syd Barrett. It’s rather more straightforward than his Pink Floyd songs, but there’s some similarity in the songwriting and the very British, measured vocal.

It turns out, however, that there’s no known connection between this Barrett and Syd Barrett. Rumors were fueled, perhaps purposely, when it was given a credit of “S. Barrett” on the inner label of one of the first and best (if unauthorized) compilations of rare ‘60s British psych, Chocolate Soup for Diabetics. In fact, virtually nothing is known about this group. “Fashion Conscious” has never been reissued again to my knowledge, despite its considerable quality.

Throughout rock history, songwriters who are star recording artists in their own right have always “given” songs away to other acts. Or, at least, other acts have often recorded compositions that the songwriters haven’t released themselves, whether the composers directly gifted the songs to them or not. The Beatles famously gave away some Lennon-McCartney tunes to others, especially other people managed by Brian Epstein, and especially early in their careers. But many other stars did this too, maybe more during the British Invasion than some other periods, though this was happening and still happens all over the world.

Assembling a list of all the interesting instances when this occurred would fill up a book. I don’t have time to write that, unless someone pays me well to do so. However, I can offer some of my favorites from rock’s early years, along with some such items that might not have been great tunes, but have interesting stories behind them. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some, including maybe some of your favorites. Keep in mind this isn’t meant to be a definitive or comprehensive list, just a group of some I want to blog about.

I also didn’t want to get into the nuances of ranking them in order. So I’ll go kind of in chronological sequence, listing the artist and then the composer, or the artist and the group from which the composers came.

The Everly Brothers/Roy Orbison, “Claudette.” Orbison didn’t get his first big hit until 1960 with “Only the Lonely,” though he’d made some fair rockabilly records starting in the mid-1950s, usually for Sun. Perhaps not unreasonably considering his early lack of major success, he considered concentrating on songwriting rather than performing. His one major triumph in landing a hit with someone else was this 1958 B-side to the chart-topping “All I Have to Do Is Dream.”

“Claudette,” a much harder-rocking number that verged on rockabilly, was a pretty substantial hit in its own right, reaching #30. Inspired by Orbison’s first wife Claudette, it had furiously scrubbed chords and a chorus with much different, more irregular rhythms than the fairly conventional verses. The Everlys put their usual high-powered infectious harmonies into the performance. Orbison eventually recorded his own version on his 1965 album There Is Only One Roy Orbison, but the Everlys’ remained definitive.

This is the only 1950s entry on this list, and I’m aware there are others. Maybe the most famous is Buddy Holly’s “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” written by Paul Anka, and a pretty big hit. But I don’t think it’s a great song, and a worrisome indication that Holly might have gotten into tamer orchestrated pop arrangements had he survived. As an interesting side note, however, Holly had written a song with Bob Montgomery (“Wishing”) in hopes that the Everlys would record it. They didn’t, but fortunately Buddy cut a version (not released until 1963, with posthumous overdubbing) that’s among his best recordings, though it’s not too well known.

The Crystals/Gene Pitney, “He’s a Rebel.” Pitney had a lot of hits, but he didn’t write most of them. And he couldn’t have released his own version of “He’s a Rebel” in 1962, at least not without changing it to “She’s a Rebel,” which wouldn’t have had much of a chance in those pre-feminist times. But write it he did, and it was taken to #1 by the Crystals, though the lead vocal was actually done by a singer not in the Crystals, Darlene Love—something that’s fairly well known now, but was unknown then. Another peculiarity about this recording was that it had to fight off another version by Vikki Carr, which it did, pretty easily. Carr’s rendition is pretty stiff, and the Crystals’ (or Love’s, if you prefer) was far more soulful, as well as benefiting from one of Phil Spector’s definitive Wall-of-Sound productions.

This wasn’t the only hit Pitney wrote for someone else, as he also co-penned “Hello Mary Lou,” a big rockabilly-pop single—and one of the best and hardest-rocking—for Ricky Nelson. Yet “Hello Mary Lou” was a B-side to Nelson’s #1 “Travelin’ Man,” although it became almost as big a hit, reaching #9 on its own. Pitney put out his own version a little later as an album track, and while it’s okay, it’s not a match for Nelson’s, which benefits from a sparkling James Burton guitar solo.

Getting back to “He’s a Rebel,” while it could be naturally assumed that Spector’s production was the key to making the song a hit, his touch wasn’t infallible. There was another instance where a Spector-produced original version was the relatively stiff flop, and a much different arrangement a huge classic hit. Spector produced the original, forgotten version of “Twist and Shout” by the Top Notes. But it took the Isley Brothers’ vibrant cover to make it a hit (and of course the Beatles’ sensational version was an even bigger one).

Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas/The Beatles, “Bad to Me.” Speaking of the Beatles, as previously mentioned, John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote quite a few songs that the Beatles didn’t put on their own discs, but which found a home on other releases. When asked about such gifts in their early years, they’d diplomatically reply that they simply felt that a few of the songs they’d written weren’t suitable to do themselves and would be better handled by others. In truth, they were probably limiting the giveaways mostly to castoffs that weren’t as good as, and were more lightweight than, what the Beatles were reserving for themselves. That principle probably holds true for many giveaways by many songwriters throughout rock history.

Still, most of those semi-rejects are fun and catchy enough to hear, if hardly on the level of what the Beatles were putting on their own records. Kramer was one of the most frequent beneficiaries of Lennon-McCartney surplus, and “Bad to Me” was the best of their Merseybeat-styled extras. Unlike most of them, it was just about good enough to imagine as filler on one of their 1963 LPs. A very basic acoustic demo of the Beatles (probably Lennon solo, possibly with a little help from McCartney) doing their own version finally came out on iTunes a half dozen years ago (after being bootlegged for many years). Despite the rudimentary recording quality, it’s much better than Kramer’s anodyne interpretation.

Jan & Dean/The Beach Boys, “Surf City.” I didn’t hear “Surf City” until around 1973, since I was only a year old when it first came out in 1963. I was well aware of the Beach Boys by 1973, however, and when I first heard “Surf City” on an oldies station, I was sure it was the Beach Boys. I’d be surprised if some of you reading this didn’t have the same reaction, whenever you first heard it. There was a good reason for this: Brian Wilson co-wrote the song with Jan Berry. “Surf City” was a huge hit, reaching #1 before the Beach Boys themselves had any #1 singles.

A few years ago, I asked Dean Torrence of Jan & Dean whether Wilson didn’t realize how big “Surf City” could be before letting Jan & Dean work on it. “He think he saw the potential,” Dean responded. “Brian probably very rarely worked on something that had no potential. But I sure think he, in comparing the two, just thought ‘Surfing USA’ had a lot more potential. And so did we. I mean, it was perfect. It was kind of a simpler song. It’s in E, and it’s Chuck Berry. We certainly loved Chuck Berry; obviously Brian did too as well. He couldn’t go wrong by liking Chuck Berry and being influenced by Chuck Berry. And ‘Surfing USA’ is just a straight old backbeat. ‘Surf City’ was kind of a shuffle, and was a little bit more complicated. 

“I think creative people can kind of lose interest in a creative piece that they’re working on, and not be as motivated by that particular project, because you got something else in your mind that you’re also tinkering with. I’m sure he knew there’s potential, or he would have been embarrassed even to give it to us. So I’m sure he knew it was good. 

“What we did to it, though, was we took it ten or fifteen levels above just the pure song in terms of cutting a track, and discovering the Wrecking Crew and all that. I think the tracks and the recording techniques that we used for [1963] were pretty unbelievable. The song was kind of a good song, and a Brian Wilson song, again, it’s always gonna be good. But the production that Jan put in relationship to the song really pushed it over the top.

“Even Brian, when he heard it, was blown away. Maybe at that point, he probably realized, this is really, really good. But it wasn’t as though he was gonna ask for it back or anything. As a songwriter, he was probably thrilled. That’s the way he looked at it—‘This is a song I didn’t finish, and I am a songwriter. I’ll get credit on it anyway. And I got a publishing company. So I’m doing exactly what I should be doing at my age, being a songwriter. And record producer.’”

I think this is the very best recording on this list, and certainly it’s one of the most successful. The Beach Boys probably missed out on a big hit, but they’d have plenty others over the next few years, and Jan & Dean did as good a job on the song as the Beach Boys probably would have. So to use a cliché that wasn’t in use in 1963, “It’s all good.”

Mary Wells/Smokey Robinson, “My Guy.” Smokey Robinson wrote so many songs for other Motown artists that it’s really grounds for an entire article in itself, if not a book. Plenty of songs he wrote for others, rather than his own band the Miracles, were big hits, especially for Mary Wells and the Temptations. As a #1 single, “My Guy” is hardly an obscure pick, but I think it’s the best of the lot. It’s also not something he could have sung with the Miracles, at least without changing the title to “My Girl.” And that would have meant he couldn’t have co-written the #1 song he actually did title “My Girl” for the Temptations.

This entry also gives me cause to note that while historians often speculate about what might have happened had legends like Janis Joplin, Buddy Holly, and Otis Redding not died young, they don’t always often discuss other what-ifs that weren’t death-related. Robinson wrote (or co-wrote) and produced a number of hits for Wells, also including “Two Lovers,” “The One Who Really Loves You,” and “You Beat Me to the Punch.” It was a great artist-producer team, and when Wells left Motown after “My Guy,” she couldn’t work with Robinson anymore, or record his fresh compositions. She lived for another few decades, but none of her post-Motown records were big hits or, more importantly, nearly as good.

It’s an artistic tragedy that the partnership was cut off. In an alternate universe, what would have happened if she’d stayed at Motown and, most likely, kept working with Robinson? We don’t know, but I bet there would have been a series of hits to come, and that she’d be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — which she deserves to enter anyway, based on the run the pair did have.

Peter & Gordon/The Beatles, “World Without Love.” I think this is clearly the best of the Beatles’ giveaways. Whatever anyone’s opinion, it was certainly the most successful, getting to #1 in the UK and US (where P&G were the first British Invasion act to top the charts after the Beatles). It’s now well known that Peter & Gordon got access to this, as well as several other Lennon-McCartney extras, since Paul was going out with Peter’s sister, Jane Asher, and living in the Asher household. Peter & Gordon’s Lennon-McCartney covers were really McCartney covers, as he was the dominant and indeed possibly sole writer of all of them. John Lennon didn’t like “World Without Love” because of the lyrics, especially the opening line “please lock me away.” But while it’s hard to figure where the Beatles might have placed it on their own releases, it’s certainly a good early British Invasion-style tune, with fine Peter & Gordon harmonies and a somewhat more forceful arrangement than most of the early Lennon-McCartney donations.

Of course Lennon and McCartney gave away quite a few other songs in the ‘60s. If you want to read about all of them in detail, I’ll take a second to plug my book The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film, which has a whole lengthy chapter dedicated to the subject. For the past few years, Peter Asher’s been presenting a combination music/storytelling show in New York, San Francisco, and London where he talks about getting “World Without Love,” and plays McCartney’s brief, primitive solo demo of the song. He also tells the story of how the duo got access to another composition by a different star…

Peter & Gordon/Del Shannon, “I Go to Pieces.” Del Shannon had already recorded a version of his composition “I Go to Pieces,” and produced an unreleased version by obscure soul singer Lloyd Brown, before Peter & Gordon became aware of it. As Asher tells it in his show, Shannon offered it to the Searchers during an Australian tour, but they turned it down. Peter & Gordon were also on that tour, and let Shannon know they’d like to do it. It became their first hit (at least in the US) not bearing a Lennon-McCartney composer credit. Shannon’s own version came out on one of his albums a little later, and while it’s not too different from P&G’s’, I prefer it, since it’s not as heavily orchestrated, though it’s missing the dual vocal harmonies of the Peter & Gordon arrangement. The Lloyd Brown version, by the way, has since circulated, and has a gentler slightly jazzy soul-pop feel, though it’s not as good as either Shannon’s or Peter & Gordon’s.

The Toggery Five/The Rolling Stones, “I’d Much Rather Be with the Boys.” The Rolling Stones, or more properly Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, wrote quite a few songs given to other artists, even if these haven’t gotten nearly as much attention as the Lennon-McCartney giveaways. In part that’s because not many of these Jagger-Richards compositions were hits, “As Tears Go By” (Marianne Faithfull’s debut single) being a notable exception; Gene Pitney also had a British hit with their “That Girl Belongs to Yesterday” in early 1964, before the Stones had even entered the US charts under their own name. But also it’s in part because most of the songs weren’t that good, and were not only more lightweight than what the Stones recorded themselves. Most of these surplus items date from the mid-‘60s, when Jagger and Richards were first starting to write. They usually weren’t much like what the Stones were doing on their own, with an ersatz Merseybeat feel. Numerous demos of these (most or all apparently only with Jagger and Richards’ participation) are on the Rolling Stones’ outtake compilation Metamorphosis, which didn’t come out until 1975.

One of those Metamorphosis tracks, “I’d Much Rather Be with the Boys”—actually bearing the unusual songwriting credit of Keith Richards and manager/producer Andrew Oldham, sans Jagger—was done back in 1965 by a British group that never had a hit, the Toggery Five. To my mind it’s the best of the Stones’ giveaway covers, and actually considerably better than the Metamorphosis demo. It might not be the greatest of songs, but it’s fairly catchy in a sort of Merseybeat-meets-the-Drifters way, the tempo and tune owing a lot to Drifters hits like “Under the Boardwalk” (which the Stones, of course, covered in 1964). Also, however, the Toggery Five attack the song with real rock zest, in contrast to the Metamorphosis version, which like many early songs on that LP has wimpy orchestrated pop production. The harmonies are real good too, and the cut’s executed with the kind of polish that makes you think the group were certain they had a hit in the can. They didn’t, and the Toggery Five were forgotten (and only got to do a couple singles total), though fortunately their version has been reissued a few times.

By the way, the Rolling Stones themselves didn’t forget about the song after they were done with it. In the expanded DVD version of the 1965 Charlie Is My Darling documentary, there are scenes of Mick and Keith busking through the song acoustically in what looks like a hotel room, during the end credits. It’s hard to tell whether they’re doing it because they like it or they’re making fun of it, but it’s an interesting and unexpected bonus.

Trevor Gordon/The Bee Gees, “Little Miss Rhythm & Blues.” The Bee Gees, and especially Barry Gibb, wrote lots of songs in their early days they didn’t manage to jam onto their own prolific releases. Even before they moved from Australia to England in 1967, they’d already placed a lot of songs with other artists, primarily in Australia. Most of them aren’t so memorable, but Trevor Gordon’s Barry-written “Little Miss Rhythm & Blues” stands out both for its relative quality and an almost earthy rock and roll style that’s not associated with the Bee Gees. Sort of like Jerry Lee Lewis meets Merseybeat, it’s quite cool, if a bit underproduced, with the Bee Gees themselves contributing enthusiastic background vocals. Gordon would also go to England and have a British hit as part of the Marbles with the Brothers Gibb-penned “Only One Woman,” though it didn’t catch on in the States.

While not exactly the kind of thing to win them points for retroactive hipness, Barry Gibb also managed to place a song with an American star a couple years before leaving Australia. In November 1964, Wayne Newton recorded his melodramatic, somewhat Gene Pitney-esque ballad “They’ll Never Know,” which was on Newton’s Top Twenty LP Red Roses for a Blue Lady the following year. This was the first song written by any of the Bee Gees to be released outside of Australia and New Zealand.

The Thoughts/The Kinks, “All Night Stand.” There were quite a few Ray Davies songs (and even one Dave Davies song) that weren’t released by the Kinks, but issued by others. I know this might be starting to sound like a broken record, but it’s unsurprising the Kinks didn’t cut most of them on their own, because they weren’t as good or gutsy as the Davies songs they did lay down. Nor were they that successful, with the exception of the placid ballad “This Strange Effect,” a huge hit for Dave Berry in Holland, though it only made #37 in his native UK. (The Kinks did record a version of “This Strange Effect” for the BBC that eventually found release, but did not put it on their studio discs.) The eerie “I Go to Sleep” is pretty good, but I much prefer the Kinks’ sparse demo (eventually released as well after getting bootlegged) to the one by the artist who was able to record it back in the mid-‘60s, Peggy Lee.

An exception in both quality and energy is “All Night Stand,” a fairly penetrating look at the troubling undercurrents of Swinging London. It’s got the same kind of peppy brashness as numerous 1966 Kinks songs like “Dedicated Follower of Fashion”—not as raunchy as their first big singles with a modified power-chord arrangement, but not as subdued as what they’d get into by 1967 and 1968. While the Thoughts don’t put much personality into it, it probably doesn’t sound much different than how the Kinks would have done the tune. Of course it would have had much more personality with a Ray Davies vocal, as you can hear on a demo that found release after doing the rounds on bootleg.

“All Night Stand” seems like a reasonable contender for release on their 1966 LP Face to Face. Why didn’t it make it? Maybe it was considered too downbeat or serious for a collection that, for all the satirical sophistication of most of its songs, usually had a fairly cheery wit. Thematically it might have fit in better than the one song, the closing cut “I’ll Remember,” that seemed like a throwback to the earlier Kinks in its standard romantic lyrics. Which brings me to a question I’ve never read posed: was the use and placement of “I’ll Remember” on Face to Face deliberate, almost like it was a tongue-in-cheek farewell (thus the phrase “I’ll remember”) to the more standard, simpler romantic pop lyrics Davies used on the Kinks’ earlier records?

The Sons of Adam/The Other Half/Love, “Feathered Fish.” Here for a change we have a way-obscure song done by two groups that never came close to a hit, written by the leader of a band that, though very famous, never quite got beyond cult status. “Feathered Fish” was written by Love’s Arthur Lee, and has the kind of manic energy and weird free-associating lyrics of some of Love’s hard-rocking early songs, like “Stephanie Knows Who.” Why Love themselves didn’t issue a version isn’t clear. It would have fit in fairly well on the first side of their second LP, Da Capo, but maybe it wasn’t considered quite as strong as the six excellent songs that did make it on side one. Had Love decided to make a whole LP of real songs instead of devoting side two to the long jam “Revelation,” it certainly should have made it. But that might have meant padding the album with slightly lesser songs. That would have worked better than putting an interminable blues jam in their place, but what’s done is done.

Lee liked a fellow Los Angeles band, the Sons of Adam, who featured terrific guitarist Randy Holden and drummer Michael Stuart, whom Lee would poach for Love in autumn 1966. Before that, Lee offered the group “Feathered Fish.” According to Sons of Adam rhythm guitarist Jac Ttanna, Arthur actually offered them three songs, one of which, “Seven and Seven Is,” would become Love’s only Top Forty hit. Oddly, neither Stuart nor Holden would be in the band by the time Sons of Adam finally got around to recording “Feathered Fish” on their third and final single in 1967, shortly before they split. It’s a good garage-psych performance, with constant stop-start tempos and the kind of breezy raw early psychedelia that peaked in L.A. for just a magic year or so from around mid-1966 to mid-1967.

Holden did record “Feathered Fish,” however, as part of his next band, the Other Half, one of the most underrated psychedelic late-‘60s outfits. Included on their sole LP (whose label mistakenly credited the composition to Country Joe, sans McDonald), it’s a starker yet more powerful version, with almost shouted menacing vocals and thrilling yelping, sustain-heavy Holden guitar. Randy nonetheless told Ugly Things that “Other Half didn’t do it as well as Sons of Adam,” and noted in the same interview that he’d cut a much better version with them while he was still in the band.

Manfred Mann/Bob Dylan, “The Mighty Quinn.” This is hardly an obscure song, or hit cover. And there were a lot of Dylan compositions in the ‘60s that he didn’t put on his records, but were recorded by someone else. In fact, Manfred Mann had already had a #2 UK hit with one of them, “If You Gotta Go, Go Now,” in 1965.

Some Dylan fanatics have a hard time accepting the possibility that other artists might have performed any of his compositions better than Dylan himself did. But I’m siding with the masses on this one. Manfred Mann’s “The Mighty Quinn,” which made #1 in the UK and the Top Ten in the US, is much better than the original, which Dylan cut with the Band as part of a massive collection of “Basement Tapes” in 1967. That original—the second of the two takes was finally released in 1985, and both takes are now on The Basement Tapes Complete—is skeletal. Manfred Mann made it much more tuneful and fun, emphasizing a catchy-as-hell chorus, great soaring harmonies at the end of the verses, and Klaus Voormann’s unforgettable interjections of pennywhistle. When I play the versions back to back in rock courses I teach, students virtually unanimously prefer the Mann cover.

Should this be considered a giveaway? Sort of, because although Dylan didn’t write it with Manfred Mann in mind, it was on a fourteen-song publishing demo of Basement Tapes recordings meant to solicit cover versions. Take one by Dylan and the Band did soon appear on the first popular Dylan bootleg, Great White Wonder, but not until 1969, more than a year after Manfred Mann’s hit.

If Manfred Mann’s polishing of Dylan songs is considered sacrilegious, it’s worth considering Mann’s comments to me from an interview nearly twenty years ago. He saw the strengths of his group’s Dylan covers as “the ability to change it, because it always seemed as if the original version was very personal to him. It didn’t seem like a definitive version, in some funny way. I don’t mean that in any way as an insult, ’cause I absolutely loved the original versions. But it just seemed that there was space there to do something, and make it different. Which you couldn’t do with Elton John—he seems to have done it in the standard way. Dylan did it in a very idiosyncratic way. And therefore, there was the space to do it in a different way. I almost feel that I straightened them out in a way.

“We approached it without any respect for the original. That’s absolutely essential. You can’t go around with so much respect for the original that you can’t function. It was quite simply, ‘What can we do with this?’ And my general thing was to have it in music form, in front of me in paper, and just play it and play it and play it until in the end I wouldn’t refer to the original record, after I knew it. If you play it long enough, you find you’re playing it your way.” His way would extend to taking liberties that some Dylanologists would see as heresy, though they ruffled Mann not at all: “I would cut sections out if I needed to. In ‘Just Like a Woman,’ I cut out the whole middle bridge. We didn’t want to do it, and we just didn’t do it.

“We had the songs that everybody else had missed, where the original versions were sometimes quite idiosyncratic and a bit left-field. But I could use it. I was simply a bit of a predator, looking for material.”

Jefferson Airplane/The Byrds, “Triad.” “Triad” is pretty infamous in the Byrds’ history, as one of the straws that broke the camel’s back in leading to David Crosby’s departure (or, more precisely, firing). This song about a ménage a trois was recorded during the sessions for their fifth album, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, but not used. Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman, who’d jointly fire Crosby in late 1967, didn’t like the song, to the frustration of the composer, who felt what he was writing was good enough to get released. And certainly better than Carole King and Gerry Goffin’s “Goin’ Back,” which did make the album, although Crosby had no enthusiasm for its inclusion.

In Johnny Rogan’s Byrds: Requiem for the Timeless: Vol. 1, both clarified that “Triad” wasn’t the leading factor in their decision. “We didn’t like the song at the time,” Hillman told Rogan, adding, “I don’t think it was a moral decision. The song just didn’t work that well. David was drifting and bored and wanted to do something else, and that song just added fuel to the fire.” McGuinn agreed: “‘Triad’ wasn’t the crux of it, that was nothing really. It was just a song that I didn’t think was in particularly good taste.”

Crosby found a home for the song, however, with his friends Jefferson Airplane, who included it on their 1968 album Crown of Creation. “What is he saying that is bad?,” said Grace Slick in Jeff Tamarkin’s Got a Revolution! The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane. “If the two women want to live there, and he wants to live there, who cares? His band wouldn’t let him and, yeah, I’ll sing it! I wouldn’t do that [a threesome] personally, but I don’t have a moral issue with it.”

The controversy has added luster to a song that actually isn’t that great. The Byrds’ languid version, now available as a bonus track on The Notorious Byrd Brothers, wouldn’t have stood out as a good addition to the album; in fact, it wouldn’t have fit that well. And it’s not as good as “Goin’ Back,” which is the kind of sparkling folk-rock at which the Byrds excelled. I like Jefferson Airplane’s version of “Triad” better, and though it wasn’t among their best tracks, it fit in better on Crown of Creation.

Fairport Convention/Joni Mitchell, “Eastern Rain.” In their early days, prior to their heavy emphasis on rocked-up British folk, Fairport Convention excelled at well-chosen covers of American folk-rock songs. Some of them hadn’t been released by the composers when they recorded them for their first two albums, or their late-‘60s BBC sessions. One such highlight was Joni Mitchell’s “Eastern Rain,” from their first album with Sandy Denny as woman vocalist, What We Did on Our Holidays (titled simply Fairport Convention in the US). It’s given a beautiful delicate folk-rock arrangement, from the rain-mimicking guitar plucks to the rich vocal harmonies and Denny’s own characteristically glowing lead singing.

Mitchell did perform a solo folk version live in the late-‘60s, as you can hear on bootleg, but did not put it on her official discs. Fairport did a couple then-unreleased-by-Mitchell songs on their 1968 debut album, but Joni did put both of those on her second album, Clouds, in 1969. As Fairport’s Iain Matthews confirmed when I interviewed him for my book Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock’s Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock, producer Joe Boyd “had a direct line to her publishing demos and supplied us with whatever we could handle.”

Fairport, by the way, were another act that put out then-unreleased Dylan songs in the ‘60s, like The Basement Tapes’ “Million Dollar Bash,” which is on their third album, Unhalfbricking. That LP also includes a considerably older Dylan song that the composer had not issued on his records, “Percy’s Song.” Although it’s not too well known, I’d go as far as to say Fairport’s BBC version is one of the best Dylan covers, and only outclassed by Manfred Mann’s “The Mighty Quinn” as the finest of a composition not yet released in Dylan’s official catalog, though his 1963 outtake made it onto 1985’s Biograph box.

Marianne Faithfull/The Rolling Stones, “Sister Morphine.” Although “Sister Morphine” is one of the better known songs from the Rolling Stones’ 1971 album Sticky Fingers, it’s still not too widely recognized by the general public that the first version came out on a rare Marianne Faithfull single in 1969. Its status as a “giveaway” is a little diluted by the composer credits, which Faithfull herself shared with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Sticky Fingers only credited Jagger and Richards, but as Faithfull explained in the liner notes to the 2018 compilation Come and Stay with Me: The UK 45s 1964-1969:

“Mick is mean. He’ll always be a student of the London School of Economics! Keith Richards wrote to [Stones publisher] Allen Klein and told him that I’d written the lyrics. Jagger and I had split up, very bad blood and all that. Keith Richards told him that I did write the words and I needed the money. So now and again, I get a royalty check for ‘Sister Morphine.’ I’ve been living off ‘Sister Morphine’ for years. I just got one today. £485!”

The Rolling Stones’ version of this downer drug song is pretty good, but I’d give Faithfull’s the edge, if only a slight one. This is the point where her voice started to lower and become more earthy, in contrast to the angelic, virginal tone of her mid-‘60s hits. She really sounds like she’s living the lyric, not just singing it, though the worst of her drug problems were yet to come. As she herself states in the aforementioned liner notes, “I was the character in the song.”

Why aren’t more people aware of Faithfull’s version of “Sister Morphine,” although it’s been reissued a few times? Because of its controversial subject matter, the single was withdrawn by Decca Records in the UK, where only 500 copies are reported to have been issued. But I haven’t read that it was censored in the US or other countries, and in any case, it was the B-side to the relatively innocuous Gerry Goffin-Carole King composition “Something Better.” Despite its quality, “Sister Morphine” was simply unlikely to get airplay anywhere in 1969.While that finishes my list of selected favorites in this niche category, there were quite a few other oddball entries that are worth discussing, even if they were of uneven or even unimpressive quality. I’ll write about some of those in my next post.

One of my recent blogposts covered, in part, how disputes over a couple of songs—specifically “Triad” and “Goin’ Back”—helped lead to David Crosby getting fired from the Byrds. It was by no means the only factor, but it certainly played a strong part. Were there any other instances from the era in which a song, a couple songs, or a specific block of material played a major role in a band’s breakup, or at least in changing a band’s lineup?

There were quite a few, and no doubt there were more—perhaps some never reported—than the ones I’ve listed here. But here’s a summary of some of the more notable ones, some of which have been written about for pages, not just paragraphs.

The Byrds, “Triad” and “Goin’ Back.” To recap, David Crosby wanted more songs on the Byrds albums, and specifically wanted his ballad about a ménage a trois, “Triad,” on their fifth album, The Notorious Byrd Brothers. The other Byrds, specifically Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman, objected, and not just because they didn’t think the song was in great taste. They preferred a classy Gerry Goffin-Carole King composition, “Goin’ Back,” which they gave a typically glowing folk-rock treatment with ringing guitars and soaring harmonies. Crosby didn’t like “Goin’ Back,” both because he felt the band should be doing their own (and his) material, and because he thought the song was too lightweight. 

“Goin’ Back” did come out well, but without help from Crosby, who didn’t offer his full or enthusiastic participation. Before The Notorious Byrd Brothers was completed, McGuinn and Hillman drove to Crosby’s home in autumn 1967 to fire him, finishing the LP without him. You can read a fuller account in my blogpost. But it’s worth noting that in his interview presented as a bonus feature to the DVD of the documentary David Crosby: Remember My Name, McGuinn admitted, “It was a mistake to fire him. To fire the best harmony singer in the world. It was the best sound we ever had vocally…never got that good again. We missed David. David was an essential part of the Byrds.”

The Beatles, “The Long and Winding Road.” Probably the most famous example of a song playing a key role in a group’s breakup. The story’s been told many times, but basically Paul McCartney was furious at Phil Spector’s overdubs of strings and a choir on “The Long and Winding Road.” He maintained this had been done without his knowledge, and announced his departure from the Beatles shortly afterward, on April 10, 1970. It’s uncertain how soon he made up his mind after hearing the track, but it couldn’t have been too long before April 10, since the overdubs were recorded on April 1.

It’s never been completely established whether McCartney (then busy wrapping up his first solo album) was completely unaware of Spector’s overdubs on the song. An April 14, 1970, telegram from Paul to Allen Klein reprinted in The Beatles Anthology states, “In future no one will be allowed to add to or subtract from a recording of one of my songs without my permission,” implying the mix was done without his approval. In the Evening Standard, he added, “I was sent a remixed version of my song ‘The Long and Winding Road,’ with harps, horns, an orchestra and women’s choir added. No one had asked me what I thought. I couldn’t believe it. I would never have female voices on a Beatles record.” (Although there actually had been female voices on Beatles records on occasion, most recently at the January 1970 overdubs for the “Let It Be” single, which included harmonies by Linda McCartney; Mary Hopkin also recalled singing on this session.)

Ringo Starr, however, told Melody Maker, “He heard it. I spoke to him on the phone and said, ‘Did you like it?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, it’s okay.’ He didn’t put it down. And then suddenly he didn’t want it to go out…two weeks after that, he wanted to cancel it.”

Contended Spector in the 2009 documentary The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector (in an interview filmed shortly before he began serving a prison sentence for murder), “Paul loved, he said, ‘The Long and Winding Road’ when it was done. … It was a terrible recording when I heard it. John was playing bass on it with all the wrong notes, there was no snare drum on it. I had to get Ringo in to play. It was bass, drum, and piano. It was really awful. … I had to do everything I could to cover up the mistakes. And I even called Paul to ask me who he’d recommend as arranger. And I used an arranger that Paul recommended.”

For his part, George Martin told Melody Maker, “John insisted that [Let It Be] was going to be a natural album, a live album, and he didn’t want any of the faking, any of the Pepper stuff, any production. … When the record came out, I got a hell of a shock. I knew nothing about it, and neither did Paul. All the lush, un-Beatle-like orchestrations with harps and choirs in the background—it was so contrary to what John asked for in the first place.”

Yet this is what came out, and history generally accepts the overdub of “The Long and Winding Road” as one of the last straws that finally led Paul to throw in the towel and quit the group on April 10, 1970.

The Yardbirds, “For Your Love.” Although they were already a great R&B-blues-oriented group, and had already issued a couple fine singles and recorded an exciting live album, the Yardbirds didn’t have a hit as 1965 dawned. They took a chance on a decidedly non-R&B-blues song, Graham Gouldman’s “For Your Love.” Guitarist Eric Clapton seemed disgusted by the move, as he wanted to play blues and viewed it as a sellout, though he does play in the boogie bridge. He might have been wanting out of the group anyway, but he left shortly after it was recorded.

Actually, this worked out well for everyone. Clapton got to play the blues he wanted in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. “For Your Love”—hardly a sellout, but a radically different kind of pop-rock song, with harpsichord, bongos, an ominous melody, and unpredictable tempo changes—was the big hit the Yardbirds were gunning for, in both the UK and US. And Clapton’s replacement, Jeff Beck, was not only just as great a guitarist, but more amenable to the non-blues risk-taking at which the band would excel for the year and a half he was in the Yardbirds.

Clapton’s sometimes painted as the heroic figure who refused to be compromised by commercial considerations, but that wasn’t necessarily the case. “Eric didn’t like the change of policy towards getting hits,” Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty told Chris Welch for the liner notes of the 1977 double-LP compilation Shapes of Things. “I thought that was a bit strange, because he got a bit commercial afterwards didn’t he? I just think he didn’t like ‘For Your Love.'” And while he might have played the noble purist, Clapton was quite soon going into some non-blues directions—much to his musical benefit—starting with Cream and on through Derek & the Dominos, though not so much to his musical benefit (and much more commercially) in his post-Layla career.

McCarty has a humorous insight along the same lines in his fine recent memoir, Nobody Told Me! “Years later,” he notes in the book, “I read an interview with Eric where he complained that we’d seen the Stones come out of the Crawdaddy, score a few hits and become international superstars, and we wanted to follow them. It’s true! We did, and I don’t see anything wrong with that. We saw how others were going to America and making out like bandits. Why shouldn’t we do the same?

“And another thing. Yes, ‘For Your Love’ was a pop song. But had there ever been another one that sounded like that? And that, in turn, was what the Yardbirds had been all about, back when we first got together. Take something ‘normal’ and give it a twist. A unique Yardbirds twist.”

The Beach Boys, “Surf’s Up.” The Beach Boys were probably never in serious danger of breaking up in the 1960s, but Brian Wilson’s ambitious (and ultimately unfinished) Smile project certainly put them to the test. A whole book’s been written about it, and it also takes up chunks of some documentaries and other Wilson/Beach Boys books. But it usually comes down to this: the other Beach Boys, but most particularly singer Mike Love, to varying degrees did not understand and thus did not fully support the rather avant-garde album Brian had in mind. In particular, it’s been reported that Love could not get to grips with some of Van Dyke Parks’s lyrics, especially the “columnated ruins domino” phrase in “Surf’s Up.” That might not have doomed the Beach Boys, but it certainly seemed to play a part in dooming Smile, though much of what was recorded for the album is now commercially available—much of it on a box set, even.

Mike Love is one of the least popular rock stars, at least among a major band’s core fanbase, and his widely reported opposition to Smile is part of the reason. It should be pointed out, however, that Love has sometimes maintained he wasn’t opposed to the project, at least to the extent that’s often perceived. In his recent memoir Good Vibrations: My Life As a Beach Boy, he admits he had concerns about the record, mostly to do with the impenetrable lyrics. Yet he also writes, “We all had questions, but we did what Brian wanted, and we worked harder on those vocals than on any others in the history of the band.”

The Kinks, “Days.” Compared to Ray Davies and Dave Davies, original Kinks bassist Pete Quaife wasn’t at the forefront of the band’s creativity. Still, he was part of the group’s original and best-loved lineup before leaving in 1969. In an interview with Disc & Music Echo around that time, he explained, “I’m sick of standing onstage and just playing two notes per bar…I was fed up playing pretty bubblegum music.”

Few if any others would call the Kinks’ late-’60s records bubblegum. But they were certainly more subdued than their raunchy British Invasion hits of the mid-’60s, and maybe Quaife found their new material too staid and boring in comparison, at least for a non-writing/non-singing bassist. He might have especially had one song in mind. According to Ray Davies, Pete wrote the word “Daze” on a tape box of their 1968 single “Days,” although that’s one of their more beloved songs, and not one that was especially languid in mood, at least relative to their other discs of the period.

Again this is a story that was challenged by one of the participants. “That is so not true,” Quaife told Neil Rosser years later. “Ray always insisted that we be in the studio whether we were involved or not. I think he looked upon us as his courtiers who had to sit around watching the master working. He loved that. So we had to sit there with nothing much to do but listen to the music. It would have been interesting if we knew what the goal was, but we didn’t.

“I’d spend my time casually sketching little figures, having always been a cartoonist. I drew this little man with a raincoat and a hat. It was just on the side of one of the boxes of tape. Ray, who often did this, found something to make a huge fuss about and assert his authority. He started yelling and screaming that he was doing all the work and all I was doing was sitting around drawing stupid pictures. Years later he came out with the story that I wrote ‘Daze’ on the box. I never did.”

Pink Floyd, “Have You Got It Yet?” Such was Syd Barrett’s instability around the start of 1968 that his departure from Pink Floyd couldn’t be attributed to any one song or incident. But this particular composition seemed to tax the other guys’ patience to the breaking point, Syd changing the melody and chord progression each time they tried to rehearse it. Calling the song (which never has been released or otherwise circulated) “a real act of mad genius,” Roger Waters told ZigZag in 1973, “I stood there for an hour while he was singing….trying to explain that he was changing it all the time so I couldn’t follow it. He’d sing ‘Have you got it yet?’ and I’d sing “No, no!'”

Not long afterward, the other four (David Gilmour having recently temporarily made the Floyd a quintet) determined they couldn’t go on with Barrett, even if he took a Brian Wilson-like role of restricting his activities to the studio and songwriting while leaving the others to play live. We’ll never hear “Have You Got It Yet?,” though indications are that like some of his final Floyd compositions—”Vegetable Man,” “Scream Thy Last Scream,” and “Jugband Blues”—they reflect a considerably confused state of mind, teetering on madness.

The Velvet Underground, “Sweet Jane” and “New Age.” This is a bit of an outlier, since this is more something that could have broken up a group than actually did. By the time the Loaded album with these songs came out in fall 1970, Lou Reed had quit the Velvet Underground — actually he left in late August, near the end of their residency at New York’s Max’s Kansas City club. That meant he might not have had a voice in the final shape of Loaded, but that didn’t keep him from complaining about it after its release, singling out a few songs in particular.

“Toward the end [of ‘Sweet Jane’], just before it gets heavier, it had a minor melody,” Reed complained in an interview with Karin Berg, “but they edited it out. That was sheer stupidity.” The final part of “New Age,” he noted, “was supposed to go on for a full minute, that was the powerful part of the song, they have it go on for one chorus – how could anyone be that stupid? They took all the power out of the song.” In an April 1977 ZigZag interview, Reed added another grievance: “The guitar solo on ‘Train Coming Round the Bend’ was fucked around with and inserted.”

Reed was also angry that the songs were sequenced without his input. “The thing is I always took great care in putting the songs in order so they made sense,” he told Tony Stewart in a June 1972 New Musical Express interview. “One character would say one thing, and another character in another song would answer it. There was reason why they were put together in a certain way. But that’s not true on Loaded, because I left long before the mixing even. So Loaded doesn’t make sense. I didn’t like the production. Like with the vocals, sometimes they didn’t use the right mics.”

Added Lou in ZigZag, ”Loaded was a rock and roll album that I thought was badly produced. I don’t like the sound. I left before the editing and all that, and they just butchered two of my songs. I was very displeased about that.” “In Creem, Reed maintained, “I left before the thing was even mixed. They took me out of a lot of it.”

As usual, there are different points of view on what actually transpired. In his 1995 interview with Pat Thomas, Doug Yule—bassist in the Velvets by this time, who also plays other instruments on Loaded—recalls that all of the Loaded mixes, including the “Sweet Jane” and “New Age” edits, were done by Reed himself.

The Rolling Stones, “Time Waits for No One.” Considering he’s had more than 45 years to talk about it, Mick Taylor’s never been too forthcoming or specific about why he left the Rolling Stones in late 1974, after five years in the group. It’s often been speculated, however, that one of the principal reasons was his failure to gain songwriting credits for material in which his contribution was substantial. One example might be the extended instrumental tag to “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” whose Latin (almost Santana-esque) flavor was quite a departure for the Stones, and quite a good one. Another might be the less famous “Time Waits for No One,” heard on their 1974 album It’s Only Rock and Roll. Its fluid guitar lines, again especially on the instrumental tag, aren’t much like what Keith Richards played, or what Richards and Mick Jagger wrote.

Taylor wasn’t the only Rolling Stone not to get songwriting credits for songs in which contributions by members other than Mick or Keith might have been substantial. Most famously, Bill Wyman doesn’t have a co-credit for “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,”  although he’s remembered coming up with the main guitar riff. Here we do get into the very broad and controversial subject of what exactly constitutes a contribution that entitles you to a co-credit. Some people are awarded co-credits for a word or two or a lick; more often, it’s considered that if you didn’t write most or all of the melody and lyrics, you’re not entitled to one.

The Who, “Substitute.” Here we have a song, or certainly record, that threatened the livelihood of a band known for quarreling viciously among themselves. Roger Daltrey had even been fired for a bit (and subsequently rehired) not long before this classic was recorded. But the problems the song caused had nothing to do with interpersonal tensions within the Who. Instead, they arose because they’d recorded it without the producer to whom they were contracted, Shel Talmy, who produced all their 1965 recordings, including three British hit singles and their debut LP.

When the dispute went to court, the Who were prohibited for recording for almost half a year—nothing in twenty-first century terms, but a huge gap in the 1966 singles-oriented market for a band hungry to establish themselves as stars. It’s a tribute to their perseverance, in spite of their frequent conflicts with one another, that the group stuck together until they could enter the studio again later that year. Many if not most bands much less renowned for fighting with each other might have broken up in the face of such a huge obstacle.

There were other times when the Who were reported to be on the verge of breaking up or fighting so hard that their very existence was threatened. That was sometimes reported to be the case whether it was most of the guys and their managers trying to understand what Pete Townshend was doing with the uncompleted early-’70s opera Lifehouse, or Daltrey punching and injuring Townshend in a heated argument in late 1973, apparently exacerbated by a Quadrophenia mix that didn’t make the vocals as prominent as Roger would have liked.

As the Who stayed together with the same four guys from 1964 to 1978, verging on splitting eventually seemed more like the normal state of things than something ever likely to happen, at least while Keith Moon was still alive. It really took an external circumstance to threaten their career. It’s been reported that Moon and John Entwistle might have considered trying to join or form another band around then, though typically nothing ultimately came of it.

The Hollies, Hollies Sing Dylan. Graham Nash had been growing apart from the Hollies, musically and personally, for some time before he left at the end of 1968. Basically he wanted to get hipper and write more sophisticated material, though his cause was hurt when the ambitious “King Midas in Reverse” wasn’t a big hit in 1967. Also the Hollies didn’t want to do “Marrakesh Express,” which would be a popular track (and a modest hit) off Crosby, Stills & Nash’s first album.

Nash probably would have left the Hollies to join CSN no matter what. But the point of no return was marked by the Hollies Sing Dylan album. He was plain enough about the matter to Melody Maker in mid-1969: “I quit the Hollies because of the Sing Dylan album. It was just that I knew they would turn his songs into big commercial rock-riffed, hit single-type album tracks. I dig Dylan, man, but this—to me—is not how you treat his songs.”

The Hollies offered this rebuttal, also in Melody Maker: “All of Graham’s songs are very slow, and very boring. He wants to go all soppy, artistic and beautiful. But we just want to stay as the Hollies.” Everyone got their wish in the end, most likely. The Hollies did record their erratic album of pop-rock Dylan covers, which made #3 in Britain. Nash was free to chase his more esoteric pursuits (which, in truth, were not that far-out) with Crosby, Stills & Nash (and later Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young).

The Doors, “Riders on the Storm” and “L.A. Woman.” This classic hit single and the title track from their final album with Jim Morrison didn’t break up the group, but they did play a big part in breaking them up with their longtime producer. Paul Rothchild had produced all their previous records, but bowed out before the L.A. Woman sessions after hearing some of the material. As James Riordan & Jerry Prochnicky’s Break on Through: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison notes, according to Rothchild, “the entire group had been lazy and had developed only rough versions of four or five songs.” Rothchild is quoted as follows in the book:

“The most complete were ‘L.A. Woman’ and ‘Riders on the Storm,’ both of which I thought were great songs, but I couldn’t get the group to play either of them decently. There was simply nothing there, no energy. We rehearsed and rehearsed, but it didn’t get any better. I figured I’d do it like the last few—patch together the best stuff.

“We went into the studio and it was dreadful. Jim got into his spoiled brat thing and dragged everything down deliberately. I worked my ass off for a week, but it was still just fucking awful. Hoping to make them angry enough to do something good I’d tell them, ‘This isn’t rock’n’roll, it’s cocktail lounge music!’ But they just didn’t have the heart anymore. You know, it got so bad that for the first time in my career I found myself drifting off to sleep, putting my head on the console and nodding off. It was just BAD.”

L.A. Woman ended up being produced by the Doors with their longtime engineer, Bruce Botnick. At least the album, if not the Doors story, had a happy ending. L.A. Woman was a good record, and “Riders on the Storm” and “L.A. Woman” were the highlights. We don’t know how they sounded when Rothchild heard early versions, and if they were as bad as he says. Maybe a fresh production team was needed to get the album in shape, especially if Rothchild’s initial reaction was so negative.

The Everly Brothers, “Temptation.” While this single didn’t break up the Everly Brothers, it did have a long-range damaging effect on their career. Not because of a dispute between Don and Phil Everly, but the ruckus it caused between them and their manager, Wesley Rose. Rose didn’t like how the duo had arranged this standard, possibly at least in part because he didn’t have the publishing. 

“I woke up one day and I said I wanted to do this song this way,” Don Everly told Gavin Martin for the liner notes of a CD reissue combining the Everlys’ It’s Everly Time! and A Date with the Everly Brothers albums, adding bonus tracks (“Temptation” among them). “I had this idea with this beat and these voices and stuff. Wesley made it as difficult as possible. We cut it like twice. He would just be sitting there shaking his head. It’s really hard to work when somebody’s supposed to be nurturing and for them to walk around going, ‘Oh God, I can’t believe how terrible this is.’ You know, that kind of thing. But, if he’d have been publishing it, it would have been a different story.”

After “Temptation” was recorded in November 1960, the Everlys split from Rose. Unfortunately, that cut off their access to songs by Felice & Boudleaux Bryant, who’d written many of their hits (and some other good compositions they’d put on disc). The Everlys did record a good deal of fine music in the 1960s, much of it unheard beyond devotees. But they’d never make as consistent records, or score as consistent hits, again.

As we get on in the 21st century, boxed sets are appearing that would have seemed unimaginable even ten years ago, let alone pre- CD era. The Cherry Red group have been at the forefront of this, whether it’s a four-CD set on a cult band that never put out an LP  (the Action) or triple CDs on obscure corners of UK late-‘60s/early-‘70s folk-rock. Still, I never expected there to ever be a three-CD set for the Honeycombs, which appeared early this year on Cherry Red’s RPM imprint.

The Honeycombs are often thought of as a one-hit group, particularly in the US, where their 1964 stomper “Have I the Right” was their only high-charting single (though another, “I Can’t Stop,” fell not too short of the Top Forty). It made #5 in the States in 1964 when the British Invasion was gathering unstoppable steam, and #1 in their native UK, where they did manage to land another Top Twenty entry with “That’s the Way.” Along with the Tornados’ 1962 instrumental chart-topper “Telstar,” it was the only production by the legendarily eccentric Joe Meek to hit big in the US, though Meek was some other hits (and numerous notable and not-so-notable flops) in his native Britain.

Because of the peculiar compressed crunch of “Have I the Right,” its eerie high-pitched male vocal, and the presence (very rare in ‘60s rock) of a woman drummer, the Honeycombs have sometimes been  kind of dismissed as a gimmicky fluke act. That’s especially the case since, unlike most notable British Invasion groups, they wrote almost none of their material, most of which was composed by their managers and (more occasionally) Meek. They projected little in the way of image, other than the immediately distinctive visual  trademark of a woman drummer. What relatively little has been written about them doesn’t lend much insight into the group’s musical motivations and aspirations, even in the 24-page booklet of liner notes in this new anthology.

Yet the Honeycombs recorded a lot more than most people realize, even among British Invasion fans. Have I the Right: The Complete 60s Albums & Singles has 79 tracks, including their three albums. Yes, they had more LPs than they had big US/UK hits. And they had a lot of non-LP singles: eight, which together with the decent non-album B-side of “Have I the Right” (“Please Don’t Pretend Again”) adds up to more than another LP’s worth of sides on their own. Throw in a German-language version of both sides of the “Have I the Right” single; a couple songs broadcast on 1965 radio programs of uncertain origin (the bass on the radio take of “That’s the Way” is unexpectedly powerful, by the way); five previously unreleased studio outtakes; and some post-Honeycombs solo singles from singer Denny D’Ell and original guitarist Martin Murray, and you have enough to fill almost four hours.

Wise guys would counter that’s almost four hours too many, but in fact, there’s a fair amount of really good material here, almost all of it virtually unknown beyond Meek geeks. There’s a lot of silly, even puerile stuff too. Not infrequently, those qualities are mixed together. Their body of work is among the most peculiar of any ‘60s group to make a significant mark on the rock world.

If you’ve gotten this far, you’re almost certainly familiar with “Have I the Right,” the one song that’s familiar to almost everyone in the UK and North America. Many of its attributes (some would say annoyances) are found throughout their records. Dennis D’Ell had a  weird, whiny waver of a voice that could sound like Gene Pitney speeded up from 33 to 45. (Maybe that inspired Brian Jones, as has sometimes been reported, to call an Australian radio station while on tour Down Under to play the disc at 78.) Whether played by Honey Lantree or reinforced by the other Honeycombs and other feet and hands, there was often a floorboard stomp to the rhythm, perhaps influenced by the then-huge success of the Dave Clark Five.

As with many Meek productions, there was an eerie almost outer space shimmer to the hissy compression and sped-up-sounding vocal and instrumental tones. Less noted—actually, I’ve never seen it noted—was the distinctive piercing, curling, needle-prick guitar, which like D’Ell’s voice often teetered on the edge of the note. Since similar spooky guitar is heard on some other Meek productions, it wouldn’t surprise me if the producer manipulated the sound of the instrument in the studio.

Honeycombs managers Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley were responsible for writing the bulk of the group’s repertoire (though they’re more famous for doing the same thing a bit later for Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, who had a long string of UK smashes without breaking through in the US). Even by the standards of early British Invasion lyrics, their Honeycombs songs were twee in the extreme. Early Beatles songs like “Love Me Do” might have banal words on paper, but they were delivered with sincerity and soul. The Honeycombs bore, in keeping with their name, rather sickly sweet sentiments, accentuated by a voice (D’Ell’s) that almost seemed about to run away and hide in the corner out of nervous embarrassment.

What saved the best of their recordings—indeed, sometimes made them exhilarating—were of course the production, but also some haunting melodies, surprisingly effective unearthly background vocals, and a certain sense of manic ebullience that transcended the source material. Sometimes “deep” Honeycombs cuts could be surprisingly spooky, like soundtracks for walks through a moonlit cemetery. From their first LP, “Without You It Is Night” and “This Too Should Pass Away” (both enhanced by ethereal organ) certainly qualify on those grounds, even if the songs are pretty much alike. The non-hit single “Eyes” is too, building to a suspenseful climax and perpetually restless in its key shifts and fractured waltz tempo.

“Something I Got to Tell You” (buried on their second LP, 1965’s All Systems Go!) was, along with the bouncily innocuous “That’s the Way,” the only song on which Honey Lantree sang lead. With a fairly pleasing and far more conventional voice than D’Ell’s, she was underutilized in this role, and “Something I Got to Tell You” was  more mature than most of songs that surrounded it. But still spooky, with its pensive melody and, more notably, faint swirling backup vocals that seem to have floated up from the bottom of a fish tank. This sounds like it just could have been a hit, but its prospects probably would have been doomed by the unusual use of “hell” (“something’s giving me hell, baby”) in the lyric, which was rarely heard on AM radio in 1965. A far more chipper, and much inferior, version was produced by Meek for another of his clients, Glenda Collins.

The Honeycombs’ finest moment, however, was “I Can’t Stop,” a US-only follow-up single to “Have I the Right” that actually made it up  to #48 in the American charts. With infectious stop-start stomps, downward glissando sweeps, and nearly crazed yelps and screams, it was one of Meek’s finest productions, though I’ve never seen it hailed as such elsewhere. Such was its idiosyncrasy that even though I heard it on oldies radio just once as a young adolescent in the mid-1970s, I never forgot it. 

Warning: the version of “I Can’t Stop” on All Systems Go! is an entirely different remake, and a ghastly one. I can think of no other remake done relatively shortly after the original that is so inferior. Everything about the 45 is right; everything about the LP counterpart is wrong, plodding around without the vocal yelps, glissandos, machine-gun drumming in the bridge, punchy sonics, or general sense of out-of-control euphoria. I keenly recall my disappointment at finally finding the track on a best-of LP around the late 1980s, and my horror when realizing I was hearing a poor substitute. Its existence (especially as it’s the first cut on All Systems Go!) is inexplicable, though a fellow collector speculated the original wasn’t used as guitarist Martin Murray left the band in December 1964 under somewhat less than amiable circumstances, receiving a substantial cash settlement. “I Can’t Stop” might have been redone so Murray wouldn’t get paid for a performance by a different lineup.

Getting back to the Honeycombs’ catalog, another highlight is All System Go!’s “Love in Tokyo,” with its otherworldly electronic keyboard glow and typically spectral Howard-Blaikley tune. Alas, another warning is needed: the version on the new CD box has a defect, skipping a whole second (which includes part of a vocal) around the 22-second mark. So for all its breadth, this three-disc comp is still the Incomplete 1960s albums and singles, if only by the slimmest of margins. (The original, defect-less version did appear on the expanded All System Go! CD on Repertoire in 1990.)

Yet another warning: the second LP was coveted by some non-Honeycombs fans for its inclusion of a rare Ray Davies composition the Kinks never recorded, “Emptiness.” But—in common with most of the songs great British Invasion bands like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Who “gave away” for other acts to do—it’s not that good, and certainly not in the same league as what the songwriters were holding back for their own groups. The Honeycombs also tried one of the Kinks’ better early songs, “Something Better Beginning,” though the Kinks’ version is way better.

Back to more positive notes, a good number of Honeycombs tracks—the majority, I’d say—have something to recommend them in the way of odd production and appealing strange melody, even if a good number of these are kind of variations of a formula. An obscure standout is their final single (from September 1966), “That Loving Feeling.” Almost sounding as if the group’s fighting to be heard from behind a closet in its dense compressed clutter, it also has the feeling of a band sensing their end is near. That’s not referred to at all in the lyrics, but there’s a desperation to the gloomy melody and combination of lead and backup vocals, as if the group knows the time for their sound is fast running out.

That same vibe also comes through in a more muted way on the B-side, the Meek-penned “Should a Man Cry,” with an unexpectedly guttural fuzzy guitar solo. Time really was running out for Meek. The Honeycombs might have ended their recording career, but they didn’t die. Meek did in on February 3, 1967, killing himself after shooting his landlady.

In a different way, however, “That Loving Feeling” could have pointed to the future. It was one of just two original compositions the band managed to release, the other being the Murray’s lightweight “Leslie Anne” on their debut LP. “That Loving Feeling” was the work of Colin Boyd, part of the much-altered lineup of the Honeycombs’ final year or so. Boyd also wrote two neat (and yet more muffled-sounding) outtakes that make their first appearance on this compilation, indicating he could hit the right kind of haunting Honeycombs tone with his compositions had he been given more opportunities. “Tell Me Baby” in particular has the kind of mix of melancholy and exuberance heard in some of their best material, with a somewhat more mature air than Howard-Blaikley’s ditties. But that wasn’t to be, the group petering out not long after Meek’s death.

For all my enthusiastic championship of the Honeycombs’ work as worthy of reexamination despite its extremely unhip reputation, even a fan like me has to admit there’s a fair amount of guff in their discography. Some Howard-Blaikley constructions could be sugary in the extreme, starting with the leadoff cut from their first LP, “Colour Slide” (though that song does have its devotees). All Systems Go! has some treacly oldies covers, like their take on the Platters’ “My Prayer.” The rare Japan-only LP (issued in late 1965), In Tokyo (Live), is mostly comprised of mediocre covers of American rock hits. And the solo singles by Martin Murray (one, from 1966) and Denny D’Ell (two, from 1967) that close the box are undistinguished pop, and not produced by Meek. Who was going to listen to a cover of Bobby Vee’s “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes” in the summer of 1967, which D’Ell put on the B-side of his final 45?

Even after digesting this quite hefty box (and even though I already had most of the tracks elsewhere), some puzzles about the Honeycombs remain. How much of their records was down to Meek and Howard-Blaikley, and how much to them? There are few other hitmaking bands from the time that played their own instruments that seemed so dependent on their producer and a specific outside songwriting team for whatever distinctive sound they managed. How did they feel about the process, in which some might view them as mere vehicles for the others who did the creative grunt work?

Also: was Meek trying to do something particularly special for the Honeycombs in the studio, in contrast to his numerous other clients? Why were so many Honeycombs discs released in the wake of “Have I the Right,” including a second studio LP, at a time when even some UK groups with big hits never got the chance to do more than one longplayer in their home country? Why in the world wasn’t the single version of “I Can’t Stop” issued in the UK? How did the group’s early singles end up on the little known Vee-Jay subsidiary Interphon in the US—making the Honeycombs the only British group besides the Beatles to have American hits on Vee-Jay?

The sources that would seem most likely to contain some insight—the 24-page booklet of liner notes with this anthology, and John Repsch’s biography The Legendary Joe Meek—offer disappointingly little in that regard. The chapter on Howard-Blaikley in Johnny Rogan’s Starmakers and Svengalis doesn’t offer much either, but does contain this interesting passage:

“Reviving the chart fortunes of the Honeycombs proved immensely difficult, particularly as the group seemed relatively unconcerned about their status in the pop world. According to Howard, they preferred singing in pubs to appearing on television and reacted to their chart-topping achievement with humble satisfaction rather than awe-inspiring egomania. Their lack of ambition was also reflected in lackluster live performances which often ended in jeers from over-expectant members of the audience. In desperation, their managers temporarily sent them abroad where pop-starved fans were less discriminating.” (Indeed, according to the liner notes, much of their final year was spent in Israel.)

With some of the Honeycombs now gone and little interest in investigating their work among mainstream rock historians, we’ll probably never wholly know what made them and their team tick. Their story is in some ways as mysterious as their music.