Don't Get Weird On Me, Babe Notebooks

Compiled from original posts January 9th - March 9th 2022 with additional comments and editing March 5th - 6th 2025

Lloyd Cole

Mar 05, 2025

∙ Paid

1990-1991 The Rhodia Years

January 9th, 2022 and March 6th 2025

I've been through all the notebooks and this is all I have for after The X Album and before Bad Vibes. Not very much.

Computer Age. Yes, there is that. Final drafts were probably printed. But it does seem that my confidence and fluency were at an all time high. I wasn’t worried. I was (arguably over) confident. I was writing songs (by my standards) very quickly.

I’m not suggesting that this a particularly strong group of songs. I’m just observing that it was assembled and fine tuned very smoothly, without self doubt or second guessing.

The Don't Get Weird Song Pool

January 16th, 2022

This is all the evidence I have.

Mean Bartender, of course, became To The Lions.

Sweet Lord Thing became The One You Never Had.

I have no idea what Dylanesque Waltz was...

Ditto Roxyesque Ballad (although I suspect that might be an old idea of Blair's which posted here a while ago).

Ditto E Riff R'n'R Thing - I see some scraps of a Sweetheart type thing in one of the notebooks, but there is no demo, and based on the scraps, this is a good thing.

The Pretty Arpeggio from the previous album pool of ideas was still lurking and I still wanted to make it into something called Like Lovers Do, but I failed again.

I suspect Dance/Rock became Pay For It.

Mannish Girl was briefly still in the mix...

Barry Strings? I don't know, but maybe it morphed with Gershwin Piano/Strings, which became Butterfly.

Walker Ballad became Half Of Everything.

Jim Webb became There For Her.

Right Track became Man Enough.

Green World became What He Doesn't Know.

And I think Margo's Waltz is the only song (ever) I didn't entitle - that was always Blair's working title and it worked with the lyric, I thought.

On the third sheet, which is from the recording sessions, it seems that Weird On Me was seriously considered as the album opener. Thank heavens that didn't happen...

Butterfly was called You Lied, until I completely re-wrote the vocal line and lyric.

And Tell Your Sister was still The 'L' Word until quite late in the proceedings.

The very next page in the notebook is the 4th sheet -

B-Side Thing (ha ha)

You've got to be

The stupidest girl in the world...

This is the only eveidence I have that I actually wrote She’s A Girl And I’m A Man.