Don't Get Weird On Me, Babe Cassettes
Originally posted November 8th 2021 - January 23rd 2022. Edited, augmented and re-assembled March 8th - 9th 2025.
If I Can Make It There
Outside of France and maybe Portugal, there were no actual hits on The X Album, but album sales had been decent, tours sold out and my visibility was still high. Rising, in fact in Sweden, Germany, North America, France. Polydor and Capitol were still as ‘fully invested’ as they ever were.
I was in no mood to take a break. I’d been writing on tour, Blair had sent me what amounted to 5/6 of side one, and I was confident I could turn these pieces into songs. After the kicking it took making Mainstream, my confidence, and consequently my ambition, was probably at an all time high. Why not make an album to show the world I wasn’t a one trick pony? One side full orchestra, recorded at Capitol Studios where Nelson Riddle conducted for Sinatra, and the other proper New York r’n’r with Fred, Matthew and Quine.
Polydor didn’t baulk at the cost, or the risk. We kept the same production team.
Looking back, I wish we’d made a 100% orchestral album, and held back the r’n’r songs for the next record, because, when it came to the crunch, neither Polydor nor Capitol (especially not Capitol) had the guts to back the orchestral side when it came to trying to get the material on the radio.
Late 1990 I had no idea how it would pan out. I gave myself no time to second guess myself. I dove into it.
Blair was in the form of his life. His material was very strong. Paul Buckmaster, ultimately, did a fantastic job with the orchestrations, and it was a dream to work with him and his team, but make no mistake, 80% of these orchestrations are Blair’s parts. You can hear this on the tapes he sent me.
Beth and I were now married and we’d moved into The Archives, an ‘upscale’ rental property at the end of Christopeher Street in the West Village, close to the Hudson. It was nice, a large duplex, but there was no ‘studio room’. As I recall, my recording gear, still based around the Akai 1212, remained in a corner of the living room. Was Beth upstairs trying to read when I was making demos? More likely she was out with our new New York friends.
I was now on the pool team at Milday’s on Prince Street and I recall taking Del Amitri there after their Letterman debut to celebrate and watch, around this time. Late Night TV was all we watched. We were out the rest of the time. Less than a year later She’s A Girl And I’m A Man would get me on the show. That song generated an awful lot of optimism in my corner of the music biz. It never delivered.
Preparing for the album, side one was simple enough - there were Blair’s five compositions, and I had Butterfly, or at least the music… How and when I completed the lyrics and vocal ideas for these, I’m not sure. The Notebook Project for this period shows that I was working very quickly.
The demos I instigated gave me all of what became side two (world ex N. America) excepting She’s A Girl, which was a b-side idea until very late in procedings. I already had Tell Your Sister, from the X Album outtakes. Two cover songs were demoed but ultimately not included on the record - Nick Cave’s The Ship Song and Quine’s idea - Lee Hazlewood’s Pour Man. There’s an Akai 1212 mix of The Ship Song, but somehow or other Polydor and I conspired to lose all evidence of Pour Man. A shame, it wasn’t bad.
When UMG released the Lloyd Cole In New York box set a few years ago they wanted outtakes so I gave them demos from 1988-1994. Consequently, missing from this page, are my final mix Akai 1212 demos of
To The Lions
The Ship Song
Pay For It
Weeping Wine
The One You Never Had
Weird On Me
The (Rough) Mix Tapes
Blair Work 4/90 Cassette
I was touring The X Album, with Blair, in the Spring of 1990. I’m guessing he made this for in during the break between Europe and North America. It’s a compilation of his recent compositions and it’s the kernel of the idea for Don’t Get Weird.
Rare Groove became There For Her.
Walker Ballad became Half Of Everything.
Right Track became Man Enough.
Another Green World Idea became What He Doesn't Know.
Margo’s Waltz is the one and only incidence of someone other than me titling a song of mine (that is, other than titles I stole from books or stories).
Butterfly excepted, that’s side 1. A healthy start to the process!
Ex Harold Dessau DAT
I guess DAT tapes were expensive...
Here I seem to have recorded Blair's demos over The L Word and Mannish Girl.
My DGWOMB Demo DAT
Needles became Weeping Wine, referencing The Searchers’ Needles And Pins
Mean Bartender became To The Lions
Like Lovers Do is another exploration of the X Album outtake
D to G Ballad became Somewhere Out In The East
Something Sweet became Pay For It.
Track 1 - Gospell #3 (sic) is the mystery.
I'd forgotten it ever existed.
Gospell #3 (sic)
There are 28 audio outtakes from Don't Get Weird OMB.
This might be the most interesting.
I know the way I think. I'm the same with notebooks, at least, I used to be. I don't put something at track 1 unless I have high hopes for it. But nothing ever came of Gospell #3 (sic). I've never been great in the spelling department.
The sound is recognizable. Those are the Kurzweil Piano and Strings, but that piano part doesn't sound like me. Maybe Nicky Holland helped me out. She doesn't remember. Or maybe my programming was better than I remember? The guitar is definitely me and rather embarrassingly out of tune. I still don't have a great ear for tuning...
Butterfly Akai Portastudio Demo
Instrumental, but shows I had a basic idea of what I wanted the orchestra to do before Paul B arranged the strings.
Even though there is no singing here, one thing I recall about Butterfly is that the final vocal melody/arrangement wasn't the first attempt. It's quite rare that I scrap a whole vocal idea and start again, but I did. The only other song I can think of where this happened was Baby, during Love Story Dangerous Music sessions.
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