Love Story Cassette Project
Originally posted April 8th - October 7th 2023. Edited, augmented and re-assembled March 11th 2025.
Long, Long, Long
This one is going to take a while.
There’s inevitably a fair amount of overlap between the Notebook and the Cassette projects. Stuff will be repeated. No avoiding that.
I wrote this, over in Notebooks, based on the essay I wrote around 2010 for Cleaning Out The Ashtrays. Probably no need to add to it, here, at this juncture. Plus I get awfully angry/sad revisiting this time. I really don’t want to do this again.
An approximate timeline of the project, based on dated DAT tapes looks like this.
End of 1993 - Sorcerer Sound Debacle
Early 1994 - probably February - Dangerous Music sessions
March, maybe April - move to Green Street Studios. Steven Street assumes production responsibilities. Neil and Quine record electric guitar overdubs. The rest of the recording, backing vocals and percussion excepted, is all Adam and I.
May, or thereabouts. Record Duke Quartet and mix ‘singles’ Baby, Like Lovers Do and Sentimental Fool at The Townhouse in London with Steven Street supervising. Mixes delivered to Bates, who then fires Steven from the project. It’s a depressing time.
Around about this time Bates’ team set up co-write meetings for me, all in the UK. I visit Andy Partridge in Swindon and Terry Britton in London. I also meet Boz Boorer, but we don’t ultimately get together to write. Mark Nevin visits the Notting Hill flat I’m staying in and we write Love Ruins Everything, or at least the beginnings of it.
Back to New York and back to Green Street in the Autumn. I think it was around this time that we had to sell our ‘dream’ apartment. We were only in it for three years. We moved into rented accommodation in The West Village.
By the Autumn I think Adam was out of the picture and I supervised the remaining recordings, not because I wanted to, but for want of a better idea. Neil came again, and recorded Be There, Unhappy Song and a few others, and the project started to come together. Quite why we were so worried about it, I’m not sure. I can only assume it was trickle down anxiety.
Steven Lindsay came in late October or November and we worked on a couple of his instrumental compositions, yielding Missing and Rain On The Parade. He also sang back ups and harmony vocals on various tracks.
Marl Nevin flew in and recorded his nylon strung part for Love Ruins Everything.
I guess we broke for the holidays.
In January, February and March 1995 work resumed and at least five new ideas were recorded but only Let’s Get Lost made in on to the record. The final rough mix DAT before taking the project to London was dated March 6th.
The string section recording sessions, for Be There and Unhappy Song at the Townhouse Studios was April 24th.
Mixing, with Mick Glossop, was June.
PS - Many of the outtakes from Love Story became b-sides, and the more polished/finished ones which didn’t, ended up on Cleaning Out The Ashtrays.
PPS - 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 rough mixes of
Casanova Smith
Cold Empty Room
Everyday
She Loves You
PPPS - Many of the audio files here contain multiple tracks. This is because, when these were originally presented, on my Patreon page, it was impossible to post multiple audio tracks to a single post.
Dangerous Music
The beginning of Love Story.
Dangerous Music was a cheap 'demo' studio in the East Village. Looking back I think Chris (Merrick Hughes) and Adam (Peters) conspired to get me away from my newly constructed home studio and have me focus on simple songs rather than sophisticated studio gear.
Chris and I would meet at Aggie's on Houston St for breakfast, where we would often see Ellen Barkin, then we'd walk over to Dangerous and work a full day, with Adam and I playing or programming everything. Almost everything. Quine would drop by play from time to time.
It was a brilliant idea. It worked. I got back to writing and most of the material was strong.
Quite how it took us almost another year to turn it into an album is something you'd need to ask my A&R man and manager.
If we'd settled for these songs as an album the only tracks missing from the final album would be Love Ruins Everything and Let's Get Lost. I Will Not Leave You Alone and It’ll Never Happen Again could easily have taken their places.
(31) Dangerous Rough Mixes
These DATs above were made at Green Street (all Green Street DATs were pink that year). But they are just compilations of rough mixes from Dangerous.
I Will Not Leave You Alone Earliest Rough Mix
Just Adam and I.
I Will Not Leave You Alone Dangerous Rough Mix
Rough and ready with Quine's part not figured out yet, and still no second verse.
I Will Not Leave You Alone Complete?
Tiny song, but all written, now.
Quine's playing on this is quite lovely. Maybe my favourite outtake from the album.
Trigger Happy First 2 Dangerous Rough Mixes
The lyric is almost there from take 1.
The ending isn't figured out yet and Neil's counter melody is missed.
This might be my best guitar playing. I wrote this song using James Taylor style finger picking but when I tried to record it I learned that I can't finger pick in time, or with any real finesse, so I taught myself, what is now my playing style which is faking finger picking using a plectrum.
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