NEW YORK (AP) — The concept that Bruce Springsteen wrote, recorded and in the end shelved total albums of music could appear odd to the informal listener. Why put your self via all that work for nothing?
But “lost albums” are embedded in music trade lore. Some had been actually misplaced. Some remained unfinished or unreleased due to tragedy, shortsighted executives or creators who had been perfectionist — or had quick consideration spans.
Typically, the music is finally made public, like Springsteen is doing now, though out of context from the occasions through which it was initially made.
So in honor of Springsteen’s 83-song “Tracks II: The Lost Albums” field set being launched Friday, The Related Press has collected 10 examples of albums that had been meant to be however weren’t.
“Smile,” The Seashore Boys
Again within the information with the dying of Brian Wilson, this album “invented the category of the lost masterpiece in popular music,” says Anthony DeCurtis, contributing editor at Rolling Stone. A number of the materials that surfaced urged Wilson, the Seashore Boys’ chief author, was effectively on his approach: the majestic single “Good Vibrations,” the centerpiece “Heroes and Villains” and the reflective “Surf’s Up.” Wilson succumbed to inner aggressive stress worsened by psychological sickness and drug abuse whereas making it in 1966 and 1967, finally aborting the undertaking. He later completed it as a solo album backed by the Wondermints in 2004. The higher-known songs had been joined with some psychedelic-era curios that displayed Wilson’s melodic sense and matchless potential as a vocal arranger, together with lyrics that some fellow Seashore Boys nervous had been too “out there.”
“The Black Album,” Prince
The mercurial Prince pulled again this disc, set for launch in December 1987, on the final minute. Some promo copies had already slipped out, and it was so extensively bootlegged that when Warner Bros. formally put it out in restricted launch in 1994, the corporate billed it as “The Legendary Black Album.” Encased in an all-black sleeve, the undertaking was mentioned to be Prince’s nod to Black followers who might have felt they’d misplaced him to a pop viewers. It is nearly nonstop funk, together with a lascivious Cindy Crawford tribute and the exercise “Superfunkycalifragisexy.” The maestro’s instincts had been well-placed, although. Coming after “Sign O’ the Times” — arguably his peak — this might have felt like a minor undertaking.
“Cigarettes and Valentines,” Inexperienced Day
Written and recorded in 2003, Inexperienced Day’s “Cigarettes and Valentines” was really misplaced; somebody apparently stole the grasp tapes. Feeling on a inventive roll, the rock trio determined in opposition to recreating what they’d completed and pressed on with new materials. Sensible transfer. The outcome was “American Idiot,” the band’s finest work. Maybe the theft was “just a sign that we made a crappy record and we should make a better one,” songwriter Billie Joe Armstrong advised MTV. The title reduce later surfaced on a 2010 dwell album. The remainder was misplaced to time.
“Detox,” Dr. Dre
To say anticipation was excessive for Dr. Dre’s third album when he began recording in 2002 places it mildly. The theme disc a few hitman, which Dre described as a “hip-hop musical,” had an all-star squad of contributors together with Eminem, 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige, Busta Rhymes and Kendrick Lamar. “I’d describe it as the most advanced rap album musically and lyrically we’ll probably ever have a chance to listen to,” co-producer Scott Storch advised MTV. However we by no means have. When he introduced a distinct third album in 2015, Dre defined on his radio present what occurred to “Detox”: “I didn’t like it. It wasn’t good. … I worked my ass off on it, and I don’t think I did a good enough job.”
“Black Gold,” Jimi Hendrix
A collection of unfinished demos, “Black Gold” was a style of the place guitar god Jimi Hendrix might need gone creatively if he hadn’t died at 27 in 1970. He was composing a tune suite about an animated Black superhero, says Tom Maxwell, whose podcast “Shelved” reveals tales behind misplaced music. Hendrix despatched a tape of his work to longtime drummer Mitch Mitchell for recommendation on fleshing it out. That music was put aside at Mitchell’s house and forgotten for twenty years after Hendrix died. Up to now, Hendrix’s property has made solely one among these recordings public, a tune referred to as “Suddenly November Morning.” Hendrix, after clearing his throat, slips out and in of falsetto whereas accompanying himself on an acoustic guitar.
“A Story,” Yoko Ono
Written whereas Yoko Ono was separated from John Lennon throughout his notorious “lost weekend” in 1973-74, “A Story” had the potential of fixing the musical narrative round her. It was a powerful album — with out the avant-garde stylings that made Ono a problem for mainstream listeners — recorded with musicians who labored on Lennon’s “Walls & Bridges.” Maxwell calls it “an emancipation manifesto” that was put aside when Ono reconciled with Lennon. She’s by no means publicly defined why, Maxwell says, though one tune appears clearly about an affair she had whereas Lennon was away. A number of the materials from “A Story” was included as a part of the “Onobox” undertaking that got here out in 1992, and the album was launched individually in 1997. Ono additionally re-recorded a few of its songs in 1980, and Lennon was holding a tape of her composition “It Happened” when he was shot and killed. In it, she sings about an unspecified, seemingly traumatic occasion: “It happened at a time of my life when I least expected.” That wasn’t even probably the most chilling premonition. Her tune “O’Oh” ended with firecrackers that sound like gunshots. It was left off the 1997 launch.
“Chinese Democracy,” Weapons N’ Roses
Weapons N’ Roses was on the prime of the laborious rock world after they started recording a brand new album in 1994. It did not go effectively. Inconclusive classes slogged on for years, and all however singer Axl Rose left the group. Recording prices exceeded a staggering $13 million, by some accounts the most costly rock album ever. One witness advised The New York Occasions in 2005: “What Axl wanted to do was to make the best record that had ever been made. It’s an impossible task. You could go on indefinitely, which is what they’ve done.” When “Chinese Democracy” was lastly launched in 2008, the world yawned.
“Love Man,” Marvin Gaye
Not even a decade after the triumph of “What’s Going On,” Marvin Gaye was floundering. His “Here, My Dear” divorce album flopped, he struggled with medicine and looked for relevance within the disco period. The one “Ego Tripping Out,” meant to herald a brand new album, laid naked the issues: Over a melody cribbed from Donna Summer time’s “Hot Stuff,” the famously cool “Love Man” boasted like an insecure rapper. He scrapped the album, repurposing some its materials for the 1981 disc “In Our Lifetime,” a course of so fraught he bitterly left his longtime label Motown. Gaye went to CBS, made an enormous comeback with “Sexual Healing,” then was shot useless by his father in 1984.
“Homegrown,” Neil Younger
Neil Younger rivals Prince within the quantity of fabric left in his vault, and he is been systematically releasing a lot of it. The largely acoustic “Homegrown” was recorded as 1974 bled into 1975, throughout Younger’s breakup with actor Carrie Snodgress. As an alternative of releasing it in 1975, he put out one other heartbreak album, the well-regarded “Tonight’s the Night,” about dropping pals to drug abuse. When Younger lastly dropped “Homegrown” in 2020, he wrote in his weblog, “Sometimes life hurts. This is the one that got away.”
“Streets of Philadelphia Sessions,” Bruce Springsteen
Of the discs included in Springsteen’s “Tracks II” set, this was reportedly the closest to being launched, within the spring of 1995. After the success of the Oscar-winning tune “Streets of Philadelphia,” Springsteen recorded an album in the identical vein, with a synthesizer and West Coast rap-inspired drum loops setting the musical motif. Strikingly up to date for its time, Springsteen in the end felt it was too just like earlier releases dominated by darkish tales about relationships. “I always put them away,” he mentioned of his misplaced albums. “But I don’t throw them away.”
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David Bauder writes concerning the intersection of media and leisure for the AP. Observe him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.
