Heartbreakers

★★★★★ LAMF: The Found ’77 Mixes

JUNGLE. CD/DL

Johnny Thunders’ storied punk-era masterpiece finally, as intended.

In early ’77, Thunders was punk’s most influential guitarist, and, in the immediate aftermath of his new quartet’s stint on the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy tour, the Heartbreakers spent a few chaotic weeks trying to capture their rollicking tunes in various London studios. There followed a six-month fiasco as their label, Track, went bust and successive mixes inexplicably came up muddy, including the ones released that October, dulling the impact of classics such as Chinese Rocks and Pirate Love, and ultimately splitting the band. In the mid-’90s, a different version had been assembled from rejected takes, which manager Leee Black Childers had ‘liberated’ from Track’s abandoned offices, but here, 44 years on, are the original ‘money shots’, recently unearthed in co-producer/Track supremo Danny Secunda’s attic, without the muddiness caused by a subsequent mastering fault. At last, without reservation, LAMF now sounds as it always should have – one of the most explosive records of the late ’70s.