Which LPs had multiple titles?

Let us assist you in solving your rock’n’roll queries, puzzling enigmas and niggling mysteries.

I recently picked up the Record Store Day edition of Nick Lowe’s Wireless World – a record given a third title after being called Pure Pop For Now

People in the US and Jesus Of Cool in the UK. What other LPs had different titles when released abroad?

MOJO says: If we can overlook minor-ish tweaks in tracklistings, you’re on. The rock-era starting gun for retitled international editions was arguably fired by With The Beatles/Meet The Beatles!. Some have been inadvertent, like Morrissey’s Viva Hate being called its working title Education In Reverse in Australia, or the first Electric Light Orchestra LP being renamed No Answer in America (the US label couldn’t get in touch with manager Don Arden, and a memo was taken literally). Other examples of US rejigging are Slade’s Old New Borrowed And Blue becoming Stomp Your Hands, Clap Your Feet, Judas Priest’s Killing Machine re-dubbed as Hell Bent For Leather, and Dusty Springfield’s Everything’s Coming Up Dusty regenerating into You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me once the titular song was a big hit in ’66. Further international examples include The Clash’s ’77 debut LP being released as Pearl Harbour ’79 in Japan and London’s Burning (Arde Londres) in Argentina, The Who’s My Generation getting a ’68 Dutch re-release as Big Hits Like Who, and the Spanish version of early Bowie comp Images 1966-1967 rejoicing in the title El Rey Del Gay-Power, with somewhat misleading Ziggy-era sleeve art. As for the album with the most names, Traffic’s debut Mr. Fantasy has to be in with a shout: it was also released as Heaven Is In Your Mind (US), Coloured Rain (Sweden), Reaping (Canada), Hole In My Shoe (Germany), Traffic (Italy) and, in Japan, Traffic First Album. Got any good ones?

NEXTDOOR MEN REVISITED

Re: MOJO 344. Further to convenient meetings in adjoining studios: when veteran DJ Justin Strauss was remixing Luther Vandross’s Never Too Much in 1989, Luther was working next door and liked the mix so much he recorded new vocals for it. Paul Stevens, via e-mail

My favourite chance meeting: when Moby Grape were recording their Wow/Grape Jam double album in 1968, veteran US radio personality Arthur Godfrey was nearby. He duly introduced and played ukulele on Skip Spence’s old-time Just Like Gene Autry: A Foxtrot. Listeners had to get up and change the turntable speed to 78rpm to play it properly, it sounded very strange otherwise. Dave Freeman, via e-mail

MOJO says: True serendipity! For other studio-next-door stories, thanks to Andrew Hunt for bringing up the time The Move’s Roy Wood and Trevor Burton guested on You Got Me Floatin’ on The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Axis: Bold As Love, and to James Graham for reminding us that Michael Jackson sang on Tex-Mex new wavers Joe ‘King’ Carrasco & The Crowns’ song Don’t Let A Woman (Make A Fool Out Of You) in 1981. He was paid $100, by the way.

MAD’S GHOST LP?

I was watching some clips of Glastonbury from 1986 where Madness played the unrecorded song Precious One. Was this ever recorded in the studio? I also read they abandoned a whole

The game of the name: (clockwise from left) Dusty Springfield makes her move; Bob Dylan, bangers-loving chef Keith Floyd’s favourite artist; Luther Vandross got on the remix tip; Madness’s Suggs looks like he’s seen a ghost.

album before they split up, are its whereabouts known?

MOJO says: The untitled LP in question was meant to have a “ghost theme” and was demo’d in mid-’86. The wheels came off the band before they could all be recorded – the last thing they did was farewell single (Waiting For The) Ghost Train – but all the songs intended for the LP can be heard either in demo form online or re-heated for 1988’s controversial LP released as The Madness.

HELP MOJO

I heard on a podcast an interesting nugget of information regarding late British TV chef Keith Floyd. According to the story, he once used Burgundy on a recipe and then went on to recite Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues in its entirety on one of his episodes that aired on the BBC. Is it anywhere to be found online?

MOJO says: Can anyone out there shed light? We can confirm, though, that the late Keith was a Dylan nut, choosing Positively 4th Street for his Desert Island Discs in 1991, quoting lyrics in his books and having Bob among the choices at his funeral in 2009, where songwriter Bill Padley sang his song the Keith Floyd Blues (sample lyric: “he’s a wizard in the kitchen and a wizard in the bar”). Padley wrote the song for Keith when they were at his restaurant in Phuket, Thailand, and tells MOJO, “Keith LOVED Dylan, and he would often sing Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright whenever I had a guitar.” The Keith Floyd Blues is unrecorded, though a sadly ailing Floyd tried to sing it on the notorious 2009 Keith Allen documentary Keith Meets Keith which broadcast the night he died.