Living in a rock ’ n’ roll fantasy
Not long ago, I got drawn into an extended Facebook conversation about the albums the Beatles might have made in the1970s had they not split up. This is one ofmy favorite exercises, not only in regard to the Beatles but also to everything— the alternate history of rock ’ n’ roll.
It’s inspired an array of books, from Lewis Shiner’s1993 novel “Glimpses,” which reimagines the creation of the Beach Boys’ “Smile,” to Zachary Lazar’s stunning “Sway” ( 2008), with its portrait of the “Satanic Majesties”-era Rolling Stones. Thismakes sense, since for many of us, rock music is, or once was, essential to our inner lives, the substance of our dreams and of our fantasies.
Such intentions ( or desires) reside at the heart of Bruno MacDonald’s “The Greatest Albums You’ll Never Hear: Unreleased Records by the World’s Greatest Artists” ( Octopus Books: 256 pp., $ 24.99 paper), which comes out this month and features dozens of records that never were by artists ranging fromthe Kinks to the Sex Pistols to Ryan Adams. It is a source of hours of nerdy fun.
Someof the albums here are legendary: “Smile,” the Who’s unfinished “Lifehouse,” the Beatles’ stripped-down “Get Back.” Much of the music was eventually released— either on records such as “Who’s Next” or “Let It Be” ( built, in part, out of the fragments) or in archival reissues and deluxe box sets
The real pleasure of the book is in its portrayal of breakdowns such as Jeff Beck’s “Motown album,” which neverwas, just “nine or ten tracks” recorded at Motown Studios by Beck and drummer Cozy Powell. “We were going to do instrumentals,” Beck recalled later, “get Holland, Dozier and Holland to write a great tune, and I’d play it. Butwe completely disrupted the whole Motown session!” None of those sessions has ever been released.
At times, MacDonald pushes the concept: The Sex Pistols’ “Spunk” is less unreleased than a rougher and often bootlegged version, of the band’s debut, “Never Mind the Bollocks,” while Danger Mouse’s “The Grey Album” ( a mash- up of the Beatles’ “White Album” and Jay- Z’s “Black Album”) was widely downloaded on its release in 2004… until, that is, the Beatles’ label shut it down.
But that’s part of the intention of a book like this, to blur the boundary between official and unofficial, between the music we hear in theworld and that to whichwe listen in our minds.
“‘ The Greatest Albums You’ll Never Hear in Quite the Way the Artists Intended at the Time,’ was never going to fit on the cover,” MacDonald writes. “Some of these you will hear if you have no objection to bootlegging. Others you may eventually have the opportunity to purchase because, as the music business scrabbles at the soil to keep from falling into its own grave, everything that can be reissued will be.”