The History Of The Mystery Track – You Oughta Know What Happened To 1000 Mona Lisas

When a song captures the zeitgeist of its era, when it excites just as much as it inflames, chances are it will survive beyond its moment. Its power, its vulnerability, its authenticity, despite the contrary view of its detractors, will resonate for the years and even decades to come.

One such track from the summer of 1995 stood out more than any other. Despite not qualifying for Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles Chart (there were no commercially available physical copies to buy domestically), its presence on radio and TV was ubiquitous. You could not escape it, no matter how hard you tried. It was simply everywhere.

Meant to exorcise some emotional trauma from a relationship gone very sour indeed, it caused such a sensation it even divided feminists, some of whom questioned the wisdom of releasing a song they argued reinforced the worst stereotypes of the unhinged, scorned woman.

Inevitably, when a track like this explodes into the mainstream, there are covers. In 1996, noted Toronto scenester Jaymz Bee and his band released a loungy cocktail version. That same year, Weird Al Yankovic included a snippet in his polka medley of recent alternative rock hits. 25 years after the original’s phenomenal debut, Beyonce slipped in an excerpt during her performance of If I Were A Boy at the 2010 Grammy Awards. Of the three, only Mr. Bee had the courage to not censor “fuck”.

Back in the summer of 1995, long before anyone else decided to take a shot, an up and coming punk band from Hollywood was game. What started as a lark led to an unexpected hit of their own, their only one to date. In the ultimate irony, their biggest success, covering someone else’s breakthrough song, became their own and unfortunately, unintentionally led to their undoing.

1000 Mona Lisas had stuck it out in the LA club scene for a few years in the early 90s (Weezer opened for them in 1993) when they finally caught a break. RCA Records was interested in signing them.

Rather than put out a full album right away, the band decided on a shorter release which they simply named The EP. Only five original songs were planned for inclusion. But at the last minute, a sixth cut, a Buried Song tucked away on track five, would ultimately be added.

“We were sitting at Bottom Of The Hill [a music club] in San Francisco,” frontman Armando Prado told MTV.com in November 1995, “and we were thinking, what can we do to mess with people…”

Alanis Morissette’s You Oughta Know, both the listed version and the hidden Jimmy The Saint Blend, had been blowing up huge that summer receiving extensive airplay on various radio formats. The video, featuring her touring band who didn’t play on either of the studio recordings, was in high rotation on MTV and MuchMusic.

“It was at the end of July,” Prado told MTV.com, “and she was starting to get popular.”

The trio started playing it during live shows and it received an “enthusiastic” reaction, according to Billboard Magazine in their January 20, 1996 edition. One fan in particular wanted them to record it for The EP.

In a little over a decade, Brian Malouf had already accumulated a remarkable list of credits. He was twiddling the knobs and adjusting the faders while Michael Jackson was demoing the Bad album. He discovered Everclear. And he ended up mixing Pearl Jam’s Even Flow among many other hit songs.

By the mid-90s, he was the A&R guy for RCA. Despite the reluctance of 1000 Mona Lisas, he insisted they include their version of You Oughta Know on The EP. They ultimately agreed to make it a mystery track. (Morissette and her producer Glen Ballard are properly credited as the songwriters in the liner notes.) You’ll find it with 2 minutes and 8 seconds left on track 5. (After the last listed song, Instilled And Lost, also listen for the occasional “wheeee!” from someone in the band (it sounds like Prado) which pops up at 2:10, 3:07 & 4:32.)

“I really just thought maybe a college radio station here or there might pick it up,” Prado told MTV.com, “but it’s been playing all over the country.”

“The buzz on 1000 Mona Lisas began late last summer [1995] as their version of ‘You Oughta Know’ started lighting up playlists from KROQ Los Angeles to WXEG Dayton, Ohio,” reported Billboard in its January 20, 1996 issue, “often in close proximity to Alanis’ original. RCA didn’t promote the track as a single; demand for the tune built by word-of-mouth while the band was on the road.” The song was also put into heavy rotation on CFNY, Toronto’s modern rock station, which had already been playing Alanis for months.

With just a minimalist piano accompanying him, Prado earnestly sings the opening lines. Then, after one last piano flourish, the rest of the band suddenly thrashes into the mix jacking up the volume and quickening the pace. Prado maintains his deadpan delivery until things are slightly slowed down as he and his bandmates scream out the chorus.

“I didn’t change the gender in the lyrics,” Prado revealed to MTV.com, “because I wanted to stay true to what it was, I didn’t see any reason for messing with her lyrics, it’s her song. I definitely respect what she’s done.”

In the second verse, Prado does make a slight alteration at the top. “You seem very well” is replaced with “you look peaceful”. (It sounds like he mixed up the lyric with the next line “things looks peaceful” and just decided to keep it in.) And after another shrieked out chorus, instead of a solo followed by another set of words, the band simply repeats the chorus one more time and everything ends cold.

So, what did Alanis herself think of this tighter, faster, punkier reworking of her most famous song? According to Billboard, she was mixed.

“For her part, Morissette says it feels funny to hear 1000 Mona Lisas sing ‘You Oughta Know’ ‘because the song is so personal to me….[1000 Mona Lisas] obviously like the song, and they’re passionate about what they do, so God bless ’em.'”

But according to Prado himself, as noted in the July/August 1996 edition of Impact Magazine, she was more complimentary when she met the band backstage:

“She came to our show in Salt Lake City [in November 1995] and said she liked it…I told her we’d do ‘One Hand In My Pocket’ [sic] next and she cracked up!”

The gig took place at the Zephyr Club. In mid-April 1996, Prado told Deseret News that playing her song right in front of her was a trip:

“It was good for the adrenaline.”

Like he told Impact Magazine, their backstage encounter was a highlight of the evening:

“It was cool meeting her.”

Morissette had every reason to be flattered by the band’s rendition. Despite doing the song just for fun, it’s one of the best mystery track covers of all time. Morissette’s unvarnished contempt and bitterness towards Dave Coulier was pure punk rock anyway, even if the slick, superior Chili Pepper arrangement suggested otherwise. It took 1000 Mona Lisas all of two minutes and eight seconds to fix this.

While talking to MTV.com in November 1995, Prado let slip another secret. 1000 Mona Lisas had recorded another mystery track, this one for their first proper album.

Three months later, New Disease debuted. Four minutes and thirty seconds into track 14, the band revs it up again, this time for a hit song from the mid-70s.

Around the same time Martha the sheepdog was frolicking around on their Scottish farm, Paul & Linda McCartney had also adopted a feisty puppy.

“We’ve got a Labrador puppy who is a runt, the runt of a litter,” McCartney told a reporter while promoting his third Wings album. “We bought her along a roadside in a little pet shop, out in the country one day. She was a bit of a wild dog, a wild girl who wouldn’t stay in. We have a big wall around our house in London, and she wouldn’t stay in, she always used to jump the wall.”

Frequently escaping her owners to go prowling around town, when she returned from one such excursion, the McCartneys were surprised to learn how busy she’d been:

“She came back one day pregnant. She proceeded to walk into the garage and have this litter…Seven little black puppies, perfect little black Labradors, and she’s not black, she’s tan.”

They named one of her newborns Jet, which also happened to be the name of one of his ponies he also had at the time.

While making Band On The Run, as McCartney later revealed to Australian radio in 2017, some of the lyrics were inspired by his first wife’s Dad:

“It was kind of – a little bit about the experiences I’d had in marrying Linda. Her dad [the entertainment lawyer, Lee Eastman, McCartney’s longtime manager for decades who died in 1991] was a little old fashioned and I thought I was a little bit intimidated, as a lot of young guys can be meeting the father figure. And if the dad’s really easy-going, it makes it easy. It wasn’t bad but I was a bit intimidated, probably my fault as much as his.”

Mixing fact (“I can almost remember their funny faces/That time you told them that you were going to be marrying soon”) with Lennonesque surrealism (“with the wind in your hair of a thousand laces/Climb on the back and we’ll go for a ride in the sky”), the song is catchy enough to forgive the deliberate, and in this case, literal flights of lyrical fancy.

Initially, there were no plans to release Jet as a single. But the album Band On The Run was underperforming on the sales chart compared to what McCartney had accomplished more easily with The Beatles. Struggling for the critical respect John Lennon was easily garnering for his own solo work, the LP needed a belated, added push.

It took Capitol Records’s promo man Al Coury to convince him to put Jet out as a 45. In the end, two versions were issued: the full-length album cut and a three-minute single edit. The song would peak at #7 on the Billboard singles chart, #2 in the UK. And Band On The Run would ultimately become a multi-platinum smash, the biggest record McCartney would release with Wings.

Jet became a concert highlight for decades. During McCartney’s tour in support of the 1993 album Flowers In The Dirt, it was one of the only Wings songs regularly played during shows.

“We mastered `Jet’ off a cassette we recorded a few years ago,” Armando Prado told Deseret News. “It’s a song I’ve always wanted to cover.”

“We don’t want to be known as a cover band,” Prado declared to MTV.com, “so we may be ending that pretty quickly. This one cover [You Oughta Know] has gotten us more notoriety for doing covers than we care to have, but it’s also really gotten us where we are.”

As expected, this unlisted take of Jet is much faster than the original. No slowed-down reggae detours in this version. There’s a quick guitar break but no melody-mimicking keyboard solo, no vocal improvs popping out of the background and certainly no saxophones.

Prado also makes subtle lyric changes. “That time you told them that you were going to be marrying soon” now reads “How come you told me that you’re going to be marrying soon?” which changes the whole dynamic of the song. Instead of a worried fiance concerned about what his future wife’s father thinks of him before their wedding, this Jet is about a guy who belatedly realizes he’s the side piece.

And for some reason, the opening line of the last verse – “With the wind in your hair of a thousand laces” – loses the L in the last word. Either he made another mistake and left it in or maybe he’s a poker fan, I don’t know.

When I reviewed New Disease for my college newspaper in 1996, I found the record hit and miss. As for Jet itself, following the more substantive You Oughta Know, it felt “disposable” by comparison. And truthfully, I don’t remember ever hearing McCartney’s original until much later on. But today, it’s a rollicking, affectionate mystery gem that deserves to be rediscovered.

Unlike what happened to Wings in 1974, Jet would take 1000 Mona Lisas no further, despite being given a big push in the band’s accompanying bio sent to radio stations with New Disease. It failed to match or eclipse the surprise success of You Oughta Know. The frustration of not being able to generate hits through their own material also took their toll. Modern rock radio wasn’t buying what they were selling anymore. Nu metal was becoming the new thing and they couldn’t compete.

In the May 23rd, 1998 edition of Billboard Magazine, there was an article about their label RCA Records which was going through its own creative and commercial struggles. In a brief notice midway through, there was a short paragraph focusing specifically on the unrealized potential of 1000 Mona Lisas:

“With internal and external stress,” Billboard vaguely concluded, “the band eventually broke up.”

In 1997, Prado recorded another song under a different name, B.U.G.S., for a benefit album entitled Generations I – A Punk Look At Human Rights. And then he left the music business altogether. After successfully completing medical school, he has since become a nurse. (When contacted for comment through his public Facebook account, there was no response.)

Hopefully, the stress of being in a rock band helped him prepare for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Tuesday, September 5, 2023
3:36 a.m.

The History Of The Mystery Track – Our Lady Peace, Ray Kurzweil & Molly

Mike Turner was looking for something to read. It was 1999 and his band, Our Lady Peace, were on an American tour in support of their third album, Happiness…Is Not A Fish You Can Catch. Riding long hours on a bus in between gigs can be tedious. So one day the guitarist stepped into a bookstore and found something that caught his eye.

The Age Of Spiritual Machines was written by Ray Kurzweil, an eccentric inventor, among other things, who firmly believes that death can be overcome once humanity fully merges with technology. Not an original idea by any means but few have taken the time to conceptualize such a radical line of thought outside the fantasy world of science fiction. Diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at age 35, there’s no question such a depressing diagnosis would profoundly motivate an already highly driven philosopher and computer scientist with considerable wealth to prolong his life by any means necessary.

As he read, Turner became mesmerized by Kurzweil’s often far-out ideas (“I picked it up, read it and went mental,” he told Chart Attack in 2000) and as soon as he finished the book, the lead guitarist passed it on to the band’s singer Raine Maida. He had the same reaction.

Despite the fact they had just made their third album, even before Turner bought The Age Of Spiritual Machines, the songwriting process for the next collection of songs had already begun.

“It ended up being a concept record,” bassist Duncan Coutts told the Pop Matters website in 2010, “but it certainly didn’t start that way.”

Just over a year after the release of Happiness…Is Not A Fish You Can Catch, Our Lady Peace unveiled Spiritual Machines. Hoping to get Kurzweil’s blessing for the project during its difficult production (the drummer got mugged while walking his dog and some of his parts had to be played by Pearl Jam’s Matt Cameron), not only was the author thrilled about the album, he also volunteered his services to help participate in the recording. He even gave the band one of his specially designed keyboards, the Kurzweil 350, which was implemented constantly.

Officially, Kurzweil appears on six tracks spread out throughout the record. With the exception of his voice buried so deep during an instrumental break on the single In Repair it’s basically indecipherable, the author is more clearly heard reading mostly word-for-word quotations from his book in brief snippets all set to moody electronic music and tucked away between proper songs.

But 12 minutes and 7 seconds after the final song, The Wonderful Future, concludes on track fifteen, there’s a seventh appearance, one of the weirdest mystery tracks of all time.

On page 37 of The Age Of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil engages in a conversation with an unknown person about the future. Ten pages later, there’s another dialogue. These exchanges continue on at various points throughout the book, usually at the end of a subsequent chapter. Starting with Chapter 10, we jump ten years into the future, and then another ten years in 11 until the final engagement seven decades later in 12. We begin in 1999 and ultimately conclude a full century later.

It isn’t until the very beginning of Chapter 7 that we even learn this mysterious person’s name.

“I’M MOLLY.”

Molly is not real. She’s a fictional character Kurzweil created in order to fantasize about communicating with an immortal cybernetic being in his idealized future. He gives her a back story. She’s married with children but there’s complications. (Her husband, an inventor, uses virtual reality to cheat on her and see other women naked without their knowledge.) She’s an overachieving intellectual/artist who lets the author know how many of his theories and predictions, organized by decade, prove correct which feels more than a little self-serving. (And contrary to his later assertion that 86% of his guesses came true, he got a lot of shit wrong. His math is clearly off.)

Unlike most of the spoken word segments on Our Lady Peace’s Spiritual Machines which are all under a minute each, this unlisted piece buried at the end of track 15 goes on for roughly three and a half minutes.

What ensues, following the introduction of some simple, ongoing, echoey piano playing and what sounds like electronic reproductions of whales moaning, is a peculiar, somewhat awkward and cheesy imaginary conversation between Kurzweil and Molly. In fact, the track is appropriately entitled R.K. and Molly.

Before each line of dialogue, Kurzweil calls out the name of the communicator about to speak which is heard at a lower decibel. He plays himself, of course. And he plays Molly but with his voice artificially raised to a helium-like pitch. Put simply, it doesn’t sound right. She doesn’t sound hot.

Divided up into three separate speaking segments, with that mood music playing on uninterrupted during the slight silences, the first segment involves snippets taken from pages 235 and 241 of Chapter 12 entitled 2099. Instead of starting right from the beginning of what is the longest conversation from the book, he picks it up for the hidden track nine lines into it, jumping right back into his odd flirtation with a made-up android:

“Ray: Anyway, you do look amazing.

Molly: YOU SAY THAT EVERY TIME WE MEET.

Ray: I mean you look twenty again, only more beautiful than at the start of the book.

Molly: I KNEW THAT’S HOW YOU’D WANT ME.” (p. 235)

“Ray: Okay, you were an attractive woman when I first met you. And you still project yourself as a beautiful young woman. At least when I’m with you.

Molly: THANKS.

Ray: …are you saying that you’re a machine now?

Molly: A MACHINE? THAT’S REALLY NOT FOR ME TO SAY. IT’S LIKE ASKING ME IF I’M BRILLIANT OR INSPIRING.

Ray: I guess the word machine in 2099 doesn’t have quite the same connotations that it has here in 1999.

Molly: THAT’S HARD FOR ME TO RECALL NOW.” (p.241)

After a five-second break, with the piano and fake whale noises still going strong, the conversation continues as Molly talks about her kids and a project she’s working on. At the tail end of page 238 in the book, Kurzweil asks her “what else” is she up to as they catch up after a long break from communicating. She responds, “JUST FINISHING UP THIS SYMPHONY.”

He asks, “Is this a new interest?” Her response begins the second portion of R.K. and Molly on the Spiritual Machines CD and can be found at the start of page 239:

“Molly: I’M REALLY JUST DABBLING, BUT CREATING MUSIC IS A GREAT WAY FOR ME TO STAY CLOSE WITH JEREMY AND EMILY.

Ray: Creating music sounds like a good thing to do with your kids, even if they are almost ninety years old. So, can I hear it?

Molly: WELL, I’M AFRAID YOU WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND IT.

Ray: So it requires enhancement to understand?

Molly: YES, MOST ART DOES. FOR STARTERS, THIS SYMPHONY IS IN FREQUENCIES THAT A MOSH CAN’T HEAR, AND HAS MUCH TOO FAST A TEMPO. AND IT USES MUSICAL STRUCTURES THAT A MOSH COULD NEVER FOLLOW.

Ray: Can’t you create art for nonaugmented humans? I mean there’s still a lot of depth possible. Consider Beethoven–he wrote almost two centuries ago, and we still find his music exhilarating.

Molly: YES, THERE’S A GENRE OF MUSIC–ALL THE ARTS ACTUALLY–WHERE WE CREATE MUSIC AND ART THAT A MOSH IS CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING.

Ray: And then you play MOSH music for MOSHs?

Molly: NOW THERE’S AN INTERESTING IDEA. I SUPPOSE WE COULD TRY THAT, ALTHOUGH MOSHs ARE NOT THAT EASY TO FIND ANYMORE. IT’S REALLY NOT NECESSARY, THOUGH. WE CAN CERTAINLY UNDERSTAND WHAT A MOSH IS CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING. THE POINT, THOUGH, IS TO USE THE MOSH LIMITATIONS AS AN ADDED CONSTRAINT.

Ray: Sort of like composing new music for old instruments.

Molly: YEAH, NEW MUSIC FOR OLD MINDS.” (p. 239)

What in the hell is a MOSH? It’s an acronym Kurzweil made up to differentiate generic human beings from their technologically enhanced successors. As explained to him by the imaginary Molly on page 237, it stands for Mostly Original Substrate Humans. On page 306 of The Age Of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil himself defines it thusly:

“In the last half of the twenty-first century, a human being still using native carbon-based neurons and unenhanced by neural implants is referred to as a MOSH. In 2099, Molly refers to the author as being a MOSH.”

A few seconds later, we come to the last segment. You’ll find the portion with Molly on page 252 which ends Chapter 12. The last section where Kurzweil loses contact with her is actually the opening lines of Epilogue: The Rest Of The Universe Revisited found on page 253:

“Ray: Maybe we should kiss goodbye?

Molly: JUST A KISS?

Ray: We’ll leave it at that for this book. I’ll reconsider the ending for the movie…

Molly: HERE’S MY KISS….NOW REMEMBER, I’M READY TO DO ANYTHING OR BE ANYTHING YOU WANT OR NEED.

Ray: I’ll keep that in mind.

Molly: …THAT’S WHERE YOU’LL FIND ME.

Ray: Too bad I have to wait a century to meet you.

Molly: OR TO BE ME.

Ray: Yes, that too.” (p.252)

“Ray: Actually, Molly, there are a few other questions that have occurred to me. What were those limitations that you referred to? What did you say you were anxious about? What are you afraid of? Do you feel pain? What about babies and children? Molly?…” (p.253)

The unorthodox backing track eventually grinds to a halt and slowly fades out as the CD shuts off.

The full final conversation between Kurzweil and his imaginary cybernetic plaything in Chapter 12 of The Age Of Spiritual Machines goes on for 18 pages, 19 if you count the start of the Epilogue. In some of the portions excised for the mystery track, Molly throws out random quotes from famous figures, there’s a brief discussion about government intrusions into privacy, human rights applying to humanoids, quantum computing, virtual food in place of the real thing, imagining your own body and bringing it to life, and of course, Kurzweil constantly hitting on a married robot. (In real life, he too is married with 2 kids.)

R.K. and Molly is also heard, but not in its complete form, on the credited enhanced portion of Spiritual Machines, a rare acknowledgement of a CD Extra on a Sony Records release. (In most cases, this is normally not indicated on the outside packaging.)

When you put the CD in the CD-ROM drive of your computer, the track starts playing as you watch a crude animation set in a hospital. At any time while R.K. and Molly plays, you can click that snail in the upper right hand corner which takes you to another screen. (If you let the animation play out, you’re taken there automatically.) It’s here you’re encouraged to create a login name in order to visit an Our Lady Peace “secret site”. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist anymore (it was discontinued by 2003) but cached portions have survived.)

Six years later, Our Lady Peace released their first compilation of hits entitled A Decade. The two popular singles from Spiritual Machines appear midway through the CD.

Before In Repair begins at the 15-second mark of track 10, against another sparse electronic mood arrangement, Kurzweil makes the following prediction:

“The year is 2029. The machines will convince us that they are conscious, that they have their own agenda where they have our respect. They’ll embody human qualities. They’ll claim to be human. And we’ll believe them.”

This quick clip, entitled R.K. 2029, is also from Spiritual Machines and unlike its secret placement on A Decade, it’s properly credited and given its own track number separate from In Repair on the earlier album. As before, it’s sequenced right before the song begins.

None of these specific lines appear in The Age Of Spiritual Machines, but similar sentiments are expressed in much longer form on page 153 in the following paragraph. The heart of the book’s premise, which feels heavily influenced by Blade Runner, is found in these words:

“Just being–experiencing, being conscious–is spiritual, and reflects the essence of spirituality. Machines, derived from human thinking and surpassing humans in their capacity for experience, will claim to be conscious, and thus to be spiritual. They will believe that they are conscious. They will believe that they have spiritual experiences. They will be convinced that these experiences are meaningful. And given the historical inclination of the human race to anthropomorphize the phenomena we encounter, and the persuasiveness of the machines, we’re likely to believe them when they tell us this.”

Just like the rebellious replicants who easily pass for human unless you test them for emotion.

A more succinct assertion awaits on page 280 of the Timeline section. At the very end of the summarized 2029 predictions, Kurzweil writes:

“Machines claim to be conscious. These claims are largely accepted.”

Right at the start of track 11, we don’t hear Life right away. Instead, with Turner gently noodling in the background, Kurzweil returns. Using another fictional character to illustrate the conviction of his basic theory that cybernetic humans are simply superior versions to their mortal predecessors, he presents the following scenario in 19 seconds:

“Have we lost Jack somewhere along the line? Jack’s friends think not. Jack claims to be the same old guy, just newer. His vision, memory and reasoning ability have all been improved. But it’s still Jack.”

In Chapter 3, Of Minds And Machines, Kurzweil introduces a hypothetical situation involving the made-up example of the aforementioned Jack beginning on page 52. Near the start of paragraph three, he writes:

“Our friend Jack (circa some time in the twenty-first century) has been complaining of difficulty with his hearing. A diagnostic test indicates he needs more than a conventional hearing aid, so he gets a choclear implant…This routine surgical procedure is successful, and Jack is pleased with his improved hearing.

Is he still the same Jack?

Well, sure he is. People have cochlear implants circa 1999. We still regard them as the same person.”

After opting for “newly introduced image-processing implants”, having already acquired “permanently implanted retinal-imaging displays in his corneas to view virtual reality”, near the bottom of page 52, Kurzweil writes:

“Jack notices that his memory is not what it was, as he struggles to recall names, the names of earlier events, and so on. So he’s back for memory implants. These are amazing–memories that have grown fuzzy with time are now as clear as if they had just happened.” Even the bad ones.

“Still the same Jack?” Kurzweil asks at the top of page 53. He eventually answers, “yes, it’s still the same guy.”

And then, in paragraph four on that same page, you’ll read a slightly different version of what Kurzweil recites uncredited on A Decade. The first two lines of the mystery track are exactly the same. But starting with the third line, there are slight changes. (I’ve highlighted them in bold.)

“Jack also claims that he’s the same old guy, just newer. His hearing, vision, memory and reasoning ability have all improved, but it’s still the same Jack.”

In the book, following this passage, Kurzweil goes on and on about Jack, his enhancement possibilities and the constant questioning about whether “new Jack” can still creditably be seen as the “old Jack” despite seeing dramatic physical improvements that aren’t human, for another two pages in that chapter.

On page 126 of Chapter 6, Building New Brains…, he brings up Jack again, summarizing the ethical dilemma of whether a person who downloads themselves, or rather, gets “scanned” into a new and improved cybernetic body can still be the same human being they once were:

“Subjectively, the question is more subtle and profound. Is this the same consciousness as the person we just scanned?”

Kurzweil gives a conflicting answer:

“If he–Jack–is still around, he will convincingly claim to represent the continuity of his consciousness. He may not be satisfied to let his mental clone carry on in his stead.”

R.K. Jack is an uncredited, exclusive outtake since it did not appear on Spiritual Machines.

More than two decades after being wowed by Kurzweil’s thought provoking, yet now somewhat discredited and often overly rosy “futurism”, Our Lady Peace revisited the subject for an unexpected sequel.

In 2022, the band released Spiritual Machines 2 and launched an unusual tour to promote it. Once again, Kurzweil provided voiceover narrations, this time bragging about his supposedly accurate predictions from the previous century (something he also does in The Age Of Spiritual Machines when referring to the first book he wrote, The Age Of Intelligent Machines). He even offers new ones. Everything is properly listed and in the right order.

Mike Turner, the founding guitarist responsible for initiating the original project and who left the band after their 2002 American breakthrough Gravity, was brought back just to help spearhead the follow-up.

Molly, the fake humanoid Kurzweil lusted after in print and on record almost a quarter century ago, doesn’t appear on Spiritual Machines 2 but was brought back to life for The Wonderful Future Theatrical Experience, Our Lady Peace’s tour in support of the album, which also featured her creator in holographic form.

Five years after her first appearance in The Age Of Spiritual Machines, Molly was also revived in Kurzweil’s 2004 book, The Singularity Is Near. 15 years after their last fake conversation, not only does he talk to her from the year 2104, bizarrely he also converses with her 2004 version at the same time. In fact, the two Mollies talk to each other.

Although, there is an extensive conversation about the supposed future of virtual sex (which hasn’t really exploded yet, ahem), I’m happy to report Kurzweil no longer has a raging boner for Molly. It’s true what they say. We really do slow down when we’re older.

Molly, on the other hand…

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, September 1, 2023
2:56 a.m.

The History Of The Mystery Track – Eddie Vedder Angrily Mourns Layne Staley

“When I tried drugs, they were fucking great, and they worked for me for years, and now they’re turning against me — and now I’m walking through hell, and this sucks.” – Layne Staley to Rolling Stone (February 8, 1996)

On April 4, 2002, Mike Starr paid an old friend a visit. It was his 36th birthday and he wanted to catch up with the man that he believed saved his life.

Ten years earlier, they were bandmates, both struggling to stay sober. Starr played bass. Layne Staley was the lead singer and one of the main songwriters.

On January 22, 1993, their band Alice In Chains played the Hollywood Rock Festival with Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers in Brazil. Based on two accounts Starr has given publicly, it’s not entirely clear what actually happened that night.

In one retelling, Starr claimed to author David de Sola that “Layne shot me up [with cocaine] first a couple of times. Then Kurt [Cobain] shot me, and then Layne shot me after that and I died, for like 11 minutes.”

In another told to Dr. Drew Pinsky on the February 16, 2010 edition of his long running radio show Loveline in what became his last interview, Starr claimed that the Nirvana singer and his wife Courtney Love got him high first:

“We shot up all night [but] Layne didn’t know that.”

In this version of events, after Staley helped administer a needle, Starr “flatlined” and didn’t have a pulse. In a panic, Starr claims his terrified pal was “crying and punching me in the face”, in a desperate attempt to revive him.

“I wake up,” Starr claimed to Pinsky, “and I’m all wet and I’m laying over the toilet and, you know, I’m in a different room…and he had me in the shower…I was obviously blacked out during that time…”

According to this Diffuser article in 2007, Starr ultimately survived his ordeal because Staley successfully performed CPR on him.

But in that 2010 Loveline interview, Starr doesn’t mention this at all. In fact, Dr. Pinsky informs him that putting an overdose victim in a shower is one of the worst things one can do, no matter how good the intentions of a caregiver. When he tells Starr that it would’ve been better if Staley had given him fluids or performed CPR, the bassist doesn’t correct him on the latter point. Pinsky insists he was very lucky to survive his ordeal.

Shortly thereafter, Starr left the band. Although it was publicly spun in the best possible light (Staley told Rolling Stone in 1994 Starr was simply homesick and quit), he was actually fired for his uncontrollable addictions. “I never the quit the band,” he told Pinsky on Loveline. “I’m not a quitter.”

Nine years later, the roles were tragically reversed. Although Starr himself was “high on benzodiazepine” that day to his eternal regret, Staley was now the one in desperate need of immediate medical care.

When Starr saw his old friend in his expensive fifth floor condo in Seattle that fateful Spring day in 2002, he was shocked. Barely eating and chronically dependent on heroin, he was living a highly isolated life where he mostly kept to himself at home, although an anonymous source told de Sola he would make trips to a local comic book store he worked at from time to time usually accompanied by a couple of friends who had to “kind of prop him up and help with him a lot.”

Not exactly a large man to begin with, Staley had shriveled next to nothing. He was so incredibly thin Starr wanted to intervene. The guilt he was feeling was overwhelming.

According to de Sola’s account in his unauthorized Alice In Chains bio, the TV was on and Staley was clicking around the dial looking for something to watch when he stumbled upon Crossing Over, the since cancelled syndicated talk show hosted by fake medium John Edward who wrongly claims to have full access to the spirit world.

In an alarming moment, as noted by de Sola, Staley asserted the following to Starr:

“Demri was here last night. I don’t give a fuck if you fucking believe me or not, dude. I’m telling you: Demri was here last night.”

An eventual model/actress, Demri Parrott was in her late teens when she met Staley in the late 80s, well before he broke through in the music business, while working in a retail clothing store in Seattle. By all accounts, she was the love of his life. They were engaged for three years just as his band was starting to find mainstream acceptance.

But the relationship was troubled. Both dived headfirst into drug addiction and both failed multiple times to maintain permanent sobriety. Parrott would develop a heart problem so serious she required a pacemaker.

One night in the fall of 1996, Parrott had ingested some pills, overdosed and fell into a coma for 12 hours. With no hope for a recovery this time, her family requested she be removed from life support. She died October 29th at age 27. (Starr was 27 the night he OD’d in Brazil.) Staley was reportedly so despondent over her death he had to be put on a 24-hour suicide watch. Many close confidantes have since revealed to the press that they believe this is the reason Staley kept using and would no longer seek treatment.

Was Staley so lonely and so lost that he could’ve been experiencing severe hallucinations? Did he really believe he had seen his dead girlfriend in his apartment?

Already awkward and uncomfortable, the visit with Starr was also unpleasant. Staley immediately suspected Starr was using and called him out on it. The two men argued about Staley’s emaciated condition. (Staley didn’t deny he was unwell. Starr recalled him saying, “I’m sick.”) When Starr threatened to call 911, Staley threatened to end their friendship. Fed up with being lectured by a fellow addict while nowhere near healthy himself, Starr stormed out. (“Fine, I’ll just leave.”)

The bassist intended on coming back but never returned:

“I went home and blacked out on benzodiazepine,” he told Pinsky on Loveline.

In his later retelling, he remembered a scared, conflicted Staley’s last words to him:

“Not like this. Don’t leave like this.”

It was the last time anyone saw the Alice In Chains frontman alive.

In the days that followed, his friends, his bandmates, his business associates and especially, his family became even more worried than usual. It was not uncommon for him to ignore the ringing of his phone or to refuse to let anyone enter his building despite repeated knocking and shouts from the street. Months would go by without a word or an encounter at all. (It had been a month or two since he was last seen at his favourite comic book store. His Mom hadn’t seen him since Valentine’s Day.) The silence from his end was already deafening.

It was only when his accountants realized he had stopped withdrawing funds, which he had presumably been using to buy more drugs, as well as comics and action figures, that more alarm bells went off. They contacted Susan Silver, Alice In Chains’ longtime manager, who called his mom.

On April 19, just before 6 p.m., Nancy Staley McCallum arrived at her son’s condo. She knocked on the door and got no response. Then, she dialed 911 requesting a welfare check.

Within 10 minutes two officers from the Seattle Police Department arrived. They knocked on the door. Still no response. They knocked it down.

As they searched for answers on the fifth floor, they made a startling discovery. A razor thin body in “an advanced state of decomposition” still sitting upright on the couch, his skin “darkened” and “leathery”, an empty syringe jabbed in his leg. In his hand, another needle, this one fully loaded, waiting for its turn to be injected.

“You don’t want to see this,” the cops told McCallum.

It was a grisly scene. The place was a mess. Drug paraphernalia scattered all over the place. When Layne Staley’s body was moved, it turned out he was sitting on even more empty needles. The TV was still on. His starving pet cat desperate for food. (Bandmate Jerry Cantrell would later adopt her and she would live for another eight years on his farm, according to de Sola.)

His crestfallen mother said her last words to him as he sat there motionless. All his teeth were missing and he weighed less than 90 pounds. His answering machine completely full of unreturned messages.

After 13 attempts at rehab, three trips to the ER and three previous near-death experiences, Layne Staley’s body could take no more.

The next day, Pearl Jam were back at Bad Animals Studio (now Studio X) in Seattle for a long day of recording. Two months earlier in February 2002, they commenced work on their seventh studio album. They were comfortable here having already recorded Vitalogy and Yield in the previous decade.

By this point, the band had already worked up dozens of songs (“more than 30” altogether, according to a fan who later made a free, unauthorized double-disc bootleg of the complete sessions), far too many to include on a single album.

Then came word about Staley.

“I got a call from Kelly Curtis [Pearl Jam’s manager] that Layne died,” guitarist Mike McCready revealed in the 2011 coffee table book Pearl Jam Twenty. “We were at the studio at probably eleven at night. I wasn’t surprised, but I was. It was sad. I hadn’t seen him for, like, three or four years.”

Back in 1994, McCready had collaborated with Staley on what became the only album by the Seattle supergroup Mad Season which also included Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin and bassist John Baker Saunders who later died of a heroin overdose himself in 1999.

Above would surface the next year and spawn the radio hit River Of Deceit. There were plans to do more recording but Staley’s deteriorating health prevented that from ever happening. (However, over time, there were occasional reunions with surviving members for live gigs.) McCready, a recovering addict who met a then sober Saunders in rehab, had hoped this cleaner environment would convince his friend Staley to straighten out for good.

When McCready told his bandmates what had happened, everyone wanted to go home except Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam’s longtime frontman. He ultimately stayed behind in Studio X with producer Adam Kasper. Filled with rage and despair, Vedder strapped on an electric guitar with banjo tunings and started working on an impromptu solo tribute for Staley. The song was written and recorded that same night. According to McCready, it was recorded at “two or three in the morning”.

“I think he was just so angry, and he wanted to get it out,” the guitarist noted in Pearl Jam Twenty.

Loosely structured like The Velvet Underground’s Heroin but not nearly as powerful despite a highly agreeable lyric, it begins with soft, slow, simple, start-and-stop strumming as Vedder quietly seethes against the many highly successful Layne Staley imitators:

“So all you fools/Who sing just like him/Feel free to do so now/Cause he’s dead”

He never names anyone in particular but surely he’s addressing Scott Stapp. Himself a troubled figure (he, too, struggled with addiction and erratic behaviour until he was properly diagnosed with bi-polar disorder), the Creed frontman achieved far more commercially with his much maligned band than Alice In Chains ever did which clearly irked Vedder. (Human Clay alone sold more copies than all AIC albums combined.)

Rage immediately turns to empathy as Vedder warmly empathizes with Staley’s pain. In a higher register he thankfully quickens his playing to match the adrenaline rush of the elusive high his old friend still desperately craved:

“Using, using, using/The using takes toll”

Imagining he preferred being a loner (“Isolation just so/Happy to be one”), a crushed, helpless Vedder also mourns the absence of Staley’s closest friends and family in his final moments:

“Sad to think of him all alone”

The pace unfortunately slows down again as a low-voiced Vedder mournfully reflects on the bitter irony of his beloved colleague unable and unwilling to reach out when any number of supporters would’ve gladly been there in an instant to help get him clean:

“Lonesome friend/we all knew/Always hoped/You’d pull through”

The tempo increasing once more, Vedder insists Staley’s fans issue no judgment (“No blame, no blame/No blame, it could be you”), and then offers this obvious warning about chronic addiction:

“You can’t grow old using”

Vedder wraps up reiterating his antipathy against the Staley clones calling them “fuckers” and dares them to keep ripping off his distinctive vocals because “it won’t offend him/just me/because he’s dead”.

At the time, Pearl Jam already knew which 15 songs, of the 30 or so they had recorded, would make the cut for Riot Act. Vedder’s anguished tribute to Staley was not going to be one of them.

“Most of the songs are about bigger kinds of things,” guitarist Stone Gossard asserted in Pearl Jam Twenty. “The energy was feeling so positive, and there was something about the song that felt like it maybe wasn’t right for this particular record.”

As a result, 04/20/02, as Vedder would eventually call his solo tribute referring to the date he first learned of Staley’s death (even though technically the song was recorded on April 21st), would stay in the vault.

A year later, as the band grew disenchanted with Sony, the band decided to no longer produce studio albums for their longtime label. Instead, they started compiling existing tracks for a couple of double compilations.

The first one, Lost Dogs, features B-Sides, soundtrack and tribute album contributions, a few rare fan club singles and material never before unveiled. As the band discussed the track listing, inevitably the subject of 04/20/02 came up. Was it finally time to release it?

In the end, the answer would be yes but everyone agreed it would be buried at the end of track 14 on disc two. It begins just after the six-minute mark.

“I think the reason it’s hidden,” Mike McCready asserted in Pearl Jam Twenty, “is because [Vedder] wouldn’t want it to be exploitative. I think he wants it to be hidden so you have to find it and think about it.”

Pearl Jam’s personal and professional relationships with Staley and Alice In Chains goes right back to their origins. In 1991, AIC asked them to open for them on numerous dates during their tour in support of their major label debut Facelift. At the start of that year, Pearl Jam were still going by their soon-to-be-discarded original name Mookie Blaylock, the New Jersey Net whose jersey number 10 became the title of their own first full-length release.

Both bands appeared in the underappreciated Singles, Cameron Crowe’s humourous cinematic paean to the Seattle music scene. And they both shared space on the more popular soundtrack which has since been rereleased and expanded. Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam would continue to play live shows together right up until the late summer of 1992.

In the decades since his death, Staley has not been forgotten by the man who secretly eulogized him on Lost Dogs.

When Pearl Jam played a show in Chicago on August 22, 2016, Vedder had a very special reason for bringing up his friend’s memory:

“It’s the birthday of a guy called Layne Staley tonight, and we’re thinking of him tonight too.” As Vedder pointed out that night, he would’ve been 49.

Pearl Jam played Man Of The Hour, a song given to the Tim Burton film Big Fish, in his honour.

Almost exactly four years later, Vedder appeared on a podcast hosted by Chris Cornell’s daughter Lily. Although much of the conversation focused on his close friendship with the late Soundgarden vocalist, while discussing his “dark lyrics”, he also pointed out similar traits shared with Kurt Cobain and Staley:

“These weren’t people going, ‘I’m going to pretend to write a dark song.’ It was real for everybody. It became a thing to make fun of the dour grunge groups. I think people took it personally. They were like, ‘We weren’t fucking around.’ That’s probably why people liked it and seemed to need it. ‘This guy is speaking for me. I feel these things.’”

Like Ian Curtis before him, when it came to songwriting, Layne Staley never kept his personal demons closeted. They were always there, front and centre, unvarnished and uncensored. Like Lou Reed before him, he did not advocate for more addicts. (“I don’t want my fans to think heroin was cool,” he told Rolling Stone in 1996.) He presented cautionary tales based entirely on his own self-destruction. If you paid attention, you heeded his words and hopefully avoided dangerous paths of your own. If you didn’t, you either ignored his suffering or paid your own price for being a devoted, misguided follower.

One man who never got over his death was Mike Starr. Eight years after their last encounter, Starr had appeared on the third season of Celebrity Rehab in extraordinarily rough shape. (In one scene while lying in bed one night, he rolls over and vomits on the floor before falling back to sleep again.)

In one fateful episode, he speaks with Layne’s Mom where he expresses deep regret and shame for not calling 911 that traumatic April day. (“I wish I would’ve called 911 that day…I wish I would’ve known he was dying…I wouldn’t have just walked out the door.”)

To her eternal credit, a kindhearted McCallum doesn’t blame Starr at all and insists that “Layne would forgive you.” When the bassist expresses his profound shame for not being sober when confronting his old friend, McCallum explains why her son wouldn’t call 911 himself:

“Because he was embarrassed. A beautiful man with huge talent had squandered his life and his talents and that’s not a judgment, that’s just a statement of fact and he knew that. And it’s a horrible thing but I don’t blame you and I never have.”

Despite her best efforts, Starr never forgave himself. Despite brief periods of good health, he reverted back to his worst impulses until March 8, 2011 when he was discovered dead of an overdose in a home he shared with Days Of The New’s Travis Meeks, his new bandmate, in Utah. He was 44.

Two years earlier, Alice In Chains would reconvene after a long absence with a new singer. Pearl Jam would join them for a festival gig in Belgium in 2010, the first time in nearly twenty years that the two bands had shared a bill together.

In Grunge Is Dead, one of two literary oral histories about the Seattle scene, Nancy Staley McCallum revealed how she struggled to fully understand her son’s health problems:

“…I was completely unaware or completely unprepared for any kind of drug involvement. He struggled a bit in high school for a couple of years, but had quit using. Then he was off and running with the band…I had no idea how to help my son, and I didn’t know how severe his use was. I just didn’t know how much to be alarmed.”

She didn’t accept that his music was often autobiographical until it was too late:

“I thought that the songs he was singing about drug addiction were about people he was observing…I was so naive. If I had any idea what the entertainment industry is like, and what would happen to him…I would have hidden him.”

In his 2010 interview with Drew Pinsky on Loveline, Starr was still struggling with the loss of his best friend:

“Sometimes I feel naked without Layne in this life…I just really miss him.”

As for Alice In Chains, starting in 2013, founding drummer Sean Kinney starting paying tribute to both men. The front of his bass drum reads “LSMS”, the initials for Layne Staley and Mike Starr.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, September 14, 2022
9:32 p.m.

CORRECTION: Layne Staley had a cat, not a dog, that was later adopted by his friend and bandmate Jerry Cantrell. Many thanks to GrungeFairy54 over at Reddit for pointing out the error, the kind comment and posting the link which explains why this piece has been accessed so much recently. I’ve corrected the text. I’m sorry for not catching my mistake sooner.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, February 7, 2024
3:00 p.m.

The History Of The Mystery Track – Lauryn Hill Covers Frankie Valli

On August 8, 1997, a new film opened in theatres. Released by Warner Bros., Conspiracy Theory is a comic thriller about a paranoid cabbie who produces a regular newsletter filled with his outlandish ideas about government malfeasance. One such theory, however, turns out to be dead-on accurate suddenly putting his life in danger.

Early on in the film there’s a scene where he’s sitting in his cab. With tiny binoculars he watches a young woman through her window in her apartment building singing along while running on a treadmill. He figures she’s listening to the radio so he flips through the stations in his car hoping to match what he’s hearing to what she’s singing.

In the original script written by Brian Helgeland, the song was supposed to be Blue Moon, an old Rodgers & Hart number from 1934. Instead of securing the rights to the original recording, Helgeland wanted the song covered by Annie Lennox who conveniently was riding high at the time with her hit covers album Medusa. (The screenplay was completed in 1995.)

But by the time Conspiracy Theory had reached the post-production stage of completion in mid-1997, producers ultimately wanted a younger, hotter talent to cover a different song from a more contemporary era.

In February 1996, The Fugees released their second album, The Score. One of the big singles was Killing Me Softly, an uptempo cover of an old Roberta Flack ballad, vocalized by the charismatic 21-year-old Lauryn Hill. Along with other original hits like Fu-Gee-La and Ready Or Not, The Score would go to sell more than 20 million copies worldwide.

But complicated personal entanglements and internal struggles for outside creative freedom involving two members of the trio would ultimately derail the band just as they finally figured out how to get over with a mass audience.

Hill was having an affair with Jean and they were both cheating on each other. Jean actually married his other lover while Hill was having what would become a longterm common law relationship with one of Bob Marley’s sons, the father of their eventual five children.

The final straw was Jean’s refusal to support Hill’s desire to work on her own music outside the group, an idea she had openly expressed internally for a while but denied publicly to the press. At one point, probably realizing this might be the end of the band, Jean then offered to produce her but she refused. By 1997, Hill, Jean and their bandmate Pras would all focus exclusively on their own separate solo projects. Despite occasional live reunions in the 2000s and at least one single, there would be no collective follow-up to The Score.

By the time the producers of Conspiracy Theory came calling, Hill was in the third trimester of her first pregnancy and already working on her first batch of individual songs.

“The recording took about a year and a half,” Commissioner Gordon Williams, the engineer of that eventual solo debut told Rolling Stone magazine in 2008. “Sony never wanted her to make a solo record; they wanted her to make another Fugees record.”

In the midst of all of this, Hill agreed to record a cover for Conspiracy Theory. With Blue Moon discarded as the possible song that Julia Roberts sings along to while Mel Gibson spies on her, producers had cleared another tune that had already been redone by countless artists before.

In 1966, Bob Crewe had suggested a title to his songwriting partner Bob Gaudio. From there, the two worked out a musical scenario, based very loosely on various real-life situations Gaudio knew about and personally experienced, involving a guy madly in love with a woman so beautiful he cannot look away, he is completely transfixed. Rather than record this new song with his vocal quartet The Four Seasons (which included Gaudio as a founding member), the song was constructed strictly for lead singer Frankie Valli who released it under his own name.

Delayed for a full year, after a slow start, Can’t Take My Eyes Off You would go on to become a legitimate smash in 1967, peaking at number two on the Billboard Hot 100. Eleven years later, cast members of The Deer Hunter would sing along to its famous chorus in a scene before they get shipped off to Vietnam, a moment which eventually inspired the Broadway musical Jersey Boys.

Unfortunately, Lauryn Hill had a big problem as the deadline to complete the sessions for her album was fast approaching.

“She called me and said she was behind and had to get it done.” Commissioner Gordon told Rolling Stone. “She didn’t know how the arrangement of the song went, so we went and got a copy from Coconuts or Sam Goody.”

From there, Hill and her creative team quickly put together their own version of the song, updating the arrangement with a more consistent, hip-swiveling gallop without losing any of its heart or soul. The famous horn and string sections from the Motown-inspired original may be gone (although that sure sounds like a slight sample of the former before the first chorus) but in its place is a funky contemporary take on the basic framework. There’s imitative Bobby McFerrinesque instrumentation, beatboxing, an old-timey organ and a smooth, laidback vocal from Hill who name checks the Warner Bros. film that commissioned this performance.

Commissioner Gordon “had a little one-room 16-track studio in my apartment in Jersey. Lauryn was eight months pregnant, laying on her back on the floor, half asleep, holding a handheld mike. She did all of those vocals off the top of her head pretty much in one take, with the beat box and all of that. That blew me away.”

When the song was completed, it was sent to Warner Bros. and quickly forgotten about. Hill gave birth to her son Zion four days after Conspiracy Theory began its late summer theatrical run.

Around the same time of the film’s cinematic debut, the soundtrack was released. Curiously, Hill’s new cover was not included. In fact, there are no pop songs on the album, just 40 minutes or so of composer Carter Burwell’s classical score. Whether Sony, Hill’s label, played any role in Can’t Take My Eyes Off You being left off the record is unclear.

Regardless, Hill told Muse magazine in 1998 that it was “a song that was never intended for radio play or even release.” With a new baby in her life and a solo album still to complete, Hill was too preoccupied with more important matters.

Five months after Conspiracy Theory’s disappointing stint in North American theatres (it didn’t even make back its 80 million dollar budget), the movie debuted on home video and in February 1998, it started playing on pay-per-view and became available on satellite channels like DirecTV.

It had been nearly two years since the arrival of The Score. At the tail end of 1997, Wyclef Jean was the first ex-Fugee out of the gate with a solo album. The Carnival would spawn the Top 10 hit Gone Til November and ultimately go double platinum.

But fans were starved for more. Pras’ Ghetto Supastar album (the title song would get a huge boost from its association with Warren Beatty’s political satire Bulworth in the summer of 1998) wouldn’t be available until the autumn.

Lauryn Hill’s debut was still many months away at the start of the new year. But some of her more enterprising supporters were so impatient for this collection of new music to arrive, realizing there already was something out there in the public domain, they took matters into their own hands.

In the May 9, 1998 edition of Billboard Magazine, writer Datu Faison had a small entry in his regular Rhythm Section column under the header Bootleggers.

“There’s a new recording from Fugees diva Lauryn Hill titled ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ that has everyone scratching their heads. The single was not serviced to radio by Ruffhouse/Columbia [Hill’s label which is owned by Sony], yet managed to garner 188 R&B spins according to Broadcast Data Systems (BDS).” BDS is the official Neilsen ratings system for radio.

According to the brief report, some unknown parties had managed to tape the song as it plays during the middle of Conspiracy Theory’s closing credits. (It begins right after a snipped reprise of Frankie Valli’s original starts to fade at exactly two hours and eleven minutes.)

“[S]omehow a pirate recording was made that was pressed onto CD and DAT [Digital Audio Tape]. It is also possible that someone who had access to the recording and/or master tapes could have also made pirate copies,” Faison speculated not unreasonably in Billboard since the full song is presented through the rest of the remaining end titles.

According to BDS employee Lana Goodman, somehow, a bootleg copy of the song first ended up at KMEL, a San Francisco station. This was confirmed by another industry insider in the May 29, 1998 issue of Entertainment Weekly:

“According to Michelle Santosuosso, program director at Los Angeles’ KKBT, some enterprising soul(s) taped it from the satellite dish when the movie made its pay-per-view television premiere recently and got the bootleg into the hands of deejays, who jumped at the chance to play the phantom single.”

Once KMEL started playing this cover of Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, it created a gradual domino effect. According to Faison’s Billboard column, “The song was aired again in April on top 40/rhythm [station] KUBE Seattle, and additional patterns were assigned.”

Southern outlets like WBHJ in Birmingham, Alabama and Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s KTBT ended up playing the song far more than the California stations on the west coast: 140 spins altogether compared to the measly 48 accumulated in San Francisco and Los Angeles. And that was just the beginning. Within a short period of time, the song was added to more and more playlists across the country and even on stations in neighbouring Canada. When all was said and done, the track modestly peaked at #35 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Radio Airplay chart but reached a far more impressive #2 on its Rhythmic chart.

This unexpected development greatly concerned Sony who had already drawn up big plans for Hill’s solo album. It had already been decided that Doo Wop (That Thing) was going to be the first single. (It would drop in June.) They feared it would be overshadowed by Can’t Take My Eyes Off You and therefore not as popular, a silly fear in retrospect since Doo Wop debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and would be the biggest of all the singles from The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

Hill, on the other hand, had a different reaction. She told Entertainment Weekly in their May 29, 1998 issue that it was “flattering that they’re playing [the song]…” She told Muse that same year, “I thought it was kind of funny, another cover version taking off like that.” (According to the official Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons website, there are at least 200 remakes in existence.)

Uncertain at first about how to proceed, Sony was left with few options. They could ignore the whole situation and let the bootleg airings continue until the hoopla died down which was ridiculous considering how popular the song was getting. They could demand radio stations stop playing the song altogether which would have resulted in bad publicity and a fan backlash. As a reasonable alternative, they could simply release an official version as a CD single.

With The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill scheduled for an August release in the United States (September in Canada), Sony ultimately came to an obvious conclusion. With expectations growing to a fever pitch, that damn Conspiracy Theory track had to go on the album. (There would be no single release after all (although Sony would send promo copies to radio stations all over the world), hence its absence from the Hot 100 which only counted physical commercial releases at the time.) It had unwittingly become an effective marketing tool.

With the artwork and packaging already completed, and far too expensive to replace, Can’t Take My Eyes Off You would become a Stickered Bonus Track. (It would otherwise go completely unmentioned in the liner notes and track listing.) Even print ads would prominently promote the song making note of its unlisted status. (You’ll find it on track 15. It actually runs six seconds shorter than the movie version and rather than fading out, it ends cold.) As she later told Muse Magazine, Hill was far from happy about the decision:

“I hadn’t intended to have a cover on the album at all…Naturally there was some record company pressure, but if I had my way it wouldn’t be on it at all.”

By this point, Hill was in the middle trimester of her second pregnancy and probably not in any real condition to put up a significant fight. (She would give birth to her second child, a daughter, that November.)

In early January 1999, the nominations for the 41st annual Grammy Awards were announced. Lauryn Hill would make history by securing ten, the most ever for an individual woman. One of those nominations was for Best Pop Vocal Female Performance. Her version of Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, a song that was only supposed to be heard during the end titles of a bad movie, was now in contention for a major prize. It had marked the first time a mystery track had secured a nomination since the full version of I’ll Be There For You by The Rembrandts just a few years earlier.

A month later at the actual ceremony, Hill would bat .500 overall. Besides taking the golden gramophone for Best R&B Album, The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill was also named Album Of The Year beating out the likes of Garbage and Madonna. Hill would also win Best New Artist over The Backstreet Boys and The Dixie Chicks. Despite being denied nominations for Song and Single Of The Year, Doo Wop still managed to win Best R&B Song and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance.

Interestingly, Hill found herself competing with her ex-boyfriend and bandmate in the Best Rap Solo Performance category. It was Wyclef Jean’s Gone Til November vs. her diss track of him, Lost Ones, another Miseducation song that initially got an unauthorized pre-album release. In the end, Will Smith’s Gettin’ Jiggy With It proved too irresistible for Grammy voters to deny.

When the winner was announced for Best Pop Vocal Female Performance, Hill’s Can’t Take My Eyes Off You was beaten by Celine Dion’s unstoppable Titanic anthem, My Heart Will Go On, already an Oscar winner from the previous year. Still, five for ten was a very good night for the former member of The Fugees.

Five months later, the song would find its way in an episode of the short-lived NBC daytime soap opera Sunset Beach. In the final quarter of its July 6, 1999 noon hour broadcast, journalist Vanessa (Sherri Saum) and her rescuer Michael (Jason Winston George) have a romantic picnic while Hill’s cover plays throughout. There’s no dialogue as the couple make out and walk around. On the final episode of the series, which aired on New Year’s Eve that same year, they were married.

Two months before that at the 26th Annual Daytime Emmys in May, Hill’s version of Can’t Take My Eyes Off You played in the background throughout a clip montage showcasing past winners of the Best Actor and Best Actress in a Dramatic Series categories. At the 27th ceremony in 2000, a taped bit involving Susan Lucci spending the day with her long sought after Emmy (she had famously lost eighteen times in a row before winning in 1999) was scored curiously to Frankie Valli’s original.

In 2008, ten years after its official release on The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, an unauthorized remix started circulating exclusively in Europe.

In 2016, Hill’s cover would re-appear in the romantic comedy How To Be Single, albeit for a mere 75 seconds. It pops up at the 99-minute mark near the end of the scene when Dakota Johnson visits “best friend” Rebel Wilson and realizes she’s “super rich”. (If you listen closely, you can hear the shout-out to Conspiracy Theory when the girls sit down on the floor to eat.) Four members of the film’s cast, including Johnson, sing the song a cappella in a couple of scenes. (Damon Wayans Jr.’s on-screen daughter refers to it as the “Eyes Of You” song.) Hill’s Grammy-nominated version, however, was curiously left off the soundtrack. Conspicuously absent from the film, another remake by Walk Off The Earth, replaced it on the CD. (In the movie, an instrumental organ version chimes in just as the Hill version fades out.) In 2020, Hill’s take popped up again in the straight-to-streaming Disney+ sports feature Safety.

With the definitive Valli classic already a standard for more than 30 years and Hill’s song reviving interest near the end of the millennium, Can’t Take My Eyes Off You would continue to be covered in the decades to come and sometimes by the most unlikely people.

The late Heath Ledger would woo bitchy Julia Stiles with an a cappella version in the 1999 romantic comedy 10 Things I Hate About You, a modernized take on Shakespeare’s Taming Of The Shrew. The late Andy Williams, best known for singing the Christmas staple It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year, covered the song in 1968 and many years later it found its way in Bridget Jones’s Diary in 2001. He re-recorded it as a duet with Broadway star Denise Van Outen (Chicago) the following year.

In a deleted scene from the 2002 live action Scooby Doo remake, Linda Cardellini’s Velma has a go Michelle Pfeiffer-style while the bald-headed villain tickles the ivories. In the 2005 sequel Son Of The Mask, there are multiple genre versions (rap, disco, country) heard during the Halloween party sequence, most of them sung by Jamie Kennedy.

Even Howard Stern favourite Mr. Methane, the gonzo comedian who can fart on command, has attempted his own unique spin on Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.

On a March 2021 episode of her self-named daytime talk show, the first American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson covered Hill’s version as part of her regular Kellyoke segment where she performs famous remakes with a backing band. In 96 seconds, she more than holds her own as she confidentally rolls through the first verse and chorus in this shortened version. Her back-up singers even recreate the “bah dah” bit near the end.

Interestingly, this is not the first time Clarkson has performed Hill’s R&B recreation. During a live gig in February 2019, before performing a complete version of Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, she dedicated the song to her then-husband. Nineteen months later, after seven years of marriage, they would be divorced.

While it’s not exactly clear what Frankie Valli thinks of Hill’s rendition (his official website only acknowledges its “hip-hop makeover”, although in the very next sentence, which offers celebrity testimonials, she appears to be obliquely referenced as one of the “many other great recording artists” his band “influenced”), co-writer and former bandmate Bob Gaudio is most definitely a fan. When asked by Songfacts.com for his opinion, he offered the following:

“I love the record, it’s one of my favorite versions.”

And although initially disappointed by the absence of the famous horn section, Gaudio realized Hill’s version didn’t really need it to succeed:

“But when I first heard it I thought she had the audacity to do this song without the horns. How dare she? [Laughing]

Songfacts: That’s such a big part of the song, right?

Gaudio: I thought it was when I first wrote it. That was my big assignment: take the verse, which was soft and sweet and melodic, and then kick into the drums of the chorus. How do I bridge that gap? And the horns was the filler. I thought building with the horns to get to the chorus was the setup. And she comes along and doesn’t use the horns. But it still worked. So it was quite an interesting lesson for me.”

Why are there so many versions of Can’t Take My Eyes Off You? Valli offered his theory to Songfacts:

“It’s a very, very tough song to do badly. When the song is that strong to start off with, that’s the kind of song you look for.”

Lauryn Hill proved him right.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, May 27, 2021
3:41 a.m.

The History Of The Mystery Track – Nirvana Gets Sappy For Charity

On October 26, 1993, a new compilation went on sale.  No Alternative was the third album spearheaded by The Red Hot Organization, a New York-based non-profit co-founded by lawyer John Carlin and Leigh Blake, a longtime activist and TV/film producer.

Established in 1989, there were two goals for the organization:  raise awareness about the dangers of AIDS & HIV through TV documentaries & public awareness campaigns, and raise money for a cure through the sales of CDs & associated home videos.  Following 1990’s Red Hot + Blue (a various artists tribute to Cole Porter, a legendary closeted gay songwriter) and 1992’s Red Hot + Dance, it was modern rock’s turn to join the cause.

The CD version of No Alternative lists eighteen songs by some of the biggest and most influential acts of that era, some of which were written and recorded exclusively for the compilation.  But as purchasers of that record immediately discovered upon placing their copies in their players, there are actually nineteen.

Sometime in the late 80s, a young Kurt Cobain made a demo at his family home in Washington State.  Accompanied solely by his electric guitar, he laid down this unpolished first version of a song he would revisit and revise constantly for the next several years.  (This original recording, long bootlegged, would make its official debut on both versions of the soundtrack to the 2015 documentary, Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck.)

Originally titled Sad, the song would alternately be known as Verse Chorus Verse and Sappy.  According to Wikipedia, Nirvana first played it in concert at a show in Germany on November 13, 1989.  Another live version, this one from a gig in Switzerland captured sixteen days later, almost made the cut for what ultimately became From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah.

In the first week of the new year, while still signed to Sub Pop, Nirvana worked with producer Jack Endino at his Reciprocal Studios.  On January 2, 1990, according to Endino, the band, with Chad Channing on drums, spent seven hours trying to record one solitary track.  The next day, they returned for an additional three hour session.

“This was when they came in and just did one song, ‘Sappy.’  That was the first time I knew that Kurt was fallible, because everything he’d done had been brilliant to me up to then.  And then there was this song which just didn’t seem that interesting.  And he was determined to get it.  And I was like, ‘No, write some more songs, Kurt!'” he later told Gillian Gaar.

Why was the futile process taking so long?

“They literally wanted an Albini drum sound,” Endino told Gaar.  They also “spent a lot of time experimenting with reverbs and gated room mics and just doing lots of strange stuff during the mix.”

This version finally emerged on Sliver: The Best Of The Box in 2005.

While continuing to play it in concert (the DVD on the With The Lights Out box set features a performance captured during a California show on February 16, 1990 while the expanded version of Bleach includes another audio rendition from a show a week earlier in Portland), Nirvana would return to the studio to try again.

In the first week of April that same year, they began the demo sessions for Nevermind with Butch Vig at his Smart Studios in Wisconsin.  Seven songs, including Sappy, were put on tape.  20 years later, it would finally make its official debut on the deluxe edition of Nevermind.  By the time Nirvana relocated to Sound City in California to record the album in 1991, Channing had been replaced by Dave Grohl.

During the sessions that spring, Sappy was dusted off for another go.  This time, Cobain seemed happier with the result.  In his Journals (later released in 2003) the song was continually appearing on hypothetical track listings for a time.  But when Smells Like Teen Spirit was completed, Sappy suddenly disappeared from contention.  This version remains unreleased and might possibly be lost forever thanks to that covered up fire in Universal’s music archives.

“Sometimes you get a song and you record it one way and you go, ‘The song just didn’t happen,’ Vig explained to Gaar.  “Then you try it again.  But after three tries, you’ve gotta give up.  You have to realize the song is not meant to happen.  But maybe Kurt heard something that we didn’t hear, and that’s what he was trying to get, and he never got it.  Sometimes that happens; you get these mental images of a song, and you know it’s going to be good, but if it gets to a certain point and it never gets there, it kind of drives you crazy.”

It wasn’t until the band recorded In Utero with Steve Albini in Minnesota’s Pachyderm Studios in the dead of winter in February 1993 that the song was finally recorded in a manner Cobain deemed acceptable for eventual release in his lifetime.  A serious contender for the album (when it was still Verse Chorus Verse which was also an early title for the overall collection), when the Red Hot Organization came calling for a song, rather than work up a new one, they offered Sappy instead as an exclusive.

With In Utero scheduled for a mid-September release, over a month before No Alternative’s debut, the cold hearted Geffen Records didn’t want Nirvana’s name attached to the charity project.  (Ironically, its founder David Geffen has long donated and raised millions for AIDS charities.  Red Hot itself has generated over ten million for the cause in its own right.)

It’s not clear if the company resorted to threatening a lawsuit in order to assure that Sappy, still known as Verse Chorus Verse at this point, would become a mystery track, but Red Hot ultimately relented and agreed not to mention it in the track listing, in the liner notes (which do mention that there are actually “nineteen songs” instead of the credited 18) and in any promotion published in magazines.  (On their official website, where they finally publicly acknowledge the song, they diplomatically explain that Sappy was hidden “for legal reasons”.)

By not advertising Nirvana’s association with the project, since they were the highest profile act on the disc, No Alternative was doomed to be a poor seller, at least in North America.  Despite selling less than 300000 copies, however, it still managed to raise a million dollars for AIDS charities.  (It did better overseas.  To date, it’s been purchased more than a million times globally.)

Curiously, Sappy wasn’t the only song to be named Verse Chorus Verse in the Nirvana catalogue.  During the making of Nevermind, there was another Verse Chorus Verse (also known as In His Hands), with a completely different melody and lyric, first laid down during those 1990 demo sessions.  (It was briefly added to live setlists in 1990 before being dropped forever.)  Because it remained unreleased for years (until it appeared on the 20th Anniversary reissue of Nevermind), Cobain simply recycled the title for Sappy.

Despite Geffen’s insistence on downplaying Nirvana’s involvement in order to not interfere with In Utero’s promotion and sales, the song still generated some decent radio airplay and became a fan favourite both in its live and studio incarnations.  When the With The Lights Out box set emerged in 2004 (Courtney Love told Spin magazine that Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl wanted to call it Sappy which she opposed), only the No Alternative version was included and properly listed.  In 2013, when In Utero was expanded into a two-disc set, the mystery track was remastered and fully credited in a new mix by Albini.

As for live shows, after a four-year break, Cobain revived it for some selected dates on the final Nirvana tour.  It was performed for the last time on February 25, 1994 during a gig in Milan, Italy.

Three months earlier, the band taped their famous Unplugged show for MTV.  After they played the Ledbelly cover, Where Did You Sleep Last Night?, the band walked off stage and never returned.  In her 2013 memoir, former VJ Kennedy reveals that wasn’t supposed to happen:

“…Unplugged producer Alex Coletti told me they all disappeared into the control room at Sony Studios where he and other executives begged the band to go out and do an encore with some better known songs (‘Teen Spirit,’ cough, cough…) but no one was down for that, though Dave and Krist were more accommodating and were willing to try ‘Sappy’ from the No Alternative record, but Kurt flexed his fascist muscle and said no bueno, so the thing was wrapped.”

When he spoke to Gillian Gaar, Jack Endino remained unimpressed with Cobain’s tenacity:

“It’s just not a memorable tune…I mean, Kurt just could not give up on that song!”

But on his website, Endino admits that the No Alternative version of Sappy is “the definitive and best version“.

He’s absolutely right.  In his original demo, where he open picks instead of strumming chords, Cobain plays a brief intro before singing the opening verse, the same way he played it in concert before Nevermind.  On No Alternative, he sings and plays right at the top with Grohl and Novoselic jumping in just after the first couplet.  A much stronger approach.

On the Montage Of Heck recording, which is decidedly slower than the full band versions, Cobain sings low and deep (something he almost never did on disc which makes it all the more special), whereas on all the other takes he adopts his signature mid-range melodic croak.

Although there are some slight lyrical tweaks on all the available versions, the basic sentiment is the same.  Cobain warns his female friend that she’s in an abusive relationship.  First, she can’t be sexual with anyone else.  (“And if you save yourself, you will make him happy”)  Second, she won’t have any freedom (“He’ll keep you in a jar”) and be treated like a caged animal (“He’ll give you breathing holes”).

Some of the lines are repeated while others (“And if you cut yourself…And if you fool yourself…You’ll wallow in the shit”) are only sung once.  All the while, there is always an urgency and deep concern for her well being.

The peculiar chorus (“You’re in a laundry room/Conclusion came to you” or is it “The clues that came to you”?) suggests the bitter irony of a victim belatedly recognizing she’s a prisoner forever stuck in this dilemma.  Endino seriously undervalued this song.  It’s the best Nirvana mystery track.

Speaking of stubbornness, Cobain also wouldn’t give up on the name Verse Chorus Verse.

As first noted by Charles Cross in Heavier Than Heaven, his excellent biography of Cobain, when Geffen Records rejected the first mix of In Utero, the frontman had a somewhat sarcastic back-up plan as he noted in his journals at the time:

“After many lame reviews and reports on carmudgeonly, uncompromising vinyl, cassette, eight-track-only release <of I Hate Myself And Want To Die [another working title for In Utero], the Steve Albini original mix of the album>, we release the remixed version under the title Verse, Chorus, Verse.”

According to Cross, Cobain also wanted a disclaimer that read “Radio-Friendly, Unit-Shifting, Compromise Version”.  Geffen refused.  Less than a handful of the original mixes would officially surface 20 years later on the 20th Anniversary reissue of In Utero.  The rest have long been bootlegged.

In 2013, No Alternative, which had previously only been available on CD and cassette (the latter excluded Sappy but included two extra tracks only found on the analog format), was finally pressed and released on limited edition double vinyl for its own 20th Anniversary.  On all three thousand copies, Sappy remains an Unlisted Bonus Track on track six at the end of side four.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, January 5, 2020
2:15 a.m.

The History Of The Mystery Track – Nirvana’s Jam Song

Kurt Cobain was aggravated.  Nirvana was in the middle of take three of Lithium, a key future single off Nevermind.  The problem was timing.  Drummer Dave Grohl kept speeding up the tempo, throwing off Cobain’s guitar playing.

It was sometime in May 1991.  The band were recording with future Garbage drummer Butch Vig at the famed Sound City Studios in Los Angeles.  (More than 20 years later, Grohl would make a documentary about the place.  He actually possesses the original soundboard.)  Of all the songs they would record for their most famous album, Lithium would prove to be the most difficult to finish.

When Grohl once again played too fast, Cobain stopped the take.  Then, he started playing a completely different song.  Grohl and bassist Krist Novoselic soon followed his lead.

For years, Nirvana had often warmed up playing what they called The Jam Song.  It was loud, aggressive, buzzy and surprisingly structured.  Cobain would turn on his distortion pedal when he wanted to thrash around and he would turn it off when he wanted to play more melodically.  When it came time to sing, Cobain for the most part would simply scream out improvised nonsensical lyrics.  The Jam Song would ultimately end with him creating as much cacophonous noise as he could before completely running out of steam.

That memorable day at Sound City the band once again launched into their rehearsal number.  Cobain stepped to the microphone and screamed out short words and phrases, many of them lost in the swirling maelstrom.  Everything seemed to rhyme with “I am”.  To this day, no one can properly decipher everything he was trying to sing.  Searching for lyrics often results in curious misinterpretations.

With the exceptions of a softly groaning “mama”, during the first melodic break, and “I’m sorry”, during one of the thrashings, not much else gets through perfectly clear.  And yet, it really doesn’t matter.

The point is the rage, the frustration being burned off in a surprisingly compelling performance.  For years, I detested this song.  I always found it incredibly self-indulgent and tedious.  Funny how the passage of time can fix and correct your opinions.  (Ironically, the opening 20 seconds became the theme song for the college radio version of this series, so clearly even then it had some redeeming qualities.)

This version of The Jam Song has aged unexpectedly well, despite still being an acquired taste and yes, self-indulgent.  Why do I like it now?  The spontaneous release, hard-edged and raw as it remains, is somehow less aggravating than before despite running over six minutes.  It’s curious how Grohl struggled with the time signature on Lithium and yet is in perfect sync with his bandmates here.

Maybe it’s because of all the hard rock I’ve heard and thoroughly enjoyed in the decades since Nevermind’s release.  Maybe it’s because I’ve grown to love The Velvet Underground who pioneered the kinds of ear-splitting sound experiments Cobain is channeling.  Maybe it’s because the song sounds heavily influenced by The Jesus Lizard.  Or maybe I was never in the right frame of mind to embrace such a deliberately punishing number.

In this current, uncertain climate where there is so much to get pissed off about, an uncontained rager like this is welcome medicine, if only for a brief moment.

At some point near the end during what turned out to be the only take of this song, Cobain smashed his left-handed Mosrite guitar and left the remnants in the studio.  (He eventually received a replacement to finish making the album but it took a while.  The busted ax ended up being displayed in the Experience Music Project Museum (now the Museum of Popular Culture) in Seattle.)  Plus, he blew out his voice, a common occurrence throughout the sessions.  Unbeknownst to the band, after that spoiled Lithium take, a wise Butch Vig kept the tape rolling.  The band liked what they heard.

Once Nevermind was complete, everyone agreed that there would be twelve listed songs in total.  In the meantime, the band quickly mixed The Jam Song with a supervising Vig letting them do whatever they wanted.

“It wasn’t until a week or two later, when they went to do the mastering, that Kurt decided he wanted it on,” Vig later told Jim Berkenstadt and Charles Cross, the latter Cobain’s eventual biographer.

The plan was to include that instantaneous freak-out as a Buried Song on track twelve.  For the first time, they gave it an official title:  Endless, Nameless.

“It was kind of a joke for the band to do, as in, ‘We’re not going to list it in the packaging, or [mention] it exists.” Robert Smith, Geffen Records Vice President of Marketing, told the aforementioned authors of Classic Rock Albums:  Nevermind/Nirvana.  “It’s for that person who plays the CD, it ends, they’re walking around the house and ten minutes later…kaboom!”

But a funny thing happened on the way to the mastering stage.

At Masterdisk Studio in New York, where the Nevermind tapes were shipped, Howie Weinberg was responsible for transferring the 24-track mix into a stereo two-channel release.  Although he did master Endless, Nameless, he seemed to have misunderstood what he was supposed to do with it:

“In the beginning, it was kind of a verbal thing to put that track at the end.  Maybe I misconstrued their instructions, so you can call it my mistake if you want.  Maybe I didn’t write it down when Nirvana or the record company said to do it.  So, when they pressed the first twenty thousand or so CDs, albums, and cassettes, it wasn’t on there,” he later told Berkenstadt and Cross.

Actually, it was closer to fifty thousand, not including the three hundred cassettes that were sent to professional music critics, none of which included Endless, Nameless.

The problem may have stemmed from the possibility that the song wasn’t on or properly listed on the same finished reel as any of the other Nevermind songs, with each side of the original cassette getting its own reel (six songs from Side A on one, six songs from Side B on another).  When you open up the two-disc 2011 reissue, you’ll see a photo of the cover of one particular reel box right in the middle of the packaging.  Dated July 27, 1991, all that’s listed are three “B-Sides”, Aneurysm, Even In His Youth (both of which were added to the Smells Like Teen Spirit single) and Endless, Nameless which has the added instruction, “used for CD only”.  There is no demand for it to be added to Nevermind.

At some point, Nirvana acquired an early copy of the album and as Grohl recalled during an interview on an Australian radio station, the entire band was shocked and displeased:

“We popped it on.  We listened to it.  ‘Oh, let’s check to see if that track is on there.’  And it wasn’t there!”

Most infuriated was the ever attentive Cobain who soon made an angry phone call to Weinberg demanding to know why the song wasn’t on Nevermind.

“I got a heavy call from Kurt screaming, ‘Where the hell is the extra song?'”

A sheepish Weinberg replied, “Oh fuck.  Don’t worry.  I’ll fix it right away.  No problem.”

“Fix it!” Cobain reminded him, as if he didn’t get the message the first time.

Weinberg, who felt bad about the mistake, would redeem himself by inserting Endless, Nameless at the end of track 12 in a new master.  Ten minutes and three seconds of silence after the conclusion of Something In The Way at 3:48, the extra song begins at 13:51.  Cobain and company were then satisfied.

“It was a cool way to put a song on the album that maybe did not fit it [thematically],” he noted in Classic Albums, “like a separate album of its own.  In the end, it was my fault.  It was hilarious that it was forgotten, but it was part of the whole scenario.”

In a weird moment of irony, Weinberg claimed he had put many mystery tracks in the play-out grooves of previous vinyl releases, a far more difficult process as The Beatles learned with Sgt. Pepper.

Are you an aspiring guitar player who would love to learn how to play Endless, Nameless?  Don’t bother buying the Nirvana songbook.

“It wasn’t a good guitar song for scoring.”  Rita Legros of Hal Leonard Publishing asserted in Classic Albums.  “I don’t think they could score it.”

The songbook was supposed to directly warn purchasers on its cover that indeed it’s “not an appropriate song for guitar scoring”, hence its conspicuous absence, but for some strange reason it wasn’t added.

“The note just got accidentally left off,” Legros noted.

To make up for Weinberg’s screw-up, when Come As You Are was released as a single on March 3, 1992, Endless, Nameless became a properly listed B-Side, along with live versions of School (from Bleach) and Drain You.  When Nevermind was reissued and expanded for its 20th Anniversary Edition, the song was once again buried at the end of track 12 on disc one.  This time, listeners only have to wait eighteen seconds to hear it, because of the space needed for all the added non-album B-Sides.  It begins at 4:06.

When Nirvana went on tour in 1991 and 1992 to support the original collection, Endless, Nameless was often their closer and always resulted in trashed instruments and destroyed staging, which would continue during the ill-fated In Utero tour.  It was the ultimate blow-off song.

In the super deluxe edition, a live version from their 1991 Halloween show at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle was included as a properly credited finale on an exclusive bonus CD.  This version clocks in a little over seven and a half minutes.

When Nirvana played the 1991 Redding Festival, Endless, Nameless was their big finish.  (It’s only available as a bootleg.)  When In Utero was reissued and expanded for its own 20th Anniversary package, the super deluxe edition includes the complete Live And Loud show that MTV taped on December 13, 1993.  (It’s also available on DVD in the box and separately.)  In the original, highly edited broadcast, only a portion of Endless, Nameless was shown.  A bonus CD features the complete take and once again, it’s the last song on the CD.

On September 3, 1991, while on tour in Europe just before the release of Nevermind, they recorded another studio version of the song, this one wildly uneven and in its dying breaths, far more annoying, during a John Peel BBC Session.  Clocking in at nearly nine minutes, it was officially released thirteen years later on disc two of the With The Lights Out box set.  The chorus lyrics of The Vapors’ Turning Japanese are heard far more clearly here.

Yet another version appears on a bootleg appropriately titled Endless Nameless 1992-1993.  This particular rendition, from another 1993 Seattle show, is considerably shorter, running just under five minutes.

The extraordinary success of Nevermind (it has sold over ten million copies in America alone, not to mention an additional twenty million collectively in the rest of the world) meant that many people were exposed to Endless, Nameless.  There is no doubt that despite the long established presence of mystery tracks in the rock era, it inspired, as historian Alan Cross once wrote to me in a fax more than twenty years ago, a “plethora” of new ones.  According to Entertainment Weekly, the year the album came out there were 7000 new releases.  Six years later, there were 70000.  Many feature numerous types of uncredited material.  Even today, in this vulnerable digital era, we are still getting more examples.

The Wildhearts, a hard rock British band, named their 1997 album Endless Nameless.  But when asked directly by a fan in a 2002 website Q & A whether the Nirvana mystery track inspired this obvious tribute, lead singer Ginger pleaded ignorance.  Considering that he’s a fan and Nevermind was an enormous global phenomenon, it stretches credibility that he didn’t know about the song.

As for Lithium, once a click track was implemented the day after Endless, Nameless was recorded, Grohl finally got his timing right and the band were able to lay down an excellent backing track.

“In an interview commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the album’s release,” Danny Goldberg, Nirvana’s then-manager remembered in his revealing 2019 memoir about Cobain, “Dave said it ‘was like being stabbed in the heart,’ but he acknowledged that the end result was worth it.”

Rolling Stone seemed to agree.  It named Endless, Nameless the 60th best Nirvana song.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, December 21, 2019
1:40 a.m.

The History Of The Mystery Track – Britney Spears & The Backstreet Boys Hype Millennium

Jive Records had an idea.  They had signed a new artist, an ambitious 16-year-old girl from Louisiana.  Already a show business veteran, she was ready to move on from children’s Television, commercials and live theatre.  Quickly disinterested in sticking with a girl group called Innosense she briefly joined, she wanted the spotlight all to herself.  Jive was the only label willing to take a chance on her.

Her first single, co-written by Max Martin, was a fairly standard but irresistible I-dumped-you-but-I-still-love-you-and-want-you-back pleader and, as it turns out, easily misunderstood.  Martin wrote the lyrics in his native Swedish and the English translation came out a little awkward.  The song’s premise was otherwise straightforward.  A lovesick protagonist ultimately wants to know if their ex has similar feelings.  “Give me a sign,” they plead.  “Hit me, baby, one more time.”

When a demo of the song was presented to TLC, they were appalled.  They wrongly thought the chorus advocated violence against women.  So they passed.  They weren’t the only ones.

By the time the kid from Louisiana heard it, she knew it was a hit.  It took her two days in May 1998 to nail the vocals in Martin’s studio in Sweden.  As she later revealed to Rolling Stone magazine, she listened to Soft Cell’s cover of Tainted Love for inspiration.

As her first single was being prepared for release in October 1998, Jive wanted to add something extra to the CD, an advertisement of sorts for another one of their newest signings.

Imajin (pronounced Imagine) were four Black teens from New York also working on their first professional recordings.  (Aged 14 to 16, unlike most pop vocal groups of the era, they were talented old-school musicians who played their own instruments.)  They had already found success with their own debut single, Shorty (You Keep Playin’ With My Mind), which cracked the Top 30.  Jive was getting ready to release the follow-up.

Why not promote this song on their labelmate’s first single?  Both were scheduled for autumn releases.  (Free cassettes featuring both artists were already being handed out to kids during the Louisiana teen’s early mall showcases.)

With deep concerns about the original title, Hit Me Baby One More Time became the unnecessarily mysterious …Baby One More Time despite no change to the lyrics.  Although those concerns turned out to be well founded (some critics had the same wrongheaded reaction as TLC), Britney Spears would go on to have her first massive chart success.

After the conclusion of track two, a rare B-side called Autumn Good-Bye, an Unlisted Audio Track begins with the singer addressing the listener on track three:

“Hi!  This is Britney Spears and thanks for buying my first single, …Baby One More Time.  Right now, I’d like to introduce to you some friends and labelmates of mine.  They’re called Imajin and this is a sneak preview of their new single, No Doubt.  Hit it, guys.”

For the next minute and sixteen seconds (really the actual opening of the song), you’ll hear a catchy piece of fluff from this young R&B quartet until it fades out near the end of the second chorus.  The full song, an uptempo popper about a guy trying to convince a girl he likes to get busy with him without making her feel pressured to do so, runs three and a half minutes.

While …Baby One More Time topped the Billboard Hot 100 in early January 1999, Imajin’s No Doubt didn’t even make it to the Top 40.  (It fared much better on the Hot R&B Singles chart where it entered the Top 20, just like Shorty.)  Not even having a young Meagan Good appear in the accompanying video, which is included on the credited enhanced multimedia portion of Spears’ own single, made any difference.  (Scrubs alumnus Donald Faison makes a cameo in the beginning of it as an annoyed, sleep-deprived man.  He’s the brother of Imajin frontman Olamide Faison who currently appears on Sesame Street.)

Imajin released their self-titled album on October 26, 1999, 369 days after the surprise shoutout on …Baby One More Time.  Despite the inclusion of their only hit, Shorty, and the earlier unlisted push from Spears on her single, it failed to make much of an impact.  (No Doubt is track eight.)  After offering a few more tracks to soundtracks, the band backed up Baby DC on a standalone single and released one more of their own.  Both flopped as well.

Unable to find another breakthrough, Imajin broke up sometime in 2000.  That didn’t stop Jive Records from trying the same sales tactic again.

The same week …Baby One More Time the single hit number one on Billboard, …Baby One More Time the album also debuted in the same position on the Top 200, a first in American music history.  Two seconds after Spears’ cover of Sonny & Cher’s The Beat Goes On fades out on track 11, she once again addresses the purchaser of her CD in a Buried Audio clip that begins at the 3:43 mark.  Her scripted patter is very similar to the earlier mystery track found on her single:

“Hi!  This is Britney Spears and thank you so much for buying and listening to my first album.  It means so much to me that you enjoy listening to my songs as much as I love singing them.  Now, I’ve got something very special just for you.  I’m gonna give you a private sneak preview of some new music from an upcoming album by some labelmates of mine, The Backstreet Boys.  Hit it, guys.”

It had been two years since the Backstreet’s Back album broke this Florida-based quintet in America.  (Their international self-titled debut first started taking off in Quebec in 1996.)  And there was much anticipation for the follow-up.  Eventually entitled Millennium, it would be the most popular record they would ever make.

As Spears begins to talk about this “private sneak preview”, the first song clip fades in and we’re in the middle of the chorus.  When it fades out, she comes back.

“That was called I’ll Be The One and I think it’s gonna be number one.”

Released as the fourth and final single in the spring of 2000, The One, as it was ultimately called, was not a chart topper.  It peaked at #30 on Billboard’s Hot 100.  (It fared much better in Canada where it entered the Top 5.)  Curiously, the group had originally planned on releasing Don’t Want You Back instead.  The change came about because of a sabotaged vote on MTV’s Total Request Live.  Viewers were asked to make their own choice but once Nick Carter called in to give a push to The One, the fanbase followed his lead.

The mystery clip of the song doesn’t sound like it was directly taken from the finished album version, at least not that brief instrumental build-up.  The chorus is clearly from Millennium but it’s not clear if this portion was incomplete or ultimately discarded from the final mix.  Either way, you can understand why it wasn’t a bigger hit.  It’s routine fare.

“Next up is something a little different from the boys.  It’s called Show Me The Meaning Of Being Lonely.  I know you’re gonna love it.”

An enormous adult contemporary hit (it reached as high as number two in the spring of 2000 and stayed on that chart for over a year), this third single from Millennium was indeed an audience pleaser.  It peaked at number six on the Hot 100.  (It was number one in Canada.)  This unlisted clip joins the song in progress at the 42-second mark just as A.J. MacLean sings the tail end of the last line of the first verse (“…will be done”) and fades out right after the group chorus as the Spanish guitar and the string section start to take over at 1:12 of the finished track.

“And last, but definitely not least, a beautiful ballad called I Need You Tonight.  Thanks again for supporting me and I hope to see you all at my shows very, very soon.  Bye.”

Strictly an album cut, I Need You Tonight (it was originally titled Heaven In Your Eyes) was produced by Mutt Lange, the famed hard rock producer who twiddled the knobs for AC/DC and Def Leppard.  His then-wife Shania Twain sings uncredited back-up on the track, according to Wikipedia.  This unlisted snippet fades in as Spears very quietly and unenthusiastically signs off.  We’re entering the 52-second mark of the full-length song from Millennium as an overwrought Nick Carter warbles the last bit of the first verse and goes right into the chorus.  This final clip fades out just as he begins verse two (“I figured out what to say to you”) as we only get as far as the 1:38 mark of the finished song before the CD shuts off.  Thank God.

Interestingly, this was not the first time Jive secretly offered fans an early taste of Millennium.

Long before they handed out fully credited cassette samplers, way back in early January 1998, The Backstreet Boys released All I Have To Give, the third and final single from Backstreet’s Back, their second album.  A year later, the song was rereleased.  On the two-track US version, track three reportedly features uncredited snippets of The One (when it was still known as I’ll Be The One), Show Me The Meaning Of Being Lonely and I Need You Tonight.  On the expanded five-track US release, it’s apparently the unlisted track six.  According to discogs.com, the mystery track on both singles runs a little over two minutes.

Almost a year later in mid-November 1998, a VHS tape entitled A Night Out With The Backstreet Boys began circulating officially.  (The DVD came out two years later.)  Besides highlighting a concert taped for German Television in March of that year, there was a bonus CD called Selections From A Night Out With The Backstreet Boys, featuring six audio versions of tracks that appear in the video.  The seventh and final track features a much longer trailer for the same three songs Spears introduces a few months later on …Baby One More Time in the exact same order but with longer running times.  There’s no mention of it in the track listing on the back cover.  This uncredited preview runs almost four and a half minutes.

Instead of Spears doing the shilling, after that same brief instrumental snippet of The One at the top (six seconds worth), the clip continues with Howie D & Kevin Richardson (they also reportedly appear on the shorter All I Have To Give mystery track), clearly speaking off the top of their heads, urging the listener to not turn off the CD:

“Howie:  Hey, hey, wait up!  Wait up!

Kevin:  Hold up!  Stop!  Don’t touch anything yet because, uh, we’re looking forward to seeing you guys on the 1999 world tour.  But at the same time, we got some sneak previews of, uh, some of the material we’ve been working on for the next album, right, Howie?

Howie:  Yep.  You’ll find these songs and much more on the up and coming album in 1999.  So, hope you enjoy ’em.

Kevin:  So, check ’em out and we’ll see you guys soon.  Peace.”

As they start to wrap up their intro, this unfinished mix of The One rises in volume and then we’re into the first verse (“Guess you were lost when I met you”).  At the 1:27 mark, the song’s chorus ends cold and immediately after, you hear the beginning of Show Me The Meaning Of Being Lonely.  This time, we get past the brief instrumental break after the chorus and just as Richardson sings the opening line of verse two (“Life goes on as it never ends”), it fades out completely at 2:46.

At 2:47, you’ll hear the start of I Need You Tonight.  The song fades out at pretty much the exact same point as it does on the …Baby One More Time album, just as Carter finishes singing the first line of the second verse, wrapping up the mystery sneak peek at 4:23.

I haven’t been able to confirm if this banter is the same found on the All I Have To Give single.  (One superfan on Twitter believes it is but wasn’t completely sure and I never heard back from her again.)  The CD is long out of print and it’s been extremely difficult to find an online version of the unlisted preview, despite numerous, fruitless searches.

So, just to recap, for half a year, there were three separate mystery tracks promoting an album that would go on to become one of the biggest of the decade.  Astounding.  If only Imajin had this much institutional muscle behind them.

At the time, Spears wasn’t happy about doing her own Backstreet Boys promo.  As she told Entertainment Weekly in their March 12, 1999 issue, “If I would’ve known I had a choice, I wouldn’t have done it.”

What’s curious is why she was ordered to do it at all.  All I Have To Give sold 900,000 copies while the Night Out videotape/CD package sold three million.  The most astute fans were already aware of Millennium’s future release.  But, then again, young attention spans can be fleeting.  Jive Records were clearly not taking any chances.  These mystery ads ultimately paid off enormously.

“It worked,” Jezebel writer Maria Sherman told The Ringer about her own reaction to hearing the secret sales pitch on …Baby One More Time.  “It’s really cheesy marketing that I think nobody would enjoy now, but it really did work.  And I think I’m not alone in getting into them that way.”

She was 7 in 1999.  Today, now a professional journalist, she’s planning a book about boy bands in 2020.

An open fan of the group, Spears certainly didn’t hold it against the Backstreet Boys themselves who, according to Billboard, weren’t even aware of the mystery pitch for them on …Baby One More Time.  When she met Richardson in the late 90s, as she later recalled in a quote reprinted in the 1999 book Britney Spears: Backstage Passes, “He was so beautiful–he’s prettier in person than in pictures.  And I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness,’ I didn’t know what to say.”  The other guys didn’t do anything for her.

In turn, they were big fans of hers.  Each member has their own favourite Spears song.  (Tellingly, none of them picked …Baby One More Time, a song the group rejected as a possible recording of their own for Millennium.)

It’s not clear how many copies of …Baby One More Time feature the Millennium presentation.  Andrew Fromm, who wrote I Need You Tonight, speculated to Billboard Magazine in May 2019 that it’s probably only on “the first 200,000 copies”.  That seems a little low considering how well the CD was selling in those early months of 1999 not to mention the gap between its release and Millennium’s monstrous debut.  Regardless, if you buy a new copy today, the mystery track is not on there.  (Good luck finding a used edition.  It took me years (and two purchases) to finally snag one with the Millennium preview.  You’ll have an easier time finding it on YouTube.)

After failing to make Imajin a significant crossover act, along with the earlier mystery track ads on All I Have To Give and Selections From A Night Out With The Backstreet Boys, Spears’ personal promotion for the quintet four months before their return to a much brighter spotlight clearly had some kind of impact.  Millennium entered Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart at number one selling a still remarkable 1.1 million copies, a record that would eventually be significantly broken the next year by *NSYNC.  (No Strings Attached would sell over two million its first week.  Adele has the current record with over three million.)  On that same chart, …Baby One More Time had actually moved up from number six to number three after almost 20 weeks in release.  Both albums would remain in the Top 10 for much of the rest of the year.

As of this writing, twenty years later, Spears’ debut album has now sold over 12 million copies in America alone.  Millennium’s overall total is over 15 million.  Unlike with Imajin, Jive Records correctly deduced that Spears’ new audience in early 1999 were either already fans of The Backstreet Boys to begin with or, like Sherman, after having heard the mystery track on …Baby One More Time, easy converts.  This unusual approach, to an undetermined extent, had finally worked.

In 2017, both started lucrative residencies in Las Vegas.  Spears was scheduled to return for a second run in early 2019 but real life has gotten in the way.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, December 21, 2019
12:34 a.m.

The History Of The Mystery Track – Radiohead’s Censored Breakthrough

“’Smells Like Teen Spirit’ had the kind of feel we’re after…When it came on the radio, you had no choice but to listen to it.  You couldn’t just drive along and ignore it; it came out at you.  I hope we’ll come out of people’s speakers in the same way.” (Thom Yorke in Melody Maker, May 9, 1992)

“That song will always be there…And in five, six, ten years’ time, people will be saying that ‘Creep’ is a f[uck]ing classic record.  We know that.” (Yorke in New Musical Express, October 10, 1992)

“There’s a pervading sense of loneliness I’ve had since the day I was born.” (Yorke in Rolling Stone, September 1995)

In the late 1980s, Thom Yorke started attending classes at Exeter University.  It was a challenging period for him.  Feeling very out of place in an extremely privileged institution, despite making friends (and enjoying a side gig as a DJ) he still felt very self-conscious and isolated at times.  It didn’t help matters that there was a significant problem with his left eye and that he was quite awkward with women.

In his childhood, several surgeries were performed to try to get it moving normally (it was paralyzed from birth) but the ultimate result was not only a drooping effect that gave Yorke a distinguished look that he decided to stick with, he now had limited vision.  He had already been bullied about it for years.

At Exeter, Yorke developed a massive crush on a fellow student.  While it was happening he started writing lyrics for a potential song:

“When I wrote it,” he told the NME in 1992, “I was in the middle of a really, really serious obsession that got completely out of hand.  It lasted about eight months.  And it was unsuccessful, which made it even worse.  She knows who she is.”

It’s not clear what actually happened.  Did he ask her out and she said no?  Did she say yes and lived to regret it?  Did he ask more than once, getting firmly rejected every time?  Or was he too shy to make a move but so obvious about his feelings that even she knew what he was up to and kept her distance?

A few months later, in another edition of the NME, Yorke regretted ever admitting the song was autobiographical:

“I got into a lot of trouble over that.  I shouldn’t have admitted to her being a real person.”

The eventual recording of Creep is one of those extraordinary accidents a good fiction writer could never invent.  While rehearsing songs for their first album, the band decided to do a run-through of Yorke’s self-loathing anthem, a practice they had grown accustomed to.  In his book Over The Edge: The Revolution And Evolution Of New Rock, historian and longtime radio host Alan Cross noted that one member of the band had a serious problem with the song:

“Guitarist Jonny Greenwood hated ‘Creep’ and was always looking for ways to sabotage the song whenever he was forced to play it.  He was trying to be obnoxious during one session of recording the Pablo Honey album.  The band was warming up with ‘Creep,’ as usual, when Jonny turned up all of his amps and cranked his effects pedals wide open just before the chorus.  Testing everything out, he banged the strings a couple of times, producing a couple of very noisy crunches before he began to play the buzzsaw chords of the chorus.  He figured that if he made enough noise, the rest of the group would take the hint and dump the song.  At the very least, he could make things rock a bit.”

As it turns out, the joke was on Jonny:

“Unbeknownst to the group, the engineer had a tape running in the control room and once the song was over, he played back what he had recorded.”

Unintentionally, Greenwood had actually improved the song.  His interrupting guitar attacks gave Creep an added intensity it had been seriously lacking and it also provided a clever transition from the verses to the choruses.  It was the Smells Like Teen Spirit moment the band had been striving for.

The band would record the song a second time and that would be the master take.

But there was a problem.  Creep sounded a little too much like The Air That I Breathe, an old Hollies song.  This would ultimately result much later on in a rather amicable settlement with Albert Hammond and Mike Hazelwood, the writers of the earlier track, after their publisher sued Radiohead.  They now earn royalties from the song.  They would’ve earned more had the band not been candid about their musical thievery.

Creep would make its official debut in the UK on September 21, 1992.  The reception to it was not positive.  Although there was some support for it in the music weeklies, most critics were dismissive and the buying public mostly ignored it.  (It barely entered the Top 80.)  Still determined to keep on progressing, the band moved forward continuing to put together their first album.  (Ironically, Anyone Can Play Guitar would be their first UK hit in early 1993.)

Meanwhile, in Apartheid Israel, a DJ named Yoav Kutner, the Jewish John Peel, was handed a copy of the song by an EMI plugger.  Near the end of 1992, he started playing it on his popular armed forces radio show, “sometimes three times an hour”, according to Slate.  The reaction this time was very different.  To show their appreciation (and their ignorance for the illegal occupation of Indigenous Palestinians), Radiohead started playing shows there and made a couple of local TV appearances.  (They would unapologetically return in 2017 dishonouring the BDS campaign.)  When they arrived, they were mobbed by highly excitable fans.  When they returned to the UK, it was back to obscurity.

In 2000, a New York Times Magazine profile noted a similar situation in America:

“A music director at a San Francisco college station found the single in a Berkeley record shop’s import rack and added it to his station’s playlist.  Within weeks it was an underground rage up and down the California coast.”

Not long after the original recording of Creep, Radiohead had another issue to resolve.  The band realized the lyric “so fucking special” was not going to get them on the radio, especially when it’s heard three times.  So Yorke made a last-minute change that would unexpectedly break them in North America:

“The replacement word is ‘very,’” he told a laughing John Harris of the NME.  “It’s the best option, really…The alternative was putting in a bleep, and that was never going to work.  At least ‘very’ sounds sarcastic.  I can sing that without feeling a twat.”

When Harris correctly pointed out that he made a not so radical compromise, Yorke didn’t deny it:

“Oh yeah, of course we have.  We know we have.  And it’s pretty obvious that we have – so anybody with any brains will realize that, see through it and go and buy the proper version.”

Indeed, when Creep was made available as a CD single, only the uncensored album cut was included.

Several months after Pablo Honey’s modest release, Creep started getting significant airplay on KROQ, the influential modern rock FM station that would later break Alanis Morissette.  Other stations would soon add it to their own playlists.  Around the same time, both MTV in the US and MuchMusic in Canada started airing the performance video and putting it in high rotation.  The radio version provided the soundtrack.  (By 1994, even Beavis & Butthead gave it their own seal of approval.  The album went Gold in September and has since been certified Platinum.)

Meanwhile, Radiohead was resistant to re-releasing the song in the UK.  In the end, EMI got its way.  This time, Creep entered the Top 10.  They were no longer anonymous in their own country.

When Pablo Honey debuted in February 1993, this safe for work mix was not included on early pressings of the album.  But eventually it would be, just only on later North American editions.  It’s not clear when it became an Unlisted Bonus Track on track 13, but if you buy the album today it should still be on there.  However, when the album was reissued with a bonus disc of non-album B-sides and rarities in 2009, the radio version was removed from disc one.  Two other versions of the song, an acoustic take and a BBC radio session from June 1992, appear on disc two.

There’s no question the superior take is the album version.   How can it not be?  “So fucking special” says it all. That said, the radio mix is easily one of the best mystery tracks of all time.

Interestingly, while the hook of the album cut begins immediately, on the unlisted radio mix, drummer Phil Selway hits his sticks as a count-in before the band plays.  This means this version runs a few seconds longer.  Also, it’s very clear Yorke re-recorded his entire vocal, not just “so very special”.  Everything else is exactly the same.

It’s hard not to think of the incel movement while listening to Creep today.  “I don’t care if it hurts/I want to have control,” Yorke sings at the start of the second verse.  “I want a perfect body/I want a perfect soul.”  An impossible standard even Yorke knows he’ll never meet.  (“But I’m a creep/I’m a weirdo”)

“I want you to notice when I’m not around,” he dreams almost pathetically before he makes clear his passive/aggressive feelings for his elusive target of lust.  (“I wish I was special/You’re so fucking special”)

Tapping into his permanent sense of alienation during the chorus (“What the hell am I doing here?/I don’t belong here”), by the end of the song he’s scared her off for good (“She’s running out again/she’s running out”).

At the start of the song, he puts her on a pedestal.  (“You’re just like an angel/Your skin makes me cry/You float like a feather/In a beautiful world”)  By the end, he angrily pouts and gives up.  (“Whatever makes you happy/whatever you want”)

While the song didn’t have the mass appeal of Smells Like Teen Spirit, it nevertheless entered the Billboard Top 40 and remains the biggest hit the band has ever had in America.  Despite eventually churning out dozens of big songs on FM rock radio, they wouldn’t have another Top 40 hit until Nude (from In Rainbows) fifteen years later.

Creep would be played on every date of the Pablo Honey tour for two years but all five members of Radiohead grew to resent its crossover success.  (Be careful what you wish for.)  First of all, there were deep worries about it being their only hit.

“…the thing about being a one-hit wonder: you know, you do come to believe it.” Yorke told the New York Times Magazine in 2000.  “You say you don’t but you do.  It messed me up good and proper.”

Second of all, Yorke didn’t want to be known as The Creep Guy (for many legitimate reasons) nor did Radiohead desire to be forever pegged as The Creep Band since it would significantly limit their artistic growth.  In that same NYT interview, Yorke bemoaned having to constantly answer press inquiries about the song, especially the ones about whether his parents screwed him up beyond repair:

“You can’t imagine how horrible that was.”

The internal resentment was so intense the band for years would not refer to it by name.  It was “that song” or “the previous song that shall remain nameless”.

In 1994, they released My Iron Lung, a deliberately sarcastic response to Creep.  The hook is very similar and then there’s this memorable lyrical passage:  “This is our new song/Just like the last one/A total waste of time”.  The humour was lost overseas.  It didn’t chart in America.

Despite endless requests for Creep during live shows, the band pulled it from the setlist for the rest of the decade.  (One such incident inspired Spirit Of The West’s 1996 song, Let The Ass Bray.)  Since 2001, they have only played it on rare occasions, every eight or nine years or so.  It wasn’t until 2016 when they toured in support of A Moon Shaped Pool that they made it a semi-regular part of their shows.  Thanks to all the brilliant, commercially successful albums they had released in the decades after it put them over, they could finally stop being so uptight about it.

Long after its first release, Creep’s popularity has continued to grow, just as Yorke boldly predicted in 1992.

The song was covered once by Prince during his 2008 appearance at Coachella, although he reversed the pronouns of the characters and extended the running time to almost ten minutes.  After someone posted a video of it on YouTube, he ordered it taken down and it was, much to Yorke’s disappointment.  “Well, tell him to unblock it.  It’s our song.” he said upon being informed of the situation, as noted by Yahoo! News.  Macy Gray did her own rendition for her album Covered, as did Carrie Manolakos whose live rendition in 2012 became an Internet sensation, as reported by The New Yorker.

In an unexpected moment of irony, Lana Del Rey declared in 2018 that the band’s publisher was planning on suing her because her song Get Free was a little too similar to Creep.  They wanted to collect all her royalties, she claimed.  She says she counteroffered with 40%.  While there was no lawsuit, Warner/Chappell Music didn’t deny they were hoping to collect some money, just not all of it.  It’s not clear if there was ever a settlement.  Del Rey, who has always maintained she didn’t steal from Radiohead, still sings Get Free in concert without any apparent consequence.  Unlike Radiohead, she cancelled her show in Apartheid Israel respecting the BDS movement for a Free Palestine.

In 2008, when EMI offered the public a Radiohead greatest hits collection, Creep reentered the Top 40 in the UK.  The band had already left the label in 2004 to pursue more profitable distribution options.  In 2019, as noted by Wikipedia, the song is “the UK’s most streamed song released in 1992” with over ten million downloads.

As for the Exeter student Yorke once pined for, the unknown subject of his breakthrough song, in 1992 he was long over her and believed she had moved on, too:

“I’m sure she didn’t give a shit, really.  She never gave a shit.” He asserted to the NME.  “She wasn’t even that nice, anyway…”

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
2:59 a.m.

The History Of The Mystery Track – The Rolling Stones Honour “Stu”

Ian Stewart wasn’t feeling well.  He’d been “suffering from acute respiratory problems for several days”, according to author Barry Miles.  On December 11, 1985, the night before his doctor’s appointment, he was on stage at the Old Vic Tavern in Nottingham, England playing a gig with his band Rocket 88.  Despite his discomfort, he didn’t appear to be in any serious danger.

“I was waiting for him in a hotel,” Keith Richards revealed to Rolling Stone in 2002.  “He was going to see a doctor and then come and see me.  Charlie [Watts] called about three in the morning:  ‘You still waiting for Stu?  He ain’t comin’, Keith.'”

“Next evening, he went to a Harley Street specialist for a heart scan,” Bill Wyman noted in his 1990 memoir Stone Alone.  After it was completed, he returned to the waiting room.  All of a sudden, he couldn’t breathe.

He never smoke, he never drank, he never abused drugs.  But at the age of 47, Ian Stewart had instantly succumbed to a massive heart attack.

The timing couldn’t have been worse.  It was less than two weeks to Christmas.  (His only son, Giles, was just 14 at the time.  Stewart was divorced.)  And his other band were in the middle of a serious crisis.

The Rolling Stones had been toiling away on the follow-up to Undercover for nearly a year.  It was originally scheduled for a June 1985 release.  Then it was rescheduled for September.   In the end, Dirty Work would finally surface in late March 1986.

The problem was Mick Jagger.  Every member of the band knows that when a Rolling Stones project is happening, it becomes the number one priority.  No matter what you’re working on, you have to set it aside to come back to the fold.

Jagger wouldn’t delay sessions for his first solo album, She’s The Boss, and that pissed off Richards.  After the lacklustre reception for Dirty Work, instead of going out with the band on a tour, Jagger would instead commence writing his second solo record, Primitive Cool, which dropped in 1987.  To drum up business for the follow-up, he also did solo shows in Japan and Australia and played Stones songs without his bandmates, further inflaming Richards.

Relations between The Glimmer Twins had become so icy they stopped talking to each other for nearly three years.  (Instead, they cut promos on each other in the media.)  The absence of the peacemaker Ian Stewart had never been more glaringly felt.  (They eventually reconciled in Eddy Grant’s studio before embarking on the enormous Steel Wheels album and subsequent tour.)

Eight days after his sudden fatal heart attack, every member of the band, along with Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and numerous other rock and roll luminaries, attended Stu’s funeral.  While sitting together in one of the pews, Richards turned to Ronnie Wood and asked rhetorically:  “Who’s gonna tell us off now when we misbehave?”

Dirty Work has ten listed songs and one Unlisted Bonus Track.  Track eleven features a mid-tempo piano solo that lasts about 30 seconds.  There’s no mention of it anywhere in the liner notes.

That’s Ian Stewart playing a snippet of Key To The Highway, an old blues number by Big Bill Broonzy, a longtime Stones favourite.  (It actually has its own title:  Piano Instrumental, according to The Rolling Stones:  All The Songs, The Story Behind Every Track.)  The song was recorded in France at the Pathe-Marconi Studios on February 27, 1985 and in its full version, Keith Richards assumes lead vocals.  (It remains locked in a vault.)  Mick Jagger was absent from the studio that day, a regular occurrence during much of the sessions (he eventually showed up in the final stages to add all his vocals for most of the chosen tracks) which needlessly exasperated the tension with his longtime songwriting partner.  (Most of the Dirty Work outtakes feature Richards singing lead.)

21 years earlier, The Rolling Stones first recorded the song with Stewart and Jagger during a November 8 session at the famous Chess Studios in Chicago.  This version of Key To The Highway was never officially released but has been bootlegged for decades.  Another outtake version was recorded during the sessions for Exile On Main Street and later leaked.

During the making of the 1994 album Voodoo Lounge, the band tried laying down another take which ultimately didn’t make the cut.  It too was eventually made available in an unauthorized manner.  Key To The Highway has been played live by the band numerous times throughout the decades, including a few that were captured for TV broadcasts.  Richards himself later played the song with Eric Clapton in concert.  Clapton had recorded his own studio version for the Derek & The Dominos album.

On February 23, 1986, Key To The Highway was appropriately part of the setlist for a special tribute concert at the 100 Club in London held in honour of Stewart’s legacy.  A year after his sudden death, Richards played Key To The Highway as a guest performer during a club show with former bandmate Mick Taylor.

Stewart was an unusual character.  Originally born in Scotland (he would eventually relocate with his family to England before his teens), he would grow up looking like a cross between Jay Leno and Morrissey.  Blame a bad case of the measles for his prominent chin which made him self-conscious.  (“At around age 16, he had a revolutionary operation to try to reduce his jaw size,” according to Bill Wyman.)  He started playing piano “between the ages of five and seven”, reported Wyman in Rolling With The Stones, and never looked back.  (He also played the banjo in his youth and pursued athletics like rugby and weightlifting.)  His love of the blues never dimmed in his lifetime.  He later developed a passion for golf, his favourite pastime outside of music, “like his mum”, noted Wyman.  His only vice was a steady diet of cheeseburgers.

In his interactions with the Stones, he was blunt and direct, but never in a mean spirited way.  (Ironically, before he became a teenager, he was much more introverted.)  You always knew where you stood with him.   He was indisputably the conscience of the band.  Known for his biting humour, he was also a blues purist.  And, as it turns out, an integral figure in British rock and roll history.

In 1962, a fellow blues enthusiast who had started calling himself Elmo James placed an ad in Jazz Scene Magazine.  He wanted to put a band together.  Stewart would be the first to make contact.

The 24-year-old shipping clerk specialized in playing boogie woogie piano (he had already been playing gigs as part of Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated with a drummer named Charlie Watts who also played with him later on in Rocket 88) and after he auditioned for Lewis by pounding out a number of ragtime songs on a ravaged upright piano from a pub in Soho called The Bricklayer’s Arms, he was immediately invited to join.

Over the course of the next year, many members would come and go until the first settled line-up in 1963.  Stu, as everybody called him, was mostly responsible for recruiting Richards, Jagger, Watts, and Wyman.

“It was his vision, the band, and basically he picked who was going to be in it.” Richards confirmed in Life.

James would eventually revert back to his birth name:  Brian Jones.

Because everybody else in the band were starving artists (except Wyman who worked during the day), Stu, who also had a steady job, would routinely supply money and food whenever he could.  “He was a big-hearted guy,” Richards later wrote in Life.

Enter Andrew Loog Oldham.  Already a PR veteran in his teens having worked for Brian Epstein and The Beatles, he was hired to be the band’s first manager in the spring of 1963.  Because The Fab Four had cleaned up their Teddy Boy image by wearing suits and charming the pants off the media with their polite cheekiness, Oldham instinctively knew that The Rolling Stones had to be promoted as their polar opposite (although initially they too wore the suits and ties but only for a short while).  They needed to be perceived as the bad boys of British rock.  Considering how they lived (in absolute filth and squalor) and acted (thieving was a necessity for survival), it wasn’t far from reality.  In his autobiography, while living with Jagger and Jones, Richards recalls that recording equipment was placed in their bathroom unbeknownst to their apartment building neighbours and friends.  They always played back the results for a laugh.  Chuck Berry would be proud.

Despite his characteristic outspokenness, the straightforward Ian Stewart neither looked the part of a rebel nor did he act like one.  (He dressed like a preppie and always had short hair.)  He was as straight as they come, so Oldham ordered Jones to fire him, which he did right in front of his bandmates.  Immediately recognizing his overall importance to the band, he was quickly offered a different job (which he immediately accepted) and would be seriously underpaid for the rest of his life (although he was the first Stone to buy a Jaguar).

For the next 22 years, he had a rotating list of duties.  First, he was the band’s fiercely loyal and protective road manager, driving them to gigs, setting up their equipment (until they could afford proper techies) and preventing them from getting seriously hurt during a startling number of audience riots.  (He once got hit with a bottle right in the old noggin.)  When he came to fetch them from their dressing room, as Bill Wyman noted in Stone Alone and Keith Richards cheerfully confirmed in his 2010 autobiography, he would cheekily address them as his “angel drawers”, “my little three-chord wonders” or most memorably, “my little shower of shit.”

“In the early tours it was just me and the band travelling around.”  Stu later recalled as noted in The Rolling Stones:  An Oral History.  “As the shows got bigger, especially in America we would start to get guys who would take care of the equipment and I would make sure the travel and hotel arrangements were together…”  He would also “make the arrangements setting up the rehearsals with the musicians and for the recording sessions.”

Starting in 1968, Stewart would also run The Rolling Stones Mobile Recording Unit, a travelling eight-track recording studio that would be rented out to some significant bands of the era and beyond.  The Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd and the fourth untitled album by Led Zeppelin, the one that included Stairway To Heaven, were both recorded with that equipment, as was Houses Of The Holy and the Stones’ own Exile On Main Street.  Stu, who had already appeared on Boogie With Stu on Led Zeppelin III, delivered a memorable performance happily plunking away on the keys on Rock And Roll which was later licensed for a series of TV ads promoting the Cadillac CTS and other General Motors brands in the early 2000s.

In their most famous song, Deep Purple even referenced the Mobile Recording Unit in the first verse of Smoke On The Water (“to make records with a mobile”).  They used the equipment to make Machine Head.  A couple months after Stu’s death, the Unit was taken over by Wyman until he quit the band in 1992.

When blues legend Howlin’ Wolf made his London Sessions album in the UK in 1971, Stewart appeared on four tracks.  When the album was reissued and expanded in 2002, there he was on ten additional songs.  He was thanked second just behind Jagger in the liner notes.

In 1980, Stu appeared on stage with George Thorogood & The Destroyers for a concert that featured two songs that later appeared in The Rolling Stones pay-per-view special, The World’s Greatest Rock N’ Roll Party.  It was later officially released on home video in 2014.

Although not officially recognized as a full member (thanks to Oldham who was later replaced by Allen Klein), which meant he would no longer be photographed with the band for publicity purposes, Stu still appeared on numerous Stones recordings, both live and in the studio.  He can be heard tinkling in concert on a number of tracks on Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out and Love You Live.  And that’s him on the original studio versions of Brown Sugar; Tell Me; Star Star; Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadows?; Time Is On My Side; Heart Of Stone; Dead Flowers; It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll; She Was Hot; The Last Time; Honky Tonk Women; It’s All Over Now; 19th Nervous Breakdown; Get Off Of My Cloud; Under My Thumb and Jumpin’ Jack Flash.  He also backed up the band on numerous album cuts and B-Sides.

Why didn’t he play piano on every Stones track?

“I don’t play minor chords,” he told producer and pianist in his own right Jim Dickinson as he later recounted to Bill Wyman.  “When I’m on stage with the Stones and a minor chord comes along, I lift me hands in protest.”

As a result, a rotating list of players, including the late great Nicky Hopkins and Billy Preston, filled his role on some other famous Stones tracks like Wild Horses (Dickinson played on that one); She’s A Rainbow and many, many others.

“…Nicky couldn’t play what Stu could, and vice versa.” Charlie Watts said as recounted in According To The Rolling Stones.  “Stu didn’t possess the finesse of the musical touch that Nicky had…Stu never played like that.  Stu was rumbling, with his left hand going at some ridiculous speed.  Stu had a very physical way of playing.  He was one of those players where the piano would bounce up and down.  The way he played was more like drumming.”

An unapologetic Stu had firm musical beliefs on what was acceptable and what wasn’t which the band didn’t always agree with, although as Richards notes in Life, he did ultimately soften his harsh criticism of Jerry Lee Lewis, a rare change of heart.  Amusingly, he hated the name of the band.  (“It sounds like a troupe of fucking Irish acrobats.”)  But he was overruled.

Stu played a major role in what has become the signature Stones song.  The band was struggling to figure out how to capture the right sound for this lick Richards had come up with and nearly forgot about.  As Stephen Davis reported in Our Gods Almost Dead, “Ian Stewart went over to Wallach’s Music City [in Los Angeles] & came back with a new Gibson fuzz box, the first one the company made, and told Keith, ‘Try this.’  It made the record.

The song was Satisfaction.

Stu was also instrumental in finding key replacements for departing band members.  When Brian Jones suddenly died in the summer of 1969, the pianist suggested Mick Taylor who stayed with the band for half a decade playing on some of their greatest singles.  Stu also played a role in Ronnie Wood joining the band when Taylor left.  Actually, as Wood recalled in The Rolling Stones: An Oral History, were it not for a certain Faces frontman, he would’ve become a member a lot sooner:

“…I remember when Brian died, Ian Stewart rang up the Faces rehearsal room, which we were using to get the band together initially.  [Stu is the reason they got that rehearsal space in the first place.]  He spoke to Ronnie Lane on the phone, and said, ‘Would Woody like to join the Stones now that Brian’s gone?’  And Ronnie Lane said, ‘No thanks, he’s quite happy where he is.’  I didn’t find this out for five years [laughs].”

“It’s really hard to remember when he wasn’t there,” Mick Jagger observed in the documentary 25 X 5: The Continuing Adventures Of The Rolling Stones, “but we used to rehearse in pubs and Stu would be there.  He was a lovely boogie woogie piano player.  He was very different from us because he was so straight and we were all a bit crazy.”

When the Stones were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in January 1989, Jagger eulogized Stu to audience applause calling him, “a great friend, a great blues pianist whose odd but invaluable musical advice kept us on a steady bluesy course for most of the time.”  Despite Oldham’s cruel actions in 1963, Ian Stewart, the sixth Stone (but really the first to join making him the second after Jones), was inducted as an official member.

“I honestly don’t like Andrew Oldham as a person.” Stu told a then teenage-Bill German, the publisher of Beggars Banquet, the official Rolling Stones fan zine in 1981, still steaming after nearly two decades.  If Oldham needed help of any kind, “I wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire.”

In the liner notes of Dirty Work, besides being thanked for his contributions to the album, the band included this separate statement about his legacy:

“This album is dedicated to Ian Stewart[.]  ‘Thanks, Stu, for 25 years of boogie-woogie.'”

So, why the unlisted snippet of Key To The Highway on track 11 and not the full version with Richards on vocals?  Considering how buried Stewart’s piano playing is on the 1964 version (a frequent occurrence during his other recordings with the band), it made more sense to isolate his work on the 1985 take in order to briefly showcase his exceptional, often underappreciated skill.

Also, Stu was an intensely private person who never considered himself a rock star, so offering an unlisted tribute in his honour is apropos.  Even his 2004 biography, limited to less than a thousand copies, was not made available in bookstores.  You could only order it online from the publisher’s website.

“…Stu always did what he wanted to.” Keith Richards recalled in According To The Rolling Stones.  “He eventually ended up with his own band, Rocket 88 [formed in 1979], and did all the other things he wanted to do, like promoting all of his mates, pushing the people he thought were good, which is what he loved to do.  He’d fix somebody up with some gear or get them a rehearsal room.  Stu just loved the day-to-day mechanics of band working.”

“He never changed from the day I first knew him,” Charlie Watts observed in the same book.

“Ian Stewart.  I’m still working for him.”  Richards admitted in Life.  “To me the Rolling Stones is his band.  Without his knowledge and organization, without the leap he made from where he was coming from, to take a chance on playing with this bunch of kids, we’d be nowhere.”

When Beggars Banquet publisher Bill German asked Stu in 1981 why he was so loyal to the band, Stu simply answered, “I like the music.”  When he asked him if he would “do it all again?”, the man wasn’t hesitant:

“…oh yeah, sure, I’d do it all again.”

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, December 16, 2019
2:47 a.m.

The History Of The Mystery Track – Friends Again Soundtrack

The title is perhaps a little too self-aware:  Friends…Again.

In November 1999, right in the middle of its sixth season on NBC, Warner Bros. released a second collection of songs connected to one of its biggest sitcoms.  It had been four years since the release of its predecessor and much had changed.  Ross and Rachel had gotten together (including a drunken impromptu Vegas wedding) and broken up a couple of times (including an eventual divorce).  Insecure Chandler found himself in the middle of a lusty affair with a once indifferent Monica.  An dimly arrogant Joey got fired from Days Of Our Lives.  And Phoebe became a surrogate mother for her Scientologist brother.

The alternative rock that blasted glam metal off the charts at the start of the 90s was now being replaced by a new wave of teen pop at its conclusion.  You would never know it from listening to Friends Again.  Influential legends like R.E.M. and Lou Reed have been replaced by commercial college rockers Smash Mouth and Semisonic.  Highly respected songwriters like k.d. lang and Joni Mitchell are cast aside for photogenic newcomers like Lisa Loeb and Duncan Sheik.  The Barenaked Ladies have been swapped for another Canadian alt-pop outfit The Waltons.  Despite the trades, most of the tunes on this sequel are decent toe-tappers.  Even forever unknowns like Deckard and 8Stops7 offer good studio performances.

Once again, uncredited dialogue clips from the show have been scattered throughout the CD.  (Some are funny, others are hit and miss.)  There’s no indication of this in the track listing on the back cover.  But when you open up the liner notes and look at the label side of the CD itself, the vague description “Friends Sound Byte” pops up six times in both places at the end of specific track numbers.  Furthermore, an advertising sticker placed on the cellophane of the front cover reads “Also includes bonus excerpts from the FRIENDS television show…”  However, there are two others not mentioned at all.  Plus, there’s an Unlisted Bonus Track on track 14.  Let’s go through all nine mystery tracks in chronological order.

The properly credited track one features Friends’ warm-up guy Jim Bentley introducing the six cast members to an enthusiastic studio audience response during an unspecified taping in 1999 as the instrumental version of I’ll Be There For You (the TV version) is heard prominently in the mix.  Right after it concludes at the 38-second mark, Rachel confides in Phoebe and Monica:

“Ross kissed me.

Phoebe:  No! [squealing with delight] Yes!  Yes!

Monica:  Oh my God!  Oh my God!  Oh my God!

Rachel:  It was unbelievable!

Monica:  Oh my God!  Oh my God!  Oh my God!  [audience laughter]

Phoebe:  Ok.  Alright.  We want to hear everything.  Monica, get the wine and unplug the phone.  [audience laughter]

Monica:  Ok.

Phoebe:  Rachel, does this end well or do we need to get tissues?

Rachel:  Oh, it ended very well.  [wine glasses clinking]

Phoebe:  Oh.

Monica:  Do not start without me!  [audience laughter]  Do not start without me!

Phoebe:  Ok.  Alright.  Let’s hear about the kiss.  Was it like, was it like a soft brush against your lips?  [drinks being pored] Or was it like a, you know, ‘I got to have you now’ kind of thing?  [audience laughter]

Rachel:  Well, at first it was really intense, you know, [more drinks being pored] and then [taking a breath], oh God, and then we just sort of sunk into it.

Phoebe:  Oh.  So, ok, was he holding you?  Or like was his hands like on your back?  [light audience laughter]

Rachel:  No, actually, first they, they started out on my waist, and then they slid up, and then they were in my hair.

Monica & Phoebe:  Oh.  [audience laughter]”

Then, while enjoying slices of pizza, Ross tells Joey & Chandler his perspective:

“And, uh, and then I kissed her.

Joey:  Tongue?

Ross:  Yeah.

Joey:  Cool.  [audience laughter]”

This scene begins three seconds into the eighth episode of the second season, The One With The List, and lasts for another minute and change.  Ross and Rachel’s momentous first kiss happens in the second-to-last scene of the previous episode, The One Where Ross Knows.  This aftermath scene plays out exactly the same way on the show as it does on the CD.

The next mystery track starts at 4:05 on track three:

“Chandler:  Ok.  Last night at dinner?  It’s like all of a sudden we were this couple, ok?  And this alarm started going off in my head, you know?  ‘Run for your life!  Get out of the building!’  [audience laughter]

Monica:  What is it with you people?  I mean, the minute you start to feel something you have to run away? [light audience laughter]

Chandler:  I know!  That’s why I don’t want to go tonight.  I’m afraid I’m gonna say something…stupid.

Monica:  [softly]  Oh, you mean like that guy thing where you act all mean and distant until you get us to break up with you?

Joey:  Hey, you know about that?  [audience laughter]

Chandler:  Look, what do I do?  I want to get past this.  I don’t want to be afraid of the commitment thing.  I want to go through the tunnel to the other side!  [audience laughter]

Joey:  Well, I’ve never been through the tunnel myself cuz, as I understand it, you’re not allowed to go through it with more than one girl in the car, right?  [turns to Ross who pretends to agree] [audience laughter]  But it seems to me it’s pretty much like anything else, you know.  Face your fear.  In this case, you have a fear of commitment.  So I say, you go in there and you be the most committed guy there ever was!  Go for it, man.  Jump off the high dive.  Stare down the barrel of a gun.  Pee into the wind!  [audience laughter]

Chandler:  Yeah, Joe, I assure you if I’m staring down the barrel of a gun I’m going to be pretty much peeing  every which way.  [audience laughter]”

This heavily edited sequence is taken from the fourth episode of the third season, The One With The Metaphorical Tunnel.  On the TV show, Chandler walks into Monica’s apartment with his black cordless phone ringing (what happened to the white one from season one?).  He wants Joey to answer it because he knows it’s his girlfriend Janice and he’s trying to get out of their date.  Joey refuses and the phone stops ringing.

After Rachel asks him, “What’s the big deal?  Why don’t you want to see Janice tonight?”, the CD version commences at 6:47 with Chandler talking about his previous outing with her at a restaurant.  In the TV show we get a clearer picture of what happened at dinner:  “….when the meals came, she put half her chicken piccata on my plate, and then she took all my tomatoes!  [audience laughter]”

Also not heard on the CD is Ross mocking Chandler for this while also trying to understand why this is such a big deal to him (“And that’s bad because you hate chicken piccata?  [light audience laughter]…You didn’t want to share your tomatoes.  Tomatoes are very important to you.  [audience laughter]”

To the first question, Chandler responds “No,” he doesn’t hate chicken piccata.  Then, we’re back to the CD version as he finishes the rest of his opening lines, minus an additional “No” that precedes “It’s like all of a sudden we were this couple…”

In another deleted portion not heard on Friends Again, a scoffing Rachel responds to Chandler’s paranoia:

“Ugh, men are unbelievable.  Janice just thought she was giving you chicken.  She didn’t think she was giving you scary chicken.  [audience laughter]”

Monica’s dialogue from the CD version is heard next but as Chandler responds on the actual episode he cuts himself off when he stares at Monica’s stuffed boob (part of her uniform working as a waitress at a 50s-themed diner where she later met wealthy Pete), understandably deleted because it’s a visual gag.  He then finishes the rest of his dialogue and Monica responds in the same way she does on the mystery track.  However, Rachel’s humming in agreement with her is cut from the CD.

After Chandler claims he wants to be a better boyfriend, just to make sure he understands the metaphorical tunnel, in another cut portion, Ross tells Joey, “Where’s there no fear of commitment.  [audience laughter]”

As Chandler turns around to ask Monica, “Do you have any [ideas]…”, he accidentally hits her fake boob with his open hand and after staring and pausing in embarrassment, he turns back to the boys, “Do we have any thoughts here?” in another understandably deleted section.

During Joey’s speech, there are a couple of lines not heard on the CD:

“You have a fear of heights?  You go to the top of a building!  You’re afraid of bugs.  [pause]  Get a bug.  [audience laughter]”

After Joey urges Chandler to be “the most committed guy that ever was”, Rachel’s deleted response is, “Amazingly, that makes sense,” as Monica softly moans in agreement, also excised.  Before Joey finishes the rest of his speech, his “Oh, yeah!” is missing from the CD, an insecure Chandler asks, “Do you think?” in another omitted moment.  The rest of the scene is exactly the same as it is on Friends Again.  Chandler would take quite a while to finally realize that fear of commitment isn’t the real reason his relationship with Janice is doomed.

Onto the next mystery track that begins at 3:05 of track five:

“Phoebe:  [chuckling]  That’s fine.  Go ahead and scoff.  You know, there are a lot of things out there that I don’t believe in.  But that doesn’t mean they’re not true.

Joey:  Such as?

Phoebe:  Like crop circles or the Bermuda Triangle or evolution.  [audience laughter]

Ross:  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.  [chuckling in disbelief]  What, you don’t, uh, you don’t believe in evolution?

Phoebe:  I don’t know.  It’s just, you know, monkeys, Darwin, you know, it’s a nice story.  I just think it’s a little too easy.  Heh.  [audience laughter]

Ross:  Too easy?  The process of every living thing on this planet evolving over millions of years from single-celled organisms is, is too easy?  [light audience laughter]

Phoebe:  Yeah, I just don’t buy it.  [audience laughter]

Ross:  Uh, excuse me.  [chuckling]  Evolution is not for you to buy, Phoebe.  Evolution is scientific fact, like the air we breathe, like gravity.

Phoebe:  [chuckling]  Oh, ok.  Don’t get me started on gravity.”

This is taken from the third episode of the second season, The One Where Mr. Heckles Dies.  (Mr. Heckles, who originally had a different name in season one, was Monica & Rachel’s odd downstairs neighbour who thinks they make too much noise.)  After Heckles’ body is taken away from the apartment building, the gang gather back at Monica’s apartment.  Phoebe claims she can still “sense” his presence and yells at him to go towards the light.  The CD version of the scene begins at 4:21 of the TV show as she responds to the collective skepticism.  With the exception of a missing “Too” from Ross and the sound of a cookie dish sliding on the coffee table (both deleted from Friends Again), everything is exactly the same.

In the show, the scene continues with an incredulous Ross trying to understand why Phoebe doesn’t believe in gravity.  Then, they’re interrupted by Treeger the super and Heckles’ attorney who reveals that the solitary old man with no family and no money has left all his junk to Monica & Rachel.

While the gang realizes he was a bit of a hoarder (and a lot like Chandler when it comes to being picky about dating women) as they clean out his place, a peeved Ross continues to interrogate Phoebe about her anti-evolution stance.  When he later brings over his “suitcase of facts” that contains 200 million year old fossils to Monica’s kitchen, Phoebe gets the better of him by pointing out that she’s not actually against evolution, she just doesn’t think it’s the only answer.  Like a good defense attorney she gets him to admit that maybe, based on famous past scientific reevaluations, there’s a small chance he could be wrong.  “I can’t believe you caved,” she marvels.  An ashamed Ross, too stunned to speak, quietly walks out with his suitcase, and the subject is never brought up again.

The next Buried Audio clip appears at the 3:14 mark of track seven:

“Rachel:  I just wish we hadn’t lost those four months.  But if time is what you needed just to gain a little perspective.  [gently slaps his cheek as she ends her last line] [audience laughter]

Ross:  [yelling]  We were on a break!  [audience laughter]  And for the record, it took two people to break up this relationship!

Rachel:  Yeah!  You and that girl from the coffee place which yesterday you took full responsibility for!

Ross:  I didn’t know what I was taking responsibility for, ok?  I didn’t finish the whole letter!

Rachel:  What?

Ross:  I fell asleep!

Rachel:  [mocking]  You feel asleep?  [audience laughter]

Ross:  [exasperated]  It was 5:30 in the morning and you had rambled on for 18 pages!  [light audience laughter] [shouting]  Front and back!  [audience laughter]

Rachel [infuriated] Ohh.

Ross:  Oh, oh, oh and by the way, y-o-u-apostrophe-r-e means “you are”.  Y-o-u-r means “your”!  [audience laughter]

Rachel:  You know, I can’t believe I even thought of getting back together with you!  We are so over!

Ross: [pretending to be upset] [shouting]  Fine by me!  [audience laughter]

Rachel:  [shouting] Oh, oh, and hey, hey, hey!  Those little spelling tips will come in handy when you’re at home on Saturday night playing scrabble with Monica.

Monica:  [offended]  Hey!

Rachel:  Sorry.  [audience laughter]  I just feel bad about all that sleep you’re gonna miss wishing you were with me!

Ross:  Oh, no, no.  Don’t you worry about me falling asleep.  [shouting]  I still have your letter!  [audience laughter]

Rachel:  [shouting]  And hey!  Just so you know, it’s not that common, it doesn’t happen to every guy, and it is a big deal!  [audience laughter]

Chandler:  [shouting]  I knew it!”

One of the most famous Ross & Rachel scenes from the show, this very funny clip is taken from the end of the fourth season premiere, The One With The Jellyfish.  The reunited couple is in bed together cuddling when Rachel brings up the infamous letter she wrote at the beach house earlier in the show much to Ross’ annoyance.  The CD version begins at the 21:17 mark of the episode.

After Ross shouts his catchphrase, an entering Chandler asks Monica, “Coffeehouse?” To which she replies, “You bet.”  This exchange is not heard on the CD.  They don’t make it out the door because a now dressed Ross and Rachel continue their fight in the living room in the same manner they do on Friends Again.  Only the audience laughter at Chandler’s last line has been cut.

Moving on to track nine and the fifth hidden clip that starts at 4:31:

“Chrissie Hynde:  [singing and playing acoustic guitar]  Smelly cat/smelly cat/what are they feeding you?  [light audience laughter]

Phoebe:  [cutting her off, clears her throat]  No, no, no.  I’m sorry.  [clears her throat again] [singing]  It’s smelly cat/smelly cat.  [audience laughter]

Chrissie:  [clears her throat and tries again]  S-S-Smelly cat/smelly cat.

Phoebe:  [cutting her off again]  Better.

Chrissie:  Yeah?

Phoebe:  Yeah, much better.  Good.  And you know what?  Don’t, don’t feel bad because it’s a hard song.

Chrissie:  Yeah.  [audience laughter]

Phoebe:  Wanna try again?

Chrissie:  Yeah!  From the top?

Phoebe:  [a bit peeved]  Ok.  There is no top, alright?  [light audience laughter]  That’s, that’s the beauty of Smelly Cat.  [light audience laughter]  Um.  [clears throat]  Why don’t you just follow me?

Chrissie:  Ok.

Phoebe:  Mmhmm.

Phoebe & Chrissie:  [singing in unison & playing together] Smelly cat/smelly cat/what are they feeding you?  [Chrissie sings high harmony]  Smelly cat/smelly cat/it’s not your fault.  [Chrissie quickly strums guitar and stops]

Phoebe:  That’s too much.  [audience laughter]

Chrissie:  Sorry.”

The longtime leader of The Pretenders (who appear on both the Friends soundtrack and Friends Again) plays Stephanie Schiffer, a rival musician who plays one paid gig at Central Perk, much to a jealous Phoebe’s dismay.  (Hynde does a solo acoustic version of the song heard on the earlier CD collection, Angel Of The Morning.)  The scene where Phoebe tries to teach her her signature song is the coda of the episode starting at the 24:17 mark.  It’s exactly the same as it is on the CD.

Right after the mystery track on Friends Again, still on track nine, Hynde starts counting into the next listed track, a double take on Smelly Cat.   First, we get a vocal reversal of the mystery track version (Kudrow as Phoebe doing the high harmony this time), followed by a quick, full-band, punky version.  When it’s over, Phoebe is still not impressed with her.

The sixth mystery snippet is on track eleven and begins at the 4:37 mark:

“Chandler:  Ok, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about us, you know, a lot of, uh, ‘us’ thinking, and uh, well I guess there’s only one way to do this.  [gets on one knee, light audience laughter]

Monica:  [concerned] What are you doing?

Chandler:  Monica…

Monica:  No, no, no.  Don’t, don’t, don’t do it.

Chandler:  Will you marry me?  [women in the audience squeal with delight]

Monica:  [softly]  Chandler, why are you doing this?

Chandler:  I’m doing this because I’m sorry?  [audience laughter]

Monica:  Do you, um, do you really think the best reason to get married is because you’re sorry?

Chandler:  Oh, no.  The best reason to get married is pregnancy.  [chuckles] [audience laughter]  Sorry’s pretty much fourth, you know, behind being ready and actually wanting to get married.  [laughs, audience laughter]  [deadpan]  Will you be my wife?  [audience laughter]

Monica:  Do you know that none of that stuff came from me?  I mean, I never said that I wanted to have babies and get married right now.

Chandler:  Yeah, I know.  But I was really confused.  And then I talked to these guys.

Monica:  Who?  Two divorces & Joey?  [audience laughter]

Ross:  [offended]  Hey!

Joey:  She’s right, you know?  [audience laughter]

Ross:  [whining]  Yeah, but still, cheap shot.  [audience laughter]

Monica:  You know when I said that I want you to deal with this relationship stuff all on your own?  Well you’re not ready for that.

Chandler:  [loudly relieved]  I didn’t think I was!  [audience laughter]

Monica:  Oh my God.  [chuckling]  What would you have done if I said yes?

Chandler:  Well, I would’ve been happy because I would’ve been able to spend the rest of my life with the woman that I love.  [pause]  Or you would’ve seen a Chandler-shaped hole in that door.  [audience laughter]”

At the 19:22 mark of the fifth season episode, The One With The Girl Who Hits Joey, a desperate Chandler, still wracked with deep insecurities about being a committed partner in his most serious relationship, makes his first attempt at proposing to Monica.  Earlier on in the episode, Chandler realizes he’s not ready for marriage or fatherhood.  Monica storms out on him when he claims they’re in a “casual” relationship.  Ross stupidly advises him he needs to make a “big gesture” to win her back.

In the actual episode, the fifteenth of that year, the women in the audience squeal twice, the first time when Chandler gets down on one knee.  Only the second reaction is heard in the clip on Friends Again.  Joey’s comment, “What a bad idea,” and Rachel’s, “Oh, I can’t not look at it,” have also been deleted from the CD version.

When Monica asks Chandler, “Why are you doing this?” his first response is only heard on the TV episode:

“I don’t know.  [audience laughter]  But I know I’m not afraid to do this.”

After Chandler proposes, Monica kneels down with him and says, “Chandler, umm, I want you to take just a minute and I want you to think about how ridiculous this sounds.”  An embarrassed Chandler replies, “Yeah, I’m kinda wishing everyone wasn’t here right now.  [audience laughter]”  All of this was cut out of the CD version including Monica calling him “honey”.  The rest of the scene plays out exactly the same in both versions.  Chandler, of course, would eventually get it right with his final proposal to her at the end of season six, one of the most touching moments in the show’s history.

Another unlisted excerpt is heard beginning at 3:47 on track twelve:

“Joey:  Hey Ross, will you pass me that knife?

Ross:  [pretending to be defiant]  No, I will not!

Joey:  [taken aback]  Oh, it’s ok, you don’t have to be so mean about it.

Ross:  You’re right.  I’m sorry.  Will you marry me?  [Rachel laughs hard, audience laughter]

Phoebe:  Aww, and I was gonna ask you to marry me because I forgot to say hello to you last week.  [audience laughter] [Joey chuckles]

Rachel:  Oh, no, wait, Pheebs.  I think for something like that you just ask them to move in with you but I’m not sure.  Chandler?  [light audience laughter]

Chandler:  [chuckling, getting a little annoyed]  Ok.  How long is this gonna go on?

Monica:  [chuckles]  Well, I think the length of teasing is directly related to how insane you were so, a long time.  [audience laughter, Rachel & Phoebe laugh]

Ross:  This is fun.  Ah, hey, Rach, remember that whole ‘we were on a break’ thing?  Well, I’m sorry.  Will you marry me?  [Ross laughs] [audience laughter]

Everybody but Ross:  That’s not funny, man!  [audience laughter]”

This is the coda scene from the same episode that happens right after Monica and Chandler make peace following his botched proposal.  Beginning at the 21:28 mark, it takes place at Central Perk and is exactly the same as it is on the CD.

The last mystery clip begins at 3:41 on track thirteen.  After 21 seconds of silence following The Waltons’ Beats The Hell Out Of Me, we’re back at Central Perk for another performance:

“Phoebe:  [quietly strums guitar and sings]  I found you in my bed/How’d you wind up there?  [audience laughter]  You are a mystery/Little black curly hair  [audience laughter]  Little black curly hair/Little black/Little black/Little black/Little black/Little black curly hair  [holds last note while lowering the volume] [stops singing] [audience laughter and applause] [talking]  Thank you.”

That’s right.  Phoebe is singing about a pubic hair.  Ross picked the wrong time to eat cake.

This memorable clip is taken from the third episode of the sixth season, The One With Ross’ Denial.  The TV version begins at 18:37 (the guitar intro is one second longer and actually starts right at the end of Monica and Chandler’s fight over his Merge sign in the bedroom idea).  After she finishes her song (screenwriter Seth Kurland wrote the lyrics while Lisa Kudrow composed the melody), Phoebe tells the customers, “Now if you want to receive emails about my upcoming shows then please give me money so I can buy a computer.”  This part was cut from the CD.

Ode To A Pubic Hair (the actual title of the song) was referenced three years later in the ninth season episode, The One With Ross’ Inappropriate Song.  Phoebe mentions it along with Pervert Parade during her awkward dinner with Mike’s parents.

Friends Again concludes with two versions of Friends ‘Til The End (I’ll Be There For You), both performed by Thor-El (is that a Superman pun?), also known as Almighty Thor.  A longtime collaborator of KRS-ONE, he’s the lone rapper in this otherwise pop/rock Caucasian collection.  The first version, track thirteen, is properly credited.  The second, track fourteen, is not.

Despite being a remix overseen by KRS-ONE (who is credited for it and acknowledged in the liner notes), it’s really not that much different from the regular mix, nor is it an improvement.  Sampling the hook and The Rembrandts singing the chorus of the original TV theme (now backed by female back-up singers), Friends ‘Til The End is faster paced but far more annoying, like the protagonist in the song who can’t stop mooching off his buddy.  Thor-El, who wrote all his rhymes, sounds a little too much like DMX’s younger brother and not in a good way.

Unlike the original Friends Soundtrack, Friends Again failed to find much of a following.  Despite the later emergence of three additional releases, it would be the last CD from the show to feature uncredited material.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, December 8, 2019
6:09 p.m.