Look Again - 5/80
.(private pressing)
(unreleased)
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| Where the songs came from |
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"Look Again", the second album, was to show how
far we'd come in such a short time.
Well, we'd gone somewhere pretty far, just not necessarily
in the right direction . . .
So there we were, top draws in L.A., able to get into any
club for free, enjoying the perks, the adulation, and the endless
questions about when the new record would come out.
You see, we'd been coming out with a bunch of really good
new songs during and immediately after the recording of the first
album, and had worked them so far into the set that we were by
the end of '79 playing more non album songs than album
songs.
So we clearly needed to get moving on a new album.
Now, Jack had just left in November, John Frank had just joined,
and I had no idea how radically this little move was going to
change the sound. We knew, after all the heat we took for the
"tameness" of "L. A. Explosion", that the
followup album was going to have to be hard and loud.
Other things were happening, as well. Bomp had sunk a boatload
of money into the first album, and hadn't made anything back.
They were therefore
A. Somewhat leery to finance another studio album of the same
ilk.
B. Financially unable to finance another studio album of the
same ilk.
I'm afraid we behaved a bit ungraciously to Greg Shaw and
the gang back then, but we were, as you know, young and stupid.
Bomp's counter proposal was to do a live album showcasing the
new songs. In retrospect a brilliant idea, and one that might
have changed the rest of my life. At the time it sounded like
a copout, like Bomp didn't want to support us. Oh well.
The result was that we decided to find a studio that would
allow us to record the album on spec (i.e. no money up front
- we were broke as well), in exchange for a percentage of the
royalties. The studio that went for this deal (name of which
escapes me at the time) had as co-owner a fledgling producer
named Jo Julian, founder of the band Berlin, and about to produce
the first Oingo Boingo single. The deal was, they would let us
record if we used Jo Julian. We agreed.
Vitus was upset with me at the time for a couple of reasons.
(I'm sure there are more than a couple but you'll have to ask
him.) I had pretty much run things for the first album, insofar
as I could. I'd written every instrument overdub up in advance,
supervised all the recording, and gotten my way for a majority
of the mixes. Vitus, who after all had initially joined the Last
only as official Band Recorder, felt left out of the very process
that had attracted him to the Last in the first place.
Therefore, I decided to let Vitus run things this time around.
Knowing that it would be quite impossible for that to happen
if I were in the same room, I effectively banned myself from
the mixing booth from Day One. But more on that later.
Finally, the first album was universally (at that time) considered
a powerless, overproduced disappointment. Now, our live sound
was more ferocious than ever, and the material stood on its own
pretty well. I therefore vowed to absolutely curtail overdubs,
to create as raw and honest a testament of what we sounded like
at the time.
You can guess where this is going - yep, in an attempt to
do better, we did just about everything completely wrong. The
result is certainly raw and honest, but it's more like a raw
and honest testament of what we sounded like on a bad night at
rehearsal without monitors and coming down with the flu. There
are many who like the record anyway, and indeed I admit it has
its moments, but compared to what it could have been .
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Besides, you'll soon be able to judge for yourself, right
here on this little site.
At any rate, it's all a moot point. Word on the street after
this one was completely done was "Sounds good, when
will you be finishing it?" Our response: "It
is finished." Response from person on the street:
a disappointed "Oh . . ."
Now, "Look Again" (named after the song, and also
a possibly clever title for a second album - then again, possibly
not) was to have been our triumphant follow up to "L. A.
Explosion". The material was strong enough, the timing seemed
right, and we went into the project convinced that this thing
would lead to great success.
No major label would touch the thing with a ten foot pole
(though SST wanted to put it out, again, more on all that elsewhere),
we watched our following shrink throughout 1980, and then entered
a five year period where nothing would ever go right again.
This album has never, ever been released.
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(written late Summer 1978)
So I was working at a burger joint in El Segundo, and a co-worker
had just been stood up by a female co-worker (both teenagers)
because he'd had to work late at said burger joint on a Friday
night. The song's a true story.
This friend wanted to have a birthday party at the place after
hours, and since they were all teens and I was (barely) old enough
to buy beer, I got roped into the shenanigans. I bought multitudes
of beer for a bunch of El Segundo teens, the party went on far
too late, I was two hours late showing up for work the following
morning (which only further aggravated the owner, who had shown
up to find all the trash cans overflowing with empty beer bottles),
and eventually everyone got busted.
It was at that party I debuted "Lies", to a bunch of
drunken teens, many of whom would become devoted fans a year
later.
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(written Feb 17, 1978)
We had played a show at the Whiskey A Go Go in February, sharing
the bill with the Zippers, among many others. Watching another
band from the audience, I noticed the current drummer from the
Germs bouncing around in front of me, just to my left. Immediately
to my left was a surly, mean and getting meaner by the second
looking biker dude who was probably twice the guy's size. Said
biker was directly behind Germs drummer guy, who, unwittingly,
kept bouncing up and down and back and forth, and accidentally
and unknowingly repeatedly bouncing slightly into the
biker dude.
Biker dude finally decides enough is enough, makes a fist, and
begins to rear back his arm.
Well, Germs fan that I am, I had to do something. So I
grabbed Biker dude's arm (remember, he was probably twice as
big as me as well), and attempted to give him my most
earnest "we're all just having fun" smile.
Biker dude looks at me incredulously, begins to rear back the
aforementioned arm in my direction, and I shudder to think
what would have happened had not the Whiskey bouncers shown up
at that moment.
Now - if you're a Whiskey bouncer and you have a choice between
an 800 pound biker or a 120 pound me, who would you choose?
So I was thrown out of the Whiskey, scant hours after having
been on its stage.
In retrospect, the bouncers probably saved my life, as far
as I know no violence ensued subsequently, and I probably could've
gotten back in the club ten minutes later.
At the time, however, I was outraged. I hadn't started
the trouble - I was trying to prevent a fight! (Remember,
I was young and stupid.) Anyway, this song came out of all that,
the first line conceived being "One more club that don't
allow the likes of you inside".
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OBSESSION
Listen to a clip of this song: (Real
Audio)
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(written Jan 20, 1980)
The mid-part ("See the days just die in the sunlight, etc.)
was written, words and music, on December 3, 1976 as a bridge
for a current song of Mike's called "Garden of Youth".
Since we'd never done anything with that song, I stole
the bridge for this one. The rest of this song evolved out of
a fake Dylan thing I'd come up with October 8, 1978, but never
finished, and the resulting combination as revised was written
for "G", who I actually may end up naming.
Lyrically the usual over romantic nonsense, although I have actually
had the dreams described in the song.
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(probably written Spring '79 as "Pounding",
probably revised early 1980)
Brother Mike had noticed by this time that I wasn't adding music
to any of his lyrics anymore (you'll recall that some of the
first proto-Last songs resulted from such a collaboration), so
he gave Vitus a bunch of Lyrics, including a song called "Pounding",
which Vitus dutifully set to music. Vitus also managed to add
a couple of in retrospect fairly mean Mike-directed lines of
his own.
At any rate, by early '80 the happy merging of Punk and Pop people
that had defined the latter half of 1979 and lined the pockets
of happy club owners was beginning to dissolve. This dissolution
would, among other things lead to our slow decline from the top
of the scene by the end of Summer. Vitus, presciently intuiting
what horrors were to come, took the "Pounding" music,
shuffled it all about, and came up with "Snake in the Grass".
The principal prophetic line was "People draw lines where
there ain't no lines and they put you on the other side."
Lines were, indeed, shortly drawn, and we did indeed find ourselves,
by August 1980, on the wrong side.
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(probably written early 1980)
Another Vitus composition, and one of the ones I butchered unmercifully,
earning lasting resentment from Vitus.
He'd produced a solo demo for me in early '80, as we were busily
choosing and (mostly) writing material for the upcoming recording
sessions. I liked the song - a lot - but it didn't flow real
well - it was disjointed and strange and may well have been better
than what I did to it, but . . . Ah well, you live and learn.
I chopped the thing up, added a little bit of music (very little),
and even threw in a ska section (I was very into ska and rockabilly
at the time - I would turn another Vitus song into rockabilly,
which became Sin #2).
I like it, but Vitus doesn't like his singing on it, and this
has been one of the principal reasons "Look Again"
has never come out.
He'll kill us if we put this one online.
We may anyway.
He doesn't know where I live.
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(written Jun 10,1979)
This is possibly my favorite of anything I've ever written. It
is certainly the favorite of many O.G. Last fans. This one was
written for "A" (I don't think there are any other
"A"'s, are there?
The song consists of a few similar sounding verses and a (musically)
completely different middle section. If you have therefore come
to the immediately obvious conclusion - you're right! The verses
and the mid section did indeed start life as two completely different
songs-in-progress - the only two, in fact, that I was working
on while immersed in the recording of "L. A. Explosion".
Had no real subject matter for either of them, they were mostly
just music with the odd lyric here and there, and I wasn't getting
anywhere with either of them.
Then met "A", had an all-too-brief almost flirtatious
moment, almost hooked up subsequently and didn't, and two weeks
later, on March 17, learned upon my arrival at a punk show in
Downtown L. A. that I had fallen into yet another "over
before it began" scenario.
Which would have been good enough song material - however it
was somewhat (initially) mitigated, and ultimately enhanced,
by what was to unfold that strange evening.
For this was the evening of the infamous Elk's Lodge Riot. I'll
probably say more elsewhere about that (personally getting thrown
down a huge flight of stairs by one of L.A.'s Finest, etc), but
suffice it to say that losing said girl combined with the riot
was irresistible. I immediately threw the two songs-in-progress
together, and began to work in earnest.
As one may discern from the dates, it would be nearly three months
before I finished the song. Part of this is attributable to the
fact that we were completely immersed in "L.A. Explosion"
sessions, the rest attributable to the fact that I wanted to
get this one exactly right.
I did.
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(written Fall '79)
Vitus' homage to the Mae West film "Every Day's a Holiday".
A lovely example of dark humor and pop hooks - the chorus especially
being arguably the most Beatle-esque thing he's ever done. The
demo he made of this was great, and the strange harmony that
should not exist thing during the "World in trouble - ashes
and rubble" part was taken note for note from Vitus' original.
Unlike others, this is an extremely faithful version of what
he had originally intended.
Oh, wait - I take that back. Damn, I was so proud of myself for
a second, thinking I'd resisted the opportunity to meddle in
one of his songs.
You see, that mid-section, based mostly on the chorus, was mine,
words and (adapted) music. The demo version was just verse/chorus/verse/chorus,
and I thought it might benefit from an extra part.
Guilty as charged, again! Forgive me, Vitus . . .
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(written late Spring '79, turned into rockabilly August
'79)
Ah, yes, speaking of Vitus and my meddling, this is the definitive
example. I really wanted to do a rockabilly song, but hadn't
come up with anything. Vitus had demoed a song earlier that year
that was essentially a slow, creepy, gothic, million voiced chant,
with the haunting refrain "I take the subway home"
repeated over and over. It was chilling and cool, and I had no
idea how we would ever be able to do it live. The arrangement
was, literally, a whole lot of Vitus voices chanting over a subdued
organ.
Just for fun, I was sitting in the basement of the Church and
goofing around, and started doing the thing with a rockabilly
rhythm.
It worked - real well, in fact.
The lyrics are Vitus', and emerged (relatively) unscathed. Ditto
for the music, though I did add enough room for some cool rockabilly
licks.
Vitus hated the arrangement.
Then people began congratulating him on an outstanding composition.
Hopefully that mollified him, somewhat.
For me, I never worried about ruffling feathers in the late '70's.
My concern was to create the best versions of the best songs
possible, and I did not differentiate between dissecting and
mixing up my own songs, or anyone else's.
By early 1980, I began to feel bad, that I had been meddling
too much. I backed away, just in time for the "Look Again"
sessions, stopped meddling as much, and let The Last become a
more democratic organization.
Which is partly why we fell so fast from our exalted position
in the early 80's, and which is probably why this album was never
released.
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EVERYBODY HAD IT WITH YOU |
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(written Spring 1980)
In 1973 I wrote a song called "Wharf Rat", for a rock
opera Vitus was creating. This was of course right in the middle
of our strange prog-gone-crazy era, about which I trust I have
or will write more about elsewhere.
I was frantically producing "songs to order" in early
'80, as we were about to record this album and the roster of
songs wasn't yet satisfying to me.
On August 20, 1977, I'd written a song called "Don't Go"
(true story, written for "R", who had just told me
that I made her nervous), which had nearly ended up on "L.A.
Explosion" but didn't. (A definitive band version of this
has never been recorded, though a reasonable 4 track demo exists
somewhere.)
Anyway, I took the riff from the end of "Don't Go",
and used it to start a new song. I wanted to do something Buzzcocks-like,
with some of the dynamic of their magnificent song "Lipstick".
Shortly into the writing process, I realized that the ersatz
Buzzcocks melody I was creating was extraordinarily similar to
that old song "Wharf Rat".
Hmmmm . . .
So I completed the melody lifting several musical bits note for
almost-note straight out of that one, and the song was quickly
finished. It was, at the time, a made up scenario, a tongue in
cheek parody of my usual true life romantic mishaps.
It's not, contrary to popular belief, directly about "G",
though "G" did express alarm that people would assume
that. I laughed. I was wrong. People in years to come would indeed
assume that, all the way to a rather unkind bit of graffiti on
a dressing room wall of the Whisky a Go Go.
Oops.
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(probably written early '78)
By mid 1978 I'd known Back Door Man's Phast Phreddie for a couple
of years, but only now started hanging out with him regularly.
He knew this guy named Jeff Pierce, who had had a band called
the Redlights, and at some point played me the Redlights' "Jungle
Book". I was floored, and said "I gotta meet the guy
that wrote this!" I did, and from late '78 through early
'80 the three of us were inseparable drinking buddies. Now Jeff's
dead, Phred's clean and sober, and I'm drinking a rum & coke
as I write. Go figure.
(The above is almost verbatim from something I sent to a guy
in New York who's writing a bio of Jeff, who as you probably
know went on to form the Gun Club and became legendary. As it
is Sunday morning, I am not, in fact, drinking rum & coke.
At any rate, the best way to tell this story is with a couple
of excerpts from the journal I kept in '79. Jeff's band had broken
up, and I thought it was criminal that hardly anyone knew "Jungle
Book" existed. I liked that song a lot. What follows are
a couple of the aforementioned excerpts.)
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Jun 1 1979
I called Phred's house. No answer.
Oh well, scratch tonight.
Half hour later I called Phred's again. He was home! Great .
. . we agreed that he should get a bunch of people down there
. . . solace in numbers. He said to call back at 9:00 & he'd
know what was happening . . .
Nobody showed up for like 2 hours so we hung out & got plastered
on Mickey's & Tres Equis . . .
Eventually people arrived . . . Thee Precisions' bass player,
Jeff Pierce, Don Snowden, some people from Carl's Jr. . . . All
in all only 2 or 3 girls arrived & they were all taken. Whoopee.
So everybody got smashed. I told Jeff that I would give him one
month to get the Redlights back together, & then the Last
were gonna do "Jungle Book". He couldn't believe I
liked the song . . .
Jun 28 1979
[The Last are playing Gazzari's on a Thursday night in front
of 60 people]
2nd set was pretty cool, and encore #1 is now history. We
started into "Pushin' Too Hard", bringing it down as
Jeff Pierce hit the stage to go into a long fake James Brown-live-record
type intro. Then Phreddie hit the stage & the joint went
nuts. Everybody danced, people pogoed & twisted side by side.
They did the whole crowd tease thing at the end, Jeff cajoling
Phred to come back out, etc . . .
Lots of girls with stars in their eyes. Bill Gazarri had an orgasm.
Randall had an orgasm. Mike & David [my brothers] had to
clean up the dressing room. Jeff Pierce wrote me out the lyrics
to "Jungle Book". He doesn't want to do it so I said
"fuck it, the Last will do it."
Jul 12 1979
Evidently Vitus was pissed 'cause I'd planned to put "Jungle
Book" on the 2nd album. He [didn't want] to tell me, so
he told Randall. Randall then called me & said that if we
put it on the album, or I played in Jeff's band, I would probably
make an enemy out of every Last member.
I was pissed, but reluctantly agreed to cool it, Redlights-wise.
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Anyway, we proceeded to play "Jungle Book" throughout
the fall of 1979, frequently with Jeff himself singing it. It
was a hit, and the band finally relented, and we did indeed (obviously)
record it for this album.
Jeff's original is, of
course, better.
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(written Apr 2, 1978)
Brothers Mike and David were frequently pissed off at me during
the golden years of the late seventies. I was at once the oldest
brother, as well as leader of the band they found themselves
stuck in. I had, in short, become an Authority Figure, the very
thing I was railing against in songs and interviews.
Interesting contradiction.
Anyway, as a response, I wrote this, which is an attempt to look
at myself through their eyes. ("As we turn to leave you,
you better take a look and try to see . . .")
David did indeed successfully leave, and has since played with
everyone from Dave Davies to David Gray to Maria McKee to Wednesday
Week.
Mike, however, waits for the phone to ring, waits for me to make
The Last active again.
And he doesn't yet know that we have a confirmed gig on Friday,
February 22, 2002, at Brennan's Pub.
Yes, I never learn.
The Last rise yet again!
And Luke, if you see this, contact me! I don't have a working
number for you . . .
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LOOK AGAIN
Listen to a clip of this song: (Real
Audio)
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(written Apr 8, 1980)
Not content with "Difference" as the long magnus opus
of the record, I came up with this one, written just before we
entered the studio. It is indeed all about "G", and
her sadly dear departed mother.
The verses and choruses came pretty quick - I'd been working
on them musically off and on since late '79 - but I needed a
completely different middle part, ala "Difference".
Therefore, having stolen the opening riff from the end of the
aforementioned "Don't Go" for "Everbody Had It
With You", I now returned to "Don't Go" to steal,
lyrically and musically, the lines "I feel so bad I wish
that I was dead - If you don't know why just listen to what she
said". Working with that, I had my midsection. Just couldn't
figure out how to get back to the last verse.
Now, I had written a song in mid '79 called "Work",
which I liked (and like) a lot but which nobody else did, so
I took one of my favorite parts from it to bridge the mid section
back into the last verse.
Lyrically the song is basically just a musical summary of our
relationship at the time, with the gory parts left out.
Another of my favorite concoctions.
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