US Festival '82, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 9-3-1982 - Day 1, Part 5: The Talking Heads

The fifth album from Day One of the 1982 US Festival is a set by the new wave band the Talking Heads.

Be warned, again, that most of the albums I'm posting from this festival are audience bootlegs with lower sound quality than the soundboard or FM radio bootlegs I usually post. This is another case of that. 

It seems the sun set during the B-52's set that just prior to this one. So it was dark during this whole set, which helped a ton considered it had reached 110 degrees Fahrenheit during the day, and was quite dusty as well.

Here's what Rolling Stone Magazine wrote about this set in an article that came out shortly after the festival: "Talking Heads didn't have to inhale quite as much dirt during their set... but they did turn in the day's best show – a tough, gritty set of percussive funk that found [lead singer] David Byrne hopping around the stage like a bunny rabbit, running in circles around its perimeter and introducing one unrecorded, as-yet-untitled new song whose chorus consisted of 'Hi hi hi hi hi hi.'" The song mentioned at the end is called "Swamp" and would appear on the band's 1983 album "Speaking in Tongues."

The last song, "Take Me to the River," has "[Edit]" in its title. That's because the bootleg recording I found ended a couple of minutes before the song did. So I had to find another source with similar sound quality to finish it off. Also, in general, I changed the mix and reduced the crowd noise for all the songs, using the UVR5 and MVSEP programs.

At the time of this concert, the band hadn't released a new album since 1980's "Remain in Light." At that time, for a young band, that was a long time between albums. But lead singer David Byrne released a solo album in late 1981 called "The Catherine Wheel," and that effectively served as a new Talking Heads album for the purposes of their 1982 concerts. They played four songs from that album in this concert (tracks 93, 96, 98, and 103). Additionally, band member Jerry Harrison released a solo album in 1981 called "The Red and the Black." One song from that, "Slink," was a minor hit, and was also performed in this concert.

This album is an hour and 18 minutes long. 

090 Psycho Killer (Talking Heads)
091 Love Goes to a Building on Fire (Talking Heads)
092 Cities (Talking Heads)
093 Big Blue Plymouth [Eyes Wide Open] (Talking Heads)
094 Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads)
095 Mind (Talking Heads)
096 My Big Hands [Fall Through the Cracks] (Talking Heads)
097 Slink (Talking Heads)
098 Big Business (Talking Heads)
099 I Zimbra (Talking Heads)
100 talk (Talking Heads)
101 Swamp (Talking Heads)
102 Houses in Motion (Talking Heads)
103 What a Day That Was (Talking Heads)
104 Life During Wartime (Talking Heads)
105 Take Me to the River [Edit] (Talking Heads)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17467871/VA-1982USFstvlDay0105TlkngHeds_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/na32wDde

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/ZwfyWqiiVzgBJKz/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

US Festival '82, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 9-3-1982 - Day 1, Part 4: The B-52's

The fourth album from Day One of the 1982 US Festival is a set by the new wave band the B-52's.

A Rolling Stone Magazine article about the festival shortly after it happened had one paragraph about the B-52's set: "Onstage, the B-52's were learning the price of being popular. Their nonstop dance numbers turned the area in front of the stage into a man-made dust storm. By the time the band finished 'Hot Lava,' the white spotlight aimed at Fred Schneider looked for all the world like a car headlight cutting through heavy fog."

At the time of this festival, the band's most recent release was the E.P. "Mesopotamia." The band wanted to make that a full album, but the record company forced them to put it out as an E.P. before the album version could be finished. It was produced by none other than David Byrne, lead singer for the next act to perform on Day One of the festival, the Talking Heads. One song that was an outtake from the E.P., "Big Bird," was performed during the set. It would be included on the band's next album, "Whammy!" in 1983.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, unfortunately, many of the sets from the 1982 come from audience bootlegs. But I'm happy to say the B-52's set is an exception. That's because although no audio album of the set has ever been release, a DVD video release of the full set was in 2020, called "The B52's: Live at US Festival." So the audio here comes from that.

This album is 56 minutes long.

068 Planet Claire Intro [Instrumental] (B-52's)
069 Party Out of Bounds (B-52's)
070 Give Me Back My Man (B-52's)
071 Planet Claire (B-52's)
072 talk (B-52's)
073 Throw That Beat in the Garbage Can (B-52's)
074 talk (B-52's)
075 Lava (B-52's)
076 talk (B-52's)
077 Mesopotamia (B-52's)
078 6060-842 (B-52's)
079 talk (B-52's)
080 Big Bird (B-52's)
081 talk (B-52's)
082 52 Girls (B-52's)
083 talk (B-52's)
084 Dance This Mess Around (B-52's)
085 talk (B-52's)
086 Private Idaho (B-52's)
087 Rock Lobster (B-52's)
088 talk (B-52's)
089 Strobe Light (B-52's)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17467870/VA-1982USFstvlDay0104TB52s_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SxqZzCpR

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/UErSJH1aOKrQW6e/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

US Festival '82, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 9-3-1982 - Day 1, Part 3: Oingo Boingo

The third set presented here from Day One of the 1982 US Festival is performed by the new wave band Oingo Boingo.

If you've listened to my albums from the 1983 US Festival, you may have noticed they performed in that one as well. They were one of just a few musical acts to perform both festivals. I think the English Beat was the only other one, although Stevie Nicks played as part of Fleetwood Mac in the 1982 festival than as a solo act in the 1983 one.

Unfortunately, the 1983 Oingo Boingo set is a soundboard bootleg, while this one comes from an audience boot. So the sound quality here is worse. I did what I could to improve it, boosting the lead vocals relative to the instruments and removing most of the crowd noise throughout the songs while keeping the cheering at the ends of songs. But still, there was only so much I could do, so this sounds listenable, but a bit rough. However, there aren't that many live recordings of the band from this time period, when I would argue they were at their best, making this one of the better sounding ones.

A few months prior to this concert, Oingo Boingo released their second studio album, "Nothing to Fear." They would release a third album before the 1983 US Festival, so the set lists between the two sets are somewhat different.

This album is 51 minutes long.

050 talk (Oingo Boingo) (Oingo Boingo)
051 Ain't This the Life (Oingo Boingo)
052 What You See [Is What You Get] (Oingo Boingo)
053 Private Life (Oingo Boingo)
054 Little Girls (Oingo Boingo)
055 talk (Oingo Boingo)
056 Grey Matter (Oingo Boingo)
057 You Really Got Me (Oingo Boingo)
058 Wild Sex [In the Working Class] (Oingo Boingo)
059 Take the Whole Day Off (Oingo Boingo)
060 talk (Oingo Boingo)
061 Insects (Oingo Boingo)
062 talk (Oingo Boingo)
063 Capitalism (Oingo Boingo)
064 Nothing to Fear [But Fear Itself] (Oingo Boingo)
065 talk (Oingo Boingo)
066 On the Outside (Oingo Boingo)
067 Goodbye Goodbye (Oingo Boingo) 

https://www.upload.ee/files/17467868/VA-1982USFstvlDay0103OngoBngo_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/gvjCrLJg

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/CMtl1MnQOV2wzGP/file

The cover photo of the band's lead singer Danny Elfman comes from this exact concert.

US Festival '82, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 9-3-1982 - Day 1, Part 2: The English Beat

Next up for the 1982 US Festival is a set by the English Beat. (In Britain, they were simply known as "The Beat.")

By the time the English Beat started their set, the crowd had grown to an estimated 130,000 people. 

Dave Wakeling, one of the band's two lead singers, later recalled how their set began. "We could see this huge mass of people with three sets of PAs going off into the distance and then a hill, and people on them, and they were really far away. I'd never seen that many people in one place. My knees were shaking. So for the first couple songs I had to lock my legs to stop them from knocking."

Wakeling also had some later comments about Apple Computers co-founder Steve Wozniak funding the festival as a whole. "It was an interesting gesture for the time. Of all the Apple folk, Wozniak did the thing that made you go, 'Wow.' However, it’s not that difficult to do something fantastic if you’re willing to lose $20 million." (In actual fact, Wozniak didn't lost $20 on the 1982 festival though he might have lost that much on both the 1982 and 1983 festivals combined. But the amount of the loss has never been publicly revealed.)

The band had trouble with the considerable dust though, like most bands at the festival. Blockhead, the band's keyboardist, later said, "We finally got the crowd clapping along and dancing during one song, and we thought it was great. Then we saw the dust cloud heading toward us. And there I was, wearing contacts." At times, bands were hard to see clearly, due to all the dust.

Very little from either US Festival has been officially released so far, but the English Beat is a partial exception. In 2012, the official album "The English Beat: Live at the US Festival, '82 & '83" was released. But as you can guess from the title, it's a combination of both their sets into one album. None of the songs are repeated. So what I've done is combine sources. I used the official source as much as possible, then filled in whatever was missing with an audience bootleg. It so happens the first few songs are from the bootleg, but the vast majority of the rest are from the official source. I think only the songs "Ranking Full Stop," "Big Shot," "Get a Job - Stand Down Margaret," "Spar wid Me," and "Jackpot" are from the bootleg. I also rearranged the song order some, since the album had some out of order.

I did my best to improve the sound quality of the bootlegged songs, removing crowd noise during the songs (but not the applause at the ends), and boosting the lead vocals some. However, the sound quality of the officially released material is still noticeably better.

This album is 51 minutes long. 

By the way, note that the track numbering resumes where the numbering of the previous album left off, in case you want to hear all the sets from the first day of the festival together without pause.

025 talk (English Beat)
026 Ranking Full Stop (English Beat)
027 Big Shot (English Beat)
028 talk (English Beat)
029 Doors of Your Heart (English Beat)
030 talk (English Beat)
031 Twist and Crawl (English Beat)
032 talk (English Beat)
033 I Confess (English Beat)
034 talk (English Beat)
035 Get a Job - Stand Down Margaret (English Beat)
036 talk (English Beat)
037 Sugar and Stress (English Beat)
038 Spar wid Me (English Beat)
039 talk (English Beat)
040 Two Swords (English Beat)
041 talk (English Beat)
042 Hands Off... She's Mine (English Beat)
043 talk (English Beat)
044 Save It for Later (English Beat)
045 talk (English Beat)
046 Too Nice to Talk To (English Beat)
047 Mirror in the Bathroom (English Beat)
048 talk (English Beat)
049 Jackpot (English Beat)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17467869/VA-1982USFstvlDay0102TEnglshBet_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WW1mFcJL

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/a2Nx6F0xfcjqw71/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. Ranking Roger is closest to the camera. Dave Wakeling is second closest. I used the Krea AI program to improve the low-res image a bit.

US Festival '82, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 9-3-1982 - Day 1, Part 1: The Ramones

Back in August 2024, I posted the entire 1983 US Festival. Now, a few months later, I'm ready to post the 1982 US Festival. I know that's kind of backwards, I probably should have posted the 1982 one first. But I was able to find most of the music to the 1983 festival with worthy sound quality. I didn't think I'd be able to post the 1982 one at all. But after digging deeper, I was able to determine that I had enough to post the 1982 festival as well. I didn't get every major performer, but I did nearly all of them. And the sound quality isn't as good as the 1983 festival overall, but everything I'm posting here I think is worthy of hearing.

I already explained a lot about both US Festivals in general when I posted the 1983 one, but I'll repeat the general gist here too for those who are new to this. The two festivals would never have happened had it not been for Steve Wozniak, co-founder of the Apple Computer company. 1982 was very early days in the history of that company. Apple was just starting to really hit it big with their Apple II personal computer. But that was so successful that Wozniak suddenly found himself making tens of millions of dollars in profits. He decided to celebrate his success with a big rock music festival strongly reminiscent of the 1969 Woodstock Festival. 

He called it the "US Festival" because by 1982 the 1970s got the nickname "The Me Decade," and he was hopeful that the 1980s would be "The Us Decade." (Sadly, that didn't happen. In retrospect, I think one could call it the "Greed Is Good" Decade, after a famous quote in a 1980s movie.)

Wozniak took a "spare no expenses" approach to the festival. He basically took a year out of his life to get the 1982 festival going. He had a lot of time on his hands due to being on sabbatical from Apple after getting in a plane crash that left him shaken and gave him troubles forming long term memories for many months. I'm guessing the festivals would never have happened had it not been for his injuries from that crash. He linked up with Bill Graham, the top rock concert promoter of the era. Graham and his team did most of the hard work for the 1982 festival, but he butted heads with Wozniak enough so that he wasn't involved with the 1983 one.

Wozniak called the 1982 festival "the Super Bowl of rock." He spent about $13 million on the festival, most of that paying for the stars to perform. Here's a quote from Rolling Stone Magazine: "The biggest dollars were offered to acts that declined: the Who turned down an offer of $1 million; Bruce Springsteen passed on an offer of $850,000. But a reported $500,000 did the trick for Fleetwood Mac; Pat Benatar and Tom Petty... each picked up approximately $250,000, while the Police took home about $350,000."

Rolling Stone Magazine later commented about the 1982 festival as whole: "It wasn’t a wild lost weekend by any standards, or even a large-scale frat party, but a remarkably sedate soiree - a well-run, impeccably professional outing. To say that it was a triumph of logistics more than art is not to disparage the musicians who performed generally decent but unspectacular sets; it's just that most of the music was eclipsed by the fact that Wozniak and Graham pulled off this mammoth event as... well, as uneventfully as possible."

The audio was crisp and clear, thanks to 400,000 watts of speakers. Attendees could see the stage from anywhere, thanks to strategically placed massive, fifty-foot-high video screens. That's pretty standard at concerts today, but it was innovative at the time. Bob Barsotti, who was one of the chief organizers of the festival, later commented, "If you went to Watkins Glen or Woodstock and you were the 148,000th person, the chances that you would hear or see the show were actually pretty slim. But if you’re the last person at the US Festival, you could hear it, you could see it, you could buy some food at a concession stand; there was a toilet that wasn't overflowing, and there were water spigots to get clean water out of, and it was all within walking distance from where you were. That had never been done before." 

That's not to say there weren't problems, however. The main ones related to the location and the weather. The festival was held in an open area fifty-seven acres in size on the outskirts of Los Angeles, with the stage and all the facilities built just for this concert. (It would remain and be the site of many other concerts, including the 1983 US Festival.) The main problem though was that early September was just about the hottest time of the year there, and it got very, very hot. Each day had highs between 105 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit! Furthermore, the crowds kicked up dust, lots and lots of dust, which led to the nickname "The Dust Festival." Luckily, the organizers were prepared and had some methods to deal with the heat, mainly by frequently squirting the crowd with giant water hoses. But still, the heat almost certainly drained the energy of the crowd. There was a noticeably better crowd reaction after dark, when the heat eased up.

Here's the Wikipedia link to the US Festivals, but it doesn't say much, and it lumps the 1982 and 1983 ones together:

US Festival - Wikipedia 

This Rolling Stone Magazine article from shortly after the 1982 festival is a lot more informative:

Backstage at the Us Festival: It's Only Rock & Roll

Before I get to the music on this album, note that one of the few acts I couldn't find the music for was the festival's opening act, the Gang of Four. One can find video footage to part of one of their songs from the festival, but I couldn't find any more than that. I would very much like to hear the Gang of Four set, as I like their music a lot. But according to Rolling Stone Magazine, "the fans didn’t have a lot of patience with the Gang of Four, a quirky English band most of them hadn't heard of before."

So that takes us to the second act of the festival, the Ramones. The Ramones are very critically acclaimed as one of the pioneering musical acts for punk rock. However, their record sales were never big, and they didn't get a lot of radio airplay, so probably many in the crowd of 100,000 plus weren't familiar with their music. They were still close to their commercial peak, but that peak wasn't very high. Their best selling album in the U.S., 1980's "End of the Century," only reached Number 44 in the U.S. album chart.

Unfortunately, for many of the acts in the 1982 US Festival, my only source was an audience bootleg. That's the case here. Luckily, due to the high quality sound system, the bootleg sounds pretty good, compared to most. But still, an audience bootleg is a step down from a soundboard bootleg or FM radio broadcast, so be warned. The sound quality suffers a little more with the Ramones set, since their style of raucous rock and roll sounds muddy with less than ideal recordings.

That said, I did what I could to improve the sound quality. In this case, I found that boosting the lead vocals relative to the instruments (using the UVR5 audio editing program) helped some. I also found a video with better quality and used that, but it's only for about 21 minutes, slightly less than half of the performance.

The set definitely was raucous. The band played 19 songs during a fairly short set, so each song was only a little more than two minutes long. There was very little to no breaks between the songs as well. Pretty much all the songs are from their six albums released prior to this concert. Most songs were originals, but there were a couple of covers, like "California Sun" and "Surfin' Bird."

This album is 43 minutes long.

001 talk (Ramones)
002 Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio (Ramones)
003 Do You Wanna Dance (Ramones)
004 talk (Ramones)
005 Blitzkrieg Bop (Ramones)
006 talk (Ramones)
007 This Business Is Killing Me (Ramones)
008 All's Quiet on the Eastern Front (Ramones)
009 Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment (Ramones)
010 Rock 'n' Roll High School (Ramones)
011 I Wanna Be Sedated (Ramones)
012 Beat on the Brat (Ramones)
013 talk (Ramones)
014 The KKK Took My Baby Away (Ramones)
015 Here Today, Gone Tomorrow (Ramones)
016 Chinese Rocks (Ramones)
017 Rockaway Beach (Ramones)
018 Teenage Lobotomy (Ramones)
019 Surfin' Bird (Ramones)
020 Cretin Hop (Ramones)
021 California Sun (Ramones)
022 Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World (Ramones)
023 Pinhead (Ramones)
024 talk (Ramones)

NOTE: I'm posting three different download links for the first that. Don't expect that to last long. It's because I'm experimenting with a different download file service, Bestfile, after getting supposedly permanently banned from using Pixeldrain. In fact, Pixeldrain seems to be working for now, so I'm including that link, but who knows how long that'll last. Please try the Bestfile download link if you can and let me know how that goes. 

https://www.upload.ee/files/17467849/VA-1982USFstvlDay0101TRmnes_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/pshy4xzX

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/bYqBmlSu2wxmuwc/file

The cover photo shows the Ramones in concert at this very festival. However, the picture was rather low-res, so I used the Krea AI program to sharpen it up.

Covered: Sam Cooke: 1957-2009

It's time for more of my Covered series highlighting great songwriters. I generally want to look at songwriters who didn't have successful careers as performers, but sometimes I make exceptions, and this is one of those times. Sam Cooke is generally known as a great soul singer. For instance, in 2023, Rolling Stone Magazine listed him as number three in their list of the 200 best singers of all time. But I think his talent as a songwriter is far less known and appreciated.

To give the basics about him, I'll quote from his Wikipedia entry:

"Considered one of the most influential soul artists of all time, Cooke is commonly referred to as the 'King of Soul' for his distinctive vocals, pioneering contributions to the genre, and significance in popular music. During his eight-year career, Cooke released 29 singles that charted in the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, as well as 20 singles in the Top Ten of Billboard's Black Singles chart. In 1964, he was shot and killed by Bertha Franklin, a motel owner in Los Angeles with a prior criminal record."

I would add to that the fact that Cooke wrote most of his own hits. That was quite unusual back in the 1950s and early 1960s, before the likes of Bob Dylan and the Beatles changed the expectation that performers should write their own material. And particularly for soul music singers writing their own material continued to be rare for quite some time after that.

What hurts most of all is that it seemed Cooke still had a long career as a singer and songwriter ahead of him when he died in 1964 at the age of 33. In my opinion, he wrote his greatest song, "A Change Is Gonna Come," shortly before his death (it was released one month after he died), after being inspired by "Blowin' in the Wind" by Bob Dylan. It would have been great to see how someone as talented as him would have been influenced by all the musical changes that happened after 1964, but sadly, we'll never know. 

And what makes it worse is that his death seems very suspicious and unnecessary. Law enforcement never seriously investigated it. The woman mentioned above who supposedly shot and killed him, Bertha Franklin, was later convicted of murdering someone else in similar circumstances. The whole thing is really bizarre. I'm guessing he was lured into having sex with a young woman in order to rob him, and that woman who was in cahoots with Franklin, the motel owner. But something went wrong and he got murdered.

Here's the Wikipedia article about him, if you want to know more, including more details about his mysterious death:

Sam Cooke - Wikipedia

Anyway, since the focus here is on Sam Cooke the songwriter, I haven't included any songs performed by him. By the way, note that three songs he wrote, "Wonderful World," "Cupid," and "A Change Is Gonna Come," made it to Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the top 500 songs of all time.

Two songs here need a little explanation. "Sweet Soul Music" wasn't exactly written by Cooke. It was written by Otis Redding and Arthur Conley in 1967, and was a big hit. However, it drew so heavily from a Cooke song called "Yeah Man" that he was included in the songwriting credits (after a lawsuit forced the issue). Also, I generally keep to a rule of only including one version of each song. But I consider "A Change Is Gonna Come" such an incredible song that I couldn't resist including two versions of it.

This album is an hour and 12 minutes long.

01 You Send Me (Teresa Brewer)
02 Rome [Wasn't Built in a Day] (Johnnie Taylor)
03 Shake (Otis Redding)
04 [Ain't That] Good News (Supremes)
05 A Change Is Gonna Come (Aretha Franklin)
06 Soothe Me (Sam & Dave)
07 Sweet Soul Music (Arthur Conley)
08 Cupid (Johnny Nash)
09 Win Your Love (Lou Rawls)
10 Laughin' and Clownin' (Ray Charles)
11 Chain Gang (Persuasions)
12 Twistin' the Night Away (Rod Stewart)
13 Love You Most of All (Persuasions)
14 Bring It on Home to Me (Van Morrison)
15 You Were Made for Me (Luther Ingram)
16 Another Saturday Night (Cat Stevens)
17 Only Sixteen (Dr. Hook)
18 [What A] Wonderful World (Art Garfunkel with Paul Simon & James Taylor)
19 Good Times (Dan Seals)
20 Somebody Have Mercy (Otis Rush)
21 Having a Party (Rod Stewart)
22 That's It, I Quit, I'm Moving On (Adele)
23 A Change Is Gonna Come (Bettye LaVette)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17435669/COVRDSAMCOKE1957-2009atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7xcDcVKx

(NOTE: This could be my last new Pixeldrain link, since I happened to upload this album before I got banned from new uploads to their service.)

I'm not sure when or where the cover photo is from, but it's a rare case of an actual color photo from his short life, before color became the standard.

Another setback

Yesterday I posted a guest post from Mike Solof, an acoustic version of "Abbey Road" by the Beatles. Unfortunately, somehow that caused a copyright violation alert for Pixeldrain, one of the two file sharing services I've been using lately. And furthermore, it turns out Pixeldrain has a "zero tolerance" policy, which means if you ever have even one copyright violation that they notice, you are permanently banned from uploading anything to them ever again. 

That sucks, because I had been impressed with Pixeldrain. It seemed to be superior to the other file sharing service I'm using, upload.ee. However, even if I could get them to wipe this one violation, that wouldn't do me much good. I'm constantly skating on thin ice regarding copyright issues, so since they have that "zero tolerance" policy, I would be banned before long anyway. It's a wonder I lasted this long.

So, although it seems the existing Pixeldrain links still work, I'd like to find a different file sharing service for future posts, to give an option for people who can't get past the spam of upload.ee. (Although I should note that all you have to do is use the Brave browser, which is a superior browser anyway, and you shouldn't have that problem.) So if anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.

The Beatles - Uncovered, Volume 8 - The Acoustic Abbey Road (1969) (A MIKE SOLOF GUEST POST)

It's time for another guest post by Mike Solof. This one came out of a recent discussion I had with him. I told him that it's always been a wish of mine to have all acoustic versions of all the Beatles albums, much like the acoustic demos to Beatles made for the "White Album." Mike basically responded "Say no more!" and whipped up an acoustic version of the Beatles' classic 1969 album "Abbey Road." If you like this as much as I do, please encourage him to do others.

To make this, Mike used only the exact versions of the songs on the official album, no alternate versions. But interesting things are brought to light by stripping instruments away. If you want to know more, I suggest you read the PDF Mike included in the download file. He gives an explanation for what he did to every song. 

This album is 43 minutes long. Note the original "Abbey Road" is 47 minutes long. This is shorter mostly because several minutes at the end of "I Want You" weren't included, since there was nothing really acoustic about them.

01 Come Together (Beatles)
02 Something (Beatles)
03 Maxwell's Silver Hammer (Beatles)
04 Oh, Darling (Beatles)
05 Octopus's Garden (Beatles)
06 I Want You (Beatles)
07 Here Come the Sun (Beatles)
08 Because (Beatles)
09 You Never Give Me Your Money (Beatles)
10 Sun King - Mean Mr. Mustard (Beatles)
11 Polythene Pam - She Came In through the Bathroom Window (Beatles)
12 Golden Slumbers - Carry That Weight (Beatles)
13 The End (Beatles)
14 Her Majesty (Beatles)

https://spaces.hightail.com/receive/poTWzoJ41R

I came up with the idea of the album cover. Since this is an acoustic version of "Abbey Road," I thought it would be fun to change the iconic cover of the album to have the Beatles carrying acoustic guitars. Before, that just would have been a fun thought, but with the advances in AI art, it's actually doable. I used the free program Krea AI to make a bunch of variants of the cover, then picked the best bits. Then I used Photoshop to add in just those bits to the original cover.

And by the way, speaking of covers, if you open Mike's PDF, you'll see an alternate version of this with McCartney wearing giant sneakers. I made this as a joke after Mike jokingly complained about McCartney having bare feet. Mike liked the image so much that he wanted to use it for the actual cover, but cooler heads prevailed.

Covered: Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier & Eddie Holland, Volume 8: 1975-2012

Here, finally, is the last of eight albums in my Covered series highlighting the songwriting genius of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland, a.k.a. Holland-Dozier-Holland.

By 1975, the bulk of hits first written by Holland-Dozier-Holland were behind them. That was especially true since Lamont Dozier broke with the Holland brothers in 1973. Some lawsuits between them followed regarding splitting the profits from their record companies. However, despite these battles, the three of them remained friends and even occasionally wrote songs together after that.

But still, by 1975, generally speaking, the classic Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team was done. The Holland brothers generally still wrote songs together while Dozier went his own way. 

Weirdly, given that Holland-Dozier-Holland were caught in non-stop legal battles with Motown Records from about 1968 until the end of the 1970s, the Holland brothers wrote a lot of songs for Motown acts in the late 1970s. Apparently, the love of music overcame hard feelings. Dozier later commented, "The lawsuit was just our way of taking care of business that needed to be taken care of -just like [Motown owner] Berry Gordy had to take care of his business which resulted in the lawsuit. Business is business, and love is love." 

The first three songs here were written by the Holland brothers for the Motown acts Michael Jackson and the Supremes in 1975 and 1976. And "I Just Can't Walk Away" was a rare example of a new song written by the entire Holland-Dozier-Holland team after their 1973 falling out, and released by the Four Tops in 1983.

Most of the other songs here, however, were written by Dozier, either by himself or with other songwriters besides the Holland brothers. He had the most songwriting success by far after the 1970s. For instance, "Two Hearts," co-written by Dozier and Phil Collins, was a Number One hit for Collins in the U.S. in 1988. 

A couple of big hits here, though, weren't exactly willing collaborations. "Roll with It" was a Number One hit in the U.S. in 1988 for Steve Winwood. Originally, Winwood co-wrote it with a songwriter named Will Jennings. But it was so similar to the 1960s song "(I'm a) Roadrunner" written by Holland-Dozier-Holland that they were added to the songwriting credits. The exact same thing happened to the 1990 hit song "The Other Side" by Aerosmith. Holland-Dozier-Holland were added to the songwriting credits due to the similarity of that song to "Standing in the Shadows of Love," which they wrote for the Four Tops in 1966.

As far as business concerns went, the Holland-Dozier-Holland record company Invictus went out of business in 1977. That wasn't too surprising because that was around the time classic soul music went out of fashion, to be replaced by disco and then other musical trends. Note that Stax Records went out of business in 1975, and even Motown Records shrunk way down and then was sold off in the late 1980s.

However, after the decline of Invictus, Holland-Dozier-Holland carried on with a new record label, HDH Records and Productions. But while they did release some new music, that was more about managing the rights to their earlier successes. The three of them also reunited to write 22 new songs for a musical play called "The First Wives Club" in 2009. However, the play wasn't that well received, and it never made it to Broadway. 

The three of them remained friends until 2022, when Dozier passed away at the age of 81. As I write this in 2024, Brian Holland is still alive at the age of 83, and Eddie Holland is still alive at the age of 85. In 2021, Dozier released a memoir and the Holland brothers released one too. 

Shortly before his death, Dozier commented in an interview, "I feel like Eddie and Brian are my family. We have had great times and not so great times with each other, but all in all we have so much love for one another and nobody can ever change that. We wrote some incredible songs, and our catalog songs are like our children."

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 Just a Little Bit of You (Michael Jackson)
02 I’m Gonna Let My Heart Do the Walking (Supremes)
03 You’re My Driving Wheel (Supremes)
04 Going Back to My Roots (Richie Havens)
05 I Just Can't Walk Away (Four Tops)
06 Invisible (Alison Moyet)
07 Infidelity (Simply Red)
08 Two Hearts (Phil Collins)
09 Loco in Acapulco (Four Tops)
10 Roll with It (Steve Winwood)
11 The Other Side (Aerosmith)
12 Like I Do (For Real)
13 Spoiled (Joss Stone)
14 While You're Out Looking for Sugar (Joss Stone)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17429308/COVRDHOLLNDDZRHLLND1975-2012Vlum8_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/s9dsXwjG

The cover photo shows Holland-Dozier-Holland in 2003. From left to right, that's Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Brian Holland.

Covered: Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier & Eddie Holland, Volume 7: 1971-1975

This is the seventh out of eight albums showcasing the songwriting talent of the team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland, better known as Holland-Dozier-Holland.

Unfortunately, this album marks when things started to fall apart for this songwriter team. But even though that's the case, there's plenty of excellent music here.

As I mentioned in the write-up for Volume Six in this series, Holland-Dozier-Holland left Motown in 1968, where they'd experienced great success, and started their own record companies, Invictus Records and Hot Wax Records. They were somewhat successful for a time. They even had some big hits that weren't written or produced by Holland-Dozier-Holland, especially "Want Ads" by Honey Cone, which was a Number One hit in the U.S. in 1971. (I'm not including songs like that, in which none of the Holland-Dozier-Holland team was credited as songwriters.)

However, troubles grew as the 1970s went on. One really big blow was that Lamont Dozier broke up from the Holland Brothers in 1973. There were several reasons. One was that the Holland Brothers were very difficult to deal with, as even they would admit. They often got in shouting matches, especially with each other. Also, Dozier was upset with their decision making in running the record companies. In particular, they had an opportunity to sign Al Green around 1972, after he was already an established star, but decided against it. What a missed chance, to have Green sing Holland-Dozier-Holland songs, on top of all the hits he was writing for himself. Around that same time, they also turned down an opportunity to sign Parliament / Fundadelic long term, after releasing their first album in 1970. That was another tragic mistake, since that band would be very successful for the rest of the 1970s.

But on top of all that, Dozier was tired of just being a songwriter, producer, and record company executive. He felt he had it in him to be a successful performer too, especially since he'd dabbled with that in the early 1960s. He first tested the waters with some singles released as "Holland-Dozier" or "Holland and Dozier" - a partnership between himself and Brian Holland. When these proved relatively successful, he started putting out songs on his own. I've included two Holland and Dozier performances here, as well as two Dozier ones.

Unfortunately though, the songwriting success of Holland-Dozier-Holland was declining, whether they were writing together or alone. By about 1973, they'd had about ten years as one of the most successful hit making teams of all time, and that's a long run. It's very typical for musicians to have a "golden age" and then a long, slow decline, and that's what happened to them. One of their two major record labels, Hot Wax Records, went out of business in 1973. They transferred the remaining artists signed to that label to their other label, Invictus Records, but that one wasn't fated to last much longer either.

Most of the songs here are from artists signed to either Invictus or Hot Wax, but there are some exceptions. "(I Know) I'm Losing You" was a big hit for the Temptations in 1966. It was a songwriting collaboration between Eddie Holland and Norman Whitfield. I already included the Temptations version on my Covered series for Whitfield, so I've included a 1971 version by Rod Stewart here instead. "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" was also a big hit for the Temptations in 1966, and was also a collaboration between Eddie Holland and Whitfield. I also included that on the Covered series for Whitfield. So instead I've included a 1974 version by the Rolling Stones.

I already included the Marvin Gaye version of "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)" in the 1964 album in this series. But James Taylor had a very big hit with it in 1975, and did it in a drastically different way, so I decided to include it here as well. I think that song and "You Keep Me Hangin' On" are the only ones where I've included two versions in this series, even though many, many Holland-Dozier-Holland songs have been hits multiple times by different artists.

The Pearls were a British band not connected to Invictus or Hot Wax. But they had a hit in 1972 with a nice cover of "Third Finger, Left Hand," a Holland-Dozier-Holland written song that was originally a B-side for Martha and the Vandellas in 1967, so I included that here. Similarly, "Darling Baby" is a nice 1972 cover by Jackie Moore of a Holland-Dozier-Holland written song that was first released by the Elgins in 1965.

"Too Many Cooks (Spoil the Soup)" was first released by the band 100 Proof (Aged in Soul) in 1969, and was written by Holland-Dozier-Holland. It was only a minor hit at the time for the Hot Wax label. In 1973, Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones recorded a very good version of it (though it wasn't released until many years later, since he didn't have a solo career going at the time). Interestingly, it was produced by John Lennon. While Lennon didn't play on it, some other interesting musicians did, including Jack Bruce, Al Kooper, and Harry Nilsson.

"You're Gonna Need Me" by Dionne Warwick is another interesting case. Despite being stretched thin with their own record labels at the time, in 1973, Holland-Dozier-Holland took up the challenge of producing and writing all the songs for a Dionne Warwick album. This was the most successful song from that album.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Love Machine (McKinley Jackson & Politicians)
02 [I Know] I'm Losing You (Rod Stewart)
03 The Chairman of the Board (Chairmen of the Board)
04 Why Can't We Be Lovers (Holland-Dozier)
05 Darling Baby (Jackie Moore)
06 [The Day I Lost You Was] The Day I Found Myself (Honey Cone)
07 Third Finger, Left Hand (Pearls)
08 Working on a Building of Love (Chairmen of the Board)
09 Fish Ain't Bitin' (Lamont Dozier)
10 Too Many Cooks [Spoil the Soup] (Mick Jagger)
11 You're Gonna Need Me (Dionne Warwick)
12 New Breed Kinda Woman (Holland & Dozier)
13 Ain't Too Proud to Beg (Rolling Stones)
14 Breaking Out All Over (Lamont Dozier)
15 How Sweet It Is [To Be Loved by You] (James Taylor)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17429313/COVRDHOLLNDDZRHLLND1971-1975Vlum7_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ziVuK6F2

As with the cover of the previous album in this series, I've had to go far from the time period of the music in this album in order to find a decent picture of the songwriters. I don't know when or where this cover photo is from exactly, but judging from similar ones I've found, it could be from the 1990s or mayb early 2000s.

Covered: Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier & Eddie Holland, Volume 6: 1968-1970

This is the sixth volume of my Covered series that focuses on the songwriting genius of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland, better known as Holland-Dozier-Holland. Unfortunately, this is where things went off the rails a little bit, because this starts the time Holland-Dozier-Holland broke free from Motown.

For most of the 1960s, the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team and the Motown Records company was a match made in heaven. The hits kept coming seemingly endlessly. But there was trouble brewing. Berry Gordy, the head of Motown Records, was a business genius in some respects, but an idiot sometimes too. The Holland-Dozier-Holland team rightfully considered their songwriting and production to be a major part of Motown's success, and they wanted more creative control and better pay. Gordy, by contrast, could be a pretty ruthless business person, especially when it came to compensating songwriters, producers, and session musicians. So although I don't know the details, I'm guessing the Holland-Dozier-Holland team had good reason to feel undervalued.

Problems began in 1967. The team began a work slowdown while they tried to negotiate a better deal. When the deal didn't happen, they left Motown in early 1968. They immediately started their own record companies, Invictus Records and Hot Wax Records. Motown sued for breach of contract, and they counter-sued. The resulting legal battles would last years. They were still legally contracted to Motown's publishing company, so they couldn't release songs with their names credited as the songwriters without having to pay Motown. As a result, from 1968 until 1972, they usually credited their songs to Edith Wayne, who was a friend to the Holland brothers. 

The split between the team and Motown is a big tragedy for music, in my opinion. The three of them should have spent most of their working hours writing songs and producing them. Instead, a big chunk of their time had to go to fighting legal battles, and another big chunk had to go to setting up and then running their new record labels. For instance, they put out almost no new music in 1968, since leaving Motown and starting new record companies took up almost all their time. 

The three of them simply wore too many hats in their new roles. Keep in mind that when they wrote new songs, they didn't have any musical acts to perform them. They also had to be talent scouts and find the new acts for their companies. They found some good ones, like Freda Payne, the Chairmen of the Board, Honey Cone, and the like. But at Motown they had been writing songs for great, legendary acts like the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, and more. I don't blame them for leaving a bad deal with Motown, but one can only imagine all the great music that never came to be had they stayed there.

The first five songs, plus track 15, were still performed by Motown acts. That's because Motown didn't suddenly cease recording Holland-Dozier-Holland songs when they left. Motown had other talented songwriters, and I've highlighted many of them with my various Covered albums, but Holland-Dozier-Holland was the clear top songwriting entity, and Motown never really found an adequate replacement. So Motown kept releasing songs written by them until they exhausted all the good ones they still had the legal rights to.

Up until this album, I was posting the songs in the exact order of singles releases. From this album to the end of the series, I'm just posting by the year of release since it would be much more difficult trying to figure out the exact release dates. 

Besides, note the pace of hit singles slowed quite a bit. Each of the previous four albums in this series dealt with one year each, whereas this one deals with three years. There are still lots of great songs here. In fact, "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne even made Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the top 500 songs of all time. But there were lots of singles releases that were merely good. So I've been more selective to keep the quality level as high as it was for the Motown years. 

Holland-Dozier-Holland still had lots more music in them after this. Two more albums will follow before this series is over.

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 Forever Came Today (Supremes)
02 Gotta See Jane (R. Dean Taylor)
03 Leave It in the Hands of Love (Martha & the Vandellas)
04 Bring Back the Love (Monitors)
05 I'm in a Different World (Four Tops)
06 The Unhooked Generation (Freda Payne)
07 Crumbs Off the Table (Glass House)
08 Girls It Ain't Easy (Honey Cone)
09 Give Me Just a Little More Time (Chairmen of the Board)
10 Deeper and Deeper (Freda Payne)
11 Everything's Tuesday (Chairmen of the Board)
12 Westbound No. 9 (Flaming Ember)
13 [You've Got Me] Dangling on a String (Chairmen of the Board)
14 Band of Gold (Freda Payne)
15 Without the One You Love (Supremes & the Four Tops)
16 Hanging On to a Memory (Chairmen of the Board)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17410457/COVRDHOLLNDDZRHLLND1968-1970Vlum6_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/yfPbAfjT

Unfortunately, I ran out of good photos of the Holland-Dozier-Holland team when they were young. The cover photo here is from 1988, probably from some awards ceremony.

Covered: Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier & Eddie Holland, Volume 5: 1967

The Motown magic continues with another volume of the Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland songwriting team, better known as Holland-Dozier-Holland. Once again, they came up so many excellent songs that this volume in the Covered series only deals with a single year, 1967.

1967 was a year of great change in rock music, with psychedelia being all the range, and songs getting more sophisticated and diverse. But Holland-Dozier-Holland had a wildly successful formula, and they didn't change it much at all. Their thing was a poppy version of soul music, and I read an interview with them in which they said they didn't have much interest in rock music. But despite all the changing musical trends, the hits kept on coming.

Again, I managed to order the songs by the dates of the singles releases, more or less. I had to guesstimate with some songs that were only album tracks, or weren't Motown releases.

Speaking on Motown, as expected, the vast majority of songs here were put out on the Motown label. But there are a couple of exceptions. "Too Many Fish in the Sea" was a hit for the Marvelettes in 1964. It was a rare case in which the song was written by Norman Whitfield and Eddie Holland. I already have the Marvelettes version in my Covered series for Whitfield. So instead I used a version here by Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, a non-Motown band. I also decided to include "Your Keep Me Hangin' On" by Vanilla Fudge, even though I included the original hit version by the Supremes in the previous volume in this series. That's because both versions were massive hits, and yet are drastically different from each other. I like both versions quite a lot, as they bring out different aspects of the song.

This volume, unfortunately, is basically the end of Holland-Dozier-Holland at Motown Records. But it was far from the end for them, as they set up their own record companies and kept coming up with hit after hit. All that shall be explained in the next volume in this series.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Love Is Here and Now You're Gone (Supremes)
02 Jimmy Mack (Martha & the Vandellas)
03 Bernadette (Four Tops)
04 The Happening (Supremes)
05 There's a Ghost in My House (R. Dean Taylor)
06 All I Need (Temptations)
07 Too Many Fish in the Sea - Three Little Fishes (Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels)
08 7 Rooms of Gloom (Four Tops)
09 Everybody Needs Love (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
10 You Keep Me Hangin' On (Vanilla Fudge)
11 I'll Turn to Stone (Four Tops)
12 Reflections (Supremes)
13 Going Down for the Third Time (Supremes)
14 [Loneliness Made Me Realize] It's You that I Need (Temptations)
15 In and Out of Love (Supremes)
16 You Keep Running Away (Four Tops)
17 I Got a Feeling (Barbara Randolph)
18 Whisper You Love Me Boy (Chris Clark)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17429370/COVRDHOLLNDDZRHLLND1967Vlum5_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qLpjdSbN

The cover image is one where I had to create something out of very little. I was lacking having enough photos of Holland-Dozier-Holland together, so in this case I had to make one. I found three photos of them individually, probably all from the early 1970s. That's not too close to 1967, I know, but it was the best I could do. Then I colorized them using the Palette program, since all three were in black and white. Then I put them all together in Photoshop. Finally, I ran the merged image through Krea AI, which helped give more of a consistent look to the whole thing. It's still not ideal, but at least it's something.

Covered: Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier & Eddie Holland, Volume 4: 1966

This is the fourth volume highlighting the unstoppable hit making machine that was the songwriting team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland (usually known as just Holland-Dozier-Holland). This volume deals with just the year 1966. If you're not listening to these albums, you're really missing out.

If anything, Holland-Dozier-Holland was even more successful in 1966 than any previous year. Consider that the previous three volumes in this series were from 40 to 44 minutes long, whereas this one is an hour long. They still were the top songwriting entity for Motown Records, writing and producing hits for pretty much all of Motown's top acts this year. After "only" having two songs in Rolling Stone Magazine's top 500 songs of all time, they had three in 1966: "Reach Out, I'll Be There" by the Four Tops, "You Keep Me Hangin' On" by the Supremes, and "Standing in the Shadows of Love" by the Four Tops. 

Once again, I tried my best to list the songs by the exact order of the single releases. However, I had to guesstimate some, especially the few songs that were mere album tracks instead of singles. Those are songs I generally consider ones that should have been hits, but were overlooked or not properly promoted. Examples of those would include "Any Girl in Love (Knows What I'm Going Through)" by the Supremes and "Suspicion" by the Originals.

Generally speaking, these are all the original versions of each song. Note though that "Greetings (This Is Uncle Sam)" was originally a minor hit for the band the Valadiers in 1961. Brian Holland wrote the song with some others. But it was a bigger hit in 1966 by the Monitors, when it had more relevance due to the increasingly bloody Vietnam War.

"Everybody Needs Love" by Mary Wells is another oddity. Wells left Motown in 1964, and didn't have much success with other record companies. This song was recorded by Wells in 1964 while she was still with Motown, but wasn't officially released until it came out on a Motown various artists collection in 1966.

This album is an hour long.

01 Put Yourself in My Place (Chris Clark)
02 Greetings [This Is Uncle Sam] (Monitors)
03 Shake Me, Wake Me [When It's Over] (Four Tops)
04 This Old Heart of Mine [Is Weak for You] (Isley Brothers)
05 Helpless (Kim Weston)
06 [I'm a] Road Runner (Jr. Walker & the All Stars)
07 Love Is like an Itching in My Heart (Supremes)
08 I Guess I'll Always Love You (Isley Brothers)
09 You Can't Hurry Love (Supremes)
10 Any Girl in Love [Knows What I'm Going Through] (Supremes)
11 Little Darling [I Need You] (Marvin Gaye)
12 Reach Out, I'll Be There (Four Tops)
13 Function at the Junction (Shorty Long)
14 Everybody Needs Love (Mary Wells)
15 Heaven Must Have Sent You (Elgins)
16 Love's Gone Bad (Chris Clark)
17 I'm Ready for Love (Martha & the Vandellas)
18 You Keep Me Hangin' On (Supremes)
19 Suspicion (Originals)
20 [Come Round Here] I'm the One You Need (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
21 Standing in the Shadows of Love (Four Tops)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17402924/COVRDHOLLNDDZRHLLND1966Vlum4_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Yi2mc7hd

The cover image is from around 1970 apparently. That's probably right, given that the two Holland brothers grew goatees which weren't there on any pictures of them from the 1960s. The original of the image was in black and white, but I converted it using the Palette and Photoshop programs. Then I improved the image detail with the Krea AI program.

Covered: Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier & Eddie Holland, Volume 3: 1965

The non-stop hits keep on coming with Volume Three of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland (usually known as Holland-Dozier-Holland) for my Covered series on songwriters. All the songs in this volume were released in 1965.

In 1965, Holland-Dozier-Holland were in a hit making groove. Look at how many of the songs here were big hits that still get played on the radio. 

Their accomplishment is even more impressive considering that they not only wrote all these songs, they produced nearly all of them too. In case you're curious, I found a 2022 with all three of them were they explained their successful formula. Here are some excerpts.

Brian Holland: "Lamont and I would start writing the songs on piano. Eddie would also be there early on, and we would discuss what the melody and structure should be. Lamont and I would then start recording the tracks, which would be the actual tracks for the master (not just demo tracks)."

Lamont Dozier: "In the recording studio, Brian and I would split the room. Brian would work with the drummer (usually Benny Benjamin). I would get with the keyboard players (usually Earl Van Dyke or Joe Hunter) and show them how to play the track and chords. I would also give the bass lines to James Jamerson, then he would inject his own bass ideas to make it stronger. We wanted to guide the musicians, so we could create our own sound. We would never let the band just go in and play the chord sheets. We were very focused on what we had in mind for these productions."

Brian Holland: "We would record the full track, which would include the melody with a scratch vocal, without lyrics yet. Although sometimes, we would have the title, and some of the chorus lyrics. Then we would give the track to Eddie, who would go off and write the lyrics."

Eddie Holland: "When I got the track, I would spend many days writing. I would lock myself away. I had a townhouse in Detroit; I would close all the curtains and shades, and there was no telephone. I didn’t go out much; most of my life was devoted to writing lyrics."

So basically, together with the Motown backing band later nicknamed the Funk Brothers, they did it all. The only thing the star performer would have to do is come in and sing the lead vocals, helped by the guide vocals already done by Holland-Dozier-Holland. Some groups, like the Temptations, would often do their own backing vocals, but in most cases that was done already as part of the Holland-Dozier-Holland production too, by a little known female trio called the Andantes. Incredibly, they sang backing vocals on about 20,000 songs, which was about 90 percent of all the songs recorded for the Motown label! 

Virtually all the songs here are the original hit versions by Motown artists. As with the previous volumes, I did my best to order the songs by their release dates, though I had to guess for a few of them.

There is one non-Motown version here though, and that's "1 2 3" by Len Berry. This was a big hit originally written by Berry and two others. But it turns out the song had a great similarity to the song "Ask Any Girl," a B-side for the Supremes. So after two years of lawsuits, Holland-Dozier-Holland were added to the songwriting credits and got a share of all the royalties.

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 Stop, In the Name of Love (Supremes)
02 Beauty Is Only Skin Deep (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
03 Nowhere to Run (Martha & the Vandellas)
04 Back in My Arms Again (Supremes)
05 I Can't Help Myself [Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch] (Four Tops)
06 Lonely, Lonely Girl Am I (Velvelettes)
07 It's the Same Old Song (Four Tops)
08 Mother Dear (Supremes)
09 Nothing but Heartaches (Supremes)
10 1 2 3 (Len Barry)
11 Take Me in Your Arms [Rock Me a Little While] (Kim Weston)
12 Love [Makes Me Do Foolish Things] (Martha & the Vandellas)
13 I Hear a Symphony (Supremes)
14 Something about You (Four Tops)
15 My World Is Empty without You (Supremes)
16 Everything Is Good about You (Supremes)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17402922/COVRDHOLLNDDZRHLLND1965Vlum3_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cCmxZH6k

The cover photo is almost certainly from the same photo session as the photo I used for the 1964 album in this series. The three of them look to be wearing the exact same clothes, and were around a piano in both. But when I colorized this one with the help of the Palette program, I picked different colors for their clothes, so it wouldn't look so similar. I also moved them a bit in Photoshop so they'd be closer together. Finally, I ran the image through the Krea AI program to improve the detail level.

Covered: Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier & Eddie Holland, Volume 2: 1964

Earlier today, I posted Volume One of my Covered songwriting series for the Motown team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland, commonly referred to as Holland-Dozier-Holland. I explained quite a bit about them in my write-up for that volume, so I suggest you read that to learn more. They were such successful hit makers that this and the next three volumes in the series will cover just one year. This one showcases their hits from 1964.

As you can see from all the classic songs in the song list, Holland-Dozier-Holland were really hitting their stride in 1964. Three of the songs here made it to Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the top 500 songs of all time: "Where Did Our Love Go," "Baby I Need Your Loving," and "Baby Love." I'm surprised "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)" didn't make that list too.

As with most of the other albums in this series, I went the extra mile, and tried to order the songs chronologically not just by year of release, as I usually do with Covered albums, but also putting them in the exact order they were released. I couldn't manage that for all the songs, because a few were album tracks where I couldn't accurately figure out release dates.

Pretty much all the versions here are the original hit versions, by Motown artists. However, "Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)" is by the Action, a non-Motown band from Britain. 

Also, note that two of the songs here, "Just Ain't Enough Love" and "Candy to Me," were performed by Eddie Holland, a member of Holland-Dozier-Holland. As I mentioned in Volume One, he had some early singles, including a hit in 1961. But this was the last gasp of his 1964 recording career, since he suffered from stage fright and found being a songwriter and producer worked much better for him. 

This album is 40 minutes long.

01 Live Wire (Martha & the Vandellas)
02 Run, Run, Run (Supremes)
03 You're a Wonderful One (Marvin Gaye)
04 In My Lonely Room (Martha & the Vandellas)
05 Just Ain't Enough Love (Eddie Holland)
06 The Girl's Alright with Me (Temptations)
07 Where Did Our Love Go (Supremes)
08 Baby I Need Your Loving (Four Tops)
09 Candy to Me (Eddie Holland)
10 Girl [Why You Wanna Make Me Blue] (Action)
11 Baby Don't You Do It [Don't Do It] (Marvin Gaye)
12 Baby Love (Supremes)
13 Come See about Me (Supremes)
14 How Sweet It Is [To Be Loved by You] (Marvin Gaye)
15 He Was Really Sayin' Somethin' (Velvelettes)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17402266/COVRDHOLLNDDZRHLLND1964Vlum2_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/iuhYh4g8

Of all the cover photos I made for this series, this is probably the one I manipulated the least. Unlike most of the others, the original had them in these exact poses. But it was in black and white, so I colorized it with the help of the Palette and Photoshop programs. I also ran it through the Krea AI program to help with the detail. I don't know when the photo was taken, but I'm guessing it was in the mid-1960s, based on the short haircuts and clothing styles and such.

Covered: Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier & Eddie Holland, Volume 1: 1961-1963

This has been a long time coming. I consider the songwriting team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland - typically just referred to as Holland-Dozier-Holland, one of the greatest songwriting entities of all time, right up there with the likes of Lennon-McCartney and Bob Dylan. They wrote so many worthy songs that I've made eight albums for my Covered songwriter series. I believe that's the most so far, beating out the songwriting duo of Gerry Goffin & Carole King with six albums.

If you think about the dozens and dozens of Motown classic hits from the 1960s, Holland-Dozier-Holland wrote most of them. Unfortunately, they left the Motown company in 1968 due to a disagreement about their role and how much they should be paid. But they formed their own record companies and continued to write many hits well into the 1970s. Their collaboration slowly fell apart that decade, but they still had some individual successes well after the 1970s, even into the 2000s.

It's hard to even fathom just how successful the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team was. They wrote about 400 songs together. About 130 of those were hits on the U.S. pop charts. And that doesn't even include more hits that weren't written by all three of them. About 40 of their hits reached Number One on either the pop or soul charts. Just for the Supremes, they wrote ten Number One pop hits! Also, nine of their songs have made it to Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the top 500 songs of all time. I'm sure that's more than anyone else I've included in my Covered series so far.

Eddie and Brian Holland are brothers, with Eddie being two years older. As I write this in 2024, both of them are still alive and are in their 1980s. Lamont Dozier died in 2022 at the age of 81. All three of them were born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. Brian Holland was the first to start a musical career, putting out a solo single in 1958. He didn't have much success at first, but that single was produced by Barry Gordy, the future owner of Motown Records, and he gradually got more involved with that company, which was founded in 1959. 

Brian brought his brother Eddie into the Motown company. At first, Eddie tried to have success as a performer. He did have a hit in 1961 with the song "Jamie," which reached Number 30 on the U.S. singles chart. He put out a steady stream of singles from 1958 until 1964, with a couple more minor hits. One of them, "Leaving Here," is included here. But he suffered from stage fright and ended his career as a performer in 1964. He and his brother decided they preferred songwriting and producing.

The first really big success any of these three songwriters had was with the song "Please Mr. Postman." There were no less than five songwriters credited for the song, but one of them was Brian Holland. The song was a huge success for the Motown act the Marvelettes, reaching Number One on the U.S. singles chart in 1961. 

Shortly after that, Lamont Dozier started to enter the picture. He had been a member of various bands as far back as 1957. He even released three singles in 1961 under the name "LaMont Anthony." But in 1962, he joined the Motown company and soon started working with the Holland brothers, both writing and producing songs.

I found a 2022 interview with Holland-Dozier-Holland that took place shortly before Dozier died that year. In it, they described how their songwriting partnership worked. Brian Holland explained, "I mainly wrote the melodies and tracks with Lamont, and Eddie wrote the majority of the lyrics. Occasionally, Lamont and I would also come up with lyric ideas." 

Eddie Holland further explained, "Early on, Brian and Lamont were already writing together, and they were very prolific at writing melodies and producing tracks. It was the lyric writing which slowed them down. So I suggested that I join the team as a lyricist, so that their production output would be much higher. With the three of us, we were able to finish many songs and produce more projects."

Here's the Wikipedia entry for the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team. You can also find entries for each of them individually, but those don't say much:

Holland–Dozier–Holland - Wikipedia

Some of the first songs on this album were written by only one or two members of this threesome, often with others. The first song here written by all three was "Come and Get These Memories," a hit for Martha and the Vandellas in 1963. Shortly thereafter, the three of them composed "(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave," which was a massive hit by Martha and the Vandellas later in 1963, and has been a hit multiple times since then.

From that point on, it was like they could do no wrong. They soon became the top songwriting entity for Motown, and were usually assigned to write songs for the biggest stars signed to that label. Lamont Dozier later recalled, "It was just an awesome time (back at Motown). We had a huge amount of success. During this period, whatever we touched seemed to go straight into the Top 10. It was as if we stumbled onto the best door on 'The Price Is Right,' where the prizes just keep on coming and coming!"

Normally with albums in this series, I sort the songs chronologically, but loosely, based on the year of release. But because the Holland-Dozier-Holland team had so many hits one after another, I've strived to order them even more accurately, so you can see the exact order of their hits. I've only made occasional exceptions to that. For instance, I bumped up "Come and Get These Memories" a bit so there wouldn't be four Marvelettes songs in a row.

This album is 40 minutes long.

01 Please Mr. Postman (Marvelettes)
02 Playboy (Marvelettes)
03 Someday, Someway (Marvelettes)
06 Come and Get These Memories (Martha & the Vandellas)
04 Strange I Know (Marvelettes)
07 [Love Is Like A] Heat Wave (Martha & the Vandellas)
05 Locking Up My Heart (Marvelettes)
08 Mickey's Monkey (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
09 You Lost the Sweetest Boy (Mary Wells)
10 Can I Get a Witness (Marvin Gaye)
11 I Gotta Dance to Keep from Crying (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
12 Quicksand (Martha & the Vandellas)
13 When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes (Supremes)
14 A Love like Yours [Don't Come Knocking Everyday] (Martha & the Vandellas)
15 Leaving Here (Eddie Holland)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17402265/COVRDHOLLNDDZRHLLND1961-1963Vlum1_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cDyiGUhr

One reason I didn't post Holland-Dozier-Holland albums in my Covered series prior to this is I didn't think I could make worthy album covers. But recently with my discovery of the Krea AI program, I can finally make the covers I wanted. The problem is there simply aren't that many photos of these three songwriters, either solo or together, until they started appearing at awards ceremonies when they had reached old age. For this cover, I couldn't find any good photos of them from 1961 to 1963. Instead, I used a photo of Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier together in 1965, plus another photo of Eddie Holland from that time period. Both photos were in black and white, so I used the Palette program to convert them to color. Then, using Photoshop, I rearranged their bodies so their heads were closer and at the same height level. Finally, I used the Krea AI program to increase the image detail and quality.

From right to left, that's Eddie Holland, Brian Holland, and Lamont Dozier.

Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John - Tokyo Dome, Tokyo, Japan, 11-2-1988

In the late 1980s, lead guitar legends Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler performed many concerts together. They actually first played in concert together in 1985 while Mark Knopfler was still leading his band Dire Straits. But then Dire Straits was disbanded for a few years, and Knopfler didn't had a band until the Notting Hillbillies in 1990 and then a Dire Straits reunion in 1991. In 1987 and 1988 especially, the two of them did entire tours together. They were basically Eric Clapton concerts, but with Knopfler adding lead guitar to every song and singing one or two songs as lead vocalist.

Things got even more interesting when their joint tour stopped by Japan in 1988. Elton John joined them there, and the three of them headlined four concerts together. One of them, in Tokyo, was broadcast on TV and radio in Japan only. This got bootlegged, naturally, and it makes for an excellent recording, with soundboard quality sound. That's what this is here.

The first portion of the concert only featured Clapton and Knopfler. Clapton sang most of the songs, but one of his female backing vocalists sang lead on "Can't Find My Way Home" and Knopfler sang lead on his huge Dire Straits hit "Money for Nothing." Then Elton John joined them for the rest of the concert. Most of the songs from that point on were John's hits, but Clapton sang three more, and Knopfler did one more Dire Straits song, "Solid Rock." John naturally played keyboards even on the songs he didn't sing.

So all in all this is a really nice and very rare collaboration between three rock superstars. It wasn't the last time the three of them did this, however. They also played together during the Knebworth Festival in 1990. I have posted that already, which you can find here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2024/05/knebworth-festival-knebworth-house_50.html

This album is two hours and 13 minutes long.

01 Crossroads (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
02 White Room (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
03 I Shot the Sheriff (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
04 Lay Down Sally (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
05 Wonderful Tonight (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
06 Tearing Us Apart (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
07 After Midnight (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
08 Can't Find My Way Home (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
09 Money for Nothing [Edit] (Eric Clapton & Mark Knopfler)
10 Candle in the Wind (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
11 I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
12 I Don't Wanna Go On with You like That (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
13 I'm Still Standing (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
14 Daniel (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
15 talk (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
16 Cocaine (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
17 Layla (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
18 Solid Rock (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
19 Saturday Night's Alright [For Fighting] (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
20 Sunshine of Your Love (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
21 Percussion Solo (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
22 Sunshine of Your Love (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)

https://www.imagenetz.de/e2iJV

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/873KARqh

The cover image was very hard for me to make. It is of this exact concert, right after the end of the final song of the encore. However, I couldn't find any photos of them together, so I had to resort to taking a screenshot from a video of this concert I found on YouTube. But the video was so low-res and blurry that I had to rewatch that section of the video to even figure out Knopfler was holding something (a towel) in his hands. 

The reason this cover looks like it does is due to the free Krea AI program. I ran the screenshot through that program, giving prompts identifying who was in the image. It was a little bit better, but not much. Then I ran that version through the program. Again, some improvement, but still rough. I did it four times in all! Finally, it ended up like this. To show you how drastically things changed, here's the screenshot I started from. Frankly, I'm kind of amazed at what the AI technology is capable of. Yeah, there's a lot of change there, it's not entirely true to reality, but I think the final version looks a hell of a lot better than the screenshot does.

Covered: Johnny Bristol: 1966-1974

It's back to the Covered series about great songwriters, and it's back also to shining a light on another little known songwriter for the Motown sound. This time, it's Johnny Bristol.

Bristol's music career began as part of a soul duo called Johnny and Jackey in the late 1950s, kind of an early version of Sam and Dave. They didn't have much success. But one of their singles, from 1961, was the song "Someday We'll Be Together," co-written by Bristol. It was later redone by the Supremes in 1969 and was a Number One hit in the U.S. by them.

The record company Bristol was working for was taken over by Motown Records, so he found himself working for the Motown hit machine. His soul duo had died out by that time. Instead, the leaders of Motown decided he was more valuable as a songwriter instead of a performer. Virtually all of the songs on this album are from his time at Motown. He especially developed a good relationship with Jr. Walker and the All Stars, writing many songs for them.

But his connection with Motown ended around the same time it did with so many others, in the early 1970s, when it almost seemed as if the company was willfully trying to lose most of their talent, as it (foolishly) shifted from Detroit to Los Angeles and from music to movies and TV shows. He left the company in 1973, in part due to frustration that he was never given a chance to be a performer as well as a songwriter.

Unlike many who left, he found a lot of success working for another record company. He very quickly turned into a star, thanks to his performance of one of his songs, "Hang In There Baby." It reached the Top Ten in the U.S., and Number Three in Britain. He had a series of smaller hits through the rest of the 1970s. However, I've only included his one big solo hit here, because this has a focus on his songwriting, not his performances. Besides, in my opinion, most of his solo singles were generic and not that memorable.

He also continued to write hits for others. His biggest success outside of Motown was "Love Me for a Reason," which hit Number One in Britain for the Osmonds in 1974. But he was more successful as a producer, producing albums by Tom Jones, Boz Scaggs, Jerry Butler, and many others.

Unfortunately, also following a pattern with other Motown songwriters, his successes petered out by the end of the 1970s, due to changing musical trends. He died in 2004 at the age of 65.

Here's his Wikipedia entry, if you want to know more:

Johnny Bristol - Wikipedia

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 I Can't Believe You Love Me (Tammi Terrell)
02 These Things Will Keep Me Loving You (Velvelettes)
03 Pucker Up Buttercup (Jr. Walker & the All-Stars)
04 If I Could Build My Whole World Around You (Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell)
05 What Does It Take [To Win Your Love] (Jr. Walker & the All-Stars)
06 My Whole World Ended [The Moment You Left Me] (David Ruffin)
07 Someday We'll Be Together (Supremes)
08 Twenty-Five Miles (Edwin Starr)
09 Gotta Hold on to This Feeling (Jr. Walker & the All-Stars)
10 What Is a Man (Four Tops)
11 Take Me Girl, I’m Ready (Jr. Walker & the All-Stars)
12 I Don't Want to Do Wrong (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
13 Way Back Home (Jr. Walker & the All-Stars)
14 Daddy Could Swear, I Declare (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
15 Hang On in There Baby (Johnny Bristol)
16 Love Me for a Reason (Osmonds)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17379501/COVRDJOHNNYBRSTL1966-1974BstOf_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ih89BWNi

I found a few decent photos of Bristol from the 1970s, thanks to him having a big hit single then. The photo on the cover is from 1975. I improved it using the Krea AI program.

The Stills-Young Band (Stephen Stills & Neil Young) - Boston Garden, Boston, MA, 6-26-1976

This year, 2024, Neil Young released his third big box set of his music career, "Archives, Volume 3." One thing I was looking forward to from this was a concert album from his 1976 tour with Stephen Stills. But there was nothing from it whatsoever. And even though his box sets have gathered up virtually all his previously unreleased original songs, there was one nice original song of his played on that tour, "Evening Coconut," that remains unreleased.

The reason I was looking for such a live album is because there are no known FM radio or soundboard recordings from the 1976 Stills and Young tour. But once I found out that tour had been skipped for the box set, I went looking for the best sounding bootleg from the tour, figuring we're probably never going to get anything better now. I found this concert from Boston.

But if you're a stickler for excellent sound quality, never fear. Although this is an audience boot, I edited the songs, and now it sounds just as good as a typical soundboard from that era. Really. First off, it sounded pretty darn good for an audience boot, heads above all the other concert bootlegs from the tour that get traded. But then I edited all the songs with the MVSEP program to remove a low constant level of crowd noise from all but the parts where you'd find crowd noise on a soundboard, especially at the ends of songs. Then I boosted the lead vocals generally for all the songs, and adjusted the mix. I'm proud of the result.

I even took extra steps for a couple of songs. For the songs "Black Queen" and "4+20," Stills either forgot some lyrics or had his mouth too far from the microphone for them to be heard. It was only about ten seconds for each song, but I found it kind of annoying. So I went to the next best bootleg from this tour, then pasted in just those few seconds of missing singing for each song. That's why those two have ["Edit"] in their titles.

Now, I feel the need to say a little bit about this tour in general. There's a long and tangled story behind the creation of the album they made for this tour to support, called "Long May You Run." It involved Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) getting back together, briefly, and then breaking apart again, leaving bad feelings all around. There's a good summary of the whole thing here, including information about this tour:

Long May You Run - Wikipedia

Here's my summary about the tour part. Stills and Young were together in Buffalo Springfield, and then again in CSNY. They often butted heads, but they greatly enjoyed their musical collaboration through all their problems. To this day, in 2024, they apparently remain very close friends. In 1976 though, Young was flying high creatively, writing tons of excellent new songs. By contrast, Stills was struggling somewhat. Once the tour started, Young got rave reviews while Stills was criticized. Stills didn't take this well. He started drinking heavily and acting like an asshole. 

After 19 concerts, Young quit the tour unexpectedly. He simply sent Stills a telegram that read, in full: "Dear Stephen, funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach. Neil." That seems like a dick move to me, but it fits with Young's behavior over the years, in which he follows his muse, despite often leaving other people working with him frustrated. Stills was forced to finish the tour on his own.

Given all that, one might expect Young to sound great here and Stills terrible. I don't think that's the case at all. I think they both sound very good. It turns out this was only the third concert of the tour, so probably they both were still enthusiastic and the bad reviews and problems hadn't happened yet.

If you're a fan of the music of Young, or Stills, or both, you really should give this a listen. And by the way, in a sense Stills got the last laugh over the next year, because he pulled himself together, reunited with Crosby and Nash, and put out a very good Crosby, Stills and Nash album in 1977 that outsold what Young was doing at the time. And Stills and Young patched up their friendship. For instance, note that I've posted a concert they did as a duo in 2015. You can find that one here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/04/stephen-stills-neil-young-light-up.html

This album is an hour and 51 minutes long.

01 Love the One You're With (Stills-Young Band)
02 talk (Stills-Young Band)
03 The Loner (Stills-Young Band)
04 talk (Stills-Young Band)
05 Long May You Run (Stills-Young Band)
06 For What It's Worth (Stills-Young Band)
07 talk (Stills-Young Band)
08 Helpless (Stills-Young Band)
09 Black Queen [Edit] (Stills-Young Band)
10 talk (Stills-Young Band)
11 Southern Man (Stills-Young Band)
12 talk (Stills-Young Band)
13 On the Way Home (Stills-Young Band)
14 Change Partners (Stills-Young Band)
15 talk (Stills-Young Band)
16 Too Far Gone (Stills-Young Band)
17 talk (Stills-Young Band)
18 4 + 20 [Edit] (Stills-Young Band)
19 talk (Stills-Young Band)
20 Stringman (Stills-Young Band)
21 Word Game (Stills-Young Band)
22 Band Intros (Stills-Young Band)
23 talk (Stills-Young Band)
24 Buyin' Time (Stills-Young Band)
25 Evening Coconut (Stills-Young Band)
26 Make Love to You (Stills-Young Band)
27 Cowgirl in the Sand (Stills-Young Band)
28 The Treasure (Stills-Young Band)
29 talk (Stills-Young Band)
30 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes (Stills-Young Band)
31 talk (Stills-Young Band)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gAS9m

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MTeo7AjB

The cover photo shows Stills and Young in concert on this tour, but I don't know the exact date and location.