 |
Look Again (unreleased) - 5/80 |
1)
Lies (info • MP3)
2) That's Just Life (info • Real
Audio)
3) Obsession (info • Real
Audio)
4) Snake in the Grass (info • Real
Audio)
5) Should I Say a Word? (info • Real
Audio)
6) Difference (info • Real
Audio)
7) Everyone's a Holiday (info • MP3)
8) Subway Song (info • Real
Audio)
9) Everybody Had It With You (info • MP3)
10) Jungle Book (info • Real
Audio)
11) The Other Side (info • MP3)
12) Look Again (info • Real
Audio)
...
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 Reynolds 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...
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.
—Joe
Nolte
It was a Friday
night and you were working late Another night in the dark, you heard them
say Lies lies lies and you Oh when I really believe all the things that
they say It's just a brand new game that everybody
plays Night, night, night and you |
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.
—Joe
Nolte
People turn their heads to me Guess I outta know by now I don't mind Had enough of politics People try and change the world Rock 'n' Roll is here to stay Guess we oughta know by now You don't mind |
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".
—Joe Nolte
Once in a dream - a time Once in a dream I cried Once I was wise - I laughed Now in my dreams I see your hair Once I had dreams - you know See the days just die in the sunlight |
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.
—Joe Nolte
People draw lines where
there ain't no lines Finally get to sing and dance all night Catch a ride from time to time Finally get to sing and dance all night But in that light you see it lying there
A knife in the water - a snake in the grass There's a feeling true that comes to you Visions of the minions in their riot gear Suddenly you feel you're not alone, you're
in a crowd Finally get to sing and dance all night We've been getting held down so goddamn long A knife in the water - a snake in the grass |
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.
—Joe Nolte
I saw her yesterday Seen here many times before I see her walk on by Never take my eyes off her Girl, just another girl Think you're oh bad news I've seen her many times before Girl, just another girl But maybe, just maybe |
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.
—Joe Nolte
The day I first saw you A dream to dream And I saw you Sometimes I still wish I could find a way
that would have made you understand So I hit the streets again And in a vision I watched as the whole damn
thing unwound You know you must believe Come the 17th, the only killers on the streets
are the police |
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.
—Joe Nolte
Everyone's a holiday A world's on fire and oh, don't ask why Candlelight call in the dead What do you do when everyone you see knows
that it's true Sunlight call it a day Your world is burning down, down to the ground...
|
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...
—Joe Nolte
The city and the streets are getting tight No city sleeps at night Can't keep my distance anyway I take the subway home Can't control my destiny I take the subway home |
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.
—Joe Nolte
Everywhere I run Sleeping alone at night And it makes me shake and it makes this poor
heart break 'Cause now I know the things they say to
me are true So I talk to the walls and I laugh |
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.
—Joe Nolte
Under the light - Dark parking lot light Under the light - dark parking lot light And still there's stupid songs down here Well I walked the streets just last night Well I saw the kids by the market stand And still there's a lot of stupid shit songs
down here Somebody's calling me far away |
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.)
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. |
...
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.
—Joe Nolte
For years you've been running my life So keep on with your dreaming (Everybody knows) I know I know Now I ain't your puppet and I ain't your
slave Now it don't make no difference (See my life turn oh) I know I know [From
the original written lyrics. The refrain at the end was originally
going to be: "As we turn to leave you, you're gonna have to
open your eyes", and then "As we turn to leave you, you
better take a look at yourself".] |
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...
—Joe Nolte
LOOK AGAIN - Version 1 - early March, 1980 See my world - woh-oh look again In the days of my youth, in the back of my
mind Hey and I often wonder Premonitions they run - unbidden they come
What do you care - 'cause the news is old
now But if I look hard, real hard far ahead LOOK AGAIN - Version
2 - March 10, 1980 See my world - woh-oh look at your world
Take a look at the people around you - the
ones Hey look again - I told you Look at me - I'm a boy, she said - look again
Do you believe all the things she told you
I look back to the days of their youth And at times I can almost feel compassion,
but you know Sometimes I succumb and I believe the things
they say Well someone's gotta pay the price And I work through the day and the night
and I try LOOK AGAIN - Version
3 (middle only) - April 8, 1980 I look back to the days of their youth And in the doom of their folly they tried
to ensure See my world - please tell me where you fit
'Cause I feel like I'm talkin' to a five
foot wall Sometimes I don't know who you are
And in the doom of their folly they tried
to ensure Poison lingers long And I wonder if I |
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.
The song took place in three stages:
Stage 1, the first complete version of the song, was an early attempt at a finished product, in early March of 1980, when the song was still being treated as a normal 2 1/2 minute number. It consisted of a short intro similar to the final version, as well as three verses, with choruses in between. The melody for verse and chorus was already complete.
Stage 2, the version written March 10, 1980 and finished at 6:44pm, included a complete reworking of the lyrics, and essentially became the final song. Even half the midsection was in place at this time - specifically the second half, which included the stuff I stole from my earlier song "WORK". The first half didn't grab me, however, but I let it go at the time and declared the song "finished".
Stage 3 did not happen for nearly a month, but on April 8, 1980 I realized that, having borrowed the chorus from the song "DON'T GO" for "EVERYBODY HAD IT WITH YOU", the rest of that earlier song was now fair game. I therefore, just for an experiment, took a verse from "DON'T GO", messed with it, and threw it into the beginning of the problematic midsection. At this time I also rewrote a lot of the third verse, which led into the midsection. It all worked real good, and now the song WAS complete.
—Joe Nolte