The Hollies - Listen To Us (1968)

This album should have should have followed the release of 'Butterfly' in 1968, but following the release of that album Graham Nash started experimenting with drugs, and under their influence he produced a flurry of new songs. When he took them to the band, however, they were less than impressed, but recorded some of them anyway. Shortly after this Nash left the band (supposedly because he didn't want to record covers of Dylan songs, although he seemed happy enough to play on 'Blowing In The Wind') and moved to the US, where he joined up with David Crosby and Stephen Stills to form CSN. The songs that the Hollies recorded with him were all shelved, and they recorded a collection of Dylan covers for their next release 'Hollies Sing Dylan'.
This reconstruction is what that album could have sounded like had it been released as intended, and includes nearly all the songs recorded with Nash before he left the band. As an added bonus there is an extremely rare instrumental version of Nash's 'Marrakesh Express', which the Hollies did record, and a fan has synced this up with the vocal demo that Nash took to CSN, to make the only Hollies version of this song in existence. It's not perfect, but it's the only place you'll hear it.

Track Listing

01 Open Up Your Eyes
02 Do The Best You Can
03 Relax
04 Tomorrow When It Comes
05 Man With No Expression
06 Like Every Time Before
07 The Times They Are A-Changin' (live)
08 Wings
09 Jennifer Eccles
10 A Taste Of Honey
11 Blowing In The Wind
12 Listen To Me
13 Marrakesh Express (Hollies backing track synced with Nash's demo vocal)

A couple of these songs slipped out as singles during 1968 - 'Jennifer Eccles' and 'Listen To Me' -  but the rest were kept under wraps until some of them turned up on the 'Abbey Road' and 'Rarities' albums. I thought it would be nice to have them all in one place, so that you can hear great songs like 'Man With No Expression' and 'Tomorrow When It Comes', the full orchestral version of 'A Taste Of Honey', the 'lounge' version of 'Blowing In The Wind', and the superb live recording of 'The Times They Are A-Changing'.