Caleb Quaye - ...and on guitar (1974)

Caleb Quaye was born 9 October 1948, and is the older half-brother of singer Finley Quaye. His musical career began when he was a member of local band The SoundCasters (or The Sound Castles) while at school. In the early sixties, he joined the band Bluesology, featuring Reginald Dwight on keyboards, later to morph into Elton John, and they were Long John Baldry's backing band for a while, releasing three singles with him from 1965 to 1967. After the breakup of Bluesology, Quaye released a single in 1967 under the name Caleb, with 'Baby Your Phrasing Is Bad'/'Woman Of Distinction' now being rated as one of the finest psychedelic records of the era. In 1968, Elton John started playing concerts under his new name, enlisting Quaye as his guitarist, and in 1969 this group recorded a private album under the name The Bread And Beer Band, just for their own amusement, with only two tracks ever appearing officially on disc, with the 'Dick Barton Theme'/'Breakdown Blues' single being released in 1969 on Decca Records. 

In 1969 he served as guitarist for the one-off "flower power" pop band Argosy (which also included Dwight, Roger Hodgson, and Nigel Olsson) on their single, 'Mr. Boyd'/'Imagine', and he also issued 'The Way Of The Musician' as a single under the name of Hookfoot. As Elton John knew Quaye from his Bluesology days, he used three quarters of Hookfoot as his backing band when he recorded some sessions for the BBC in July 1969. Around April 1970, Quaye reinvented Hookfoot as a proper band, with Ian Duck on harmonica and vocals, Dave Glover on bass and Roger Pope on drums, and once again they backed Elton John when he was invited back to the BBC in April 1970. They also backed Steve Ellis on two solo singles in 1970 and 1971, before they released their eponymous debut album in 1971. It was well-received, and included songs by Quaye, as well as covers of tracks by Stephen Stills and Neil Young, and with the addition of Bob Kulick as a second guitarist, the band released their second album 'Good Times a-Comin'' in 1972, which was a more straight-ahead rock record. While Hookfoot was active during 1971 and 1972, Quaye was much in demand as a session player, and appeared on a number of recordings by the likes of Al Kooper, Phillip Goodhand-Tait, Ralph McTell, John Baldry, Nilsson, and Cochise. Following a few more line-up changes, and two more albums in 1972 and 1973, Hookfoot eventually split up in 1974, and Quaye went to the USA to work as a session musician. 

While a member of Hookfoot, Quaye had played on most of Elton John's records up to 1971's  'Madman Across The Water', when John recruited Nigel Olssen, Dee Murray, Davey Johnstone and Ray Cooper as his permanent backing group, but in April 1975, long time bandmates Murray and Olsson were asked to leave the group. They were replaced by old friend Roger Pope and Kenny Passarelli, and it was at this time that Quaye was also asked to re-join, ready to start tour rehearsals in June 1975. This line-up released the 'Rock Of The Westies' album later that year, and he stayed with them for a couple of years, also appearing on 1976's 'Blue Moves'. After this his guest appearances slowed down, with only a couple in 1977, then nothing after 1980, as in 1982 his life changed completely, when he became a musician/evangelist. He is currently serving as the Chairman of the National Worship Committee, and he was officially appointed as National Foursquare Music Minister in the Spring of 1995. So that's where we'll end this look back at the early career of an extremely talented, but undeservedly neglected guitarist, and if you want to learn more about his life, then you can read his excellent autobiography 'A Voice Louder Than Rock & Roll'.

Track listing

Disc I
01 Ticket To Ride (from 'Hold Up!' by The Moonshiners 1967)
02 Baby Your Phrasing Is Bad (single by Caleb 1967)
03 Breakdown Blues (b-side of 'Dick Barton Theme' single by The Bread And Beer Band 1969)
04 Empty Sky (from 'Empty Sky' by Elton John 1969)
05 Mr. Boyd (single by Argosy 1969)
06 The Way Of The Musician (single by Hookfoot 1969)
07 Jingle Jangle Jasmine (b-side of 'Take Your Love' single by Steve Ellis 1971)
08 Eric Is Calling (from 'Chumley's Laughing Gear' by Claggers 1971)
09 Loudwater Zoo (from 'Loudwater House' by Tony Hazzard 1971)
10 Going Quietly Mad (from 'New York City (You're A Woman)' by Al Kooper 1971)
11 Old Brown Dog (from 'You Well-Meaning Brought Me Here' by Ralph McTell 1971)

Disc II
01 Sunshine Looks Like Rain (from 'Drum Orchestra And Chorus' by Nigel Olsson 1971)
02 Oh Rosanna (from 'I Think I'll Write A Song' by Phillip Goodhand-Tait 1971)
03 Take Off My Shoes (from 'Shalom' by Shalom Chanoch 1971)
04 Another Day (from 'Swallow Tales' by Cochise 1971)
05 Like Summer Tempests (from 'Taupin' by Bernie Taupin 1971)
06 Let's Burn Down The Cornfield (from 'It Ain't Easy' by John Baldry 1971)
07 Coconut (from 'Nilsson Schmilsson' by Nilsson 1971)
08 Same Old Thing (from 'A Story Ended' by Dick Heckstall-Smith 1972)
09 Keep Dreaming (from 'Bill Quateman' by Bill Quateman 1972)
10 Everything Comes And Goes (from 'Somewhere' by Mike Hugg 1972)
11 Kid's Stuff (from 'David Elliott' by David Elliott 1972)
12 Jubilee Cloud (from 'Kongos' by John Kongos 1972)

Disc III

01 The End (from 'Queues' by Vigrass & Osborne 1972)
02 I Can't Stand It (from 'Lou Reed' by Lou Reed 1972)
03 Sweet America (from 'Meanwhile... Back At The World' by Roger Cook 1972)
04 Forever's No Time At All (from 'Who Came First' by Pete Townshend 1972)
05 Parisien Plight II (from 'Faces' by Shawn Phillips 1972)
06 Non-Commercial Blues (from 'A Little Taste' by Ann Odell 1973)
07 Albuquerque Rainbow (from 'Chris Darrow' by Chris Darrow 1973)
08 Get Yourself Together (from 'In London' by Teresa Brewer with Oily Rag 1973)
09 Overnight Train (from 'Love Songs' by Billy Nicholls 1974)
10 I Got You Covered (from 'Mo' by Mo McGuire 1974)

Thanks to progcollector for supplying the Claggers track. 

Pete Townshend - Tommy (1969)

I know Paul over at albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com posted this album last year, but it nicely finishes off this series of Pete Townshend demos, and I did spend a bit of time on the cover, so I'm posting it anyway. Paul sourced his tracks from the deluxe issue of 'Tommy', whereas these have come from the various editions of the 'Scoop' series, although I'd be very surprised if there were any differences between them. The one difference that there is between our two posts, however, is the addition of three extra tracks on this one, none of which were written by Townshend, although strangely enough all three have appeared on either 'The Genuine Scoop' 5CD set, or the 'P.T. Demos For The Who - "Tommy" Demos 1968' (what a convoluted title) bootleg CD. While we know that it's highly unlikely that Townshend would have recorded demos for songs he didn't write, I decided to include them just so that we'd have alternate takes of every track on the actual album. It's been suggested that 'Cousin Kevin' is the album version stripped of the acoustic guitar and is possibly the harmony vocals only, but it does make for a very different sound, and although 'Fiddle About' does sound like a stripped back take of the album track, 'Tommy's Holiday Camp' is definitely just the album version. I've created new artwork to make this a Pete Townshend solo album, and that's the end of this short series of 'What If...' albums.

Track listing

01 Overture

02 It's A Boy

03 1921

04 Amazing Journey

05 Dream One

06 Sparks

07 The Hawker

08 Christmas

09 Cousin Kevin

10 The Acid Queen

11 Underture

12 Do You Think It's Alright?

13 Fiddle About

14 Pinball Wizard

15 There's A Doctor

16 Go To The Mirror!

17 Success

18 Tommy Can You Hear Me?

19 Smash The Mirror

20 Sensation

21 Miracle Cure

22 Sally Simpson

23 I'm Free

24 Welcome

25 Tommy's Holiday Camp

26 We're Not Gonna Take It

Pete Townshend - Quadrophenia (1973)

After I posted Pete Townshend's 'Pete's Next' album, Uncle Dan asked if it would be possible to do the same for 'The Who By Numbers'. I've hunted around and found that only a handful of demos have ever leaked out for that album, although in my investigations I did find that there were more out there than I first thought, because as well as the three volumes of 'Scoop', there's also a 5 CD bootleg with even more demos on it. Looking through them I found that it was actually possible to piece together a Townshend version of a couple of Who classics, so I'm starting with perhaps my favourite record of theirs, 'Quadrophenia'. In 2011 the album was re-issued as a Director's Cut with a host of extras, including all of Townshend's demos, and so I've used those as they were the best available quality. Not only are they great versions of the songs that we know and love, but more excitingly, there are an extra seven songs and two instrumentals on here which were eventually dropped from the released version. This means that even for fans like me who've played this record to death, this is well worth hearing to see how those additional songs fit into the narrative.   

Track listing

01 The Real Me
02 Quadrophenia
03 Cut My Hair
04 Get Out And Stay Out
05 Four Faces
06 We Close Tonight
07 You Came Back
08 Get Inside
09 Joker James
10 The Punk And The Godfather
11 I'm One
12 Dirty Jobs
13 Helpless Dancer
14 Is It in My Head?
15 Anymore
16 I've Had Enough
17 Interlude
18 Wizardry
19 Sea And Sand
20 Drowned
21 Is It Me?
22 Bell Boy
23 Doctor Jimmy
24 The Rock
25 Love Reign O'er Me

Pete Townshend - Meaty Petey Big & Bouncy (1972)

Pete Townshend was recording demos of his songs as early as 1965, and many of these versions of The Who's biggest hits have appeared on his various 'Scoop' sets, so I thought just for fun I'd recreate the band's 1972 greatest hits compilation as a Pete Townshend solo album. There were only three songs from the original album that we don't have demos for, so I've replaced them with three hit singles from the early 70's which still fit the time-frame of the original record, although as some of these versions were considerably longer than the band's take on them, the album now runs to just over 50 minutes. I've had to fade down 'I'm A Boy' as the tape just collapsed at the end, but the rest of the songs are Townshend's vision of them when he wrote them. I've updated the artwork, and was particularly pleased with the title. 

  

Track listing

01 The Kid's Are Alright
02 Happy Jack
03 I Can See For Miles
04 Pictures Of Lily
05 My Generation
06 The Seeker 
08 Pinball Wizard
08 Magic Bus
09 Substitute
10 I'm A Boy
11 Let's See Action
12 Join Together
13 Relay

Pete Townshend - Pete's Next (1971)

It's fairly well-known that when Pete Townshend wrote a new song he often recorded a demo of it, playing all the instruments himself, so that he could present it to the Who for their opinion. Many of these demos have turned up over the years on his 'Scoop' series of albums, as well as on a wide variety of bootlegs, and while they are generally not too different from the finished article by the Who, it's still interesting to hear his original take on the song. During the 70's he was able to record these tracks in his own studio, so the sound quality is excellent, and around 1970 he laid down a considerable number of demos for his aborted 'Lifehouse' project. It's well documented that despite Townhsend really believing in the project, it was beset by problems and remains unissued to this day. So as not to waste many of these new songs, he offered them to the band for a new album, which became 'Who's Next', and it's now generally regarded as one of the very best records of the Who's long career. I thought it would be interesting to hear what this classic album would have sounded like if Townshend had decided to release it himself instead of 'Lifehouse', and as there are demos available of all the songs that he wrote then it's fairly easy to do. One of the tracks was composed by John Enwistle, so obviously there will be no demo for 'My Wife', and in its place I've added an extended take of 'Pure And Easy', which was written at the same time as the others, and which has always been a favourite of mine. Some of these recordings are noticeably longer than the Who's versions, which were obviously tightened up in the studio, while 'Love Ain't For Keeping' is more of a sketch for the full song to be completed later, but this is still a fascinating look behind the scenes of how 'Who's Next' was put together. I've updated the original sleeve to make it a Townshend solo album, but kept the idea of the title.  

Track listing

01 Baba O'Riley
02 Bargain
03 Love Ain't For Keeping
04 Pure And Easy
05 Song Is Over
06 Getting In Tune
07 Going Mobile
08 Behind Blue Eyes
09 Won't Get Fooled Again