Maybe Love Abbey Road mix
 

I've been listening to this a lot lately. Am I alone in my admiration of this song? The Street Angel sounded so adult contemporary and sedate but the Abbey Road demo is really earthy and folky. It almost sounds like a Fleetwood Mac song from the Behind the Mask era. Any idea why she scrapped the Abbey Road mixes for SA?

I'm sorry if this was talked about before but I couldn't find any threads on it.

Can you post an mp3 of this so I can listen to it? Very interested to hear what it sounds like.

I don't think she's ever said why that specific song was redone. But from this interview, it sounds like she thought the whole album was too dark and lifeless.

By Jon Wiederhorn
CDNOW
June 5, 2001

Your last solo album was 1994's Street Angel. What did you want to do this time that you didn't do on that record?

Street Angel wasn't a very good record, so I really ran away from that quickly. It came out in the summer, and two months later I wrote "Love Is," which is the last song on this new record. So I really started trying to write a new record immediately, because I was so unhappy with that record.

Why were you unhappy with it?

Because for eight years before -- and it always comes back to this, which I'm sorry about -- but it comes back to the [anti-anxiety medication] Klonopin. And that was Street Angel -- the little street urchin on Klonopin. And it was a sad record. Writers do not thrive on drugs like Klonopin and Prozac. It takes your soul; it takes your creativity; it takes your love of running home at night and getting out a typewriter or getting out your paper and pencil and writing something that you love. It takes that away. You don't care anymore. So Street Angel was all about just not caring. And that's horrible to me. One of the few things that I've never not done in my life is not care. And I didn't care for a long time.

I'm not sure if I"m thinking of the same version you are referring to but I do know of a demo of Maybe Love which is much better than the album version. The vocals are more enthusiastic and it has a much more raw sound to it. I do like this version a lot and offten wished it was used on the album.

For someone who is claiming they didn't care, she sure put a lot of work into it. She switched producers, delayed the release and tinkered it to hell. As the earlier versions were indeed much better. So with that much emphasis put into it, she cared. She cared a whole lot more when it flopped.

Let's just blame it on her evil Gemini twin sister.

All that was done after rehab. She's referring to her performance on Street Angel, while on Klonopin.

I'm at work now and don't have it on my computer here. I'll post it when I get home. It's a lot longer with some really nice guitar work on the instrumental parts that were cut from the final mix. I even noticed, now after listening to this version, that when the album mix comes in off the bridge the edit is really noticeable.

I always thought the mix of Rose Garden was less than stellar but it's such a beautifully sad song that it's one of my favorites. I remember the Pittsburgh show from that tour where she said something like "I wrote this when I was 14, and I don't know what I was thinking to have a song with this much tragedy in it at 14, but it just goes to show you... if you want to write a song you can start when you're young". It was really sweet and kind of funny. I never even listened to that song until that show then I ran home and played it again and loved it ever since.

Right. She cared. That's why she fired producers, tinkered and re-recorded a lot of it. The album was better before she "cared." Not sure it was done after rehab either. The basic tracks were already layed.

I think the point she was making was that she didn't care while she was writing and recording it.

And for the record, no producers were "fired" in the making of the album. The album was finished, for all intents and purposes, and Glynn Johns had returned to England. Once Stevie re-emerged from rehab and listened to the masters, it was then... newly clean and sober... that she realized she needed to at least try to fix it with overdubs and new mixes.

In a 1994 radio interview with Mary Turner, she said one thing she didn't do, was record new vocals -- though she admitted she probably should have.

So, yeah, she "cared," but only after the main recording and her vocals were completed.

I still love the album, either way. :nod:

So when did Thom Panunzio enter the picture? Was he hired when she came out of rehab? Also, I also thought the Destiny vocal was recorded after she came out of rehab because it sounds so emotional and different from the rest of the monotone vocals.

The Destiny vocal was pre-rehab. It's the same vocal on the 2/26/93 Master Mix tape, but mixed differently.

Here's an excerpt of that telling Off the Record interview...

"Off the Record" radio interview, with Mary Turner, from December '94:

Announcer: "...Street Angel, the 1994 solo album that Stevie won't be putting in anyone's Christmas stocking"

SN: "No, I've really walked away from it. It's really over for me. It took...it was started in the summer of '92, I hope I get this right, and it went...um...we recorded through 'til after Christmas in '93, when the inauguration was, and then we went back and worked for like another six weeks on it, and then we finished it, basically. And then...all the English people that were involved went home to England and I listened to it for two months and I didn't like it.

And so I went back in, with Thom Panunzio, to try and fix what I was not happy with. And I didn't fix it while I was working with the person that I was working with [Glyn Johns]...who dosen't like to be talked about because he's not speaking to me, um...I didn't like it when he was there, and he knew it, and basically he told me to...like, in no uncertain english, very rough terms, to shut up and deal with it and this was the way it was going to be.

So I waited for him to not only leave, but be gone for two months, before I summoned up enough courage to say well, I know this isn't right, this is just not me. This is not my record. So I went back in for about eight weeks and I didn't mess with the vocals, which I should have. But I was so sort of overwhelmed with trying to fix the things that I didn't like about the music, which was like...there was no percussion, there was no Waddy Wachtel. Because I was told that the last thing that I would need was Waddy Wachtel. And I, you know...I mean, to that comment I was so speechless that I just didn't do anything, I said ok. So when I went back in, I had Waddy come in and play, and I had Peter Michael come in and put percusssion on, and Michael Campbell came back and put some more guitar on it, and we re-mixed everything, and we did a lot of other things besides that.

I should have gone back in and really worked with the album, with the vocals. Because that's something that...I guess that was the last thing that I knew was wrong with it, and after being in two months trying to fix everything that I thought was wrong about the music and the mixes, it was almost kind of like, you know, maybe you just need to let this go and go on. I mean, this is three years now. And this record should have been out a long time ago. It may be new for everybody else, but it's really old for me.

And, it's not my favorite record anyway, so, maybe it's just time to stop. So I did stop."

Okay, this is the one I have. I guess it's Abbey Road. Please Correct me if I'm wrong.

http://download.yousendit.com/B27A27C449F3EA80

Yup! That's the one I have. It's really good, isn't it? Should have gone on the album, as is

I don't think it's all that bad. Vocally, I think Street Angel was important because for me it's when she started singing really well again.

I knew nothing of all this guys, interesting conversation! shame i missed the download but i was too late