Rock A Little track listing - November 1984 - And More!

[mikebise]

Nik, I thought your post had some very interesting and intriguing points. Stevie is so contradictory in the different stories she tells. That Timothy White interview was perculating in the back of my mind, but I couldn't grasp it until you quoted from it, and that was awesome! Ginny Kamano certainly could have given erroneous information out to the fanzines in 1987. That's why I think these old mysteries are so fascinating, and I loved your input.

"Seven Wonders" ~ I dunno. I've heard and read several versions of what Stevie contributed to the song. The Rock Star radio interview has Stevie making it sound like she changed more than one word of the song, a la what APerfectLie posted above.

The gist I got from Stevie only being allowed 2 songs on TIIN was that came from the band since she "wasn't there" (despite having recorded 6 songs with them in 1986 prior to "Welcome To The Room... Sara"). They even stipulated that Stevie would only be heard on two other songs on the album not hers! (This is from the Velvet Underground fanzine).

However, Warner Bros. wanted more of a Stevie presence on the record, hence the three slots allowed for her. That seems plausible with all of the drama flying around them in those days! Stevie was still the most visible, famous and commercially successful member of the band. But, like I said, I'm a Stevie Fan, and I'm sure I read too much into things!

[nicksphan]

Originally Posted by Sanne2

Billboard magazine from October 11, 1986 reports that Stevie cut a single titled "Whole Lot Of Trouble" for a future Fleetwood Mac album at Ardent Studios in Memphis (Joe Hardy engineerd and Pat Taylor assisted)

WLT was definitely around in '86. Stevie sang the line, "this could be a whole lotta trouble for you" after one of the songs at one of the Jones Beach RAL shows.

[Nikolaj]

[B][QUOTE=mikebise;912390[/B]]
Nik, I thought your post had some very interesting and intriguing points. Stevie is so contradictory in the different stories she tells. That Timothy White interview was perculating in the back of my mind, but I couldn't grasp it until you quoted from it, and that was awesome! Ginny Kamano certainly could have given erroneous information out to the fanzines in 1987. That's why I think these old mysteries are so fascinating, and I loved your input.


Wow, thank you for those words, MikeBise, I never expected that. The reason I deleted it after all of the typing was that I felt that you and others had given the correct information, and that the tone of the chapter in the book was Stevie at her angriest, and it would just stir stuff up, not even related to 'Whole Lotta Trouble' but a whole lotta anger, and possible debate over something decades old and resolved. So, I just deleted it, because I've had enough disharmony with strangers on The Ledge whom I like, lately, and if even a small sh*tstorm was raised, it would have been me who caused it.
For anyone interested, I was referencing a book called 'Rock Lives' that had a very long Stevie article in it written by the late Billboard editor Timothy White, the interview he conducted with her was just as LB was leaving Fleetwood Mac in '87.
Oh, I liked the various fanzines, very much, and I have only a few.

Personally, I think you have it in you to do a new 'Rock A Little Revisted' fanzine and do a bangup job on it and sell it not at any loss. You're organized. And have 'attention to detail'.
In my LA days; one of the weirdest things I encountered was that a PR firm had in their bio; mission statement, whatever it was called back then, their commitment to "attention to detial." -- It was so silly, I thought I was being tested- I wasn't. They had missed the gaffe. Professionals.

[cactusjack]

Originally Posted by Nikolaj

Personally, I think you have it in you to do a new 'Rock A Little Revisted' fanzine and do a bangup job on it and sell it not at any loss. You're organized. And have 'attention to detail'.

yes, yes, do it Mike!

[wildheart048]

What a great thread! very interesting...thanks!

[iamnotafraid]

Originally Posted by HejiraNYC

WLT is not suitable for a Fleetwood Mac album, period, and WISYA and WTTRS, as we know, are not great Stevie songs. That is why I consider that batch of songs to be among her weakest ever, even behind Street Angel.

Whole Lotta Trouble isn't suited for any album.
Oh, how I hate that song.

[demonchaser]

Originally Posted by APerfectLie

However, according to Ledgie fannymac, who interned at Modern, in an earlier post back in 2008 she said,

"Sandy almost asked to have "Seven Wonders" removed from TANGO IN THE NIGHT. Seems Stevie changed a number of lyrics AND the title (originally called "Aaron"), and Sandy was pretty upset. Paul Fishkin put it to her this way...."You can A) have the song for your next release, or B) leave it the way it is, let Fleetwood Mac release it, and make a ton of money! Needless to say, Sandy went with B!"

So IDK

There is an interview where Stevie says after she found out Sandy was upset, she wanted to re-record the vocals using the original lyrics. Lindsey would not let her because he he like the original vocals. Thus the compromise of adding the "additional lyrics by" .

People tend to focus on Stevie's answer to a question asking what is Emmeline, where she answers she misread the lyric and that is why she received a songwriting credit. Given other interviews and Stevie's history regarding co-writing credits (offering one to Prince for Stand Back, refusing Brett Michael's offer to give her one on "love's a hard game to play' after she changed lyrics to that song'), I would tend to believe there was a significant change to the lyrics.

Does anyone one know if the additional lyrics by credit amounts to different royalty percentage than a co-writing credit?

[mikebise]

I'm always fascinated by when Stevie wrote her songs, the groupings of them, even if they are recorded out of order. Can you imagine November 1985, when Stevie got her first acetate of the about-to-be-released Rock A Little, and then Joe Walsh pissed her off again, a whole year after they broke up, and she was spurred into writing "Long Way To Go". You know she's wishing she had been able to put that on Rock A Little ~ too late!

Then, in February 1986, she wrote up a whole storm...
"Whole Lotta Trouble"
"You Like Me"
"Two Kinds Of Love"
"Juliet"

It's like there's this "other" post-Rock A Little album Stevie, with all kinds of new songs. It's like, after the hassle of getting RAL done, Stevie suddenly had a brand new creative burst! And I don't consider any of Stevie's songs junk, just of varying enjoyment for me personally.

I've often tried to make CDs of "era" songs, to see how they sound together. Songs recorded at different times across the decades, but written around the same time. Despite the differences in musicians and Stevie's voices, are these songs discernible from a timespace point of view?

[petep9000]

Originally Posted by iamnotafraid

Whole Lotta Trouble isn't suited for any album.
Oh, how I hate that song.

ha, me too. Yet I know others adore it, and I can't understand why. It's so un-Stevie, the whole sound. When she played it live I cringed, and left to visit the concessions. I think Lori (or was it Sharon) confessed to feeling dorky singing it on stage too.

[vermicious knid]

The first time I heard that song, it was on a website where you could play a 30-second snippet. It was a clip of a menacing verse, and I loved what I heard. You didn't hear the blaring horns or the chorus, and I have always fantasized about a superior version of that song that maintains the Tanita Tikaram vibe throughout.

[petep9000]

and I'm so 'anti' that I must confess that I never pursued alternate takes or demos, so for all I know, other versions of WLT do have the haunting quality the Tikaram track has.
I know in an interview, Stevie says she wrote 4 or 5 different versions of WLT waiting for Mike Campbell to come back and work on the track with her.

[SapphireSister]

I've complained about this before because it really bugs me but I wish they would have discerned on the writing credits who wrote the lyrics and who wrote the music (on Nickfix for example). I know some of them do say "music by..." or "lyrics by..." but a lot of them don't and for some reason it's really important to me to know which music and lyrics Stevie wrote as opposed to other people writing or composing for her. Maybe it's just too complicated.
My request is that Stevie herself go through every one of her released songs that she didn't write the music and lyrics to and break down for us the specific parts of each song she did and didn't write. Ha! Like she'd even remember lol. Obviously this will never happen.

[Maxd9]

Originally Posted by mikebise

I've often tried to make CDs of "era" songs, to see how they sound together. Songs recorded at different times across the decades, but written around the same time. Despite the differences in musicians and Stevie's voices, are these songs discernible from a timespace point of view?

This is an interesting idea; one I never would have thought of. Do the songs work together? And if so...Playlist!!
x

[silvasprings]

Originally Posted by mikebise

Then, in February 1986, she wrote up a whole storm...
"Whole Lotta Trouble"
"You Like Me"
"Two Kinds Of Love"
"Juliet"

I'm pretty sure that in an interview she said that she wrote this song whilst in Australia on tour with Bob Dylan and Tom Petty at the end of 1985. I always assumed the Whole Lotta Trouble thing related to the fact that the Aust. authorities where going to kick her out for not having a working visa. She said it was the first time she'd written a song on guitar in a long time, and also that Tom and Bob thought it sounded " Just like an old John Lee Hooker song" And of course much of the song is from other poems i think.
Also thanks for an awesome thread, the whole story behind RAL has always been one of intrigue for me.

[michelej1]

Here are some Stevie quotes about WLT:

"I wrote Whole Lotta Trouble myself, on the guitar, which I seldom do because of my fingernails. Again, along with Two Kinds of Love, in Australia on the Bob Dylan/Tom Petty tour. I went to Michael's room, he had his 4-track set up, gave me his guitar, tuned it to an open G, you know that . . . [demonstrates song start] Well, I can play pretty well. I can play real good rhythm guitar. But with long fingernails and an open tuning, you can only just play that one note, so it's like bass. So I played it, and he recorded it and he sang it, and he took it home, and a year later, I went to Michael's house and he had cut a complete track on it. And he had written a little bridge in the middle of it. And the wildest thing about it was that I had already, in the years that had gone between, I had written probably five or six more Whole Lotta Troubles. So I was all into my new Whole Lotta Troubles, and Michael brought his little yellow ghettoblaster and said, 'Stevie, this is the way we wrote it' and he made me listen to it. And then he put on his track, and it was one of the most amazing moments of my life, was that exactly what I had played on the little yellow ghettoblaster, went exactly along with this incredible track that he had done, and he said 'Now you have to relearn it that way.' And of course I hate that. I hate when anybody tells me that. But I adore Michael, so it's like, 'Yes sir, Mr. Campbell, I'll learn it. Give me five minutes.' So I learned it, I sang it, and it remained very much, exactly ike it is on the record."

_____________________

"We went into a recording studio called Lionshare, and by the grace of the gods, the LA rhythm horn section was doing another session down the hallway. And I had never in a million years expected that those horns would be anything but synthesizers. Well, they were, like, walking down the hall with all their horns, right? And Rupert [Hine] and I saw them, and it was like, we went, 'Hey! Are you guys, like, really tired? Are you going home? Do you have any extra time?' And they said, 'Nah,' like, we got nothing to do.' So they came in; they listened to the song once, and they went out, and they played the horns all the way through the song one time, and then said, 'Is there anything else you want us to play on?' So we, just out of magic, just as a special gift from the gods of music, got them. And they loved it. I mean, you could tell they loved it. We loved it. It was so special, because I never had any horn players play anything on my record before, except for the things that Kenny had played, and that's a whole different. He's like a little archangel, you know? And these are like, these four heavy-duty guys that got these big, huge horns and stuff, and they -- I couldn't believe it. I walked in and they were out there, and they were doing the moves, the up and the down, and it sounded incredible, and I never in a million years expected it to be anything but programmed-in horn sounds off of a synth. Because that's what Michael had done, and that sounded great, it sounded just like horns to the point of I never complained and said 'You know, this is really not fair, I think we should have real horn players.' I just never expected it. So, they were in and out in thirty minutes."
_________
[Then from Timespace, she says it was written for Tom and Bob]

"I recorded this song in Michael's room in Sydney, Australia, on his 4-Track. I actually played guitar, and almost a year later, Michael had worked up a track right along with what I had played in Australia. He wrote a bridge for it, and when I got home from my tour, he insisted I come up and sing it exactly as I had played it that night; and he could play his track right along to me playing rock and roll guitar. I was totally flattered. On the other side of the coin, he is the only person in my whole life who has ever done one of my songs exactly as I had written it. So thank you Michael, for all your wonderful music and for sharing some of it with me, nothing like a tour with Tom Petty and Bob Dylan to make you extremely creative. I asked Tom if I could be an honorary Heartbreaker, and he said:
'You already are one, Stevie'"