Description
“The past is the only thing that lasts … if you move too fast”
Yeah, that’s a line from my song “Deco Dance” (Night Lights) that Lou Reed inspired (note the banana reference in the intro and then look at the banana on the cover of the first Andy Warhol produced Velvet Underground & Nico album) and that I wrote over fifty years ago. And I’m humbled to admit that at that young and dumb age (25 although it did seem old at the time) I had no idea how true that would prove (the past being the only thing that lasts part) or how fast I was moving at the time or the totally crazy idea that I’d be releasing tracks that were recorded all those years ago … now.
Visions of the Night 1975-2025 (Vintage Series #11 ) is finally available in it’s enhanced, enchanted and re-mastered version commensurate with all its vintage glory. Suffice it to say that it is a collection of master and demo recordings made around that fateful year of 1975; songs that contain a plethora of memories that I am still drawn back to. Yes, the past is the only thing that lasts … especially when it comes to recorded music. Sometimes I feel that Visions of the Night 1975-2025 should have been the album that followed Aquashow but in retrospect I suppose I was (to quote my friend Bruce) blinded by the light. And that light was nothing less than the Hollywood sign that shone above Los Angeles which attracted me like a moth in a white suit to a flame. In New York we had the Empire State Building as our claim to fame but in LA it’s an advertisement on a hilltop for a once promising housing development. Apparently the original sign said HOLLYWOODLAND!
So to begin with, the opening track on Visions of the Night 1975-2025 was recorded in my then hometown of NYC at the Record Plant Studios with brother Matthew Murphy on bass guitar, Frank Owens on piano and Rick Marotta on drums – all fabled alumni of the original Aquashow sessions that took place less than two years before in the same studio. But like other naïve rock ‘n roll debutantes who were thrown into the shark strewn waters of the music business, I was stricken with self-doubt and plagued with worries that I would be just another victim of the dreaded second album “sophomore curse” failure. Could I live up to the promise of Aquashow which the most formidable rock critics in the country were unanimously heaping praise upon and was still receiving continuous airplay on US radio?
So this was to be my first album on RCA Records and the idea was that I would co-produce with guitar virtuoso Steve Hunter who had played on the monumental Lou Reed animal Rock ‘n Roll Animal and even composed the gorgeous overture before Lou started singing “Standing on the corner …” from “Sweet Jane.” But for some crazy and still unexplained reason (at least to me) I was not getting off on these sessions, just didn’t feel the mojo in my fingertips, and to my everlasting regret and shame, I kiboshed the whole project, quickly left town and moved out to The Beverly Hills Hotel in LA to work with legendary Doors producer Paul Rothschild on the album that would eventually be known as Lost Generation. Perhaps I should have called it Lost Elliott and although some critics think Lost Generation ranks amongst my finest and most complete works, to tell you the truth, I was never convinced. It’s got some holes in it which I won’t point out now but looking back, I think it would have been cooler to get one more home-town produced album under my studded belt before moving on to Tinsel Town. Or was it fate? I’ll let you decide …
Many of these demos seemed so incomplete at the time that over the years I’ve revisited them even adding additional instrumentation and vocals but it’s all me and this is the album that could have been. Ah! The glory that was Greece so to speak.
Track Listing:
1. Visions of the Night
2. Deco Dance
3. Wha da ya know
4. Drowning
5. Fan Male
6. From the 20th Century
7. Rich Girls
8. Razor Love
9. Everything a Boy Should Know
10. What’s the Matter
11. Night Connection
