CELEBRATING 35 YEARS OF ONE OF THE GREAT DEBUT ALBUMS

What is the definitive Liverpool album? It is a huge question with no right answer – well unless it’s my answer because I’m a music expert you know and I’m from Liverpool so double points to me.

You could definitely make a claim for it being The Real Thing’s masterpiece 4 From 8. Or what about Welcome to the Pleasuredome, released at a time when Frankie Goes To Hollywood were the biggest band in the world. Ocean Rain by Echo and the Bunnymen was proclaimed as the greatest album ever made when released, but I think it was Ian McCulloch who said that so maybe there’s a little bit of bias there. You don’t hear that much about them now but there was a band called The Beatles who I think some people would say had a couple of records that should be in with a shout.

But for many people the definitive Liverpool record is the debut album by The La’s which with beautiful simplicity is also titled The La’s. Released 35 years ago to the week the record was widely acclaimed at the time and is still regarded as a classic. It’s a record that could only have come from Liverpool and it’s packed full of melodic gems. If he never wrote anything else singer/songwriter Lee Mavers would always be remembered as the man behind There She Goes but personally I don’t even think that is the best track on the album. For me Timeless Melody is the standout tune but you could easily make a case for Doledrum, Feelin’ or Way Out. To be fair there isn’t a dud on it and if you released it now it wouldn’t sound out of place.

So another Liverpool guitar band release a good record – what makes it special? Well it does have the main ingredient of being a set of great songs that are uniquely Liverpool in nature. It’s also the only album the band ever released and that is where this record and the band have retained almost mythical status. When the album was released it was against the group’s wishes and they, and in particular Mavers, denounced it. It confused the hell out of fans and music journalists who loved what they were hearing only to be told by its makers that it was rubbish.

When you go a little bit further into the reality is that The La’s record label just got fed up waiting for the band to record a version they were happy with after spending lots of money putting the group in various expensive studios with a variety of expensive producers. Mavers always complained he could never get the authentic sound he wanted from the studios they used although to be fair I don’t think he would ever have been content and would never have got the real sound he was chasing.

Even before the whole album saga The La’s were already infamous and charged with a certain mystique enhanced by interviews in which Mavers talked about how his music flowed from the tides of the River Mersey la, or other nonsense along those lines. Band members came and went and for a period almost every musician I knew was either in The La’s or had just been kicked out of them. The only constants in all this chaotic turnover was Mavers himself and bass player John Power. (I even appeared in a version of The La’s, albeit in a line up called The Rizzla’s put together by The NME.)

The La’s continued to tour after the release of the album they hated. To be honest the magic had long gone. They were playing the same set of songs in pretty much the same order that they had been playing them in for four or five years but most nights they were clearly just going through the motions. Mavers clearly didn’t want to play any new material and on the last tour it was left to John to quietly make his debut on lead vocals singing a couple of his own tunes.

John subsequently went on to form the hugely successful Cast while Mavers has largely stayed out of sight and released no new material even though there is plenty of evidence on the internet of songs that could have made up a second album.

I’ve got loads of different versions and demos of the songs that ended up on The La’s. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the album released by Go Discs but for me if you haven’t listened to them before I’d be tempted to go straight to The La’s BBC In Session which because they are recorded pretty much as live gets you as close to understanding what a remarkable band with an incredible set of songs that The La’s really were.

Kev McManus