(TV) Allan Schwartzberg quote

["Joe Thornton" <joe.thornton@gmx.net>]

A few weeks ago I posted the Schwartzberg quote. I think that -- in the
following paragraph -- there's an interesting implication, which nobody drew
attention to.

"I've done albums with him [Verlaine] in the past," Allan says, "but for this
particular project he played me a record he'd already cut in England, a record
he wasn't happy with. There was nothing wrong with it, he just wanted to do it
over with different people and get a second opinion, so we redid it."

That seems to contradict what Clinton Heylin wrote in the Miller's Tale liner
notes, viz.

"... There seemed a half-heartedness to some of the shows on Verlaine's final
band tour in 1987 that suggested the rejection of that 'first' album for
Phonogram (the Bascombe/Verlaine effort) had permanently soured his relations,
not only with Phonogram but with The Biz."

Whatever about the "half-hearted" live shows (and I think some of you who were
there or heard recordings would contradict that, as also would the brilliant
live Marquee Moon from 1987 that was subsequently released), it's hard to
believe that Verlaine finished the London album to his own satisfaction, only
to have it rejected. He "wasn't happy with" the album, and it's unlikely that
that was only because Phonogram didn't like it.

There's another point to be made about Schwartzberg's reference to "a record
he wasn't happy with": We must presume that this means a whole album, rather
than just the one song we know to have been recorded in both the London
sessions and the Flash Light sessions in the U.S. ("One Time At Sundown").
That suggests strongly that probably most, if not all, of the Flash Light
songs had already been recorded in London. So they probably recorded about
twenty songs in London, and then Verlaine took half of them into the American
studio and honed them to perfection for Flash Light.

I have to wonder whether Verlaine felt in 1987 that songs such as "Anna" and
"Sixteen Tulips" weren't worthy of inclusion on Flash Light. Doesn't make
sense to me.

Can anyone cast more light or wisdom on it?

We already knew that Heylin could jump to inaccurate conclusions: he stated
that Verlaine "grew up in the subtle stranglehold of Smalltown America --
Delaware, Pa." Verlaine actually grew up in Wilmington, Delaware -- a fairly
big city. But I must say that, on the whole, Heylin did a great job on those
liner notes.

--JoeT
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