Happy 35th Anniversary to The La’s’ eponymous debut (and only) album The La’s, originally released October 1, 1990.
One of the wildest—but maybe most telling—rumors about the fraught recording of The La’s is that La’s frontman Lee Mavers once demanded that musical equipment be fetched that was sufficiently coated in “1960s dust.” It was the late ’80s inching into the ’90s, and we were just about to emerge, bleary-eyed and spent, from a big-haired, synth-heavy decade full of bleeps and bloops and slick over-production. The La’s, with their distinct Byrds-and-Beatles vibe, were the antithesis of this ’80s excess. So much so that they’re often credited as the blueprint for Britpop, bringing back the raw, early rock ‘n’ roll sounds of a bygone era, but cleverly reimagined for the gritty and cynical ’90s. Unfortunately, however, back in the pre-Britpop Neighties, very few people thought the 1960s—and their residual dust—were particularly cool. Very few people, that is, besides Lee Mavers.
No one knows if Mavers’ demands for “1960s dust” actually happened, or if it’s part of The La’s well-worn lore, which has proliferated over the decades since the band released The La’s, their sole album prior to disappearing and never releasing music again. Mavers in fact hated the album, going so far as to liken it to “a snake with a broken back” in a 1990 interview with the NME. The La’s was, however, critically well-received, with Robert Christgau asserting, “Once in a blue moon, somebody with the gift comes along, and frontman Lee Mavers is that somebody.” The album has also amassed a cult fandom in the three-and-a half decades since its release, owing in large part to its pop earworm “There She Goes” and the many artists who never seem to tire of covering it.
Mostly, though, it’s a marvel that The La’s was ever even released. The album was recorded and re-recorded numerous times, all driven by Mavers’ relentless perfectionism. Several different producers with impressive pedigrees tried and failed to capture the sound in Mavers’ head, with his bandmates growing increasingly exasperated. At the end of this grueling process, the project had cost Go! Discs, the band’s record label, £1 million and yet Mavers still was nowhere near satisfied. So by 1990, the label decided it had had enough and released the most recent version produced by Steve Lillywhite, best known for U2’s early ’80s albums. Mavers was incensed, and publicly and passionately discouraged fans from buying it.
Prior to this album-release rigamarole, the story of the La’s goes back to 1983, when a fledgling singer-songwriter named Mike Badger decided to start a band in his native Liverpool, settling on the name “The La’s” to reflect Liverpudlian slang for “lads,” as well as a beautiful, timeless melody—as in “la-la-la.” In 1984, he hooked up with fellow singer-guitarist Lee Mavers, who shared Badger’s love of The Fall and Captain Beefheart. They started prolifically composing, and in 1986 recruited bassist John Power and drummer John Timson. Timson was soon replaced by Chris Sharrock. The La’s began playing out constantly, packing in appreciative crowds at venues all over Liverpool.
Soon, they attracted the attention of various labels, eventually signing with Go! Discs in 1987. By this point, Badger had left the band, and was replaced by guitarist Paul Hemmings (later of the Lightning Seeds), with Mavers’ brother Neil eventually taking over drums from Sharrock. Despite the many lineup changes, which might have contributed to Mavers’ impending frustration with The La’s recorded sound, Mavers had a stable of songs the band had demoed much to his liking. During the remainder of the ’80s, the La’s released a couple of singles— “Way Out” (praised immediately by Morrissey in Melody Maker) and the hypnotically sweet and spinning “There She Goes”—which only made fans hungry for more.
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Meanwhile, The La’s went into the studio to record their debut album, but would soon discover that Mavers’ feverish attempts to maximize the magic of their demos would prove increasingly frustrating and futile. From 1987 to ’89, the band started and then abandoned sessions with respected producers John Porter, John Leckie, Bob Andrews, Mike Hedges and more. However, for a while the Hedges sessions seemed promising. Hedges and The La’s recorded 35 songs together—enough for not one, but two albums. "The band were very positive, even Lee, until the last couple of days, thought it was going to be great," Hedges told The Guardian in 2008. "Everyone else thought it was the best thing they'd done."
It might have helped that Hedges had recently added to his studio a 1967 mixing console and a 1968 multitrack from Abbey Road, which is likely why Go! Discs had suggested the band work with him in the first place. But the album never reached the mixing console. Mavers had a falling out with drummer Chris Sharrock, which sparked an inexplicable desire to scrap the entire thing. Hedges believes Mavers was in the throes of a drug-induced psychosis. “He'd either be really on it, or the opposite. I can't really say what drugs were involved, but let's say he had ups and downs,” Hedges recalls.
Overall, though, it was Mavers’ perfectionism that was the most unusual—and crippling—element of the entire scenario. "His standards were so high that you're never going to reach them," Hedges says. "At some point you have to say, 'That's it, it's finished,' and move on to something else. I've never been 100 percent on anything I've ever done. I don't think you can be, because how do you measure perfection?" Hedges also added that he believes the Steve Lillywhite album, which eventually emerged as the final record, is a great one, even if it’s “not necessarily how they sounded when I was with them.”
The band soon had yet another personnel change, with guitarist Peter “Cammy” Cammell joining the lineup that would eventually record the final version of the album. The sixth producer to work on the album, Steve Lillywhite, who had produced U2, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York,” entered the picture in a last-ditch effort to finally get the album recorded in December 1989.
“The problems were Lee had this vision for the album, but I don’t think he was that eloquent to explain the vision to anybody. And then he would fire the members of the band thinking they were the problem,” Lillywhite told NPR. “He saw the album in his head, and in his own mind there was only one way this album could sound. It was a very difficult recording session for me. It was falling apart yet again, and my friend at the record label said, ‘Look Steve, what will it take to get this album finished?’”
After laying down the tracks, the band was sent back to Liverpool, Lillywhite finished the album, and Go! Discs promptly released it. Cue Mavers’ rage and incendiary quotes about the snake with the broken back. “It must be one of the few albums in history where instead of the artist promoting the album, he demoted the album,” Lillywhite says. “People would go see them live and then listen to the album and say, ‘I don’t get it. This is a great album.’”
Eventually, years later, Lillywhite’s friend Johnny Marr showed interest in recording with Mavers, telling Lillywhite he was going to reach out to him. “He went in the studio with Lee, and Johnny called me up two weeks later and he said, ‘Steve, I see what you mean about him. He didn’t want to record anything new, he wanted to still record this album [The La’s].’”
Noel Gallagher, who credits The La’s as a major Oasis influence, has also befriended Mavers since and observed the same bizarre behavior. “When I see him I say, ‘Hey Lee, when are you going to release your second album?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll do it when I’ve finished the first one,’” Gallagher told The Quietus in 2011. “He’s still trying to nail his first set of songs right after 27 years. So I’ve come to the conclusion he’s either shit-scared of ruining his legacy or he’s just a lazy cunt.”
Ironically, the success of “There She Goes,” measured by its widespread use in movies, TV shows, and commercials, has afforded Mavers economic stability, which has allowed him to continue perseverating on his obsession. "It's the best thing that's happened to Lee but also the worst," says former bandmate Mike Badger. "He wrote this perfect song, but it's meant he hasn’t had to do anything because he has a constant source of income." Despite now being an otherwise ordinary family man, Mavers has become so well known for his eccentricity surrounding The La’s—and his refusal to move on and record something new—that it even inspired a book, In Search of The La’s: A Secret Liverpool, where author MW Macefield tracks down the band and attempts to understand the whole weird psychology of it all.
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Another irony is perhaps how many bands who aren’t The La’s have achieved success with their covers of “There She Goes,” imposing their own vision on Mavers’ illusive sound. I typically am very good at remembering when and where I first heard an album, but The La’s is one exception, possibly because of how many covers of “There She Goes” were swirling around in the ’90s, and just how many times the original appeared on movie soundtracks. (I do know, however, that I’d heard it prior to the overly saccharine Sixpence None The Richer cover.)
The La’s kicks off with the jangly and percussive “Son Of A Gun,” which opens with lines uncannily autobiographical: “If you want I'll sell you a life story / About a man who's at loggerheads with his past all the time / He's alive and living in purgatory.” It’s somehow both sparse and rocking, with shivery little flourishes of vocal harmony. Next up is “I Can’t Sleep,” swaggering and Jagger-esque snarling, the kind of song you’d want to bop your head to on a road trip with the windows down. Still, despite its up-tempo exuberance, the lyrics are tinged with dread and paranoia—“I was looking through my window / I was looking through my eyes / And there’s a big black cloud coming / Get off the street outside.”
“Timeless Melody” is an ode to the beauty and power of music itself, and it seems to capture the unique power, and madness, of its place in Mavers’ own mind—“The melody always finds me / Whenever the thought reminds me / Breaking a chain inside my head / The melody chord unwinds me.” The song chugs and meanders, with no real delineation between verse and chorus, in a way that’s magnetic and rattlingly psychedelic. Meanwhile, “Liberty Ship” is a seafaring ditty that reminds me of ’60s Britain’s pirate-radio ships, both due to its very distinct retro ’60s sound, as well as its chorus of “Sail away on the ocean waves / Sail away on the airwaves.”
It's hard to oversell just how amazing of a song “There She Goes” is—even though it’s been covered ad nauseum and used literally everywhere. It’s the glorious, effervescent feeling of being in love captured perfectly by music, without ever once edging into cheesiness. The dizzying, roller skating-in-circles feeling it evokes derives from its structure—a cyclical chorus, no verses, and a bridge. Although it’s been rumored to be about heroin (“racing through my brain” and “pulsing through my veins”), the band has denied this many times. It’s followed by the galloping “Doledrum,” which captures the drudgery of being a working stiff with a head-bopping acoustic-guitar riff.
“Feelin’” is a toe-tapping rocker with a dirty Beatles vibe, while “Way Out” is a suspenseful, darkly waltzing snapshot of an impending breakup: “Give me one last kiss /Before I walk out of this.” The next song, “I.O.U” is sashaying and folky, a track about neighborly interdependence: “On the farm / Linking you arm in arm / There's no harm in / Greasing your neighbour's palm.”
“Freedom Song” has a cheeky cabaret vibe, and the careening “Failure” features riotous guitars and a defiant strut in the face of tough luck. The album closes with “Looking Glass,” a nearly eight-minute ballad that contemplates the complicated relationship between present and past — “Open up the broken door / For all lost to be found / Walk into the empty room and never make a sound”—and ends with a building, cacophonous patchwork of velvety psychedelia.
It’s hard to listen to this album and understand how Lee Mavers could have heard anything other than something totally sublime, but perfectionism is a punitive mistress. “In his head, it was not how he expected it to be when he had that moment and it all fused together,” Steve Lillywhite muses sadly but poetically. Former producer Mike Hedges has a similar diagnosis: "I think [Mavers] got so stuck on what the songs should sound like that he didn't know what they should sound like. But just listening to them play in that room sent the tingles down my spine."
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