by I only like British eccentric pop music, although I did get into the Magnetic Fields, an American band who are very heavily influenced by British pop bands, like the Human League, so back to English pop again. Anyway, I always loved There She Goes by the La's, a 1980s band from Liverpool, so I bought the debut album, and boy, did I hate it first of all, it was all R&B and rough, like the early Rolling Stones, the sort of thing I absolutely hate.. Not wanting to waste my money, though, I would occasionally play the album again, and then one day it clicked that there was something very special about the songs. They way they rhymed, the percussion - using blocks and other unusual percussive instruments - the way the backing vocals blended and harmonised, and so I found it started to sound
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I only like British eccentric pop music, although I did get into the Magnetic Fields, an American band who are very heavily influenced by British pop bands, like the Human League, so back to English pop again. Anyway, I always loved There She Goes by the La's, a 1980s band from Liverpool, so I bought the debut album, and boy, did I hate it first of all, it was all R&B and rough, like the early Rolling Stones, the sort of thing I absolutely hate.. Not wanting to waste my money, though, I would occasionally play the album again, and then one day it clicked that there was something very special about the songs. They way they rhymed, the percussion - using blocks and other unusual percussive instruments - the way the backing vocals blended and harmonised, and so I found it started to sound absolutely marvellous! Then I discovered that I was the only one hooked on the album, and that it had created a quite cult following too.
Their fashion was to wear the clothes they had always worn as young lads on the English council estates, very rough and ready, and this style went on to influence Oasis, another English band from Liverpool, a band I never got into, . In fact, the name, the La's, in Scouse, (Liverpool), is how they say the lads. So they are, The Lads, and they certainly were, check out, Way Out, below.
Problems with the new album
Lee Mavers was a perfectionist, or a genius, who was unable to settle for something good enough
Lee Mavers, guitarist/ singer/ songwriter was a perfectionist and hated the album when Go Discs released it. It had been re-recorded several times over three years, using many different producers, as well as going through a lot of different guitarists and drummers, who leave because they had to earn money, or go to university, so then it would take the new guitarist quite a long time to the learn the complicated guitar parts., and this really slowed things down. It cost Go Discs over a £million to make, so they got Steve Lillywhite to finish off what he has recorded with the band, and then just release the album. But Lee Mavers hated it and said that unless he could re-record the album again, he would never make another one, and he stuck to his word right up to this very day. So now his fans have to live with such a small body of work, which is tough when the songs he did record were some of the best ever written. Lee Mavers was an extraordinarily good song writer, a superb singer, and a very good guitarist, who mainly concentrateed on rhythm guitar. In fact, sometimes the songs were often full of really complicated guitar playing, all picking away. Hear Fishing Net, below. Lee Mavers liked to really pick out the notes on his guitar, which gave a strong sound. Mike Badgers, who first started the band, got Lee Mavers in, he said, because no one else played the guitar quite like him. But Mike Badgers was was no match for Lee Mavers song writing, who started to ntake over the band because he had loads of good songs, and so he left to start another band with a sound more to his liking.
Lee Mavers got much of his influence from American 50s R&B bands and American 60s bands, but he was also influenced by British Skiffle, which had American roots - listen to Fishing Net.
Skiffle, style of music played on rudimentary instruments, first popularized in the United States in the 1920s but revived by British musicians in the mid-1950s
Skiffle - Britannica Encyclopedia
There She Goes
This is beautiful!
A good article
There She Goes Again: Why The La's Still Matter 30 Years On
Celebrating 30 years of The La’s with help from the Scouse artists it still inspires…
There She Goes Again: Why The La's Still Matter 30 Years On
A lost track: Steve Lillywhite, a top British producer, thought this was one of the best songs he had ever heard and wanted to put it on the album, but Lee said no, it's to go on the next one.
Steve Lillywhite said that if you give Lee Mavers an acoustic guitar, he can outperform anyone. I think he's right.
Fishing Net
I love the dreamy echo!
Way Out - Andy McDonald version.
It’s totally superb! I think it's better than the Steve Lillywhite version. But Steve Lillywhite did so an excellent job on many of the other songs.
In my opinion, this is the best tracks on the album, along with There She Goes, its equal. It has the best ending ever, and the musicianship is amazing! Lee Mavers moves away from R&B here, and it has superb composition and arrangements. It's acoustic guitar based with some lead electric guitar, but it has incredible power, without having to get loud or heavy. Steve Lillywhite did an excellent job here, really catching the band at thier best. But I do find this ablbum thin and brittle in places, which what I think is one of the things Lee Mavers also hated. Lee said the original demos did capture the La's sound. I guess, they were too rough to release as an album.
A track that never made it to the album, but it might be a later composition. It's one of my favourites!
I Am The Key
A good review of the La's and their influences
An interview of The La's
A longer version
Lee Mavers more recent footage.
It is said he has loads of new songs as good as There She Goes, but he still won't record another album. It is said he suffered from extreme perfectionism, but he could have been a genius who was unable to settle for anything less. If we had got the album he wanted, it could have been even more amazing. One of the problems was that he was into 60s music, but all the music at the time was Indie, which had a thin, bright jangly guitar sound. It's one of my favourite sounds, which I mainly enjoyed because of Robyn Hitchcock, another musician I will cover one day. The producers couldn’t get out of the indie mind set. Indie was the all the rage back then, where bands like Smiths were huge in Britain.
This footage is about 10 to 15 years old. It looks like we will never get another album now. Lee Mavers apparently has done very well from, There She Goes, getting plenty of royalties from adverts.
The La's live, T in the Park
It's rough, but the songs are great! John Powers was a good bassist who added a huge rocking backwards and forwards bass to many of the songs - an excellent skiffle sound - plus he was a very good singer too, adding superb backing vocals. He went on the form the successful band, The Cast, as well as having a successful solo career.
The La's - Full Album