David Axelrod’s lost album from 1969. Originally issued on Mo’ Wax, this Now-Again’s definitive, Axelrod-Estate sanctioned reissue.
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Now-Again’s Egon and the legendary Los Angeles producer, composer and arranger David Axelrod were friends for years before Now-Again – at Axelrod’s request – embarked on the painstaking process to issue all-analog lacquered versions of his lauded Capitol Trilogy: Song of Innocence, Songs of Experience and Earth Rot.
David Axelrod speaks contemporaneously about ‘Song of Innocence’ in an interview broadcast on the Voices of Vista radio program.
Their first inp-person meeting was in Los Angeles, in the beginning 2001, when Egon joined his then-Stones Throw cohorts Madlib and Peanut Butter Wolf in Capitol’s studios to witness Axelrod and his long time musical partner H.B. Barnum complete what had been conceived as a third Axelrod-produced Electric Prunes album, it was to be called Faust, based on the medieval German legend.
Axelrod had completed his compositions, and recorded the rhythm tracks for the album with core Wrecking Crew personnel, including drummer Earl Palmer, bassist Carol Kaye, guitarist Howard Roberts and keyboardist Don Randi. He had even cut the tracks to an acetate. But the project was shelved, and he never completed the sessions with string and horn arrangements and vocal performances.
Don Randi visits with Egon and Emile Haynie to discuss David Axelrod and ‘Songs of Experience’.
Missing for decades, not even the deepest Axelrod acolytes knew of Faust’s existence. Then, in the late 1990s, the improbable happened: Axelrod’s son Michael – his collaborator on Earth Rot – told his father he preserved a dozen or of his father’s acetates, from demos to full albums. He hand-delivered the last remnants of Faust to the composer’s North Hollywood apartment, along with a cassette, which Axelrod then played to his loyal photographer and archivist, B+.
David Axelrod’s son Michael visits with Egon and Zach Cowie to discuss his father and their collaborative album ‘Earth Rot’.
The Faust recordings captured Axelrod in transition, at the high-water mark of his creativity – it contained early sketches of instrumental beds that would later be fleshed out on Songs of Experience as well as that suite of instrumentals, the forgotten glimmers of Faust. But they needed to be completed – and Een the visionary Axelrod couldn’t have imagined what would come next.
Now-Again now presents the album – retitled and issued by Mo’ Wax first in 2001 as David Axelrod – in its definitive, Axelrod Estate-sanctioned reissue. New photos from the 2001 sessions by B+ adorn the front and back covers of an oversize, 12-page book that contains Egon’s story of Axelrod’s life arc, and the genesis of this special album.