From the “Sailing On Fantasies” Album – “Bad News”

Our second album.

Our second album.

“Bad News”

This song was our attempt to write a Little Feat number with our own Silver Laughter spin on it, of course. The bass line is probably the first thing that I started playing around with when we started writing and that was the impetus for the rest of the tune. I think this is anything but Beatles sounding, which is why the comment by the Atlantic A&R man didn’t ring true for us.

In fact, all of the newer songs off the “Sailing On Fantasies” album had their own flavor and were showing the direction the band was heading. “Bad News”, “Turn It Down”, “Don’t Want To Lose”, “Hand In Hand” and “I Can’t Believe In You” were some of the latest compositions by us, and all have very little Beatles influence, at least to my ear. Our third album would have probably put us over the top, had we stayed together.

On this song I sing lead with lots of strong instrumentation behind me. Jon played the lead solo and he and Ken sang backups and harmonies. Once the basic tracks were down, Bob Parker took the tapes back to Des Moines with him and scored the horn section. At first I was reluctant to put anything on the album that we couldn’t do live, but as can be heard on some of the live takes I have posted, we did pretty well as a four piece. My wish is that a live version of this song had survived somewhere.

Mick Orton



Categories: History, Music

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