He was free again! Alex Chilton's lost first album

Free Again: Not just a song title, but a declaration of purpose: Alex Chilton was finally out of the Box Tops, where the producers and managers controlled everything, from tour and TV dates, to song choices and even his singing style. When Chilton deviated from the raspy growl that had made him and his bandmates famous via "The Letter", he was immediately reprimanded. His own fledgling songwriting career was stifled, with no place on the Box Tops' records for his own contributions, at a time when even in the pre-fab Monkees Michael Nesmith & Co. were able to get some of their shit in. To appease him, some of his first songs appeared on b-sides from the Box Tops, but within the confines of the band, both he and his band mates felt increasingly boxed in. Kinda like the Boxed-In Tops, AmIrite?

So, when he went into recording studio, anything went, from recutting former Box Tops b-sides (his countryfied take on "The Happy Song" is a total highlight here) to goofing around in the studio with piss-take versions of  "Jumpin' Jack Flash" (which I didn't keep here) or "Sugar Sugar" (which I did). The results were as idiosyncratic and messy as Chilton's subsequent career would often get, but also with some great highlights mixed in. But I felt like neither 1970 nor Free Again: The 1970 Sessions, the two incarnations in which these sessions were issued, were the best ways to listen to this material. I did feel that there was a good album in there somewhere, once the chaff, the doubles and the jokes are filtered out. 

So that's what I did, leaving only the best of these sessions. The title song is the slightly punchier original mono version. "All I Want Is Money" - like "Free Again" a song title and a statement of purpose - was a fine, rumbling song, but it rumbled/ramble on too long, so I edited that down quite a bit. Speaking of editing: A bunch of tracks from the sessions were little more than larks to essentially entertain themselves. In a number of them, they essentially turn into Vanilla Fudge, going for a really heavy sound for the hell of it. "It was sort of a humorous thing", said Chilton, "like Iron Butterfly doing 'Sugar Sugar'". That latter track is present here, as a medley with a snatch of Chilton's original "I Can Dig It" which has the same heavy, sludgy atmosphere and shortened a bit because well, the joke's funny, but it isn't that funny. The other goof I decided to keep is "I Wish I Could Meet Elvis", a decidedly vaudevillian performance by Mr. Chilton. 

He was free again, to do what he wanted...and so there is place for a bit of everything on my version of Free Again: Rock'n'roll, country rock, sensitive singer-songwriter songs. Something for everyone, so be everyone and check out what freedom meant to Alex Chilton back in the day...