(N)One Album Wonders: Inlaws, Outlaws And Terry Dolan

The music industry, man. Sometimes you just don't get it. No, strike that, most of the times you don't get it. And that's me talking about the old music business, not the streaming-based, 'millions of streams will buy me a box of Pringles, so I'll shell out these mega deluxe editions and special VIP concert tickets for a couple of hundred bucks' system of today. Whatever goes into calculations, into their prognostics, and margin calculations, and spreadsheets, about - as Bob Seger sang "what to leave in, what to leave out", but when the music gets left lying in the dirt, and it's great music, then all this calculatin' really don't end up. 

No one is entirely sure as to why exactly Terry Dolan's (presumably) self-titled album never got released in its day. Some think it's because in demand pianist and Rolling Stones sideman-cum-producer Nicky Hopkins abandoned the sessions halfway through, some because Warner Brothers were cleaning house...but no one knows for sure. The whole story gets told in details in the booklet included with our One Buck Record of the day, so I'll just say this: Whoever took that decision was a total idiot (cue GOB-voice: "I think I've made a huge mistake"). Sometimes records get buried, that aren't a huge loss. Some, as Terry Dolan's, were a huge loss. But what really gets me is that here Warner Brothers had a finished record, with a song that was almost certainly going to be a hit...and yet they let it all go away.

But let's rewind a little bit. And say a word or two about who the hell Terry Dolan is (the bootleg accompanying the album explains all of this in huge detail). If you are from the Bay area, you've probably heard of Terry Dolan, at least through his group Terry & The Pirates, the ultimate bar band. If you haven't, well, Dolan started as a folkie who, as he'd sing in his signature song "Inlaws And Outlaws" "came out from the East Coast", trading the Washington D.C. folk scene for that of San Francisco in 1965, then becoming known as a guy who played too hard and rock'n'roll for a folkie and too soft for a rock'n'roller. Hanging out with Greg Douglass, fuitar player for Country Weather, made him switch from acoustic to electric guitar. In 1970 he asked new Bay era resident Nicky Hopkins to produce a two-song demo tape, that included"Inlaws And Outlaws" and "Angie", a ballad written for his wife, both of which figure of course on the One Buck Record of the day. 

The story of "Inlaws And Outlaws" is as fascinating as it is frustrating: The hit that wasn't a record, and then never would be. DJs, first at San Fran's K-SAN and KMPX would play the demo tape version of the song, which became an airplay hit that even began to spread throughout the U.S., but callers enquiring about the song were disappointed, as there was no official single yet. An album with Warner Brothers was negotiated, with the understanding that Hopkins would again produce. In January 1972 Dolan, Hopkins and a hand-picked band of all-star Bay area pickers (including Douglass, Steve Miller Band-bass player Lonnie Turner, and of course John Cippolina, who had already contributed to the demo tape) Wally Heider's San Fran studios and started working on the album, recording what would become side one of Terry Dolan. 

These numbers live up to the 'folk rock'n'roller' reputation of Dolan, with crunchy guitars aplenty, and Hopkins especially piling on the multi tracks and flourishes in his part of the record. The Pointer Sisters, still months away from issuing their debut album, add lavish background vocals. Hopkins himself cheekily inserts a very Stones-ian melody about two and a half minutes into opening number "See What Your Love Can Do", a gospel-rave up. "Angie", the ode to his wife is followed by another guitar-based uptempo number, "Rainbow", before side a ends with what should have been Dolan's classic hit that we still hear on classic rock radio to this day. Quality work all around, and then disaster struck. With only these four finished tracks in the can, Hopkins was called up by The Rolling Stones to do overdubs on Exile On Main Street, then leave for a U.S. tour, then immediately go back to the studio to work on Goat's Head Soup. All of a sudden, Dolan's album was without a producer. 

After a break of almost six months, sessions restarted with Pete Sears as producer (and bass, piano, and keyboard player), who drafted in Neal Schon, right in between leeaving Santana and founding Journey, who shredded like crazy on "Purple An Blonde..?" and "Burgundy Blues", the two heaviest tracks on the Sears-produced second album side, while a cover of J.J. Cale's "Magnolia" and "To Be For You (a pure Sears/ Dolan collaboration) were more melodic. With the album finished, photos for the artwork were shot by Herb Greene, the record got a catalogue number, labels and test pressings. Warner Brothers created a bio for Dolan and a write-up, and then - cancelled the record, as well as summarily dropping Dolan from the label. What should have been - on the strength of "Inlaws And Outlaws" alone - if not a hit, then a more than decent debut by a major talent, turned into a great mess of frustration for Dolan and all the involved players and friends, musical and otherwise.  

Reasons for this suden and seemingy inexplicable cancellation abound, but answers aren't easy to come by. Just the sad fact remains, that a great record was shelved and then forgotten about for more than forty years, and by the time Terry Dolan's solo debut album finally came out in 2016, its author was dead, dying in 2012 of heart failure. He had seen the beginning of the campaign to finally get Terry Dolan issued, but wouldn't live to see it arrive in record stores. 

Why and how was he deprived of seeing the results of those sessions proudly as a finished record? And how many people were deprived of driving down the highway with a window rolled down, fist in the air and loudly proclaiming "Living! My Life! Free!"? Well, way too many. The sad story of how Warner Brothers fucked up, and would so again with Bob Carpenter shortly after, despite its reputation in the 70s as an 'artists first' label, reminds me of the mess they are right now, especially its movie division. You might have heard about a fella named David Zaslav who hates audiences and artists and movies and would rather turn an almost finished or finished film on which hundreds of people worked into a line in a spread sheet for a tax write-off. Big entertainment companies - music, film, TV, it doesn't matter - of course always cared about the dollar first and the artists second, but a company like Warner Brothers who always had a good reputation as being welcoming to artists, has now left that reputation in tatters. 

Oh well. Time doesn't heal all wounds, but this album sounded great in 1972 when it should have come out, and it sounds great now. A couple of weeks ago, over at Babs' place, she asked about what everyone's favorite unreleased music was. Well, this is mine. Just a top notch 70s album, halfway between folk and a rollicking Rolling Stones record. This album is a killer, and I'm happy, if a couple of you will discover it.