Here's my hot take of hot takes: I think the LBWL sleeve is actually nicer looking than the SIP one. The latter I've always found busy and tacky, while the former is actually a really nice heartwarming pic of Mike. He may be my least favorite member of the band and a man with a lot to answer for in his personal life, but I look at that pic and can't help but think "aww, he looks like a nice guy, great smile, just wants to share his music with us. I wish him well
" That's not to say it's a
great cover, but it's maybe the most flattering pic of Mike, especially post-60s, and better than a lot of the other awful sleeves in the band's discography.
LBWL may not be a great album but Im curious why Mike is seemingly so down on it if the previous comments about rejecting a proper reissue are to be believed. Is that because it didn't sell too well, and Mike is a very commercial-oriented musician? Or does he genuinely regret some of the creative decisions he made for it? Did he have a falling out with his collaborators, so there are bad memories associated with its production? I would love to know more. Does he talk about it in his autobiography?
And I agree, it's strange he'd be embarrassed by this when he put out SIP, Pisces Brothers and Santa's Going to Kokomo years later. LBWL, warts and all, is certainly superior to those; it actually feels like a genuine statement with integrity, while the rest are throwaway novelties at best, shameful self parody at worst. Pisces Brothers is especially embarrassing to me because George Harrison doesn't even seemed to have liked Mike, or at least paid him very little mind, and Mike's acting like they were best buds 'cause they happened to be in India at the same time. Like, for Mike "I met the Beatles!" was the highlight of his life, for them it was Tuesday.
I kind of like Paradise Found. There's something weirdly satisfying about "Looking Back with Love," the song, too. Like there's a decent song trying to get out, and not quite making it... but then that smooth 80s production almost makes up for it, but not quite... Be My Baby, on the other hand... I dunno, I know Brian had a hand in it, but unlike some of the other 70s and 80s Specter covers, it just doesn't work for me. It's light years away from the covers on 15 Big Ones... and when you're falling way short of the *covers on 15 Big Ones*, I mean, at that point you're making some pretty bad music......
I completely agree with you on the title track. There's definitely the makings of a good song in there, it just needed another (better) set of hands working with Mike to pull it off. It's like hes just rattling off a series of meandering hooks (and they're catchy as hell, "the stormy seas and sunny skies above" has been stuck in my head for years) but the song never goes anywhere. He needed a Brian to give him a great melody or chord progression to give the song direction, otherwise he's just rattling off quippy rhymes and the song just kinda stumbles along until it ends. Since the rest of the album doesn't really follow up on the "reminiscing about America's turbulent past 20 years" theme the song promises, it also just kinda feels like a false start. Without establishing a motif for the rest of the LP, the song could still work if it made any kind of statement about the random "remember the assassinations? remember the good times?" that are referenced...but it just, doesn't.
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