George M Cannon
Let’s play pretend. Let’s suspend reality and make believe we possess a ‘Wayback’ machine capable of allowing us to travel back to a single significant place in time and inhabit the mind and body of someone about to make a significant decision that will change the outcome of history or someone’s future life. Pretty powerful stuff and at its core the type of decision making we would normally ascribe to Gods and Kings. One catch, we can’t control where we go, who we’ll be and the type of decision we will be forced to make. As we step into the machine and take our seats we are understandably anxious. Who will we be? What decision will we endeavor to effect? It’s time to go and with some reservations we throw the switch.
Amazing! We find ourselves in an office but not a normal businessman’s digs, this is different, it’s looser, hipper, more laid back and as we scan the room we quickly put 2 and 2 together and determine we must be in the music business because on the desk in front of us lay a large pile of music related magazines and newspapers all sporting covers of the best known rock acts of the day. From a cursory glance through the stack and publication dates it’s obvious we have arrived in 1970 but before we can complete anymore research the office door opens and two young men enter and are seated. "Chris, what did you think of the tape, we’ve really found some great sounds this time and the songs we feel are among our best, when can get to work and complete them and have the company release the album?”
The answer to that question is why you have arrived at this particular place and time. To assist you let me provide some back story that, while not entirely historically accurate, is representative and essential information to allow you to form an opinion and make a good decision. You are indeed in the music business, it is 1970 and the record company you have built has begun to find its stride. You haven’t changed the established business model’s status quo but you can see that if you make the right moves the playing field is wide open and revolutionary change, power and wealth are possible. Money is an issue as it always has been and you do not have a large budget to work with. The two men in front of you are musicians and are very important because their previous recordings have assisted you in achieving the success you have attained thus far. Their first two albums for your label were critically acclaimed but did not sell very well in a crowded market. The singles you released by them did chart and were money makers. The business reality for you is that singles are still the dominant way your customers buy their music and while LP sales are becoming more popular and are more lucrative you are still financially tied to the sales of singles to pay the bills and drive album sales.
When you previewed the tape they had given you were very aware there were no hit singles among the songs they recorded. Also the music was similar to that of the first two albums, theatrical songs with strings and harpsichords and other orchestral elements, sounding more like the Moody Blues and less like the bands getting all of the press on the covers of the magazines you see on the desk. Those bands are playing blues based rock, progressive rock and heavier psych not the baroque sunshine pop and psych you heard on the tape. You see the musical landscape and the business changing and while you appreciate their efforts the two musicians in front of you represent the past and most likely are not the future for the company. What do you do? Do you underwrite the record? Do you allocate your limited resources to properly promote it? Oh and did I mention the two musicians are not a band in the traditional sense but two songwriters that are not able to undertake the necessary touring to generate record sales and sustain the music press’ interest. Throw in the fact that the music they’re creating incorporates a lot of non traditional instruments and orchestral elements, not unlike the Beatles at that time, that add complexity and that make it difficult for them to be recreated in a live concert setting.
Easy decision I’m afraid and one that you or I would have made and in the case of Chris Blackwell, Island Records head, did make about Nirvana’s 3rd LP then untitled and later named “Dedicated To Marcos III” that was eventually released by PYE Records in 1970 and then rereleased in 2003 as ‘Black Flower’, ironically by the same Universal (Island) Records that passed on it originally.
Why does any of this matter? Because today very few have been fortunate to hear what many, including Patrick Campbell-Lyons one of duo that are Nirvana, the other being Alex Spyropoulous, describe as the band’s best record and a unique piece of musical art that was lost in the shuffle as the music business evolved rapidly and changed fundamentally at the same time. Today we have the luxury of exploring these tracks from a different perspective and can appreciate the art without being bothered with money or any musical fashion concerns of the time.
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| Modified cover 'To Marcos III' |
I think it’s valuable that we explore the “For Marcos III” cover and the significance of its title before covering the music. The cover eventually chosen was a doctored version of the original concept that Nirvana had designed and lobbied hard to release with its powerful depiction of a female black arm/hand with a light bulb (fully lit) held in the hand rising from a dark flat sea. That cover was deemed too controversial given the ‘Black Power Movement’ of the day. No doubt the record company was afraid that an indirect association with it would hurt sales.
Patrick mentioned to me that parting with Chris Blackwell and Island was an amicable divorce but difficult to swallow at the time because “we were his blue-eyed boys for 2 years and he had given us our shot for 3 LP’s with full creative freedom and all recording expenses paid by Island (in the case of ‘Black Flower’ a 30 piece orchestra) in one of London’s best studio’s of the day. We never became a working band, that’s definitely one of the reasons we are both still alive today thank God, ‘Black Flower/To Marcos III’ is a cult album and we are a cult band.” He recognizes the limitation the lack of being a proper band created and he credits that as the reason they never made it beyond the Island pink label days. “In many ways Island stopped being my special place when they stopped using the ‘Pink’ label and the definitive reason we didn’t make it big beyond Island pink and our cult status in the UK and other places in Europe, Australia and Japan is that we never really had the desire to go on the road like Traffic or Spooky Tooth did…. that’s it in a nutshell, we much preferred to be in "our garrett" in Sheperds Bush west London doing our stuff”.
Chris agreed for Patrick and Alex to find another label, and that’s how they found a home on PYE later in the year but only about 250 promotional copies were reported to have been pressed before it was deleted due to the other label partner in the USA, Metromedia Records, “going bust". The title of the LP has been the source of speculation most of it around Alex's Uncle (Marcos?) who is said to have financed the remix when Island passed on the album. I asked Patrick about this and he sets the record straight. “The title is and always was for us ‘Black Flower’. We needed some money to remix it after the Island meeting with Chris without going right away to another record company. A cousin of Alex gave us the money and we gave a dedication to his son Marcos…..that’s it. How it kinda became an alternative title is a mystery to me! From the beginning Black Flower" was a project that always had a strange mysterious edge that it still has today. People pay hundreds of pounds for a good condition original to buy into the "cult" status of it”. I asked Patrick if he had any regrets and he did have one “I would love to have seen it in its original cover art work then it would have been a perfect piece of work for me.
The music is why this record still matters today. Patrick and Alex were and are both gifted songwriters and ‘To Marcos III’ is filled with lush and beautiful songs prominently featuring harpsichords and strings mixed with traditional orchestral pieces arranged in a way that also highlights woodwinds and brass that sound more like a film soundtrack or musical theatre than a rock record. The opener ‘The World Is Cold Without You’ is representative and among the album’s best tracks. It’s also Patrick’s favorite “I feel that it captures everything about Alex and I that were and probably still are our best creative qualities. A great ballad that has a delicate rhythmic power in the string and brass arrangement, a vocal from both of us that has the special Nirvana identity and I can play it today or hear it on the radio and feel proud of my contribution to the song and the band known as Nirvana”. The following tracks ‘Excerpt From The Blind And The Beautiful’ and ‘I Talk To My Room’ continue that maudlin and romantic lost love “what will I do now that she’s gone” vibe that permeates the entire record with the next track ‘Christopher Lucifer’ the lone exception and the one that doesn’t follow that dynamic as ‘Christopher’ has a harder driving sound fitting the subject matter. Legend is Patrick and Alex composed it in the wake of Chris (Christopher) Blackwell’s decision to pass on the record and is a thinly veiled good natured "dig". Patrick however again sets the record straight “both Alex and I always had a good sense of the humoresque as did Chris and the song was written that way. One can always find the dark side if that is what one is looking for and only people in the music business or reviewers would ever try to make a connection between Chris and the song. For the people who like the LP and have it, ‘Christopher Lucifer’ could mean so many different things and like any good lyric, it does. To let you into a secret the song is about gambling, specifically Roulette and Blackjack, and playing the numbers game”. It’s a good song but a bit out of place on this album and to my thinking out of place in the sequencing of the tracks on the record. This track might have been better served as the album’s closer but perhaps the listener needs a break at this point before diving back into that sentimental vibe. Of the remaining songs ‘It Happened Two Sunday’s Ago’, ‘Love Suite’ and ‘Black Flower’ are notable, ‘It Happened’ for its introduction of some electric guitar riffs, ‘Love Suite’ for the appearance of guest vocalist Lesley Duncan and “Black Flower’ as a true lost gem and a psych masterpiece that surpasses even their better known and critically lauded music and even today is among the best psych tracks ever recorded.
In a better world maybe a different decision would have been made and this record would have been allowed to find its audience but perhaps it has. This was never likely to resonate with a majority of rock music fans and as is true with most great art never fully appreciated until viewed through the prism of time. I would not be surprised if Black Flower isn’t resurrected for some future stage production and through that type of vehicle becomes the hit that it never was as a rock record.
Nirvana have a new 21 track compilation due to be released on April 15th titled ‘Cult” and Patrick’s book ‘Psychedelic Days’ is a great trip recounting of those halcyon days of the 60’s when everything was a Happening. Also his most recent ‘13 Dalis’ solo record is not to be overlooked.
