Category: Beck

The backstory to the recording and release of Loser is a fascinating one.

Beck Hansen is invited to the home studio of Los Angeles-based producer Carl Stephenson and just over six hours later the duo had created a classic thanks to a slide-guitar riff (played by Beck) being looped onto an 8-track, to which was added a hip-hop beat, a bit of sitar (played by Stephenson) and a self-deprecating lyric, much of it made up on the spot, including the ‘I’m A Loser Baby, So Why Don’t You Kill Me? refrain which Beck came up with having heard and then thinking his attempt to rap during the session was dreadful.

500 copies were pressed up and released, on 8 March 1993, by Bong Load Records. The song gets picked up by local college radio stations and gradually makes its way to similar stations up and down the West Coast, before some of the larger Californian commercial stations begin to play it regularly.  New York was next to latch onto it, with a copy being passed to someone who worked for Geffen Records whose executives then persuaded Beck to allow Loser to be reissued via its DGC subsidiary in January 1994.

mp3: Beck – Loser

DGC put it out on CD and cassette, while Bong Load, having retained the American rights to release Beck’s songs on vinyl, re-pressed the 12-inch single in larger quantities than before. Within a matter of weeks, Loser was Top 10 on the Billboard Chart in America and by the end of February, it had also gone Top 20 in the UK and most European countries.

I had long believed that here in the UK the single had only been made available via CD and cassette, but there does seem to have been a limited number pressed up on vinyl as a joint release by DGC and Bong Load, with the b-sides being different from these which can be found on the CD.

The extra tracks on the CD are all lo-fi in nature, reflecting the sort of music that Beck had been making in the years prior to becoming ‘an overnight success’

mp3: Beck – Totally Confused
mp3: Beck – Corvette Bummer
mp3: Beck – MTV Makes Me Want To Smoke Crack (Lounge Version)

The third of the extra tracks is a different version of an earlier 7″ single that had been released by Beck on Flipside Records, based in Pasadena.  It was a split effort with a power-pop trio called Bean, with both acts contributing two songs.  Copies of that single now fetch very decent sums of money on the second-hand market.

JC

Well…..that could have been a headline you might well have read when this single was released in mid 1996.

It was a time when the mania and hype around Oasis was at its most ferocious with Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back In Anger having dominated the singles charts like no others in many a long time. Beck had recorded a critically-acclaimed LP entitled Odelay, but the first single lifted from it, Where It’s At, hadn’t done all that well, peaking at #61 in the USA and #35 in the UK.

But Noel Gallagher was a big fan of Beck and he offered to play on and produce a remix of the follow-up single, Devils Haircut. Fair play to the record label, they resisted the temptation to make the most of things by keeping the original version as the lead track with Noel’s remix, along with another remix by Mike Simpson of The Dust Brothers made available as b-sides along with a previously unreleased Beck song.

The Oasis connection worked to some extent in the UK, with the single reaching #22 (which is the third highest single position Beck has achieved over here). But it made no difference at all in the USA with Devils Haircut bellyflopping its way to #94.

mp3 : Beck – Devils Haircut
mp3 : Beck – Devils Haircut (Remix by Noel Gallagher)
mp3 : Beck – Devils Haircut (Groovy Sunday Remix by Mike Simpson)
mp3 : Beck – Trouble All My Days

My own verdict? An excellent pop single on its own. But both remixes do manage to bring something extra along to the song – the extra guitar playing (by Noel Gallagher himself) makes it ideal for your indie discos, while Mike Simpson’s work gives it a touch of soul…..

Enjoy.