Accurately billed in the promotional material as ‘the supergroup that never was,’ as a special treat for the 2018 edition of Record Store Day, American independent label Rouge Records, in partnership with Sony’s RED imprint is releasing a remastered version of a collection of songs by a group called Pompeii.
From 1976 through to 1978, anchored by the legendary drums, vocals and songwriting of long-time Mountain band member, Montreal native Corky Laing, and equally legendary British vocalist Ian Hunter [Mott the Hoople] the group recorded several tracks at top American studios in anticipation of a release that should have made a huge impression on the music scene at the time.
But it didn’t. Even with the addition of guests such as producer/songwriter extraordinaire Felix Pappalardi, who was also the bassist for Mountain, guitar work by the likes of Dickey Betts and Eric Clapton, harmonica playing by John Sebastian and Paul Butterfield, changes in the music industry meant the project was stillborn, the music occasionally seeing the light of day, but for the most part shuttered away in the archives of a few different record labels before being acquired by an enthusiastic Rouge Records.
The repackaged Pompeii: The Secret Sessions project will be released on vinyl with a digital download on April 21, providing a missing piece of classic rock history to fans of that prolific and creatively dynamic era.
The genesis for the recordings was actually one that was both wonderful, but also indicative of the cynicism and manipulative nature of the music industry to some degree. For music historians, the late 1970s was a time of great diversity, dynamism and seismic shifts in terms of people’s tastes and how labels shamelessly tossed aside what had come before in favour of what was seen as edgy and popular.
At the same time as disco was dominating the charts, punk was also coming to the fore and so-called classic rock acts and progressive rock bands were being pushed aside by label for these new sounds. Laing had left Mountain and had recorded and released a solo album that, while critically solid, wasn’t a huge seller at retail. As the story goes, his label Elektra Asylum was looking to shed his contract but decided to give him one more shot.
“The record company president Steve Wax said, ‘listen Cork, you’ve got your solo album which did pretty well, but we want to step it up and we want to do a super band based around you and Ian Hunter [Mott the Hoople].’ And then he said he though Mick Ronson [David Bowie, Mott The Hoople] would like to come in as well. I told the guy that I couldn’t afford him, and he said not to worry, that if Mick loved the idea he would come in. Sure enough, Mick came in and he is such a brilliant guitar player. And then Felix Pappalardi [Mountain] called me and asked what I was doing, so I told him about the project and I asked if wanted to play bass and he did. So that was the essence of the band. As a joke we were going to call the group Pompeii because it sounded like such a pompous and presumptuous name,” Laing explained, adding that the funding for the project was cut and corporate changes at the record label meant the music that was recorded sat on a shelf, with it’s ownership shifting from one label to the next until quite recently when Rouge Records took over control, securing the rights for the performances of all the artists and now releasing it on April 20, 2018 – 40 years after the last of the ‘Secret Sessions.’
The project was beset by problems from the beginning, as the roster of the talent appearing on the Record Store Day package was not the original people involved to work alongside Hunter and Laing. The recordings were supposed to initially be produced by Bob Ezrin, but early in the process he was pulled away to work on an ambitious concept album by British band Pink Floyd. That album would become The Wall.
Musically, the band was going to comprise Andy Fraser of Free, Steve Hunter from Alice Cooper’s band and Lee Michaels. But when Ezrin left the project, the delays and uncertainty prompted Fraser, Hunter and Michaels to bolt, leading to the incorporation of Pappalardi, Ronson as well as a suite of guests, including Laing’s former Mountain mate, Leslie West, Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers Band and even Eric Clapton, the latter two playing on the song On My Way to Georgia.
“All the drama and people coming and going was pretty over the top. When we had Ezrin and all those other guys it was still a logistical nightmare because everybody had to be flown in and it was tough to get everybody’s schedules straight, so even though we had some great players, it was still a bit of a nightmare trying to get everything to work in the studio. It was kind of like Spinal Tap before Spinal Tap,” Laing said.
“We didn’t give up, we brought in Mick and the other guests and we had Bob Clearmountain producing but it was dragging on and it was costing a lot of money. We were recording at Bearsville, then at the Power Station. Elektra Asylum initially backed me up big time – they paid for all the studio time and for people to fly in, but then something happened to Steve Wax’s health and a new group of executives came in and it was ‘sorry Cork, goodbye.’
“I understood. I am a grown man who had spent years in the music business. But I do give them a lot of credit because they did put in a lot of time and energy and money and it was recorded properly. We didn’t spare anything. We did the best we could. I mean we had John Sebastian and Paul Butterfield playing harmonica. We had some great people guesting on it and it was a wonderful experience. And do you know why, because we had the material. So, I was happy with how it turned out musically.”
The initial idea was for it to be a small-scale release that on Record Store Day would appeal only to serious collectors, and just to have the music and performances finally see the light of day after four decades. But Laing said the project escalated in scope when Rouge Records partnered with Sony – giving the project even more industry credibility and frisson.
“So, Rouge was going to press maybe 300 or 400 – just a token pressing. Then they went to Sony and Sony said, ‘well wait a second. We want to order 1,400 or 1,500 acetates.’ And we were like ‘whoa.’ The guys at Rouge did not expect that and between you and I, I didn’t expect that, but I thought it was great. In other words, it seemed there was a little spark with Sony coming on board. Sony was essentially saying ‘well wait a minute, they’ve got some good musicians on this.’ And more important, the material itself goes back to a time when we were committed to writing great songs. We didn’t write a record so that Eric Clapton could play on it. It wasn’t like that. We created good songs and brought in musicians we thought could do them justice,” Laing explained.
But Pompeii: The Secret Sessions is more than just a collection of remastered songs recorded by some true legends of the music industry. It also features re-recordings of three of the tracks by Laing and his current bandmates Chris Shutters and Mark Mikel, as well as a brand-new studio track composed and recorded by that trio.
“I was in a studio in Toledo with these two musicians I had met, and we were basically just jamming as I was thinking about hitting the road. And we got along great and sounded great, so I said to the guys at Rouge Records that I was all in for releasing the Secret Sessions on vinyl, but could we somehow also get this new band in there and they said no problem. And we picked three songs, Silent Movie, Easy Money and Growing Old with Rock and Roll and I think we knocked them out of the park,” he said.
“While we were in the studio we just wrote the song called Knock Me Over. And I told the guys that I want to make sure we write a song that’s a little more impactful than just another recording coming out so let’s throw on a bonus track for the hell of it. That’s like the ultimate blasé thing a musician can do. I said to the guys, ‘let’s write a song about the fact that you want something to fall from the sky and f***ing knock you over.’ And we wrote this song and I really loved how it turned out.”
The process of putting together the bonus tracks for Pompeii: Secret Sessions and hooking up creatively with Shutters and Mikel has prompted Laing to head back out on the road playing what should be a crowd-pleasing mix of material from his impressive musical pedigree.
“I am writing new material and we have a U.K. label that is going to release it and all we’ve got to do is come up with a name for this new band because I am not crazy about billing it as Corky Laing Plays Mountain. That was then, this is now. I do use it to get booked which works because it’s a well-defined brand, but this band should get noticed on its own,” Laing said, adding that offers for shows and festival dates are coming in constantly.
“I will be playing some of the stuff from this Secret Sessions album, I’d say about one third, and then on third Mountain and a third of the new material that we will have. And we’ll definitely be playing up in Canada – Toronto and Montreal for sure. I have a long connection up there. I lived for a little while in Liberty Village in Toronto while my son was going to university around 2006-2007. It’s funny, Mountain hardly ever played in Canada, maybe just a few festivals. So, for many years I was better known as a label A&R guy [for Polygram Canada throughout the 1990s] than as a musician, although with Cork we did play a couple of times at Lee’s Palace in Toronto.”
For more information on Laing, visit https://www.facebook.com/corkylaing, or http://corkylaingworks.com.
For information on how to get hold of a copy of Pompeii: The Secret Sessions visit https://recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/10185
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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