The Story

Back in 1987, a single, 'Way Out', was released. It was the debut record by an exciting new Liverpudlian band called The La's.

Over a year later they released a second single; 'There She Goes'. It would go on to be re-issued a couple of years later and become one of the most well known songs of the era. However, an album didn't see the light of day until November 1990, nearly three years after their initial excursion.

The reason? Well, there have been many offered, some pure myth, other speculation, but one thing that's sure is that Lee Mavers, the band's songwriter and musical visionary, was searching for an elusive perfect sound, but as he said "the closer you get to perfection, the closer you get to imperfection, simple as".

Between July 1987 and May 1990, the band worked with 10 different producers including John Porter (The Smiths, Billy Bragg, Ryan Adams), John Leckie (Pink Floyd, Stone Roses, Radiohead), Mike Hedges (U2, The Cure, Manic Street Preachers) and Steve Lillywhite (The Pogues, U2, Peter Gabriel, Morrissey, Talking Heads) searching for the one who could get the sound out of Mavers' head and onto tape.

Most sessions were scrapped after a few songs but in April 1989, down in their label boss's Mum's kitchen in Devon, the band settled down to record a whole album's worth of material with Mike Hedges. Mike's mobile collection of analog gear, including an old Abbey Road EMI desk used to record The Beatles, offered the best chance of bottling the lightning this band were clearly capable of. However, when it came to mixing the album the word came that the sessions were to be scrapped. Again.

The label responded by stopping the band's wages which meant a change in personnel - Lee Mavers and John Power remained - and the new line up were sent to work with Steve Lillywhite. Not enamoured with Lillywhite's crisp-sounding version, the band walked out halfway through but the album was finished by Lillywhite and finally released to much critical acclaim, enduring success and influence. The band disowned it.

On 14th April 2008, the release of the Deluxe Edition of the album will offer the listener an insight into the epic journey that the band undertook to try and realise the dream. It will include the originally released Lillywhite version, but also 13 of the Mike Hedges tracks, 12 of which will be heard for the first time.

The Hedges recordings have been hidden away on a C60 cassette for the best part of two decades, the masters having long disappeared, either lost, stolen or destroyed depending on which version of the story you chose to follow. Having been remastered by Mike himself, working alongside Kevin Metcalfe (Paul Weller, Oasis, Orbital, Underworld, KLF, Spiritualized, The Who, Depeche Mode, Pulp) the album that maybe should have been released first time round is now available.

The last word? A testament to the genius of The La's? We'll leave that to Noel Gallagher:

"There's only one boy in this country who scares me and that's Lee Mavers. He frightens the life out of me."