There are so many lost songs from the 1960s floating around today. Whether they’re bootlegs or studio sessions or songs that have just slipped through the fingers of producers due to the impermanence of analog recording, so many great songs from that era haven’t seen the light of day, at least in terms of official, refined, studio-recorded releases. Let’s look at just a handful of lost songs from the 1960s that deserve official releases, but probably will never get them.
“The Palace Of The King Of The Birds” by The Beatles
This gem of an instrumental might just be the most mysterious of all unreleased Beatles songs. “The Palace Of The King Of The Birds” is a song that was recorded by the Fab Four back in 1969 during the Let It Be sessions. Only three takes of the song exist, and they differ quite a bit. One version is more than 14 minutes long and is more like an impromptu jam than anything. You might have heard it in the end credits for the first episode of The Beatles: Get Back.
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The song, of course, never made it to Let It Be. In fact, it was forgotten for quite some time until McCartney revived it in 1978 for the famously unreleased album Rupert The Bear. That version wasn’t released, either, and the song remains in limbo today.
“She’s Your Lover Now” by Bob Dylan
“She’s Your Lover Now” by Bob Dylan was recorded sometime in 1966 for the album Blonde On Blonde. It didn’t make it to the record. And, technically, it has since been released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991. But that version is the same incomplete studio outtake version that made the rounds for years, the 15th take of 16 takes recorded for Blonde On Blonde before Dylan and his band gave up. It’s not even complete, as the song starts to fall apart towards the end.
I’d love to hear a complete, professionally recorded studio version of this rock song. But knowing Dylan, that’s never going to happen.
“Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow” by Brian Wilson/The Beach Boys
Ah, Smile. The Beach Boys’ famously unreleased lost album. We can’t talk about lost songs from the 1960s without mentioning this whole album. A lot of material from that album was repurposed into other projects. However, the instrumental jam “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow” (also known as “Fire” or “The Elements Part 1”) has only found space on a collection of session recordings called The Smile Sessions and as a solo version from Brian Wilson on Brian Wilson Presents Smile. Some of Brian Wilson’s friends have noted that this avant-garde piece marked his descent into psychosis and the subsequent undoing of the whole Smile project.
It’s bittersweet to listen to, and I desperately wish each member of The Beach Boys were alive today to record a proper, official version of this song and the whole of Smile under the band’s name.
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