A Mellow Gold Mine: Revisiting Beck’s Unreleased Early Work
Invisible Hits is a column in which Tyler Wilcox scours the internet for the best (and strangest) bootlegs, rarities, outtakes, and live clips.
When Beck’s “Loser” became an inescapable MTV and radio staple in 1994, the songwriter seemed to have one-hit wonder written all over him. It’s easy to imagine a lesser talent fading away within months, particularly given the alternative-music gold rush of the era. But Beck beat the odds and then some, making innovative and influential music throughout the 1990s and solid, albeit not as exciting music since then.
Mellow Gold, Beck’s third studio album and major-label debut, was released 25 years ago today (March 1), so it’s a good time to dig into the strange, fertile years that preceded Beck’s big breakthrough. His output from 1988 to 1993 demonstrates how, from the very beginning, he was much more than a slacker generation poster child. “I mean, I never had any slack,” he told Rolling Stone around the time when Mellow Gold was blowing up. “I was working a $4-an-hour job trying to stay alive. I mean, that slacker kind of stuff is for people who have the time to be depressed about everything.”
Banjo Story (1988)
The earliest glimpse we have of Beck comes from Banjo Story, a surprisingly assured cassette recorded in 1988, when he was still a teenaged high-school dropout obsessing over folk-blues masters like Mississippi John Hurt. He was already adding his own flavor to the timeworn acoustic vibes of yesteryear, with surrealist talking blues and rambling ballads that reference crack houses, comic books, and flamethrowers—the kind of stuff he would later refine for 1994’s One Foot in the Grave. You could also point to the weirdo recitation of “Olde English” as a messy precursor to the folk/hip-hop fusion of “Loser.” And you might even get a hint of Sea Change’s melancholy heartbreak on Banjo Story’s “Going Nowhere Fast” and the forlorn “Woe” (“I found you, you found me/Together we found misery”). Clearly the pieces of the puzzle were all coming together.
“Crushing the Cantaloupe” + “Ozzy,” Troy Café in Los Angeles (1992)
After a failed attempt to break into New York City’s so-called “anti-folk” scene in the early ’90s, Beck returned to his L.A. stomping grounds and began performing wherever he could—on city sidewalks, at house parties, and at tiny clubs like Jabberjaw and Troy Café. The latter spot in Little Tokyo was a home away from home in more ways than one: his mother, Bibbe Hansen, was a co-owner. These two clips of Beck at the Troy give a good indication of what his early live show was like: shambolic, dissonant, but oddly endearing. Backed only by a drummer, Beck’s detuned acoustic and mumbly narratives don’t seem like the stuff of major-label A&R dreams, even in a post-Nevermind landscape. But there’s a clear preview of the crossover to come; one in-the-know fan requests “Loser,” which Beck had recorded in 1991 (or possibly early ’92) but didn’t release until March of ’93.
Buck Fuck Iowa (1992)
In the meantime, the songs kept on coming. For Beck fans, the early ’90s are a (mellow) gold mine of unreleased demos, cassettes of which began circulating in the L.A. underground. The Buck Fuck Iowa tape kicks off with an inspired country-blues cover of GG Allin’s confrontational “Tough Fuckin’ Shit” (“I hate my family/They can all go suck my ass”) and an aggro rendition of Dwarves’ “Fuck You Up & Get High” before cruising into twisted spoken-word rambles (“Satan Was Way Cool”) and more straightforward gospel-tinged efforts (“That Highway Won’t Get You to Heaven”). “Loser” itself (under the title “Kill Me”) also makes its unofficial debut here, buried on side two. Buck Fuck Iowa also includes an intriguing glimpse of the band Loser, featuring drummer Steve Hanft, who would go on to create several of Beck’s early videos. The group highlights Beck’s heavier side, but it’s unlikely he was taking it too seriously—“Trash Can” in particular sounds like a withering takedown of grunge.
Don’t Get Bent Out of Shape (1992)
“The only thing I miss about those days is having time,” a wistful Beck told Monster Children in 2015. “I had a lot of time to drift in and out of songs. Everything went into them and songs came out of life in a natural way. [T]here was a lot of freedom in a sense. The kind of music that I was doing and that my friends and I liked was invisible at the time. There was nobody watching or caring.” That feeling of freedom comes across loud and clear on further demo tapes that Beck mailed to L.A. radio stations in his early years. Don’t Get Bent Out of Shape is particularly good, showcasing an increasingly confident songwriter with a unique aesthetic emerging. Some versions of the tape feature the hilarious, future 7-inch “MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack,” which took on an added level of irony when Beck became a mainstay on the channel just a few years later. For further exploration of Beck in lo-fi mode, check out some of the other demos that have circulated among collectors, including Beck, Like the Beer and Bogus Flow.
KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic Performances (1993)
“Loser” officially made it out into the world on a 12-inch released by Bong Load Records in the spring of 1993. Despite only 500 copies being pressed, the song’s soaring chorus, rapid-fire stoner lyrics, and infectious slide-guitar hook quickly caught the attention of local radio stations KROQ, KXLU, and KCRW, who all put the song into heavy rotation. Beck made his radio debut that summer on KCRW’s influential Morning Becomes Eclectic show, freestyling over “Loser”’s backing track, performing solo acoustic, and chatting amiably with host Chris Douridas. The songwriter would soon sign with DGC—the alt-rock equivalent of the major leagues—and begin putting together Mellow Gold. It was time for Beck to prove he was a lifer, not a loser.
