Tumbleweed Connection Q for Steve

[whoompley]

Hey Steve,
Maybe you know the answer to this one: How come every copy of Tumbleweed Connection (yellow label UNI, black label MCA and blue label MCA) I've ever heard has a different mix from all the CDs I've heard of the same title (1st run MCA, Polydor reissue, MOFI, Rocket). These are differences you notice if you've spent a fair amount of time with the record and it's gotten into your matrix. For instance, on "Where To Now Saint Peter" the vocals are double tracked on the vinyl, single tracked on the CD. The guitar parts are a little different, too. It's the same performance, different mix. On the rest of the album there are other things, such as the drums being wetter on the lp. Anyhoo, do you know what's up with that? For that matter, does anyone here?
Thanks,
Wes (the other one)

[Steve Hoffman]

Dunno.

Didn't work on that one, so I never compared all of the versions.

I'm sure someone here knows...

[Bill S]

Wes, I've always wondered about that, too. I remember buying a Uni pressing of Tumbleweed Connection when it first came out and I would swear it had the other (now CD) mix on it. I stupidly left that LP on top of my receiver one night and it warped, so I had to replace it. My second copy had the new mix, the LP mix which seemed to appear on all subsequent pressings.

I thought I read once that the second mix was a US only mix, as the engineers felt some of the songs needed a little more oomph. So they added some compression and/or reverb and jazzed up the tracks a little, and this is especially noticeable on Country Comfort and Where To Now St. Peter, which have slightly different guitar parts and the double tracked vocal on Where To Now. I grew to like the "second" version and have always been a little bummed out with the CD versions - they always seem to be missing something.

As a side note, the same thing was done with Led Zep II, where the original had the dryer mix (now on CD), and the later version had a lot of reverb - I always liked that later version better. Although that version did have more distortion, especially evident on the bass parts in What Is And What Should Never Be.

Anyone else?

[Sckott]

I have the UNI of "Tumbleweed" and I concider it to be Elton's finest album of early work ever. I was very lucky to find a M- in Boston about a year ago. To think it was a lot of leftover songs from "Elton John"~!

I'll listen more closely for those differences though!