HOLLOWED OUT (1983)

In 1983, Tymon recorded the as yet unreleased album HOLLOWED OUT which Joe Strummer and Glyn Johns (The Beatles, The Who, Rolling Stones, etc.) helped produce alongside Tymon. The album featured Tymon on vocals/violin/piano, Richard Dudankski on drums, Ralf Schmidt on bass, and Joe Strummer playing rhythm guitar on some tracks. Tymon has recently found the album’s master tapes in a corner of Joe Strummer's workroom and is now in the process of remastering & remixing the album and possibly releasing one day soon. Below you will find further information about this album kindly provided to me in February 2007 by Tymon, Richard Dudanksi, and Ralf Schmidt. The track-listing for the album is as follows: "Straw Into Wind", "Moth Into Flame", "Johnny Is A Wanderer", "Scrape of A Deal", "The Firegame", "Velvet Stella", "Too Small To Lead Too Big To Follow", "World Apart", vPractising Hypocrite", and vHollowed Out". Later versions of "Moth Into The Flame" and "The Firegame" appear on the 1987 Frugivores album, NEW AGE SONGS, whilst an early version of "Too Small To Lead Too Big To Follow" originally appeared on Tymon's 1976 debut LP, and another later version of "Scrape of A Deal" would be recorded for Tymon's RELENTLESS album in 1989.

TYMON: "Yes, it (Hollowed Out) hasn't been released...YET!! The master tapes have just been unearthed in a corner of Joe's workroom and I'm thinking of remastering it and putting it out. It's all songs written by me. Joe produced it with me and he played rhythm guitar on some of the songs, Richard Dudanski played drums and a guy called Ralph Schmidt played the bass - who co-incidentally just got in touch by email this very week." -- February, 2007 (email).

RICHARD: "I played with Tymon again (with Helen and Chick) at the Enterprise gigs around the time of Battle of Wills, and then in 82 got another band together, this time with Ralf Schmidt on bass. Again, we did a few gigs and recorded the sessions down at Glyn Johns. Had a great time with Joe and Tymon for a couple of weeks, but the results weren't what Tymon had hoped for. Even so, Joe paid for me to fly over to NYC to try peddling the tapes around a few publishers there... to no avail." -- November 28th, 2006 (email).

RALF: "In a way it is a pity that the "Hollowed Out" material never got released or at least some of it, and I don't really know what the actual reasons were. Was it the bass player? :) I remember sitting in Richard's basement flat (he actually was our neighbour then) in W2 with him trying to comprehend that Tymon wasn't going ahead with the release of the stuff. I dearly recall some of those songs we had recorded in the studio like the version of "Moth Into The Flame", "Scrape Of A Deal", "The Firegame", "Hollowed Out", or "Too Small To lead, Too Big To Follow", just to name a few. They were lovely. Joe (Strummer) played the guitar on two of them but I am not quite sure which ones they were anymore. One of them was Too Small To Lead, I think. I remember Glyn Johns bringing out this old Mellotron to do Hollowed Out on before we decided to do the song on Tymon's little Casio keyboard in the end, which turned out to be a kind of crude sounding affair. Crude but nice!" -- February 2nd, 2007 (email).

FROM IMMORTALITY TO IMMORTALITY and THE LOTUS TRAIN (ca. 1977/1980?)

Tymon recorded two albums (?) that have not yet been released (and I'm told were never intended to be), some time possibly between 1977 and 1980 titled, FROM IMMORTALITY TO IMMORTALITY and THE LOTUS TRAIN. Tymon's then wife and Frugivores partner Helen Cherry may also have appeared on these recordings. Both albums were once for sale as audiocassettes at Sri Sathya Sai Book Centre in London, England, though the store apparently now no longer stocks such items. A possible release of such material however will be available in some way in the near future.

SUSAN DE MUTH: "I have heard From Immortality to Immortality - it's from a very spiritual time in Tymon's life when he spent a lot of time in India The site you mention is probably to do with that. I am not sure if these tapes are still available. Tymon says he is going to use some of the tracks from the tapes on future releases but the tapes themselves were for a particular project and not as a commercial release. I think he was pretty surprised to hear anyone has got copies of them to be honest." -- June 25th, 2008 (email).

MIRROR (circa mid 80s)

The following song "Mirror" was recorded at Pathway Studios in Islington for EMI with drummer Richard Dudanski and bassist Ralf Schmidt. I contacted both Tymon (August 2007) and Ralf Schmidt (February 2007) about the song and received the following messages...

TYMON: "Mike Finesilver, who owned Pathway where many classic records by the Police, Elvis Costello, Ian Drury and God knows famous who had done records, came with us and helped produce it. He also did 'Fire' by Arthur Brown. Mick Jones had nothing to do with this recording but other personnel details are correct. We were being squeezed by 80s drum machines and techno soulnessness and made this track under that cloud... then left.”

RALF: "I am almost certain that I played bass on "Mirror". It just sounds so familiar. I think Mirror is one of the tracks we recorded at EMI. What I don't recall at all are Mick Jones' backing vocals. So maybe it is a re-make and I am all wrong? As far as EMI are concerned we only spent a day in their demo studios. I am almost certain that we did 3 songs there. One of them must have been "Mirror". And I also believe we also did a rough version of "Don't Want To Be Poor". Not very sound info, is it? Now the third song might even only exist in my head. Maybe it was just a rhythm track for something; maybe we only did two songs anyway. I am really not sure. The only thing I know for sure is that I only worked in EMI once as far as Tymon's music is concerned."

OTHER UNRELEASED OR UNRECORDED SONGS

Tymon also recorded an eight-minute version of "Once You Know" (which originally appeared on his 1982 BATTLE OF WILLS LP) with The Clash during the recording sessions for the band's COMBAT ROCK album at Electric Lady Studios in New York in 1982.

TYMON: "'Once You Know' with all the Clash playing on it was recorded in Electric Lady Studios in New York when they were doing 'Combat Rock.' I was playing the violin through a guitar synthesiser and it came out like a Moroccan orchestra; Joe was in the control room and started shouting 'It's a Casbah, Man.' I wasn't sure what a Casbah was. Joe started leading a chorus with Topper and Paul shouting 'Rock the Casbah'. I didn't think any more of it because I was trying to concentrate on the track but when I came to the studio a few days later they said they'd written a song about me, I couldn't get the link at all when they played it - I thought it was a disco song, then they explained 'don't you remember us all shouting 'Rock the Casbah' at you?’"... -- February 2007 (email).

Other unreleased original songs include:

Aint Got No More

Comes The Rain (trad. arr.)

Death Don't Have No Mercy

Confessions of an English Tea Drinker

Who Are You?

Honesty Is Contagious

Wishing Cavalry

A Song For Chico Mendez

Time For Moving On

We Dragged Ourselves

Planxty John Mellor

Pick Up The Pieces

Conscience Money

Child of War

PYE RECORDS (UK) in 1968:

You’d Better Not Say You Love Me Now

In Out of The Rain

THRESHOLD records label (UK) in 1970:

The Eye In The Pond

I Am Not Important

Is There A Life After Birth?

Seagull