This song has been recorded many times over. The most famous of these is probably the one that gave Jimi Hendrix his first hit but I also know it from Love‘s eponymous first LP. [See also Friday On My Mind 3, Alone Again Or. Btw I noticed on checking that the original video I featured there has been withdrawn so I have updated it.]

Jarvis Cocker has been playing various versions of Hey Joe on his BBC 6 Music Sunday Service programme (4-6 pm) roughly every month. The one he played last Sunday (New Year’s Day) surprised me as the performing artists Kasenetz Katz Singing Orchestral Circus are probably more widely known for the “bubblegum” hit Quick Joey Small. I had certainly not paid them more attention than that. Their Hey Joe is much better than I would have thought.

Kasenetz Katz Singing Orchestral Circus: Hey Joe

Love produced some eclectic music in the middle of the 1960s. A lot of their songs had strange titles: Alone Again Or, Andmoreagain, 7 and 7 Is, and the really bizarre Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark And Hilldale. I didn’t actually buy any of their albums until relatively recently when they were reissued as CDs. The cover of their album Forever Changes is cleverly done with the faces of what I presume are the members of the band filled in with psychedelic colours and arranged to look like a map of Africa. (I see from the video still below I needn’t have bothered with the link here.)

Not a hit as such, I remember Alone Again Or from the time of its first release as not troubling the charts very much if at all. While Love also recorded Hey Joe, perhaps more familiar from Jimi Hendrix’s version, Alone Again Or is probably their best known song.

I really like the way it suddenly transforms in the middle with the Spanish sounding trumpet passage.

Love: Alone Again Or