Anyone familiar with the explosion of alternative rock in the 1990s knows one of the greatest injustices of the period was that Sublime singer-songwriter-guitarist Bradley Nowell did not live to see the release and massive success of Sublime.
The Long Beach trio’s major-label debut, Sublime, spawned the Top 5 Modern Rock hits “What I Got,” “Wrong Way” and “Santeria” and the Top 30 “Doin’ Time,” and went on to sell more than five million copies in the U.S. alone. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the self titled Sublime and to pay tribute to Nowell’s original vision is the two disc Sublime Deluxe Edition (Geffen/UMe/Gasoline Alley/Skunk) released on August 15, 2006. The digitally remastered Deluxe Edition includes, for the first time ever, the original unreleased version of “Doin’ Time” in its rightful place with Nowell’s original vocal track fully restored. The Deluxe Edition also contains 15 bonus tracks, 8 previously unreleased, plus remixes and videos.
Disc One of the Deluxe Edition restores the self-titled
Sublime to its original intended sequence as Nowell had created at famed LA mastering studio, Bernie Grundman’s. The disc includes both Nowell’s initial opener, the Bob Marley cover of “
Trenchtown Rock,” and the original version of “
Doin’ Time”, the band’s interpretation of George and Ira Gershwin’s American standard “
Summertime”. At the time of its release, the Gershwin estate would not grant permission for the use of the “
Doin’ Time”
vocal because they felt that the Nowell’s new lyrical content was a fundamental change to the original composition and copyright. The band had to excise “Doin’ Time” from Sublime, at which point Nowell shuffled the order, and also chose to drop “Trenchtown Rock” in its entirety. Shortly after Nowell’s passing and before the official release of Sublime, the bands A&R rep at Gasoline Alley (partnered with MCA/Universal to issue Sublime) found himself in an elevator with a representative of the Gershwin estate, whose office was in the same Beverly Hills building as Gasoline Alley. Phillips approached the man and explained to him that Nowell had died and that Nowell’s use of “
Summertime” in “
Doin’ Time” was an homage to the Gershwin legacy, and in no way diminished the composition, that the song demonstrated just how far-reaching the Gershwins’ influence had become and asked the estate to reconsider and grant permission for use of the song. Soon afterward, consent was granted. Although, the Gershwin estate and publisher asked that the original lyric “summertime” remain instead of the words “doin’ time” written by Nowell as a more modern interpolation of the classic. “Doin Time” referencing the term “Doin Time’ as in doing jail time, or in Nowell’s case in this song seemingly applied to a personal relationship theme
By then it was too late to place “Doin’ Time” back into the #2 position of the Sublime sequence, so it was added to the end of the album. Nowell had passed away so the band turned to Michael “Miguel” Happoldt, Sublime’s “in-house” producer and co-founder with Nowell of Skunk Records. Intimately acquainted with the band’s creative aesthetic, Happoldt stood in for his friend in the studio, singing just the word “summertime,” which was then folded into “Doin’ Time” everywhere Nowell had previously sung his twist on the original lyric. Few outside the band’s immediate circle knew it was Happoldt and not Nowell who launched that memorable hook and whose voice is heard on the original release of the self titled Sublime……until now!
Now, a decade later, the original recording of “Doin’ Time,” un-edited, with Nowell singing “doin’ time” throughout, heard for the first time on Disc One of Sublime Deluxe Edition and in the original sequence as Nowell intended.
Disc Two contains 15 bonus tracks including 8 unreleased tracks including instrumental versions of “Doin’ Time,” “April 29th, 1992”; “Caress Me Down”; and “What I Got”; an acoustic version of “Zimbabwe”; an alternate take of What I Got”; and the song “I Love My Dog” – Nowell’s tribute to both his constant Dalmatian companion, Louie, and Bad Brains’ “I Love I Jah.” Other gems include mixes of “Doin’ Time” by the Fugees’ Wyclef Jean and the Martial Arts featuring The Pharcyde, plus videos for “What I Got,” “Wrong Way,” “Santeria,” “Doin’ Time” and “What I Got (Reprise).”
Sublime began recording Sublime in late 1995 at Total Access Recording in Redondo Beach, Calif. Of the self-produced tracks cut there, “Paddle Out” appeared on the disc. In January of ’96, the band began work on Sublime in Los Angeles with David Kahne, who produced “Doin’ Time,” “What I Got,” “April 29, 1992 (Miami)” and “Caress Me Down” but also headed to Austin, Texas to record with Butthole Surfer Paul Leary, who presided over “Wrong Way” and “Santeria.” Kahne and Leary both sensed that Sublime was knee-deep in hits, and they wanted to record some of the same songs so both versions of “What I Got” on the 1996 release of Sublime and “April 29, 1992 (Miami)” can be found on Sublime Deluxe Edition.
Sublime was a pivotal record and a watershed in the development of alternative rock, tying together disparate strands of punk rock, hip hop, ska, reggae and pop and dropping this musical hybrid on a mainstream audience that had never heard such a thing and couldn’t get enough of it.
In a June 1, 1997, piece in the seminal online music magazine Addicted to Noise, Sublime drummer Bud Gaugh said of the album: “The sound we got is the closest we’d come to doing what we do live, which was the sound we’d been shooting for all along. When [bassist] Eric [Wilson] and I finished the bass and drum tracks, we were stoked – we thought it would be big.”
Concluded Addicted to Noise’s Gil Kaufman less than a year after Sublime was released: “Already, it looks as though when the formal history of ‘90s rock is written, Sublime will be much more than a footnote. Popularizers of skacore, stars of late-‘90s radio and MTV, millions of albums sold … But all of that misses the real story completely. It’s a story that most everyone who actually bought a Sublime album knows well. For Sublime was the real deal: a street-smart band makin’ real music that connected with millions of real people.” Even more than the triumph of their 1996 breakthrough album, this is Sublime’s enduring legacy.
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