About the Taglines CD

About the Taglines CD

The Taglines The Taglines

Tracks

01 - Time Holds Every Bitter Answer (3:54)
02 - Now Do I See (4:51)
03 - Nothing On The Road (3:57)
04 - Erase A Love (3:34)
05 - You Only Understand (3:48)
06 - For One Unending Night (3:37)
07 - Do I Think (3:25)
08 - One Unspoken Thing (3:46)

To purchase a copy, please go to the 7X Store.

“Perhaps one of rock music’s most tragic chapters is that of a group of four young men who many believed to possess the qualities of a super group. Yet, before a single note reached the music industry, they were silenced. This unique tale of lost opportunity is the story of The Taglines.” Joe Marks – Billboard Magazine, April 2006

In the mid-seventies, a band named The Taglines was based out of Northfield, Minnesota. From relative obscurity, they were discovered by a subsidiary of Epic Records in 1974. Soon after, they were under contract to produce an album for Epic’s legendary marketing push of 1976. The band’s music and sound was hailed as revolutionary for its time and quickly produced a buzz in the industry. Many insiders were convinced that this group of 22 year-olds was on the fast track to fame on the national music scene.

The band began recording in February of 1975 – completing 8 songs by March 21. But on a Sunday afternoon on April 5, The Taglines came to a tragic end with the accidental deaths of the band’s songwriters and front men - Andrew Mills and George Lewis. The cause of death was pulmonary edema as a result of smoking tainted marijuana. The other two members, Dean Leslie and Roland Westmore survived the incident after being hospitalized – yet never reformed the group. Epic Records attempted to release the eight songs that were recorded, but unresolved legal battles with, and between the families of Mills and Lewis over song ownership permanently shelved the material. Notably, Epic turned to their second choice for their marketing blitz of 1976 – a band called Boston.

Sadly, it is widely believed that the original masters of The Taglines were lost when the Epic subsidiary, Tartan Records went out of business in 1979. However, by the 1980s, bootleg copies of The Taglines’ sessions began to circulate – although their origin is both debated and unclear. Among musicians, the story of The Taglines was something of a legend – and despite the fact that the music was never officially released, the material from these poor quality bootlegs served as inspiration to countless musicians. We had always been huge fans of The Taglines – both the songs we’d heard and their story. In 2008, we were finally able to obtain a complete collection of the eight songs recorded by the band (thanks to a lot of work by Vern). And while the original versions of the songs can not be legally distributed, performing cover versions is legal, as long as royalties are paid as specified in compulsory mechanical license laws. So, in a respectful tribute, we have meticulously recreated the eight songs from those recording sessions of 1975 – the music of The Taglines! P7X