The La's

The La's released a single record, in 1990, and the whole band hated it. Not only Lee Mavers, which is the way the story usually gets told: also John Power, the bass player, who left on 13 December 1991, and the rest of the group. The album that today turns up on every list of the best British pop went on sale against the will of the people who played it, because the label decided to mix and release some tapes they regarded as demos. Inside it was "There She Goes", three minutes that sound as though nobody wrote them, as though they were simply there.

Liverpool, 1983: the band was founded by someone else

It was founded by Mike Badger, in 1983. Lee Mavers joined the following year, and the detail matters because the legend tends to start straight away with him, as if The La's had always been his project. They were not, at the beginning. They were afterwards, once the size of what he was writing became clear: melodies that seemed remembered rather than composed, without a single ornament, with the guitar sounding as if it had been recorded in 1965 and the tape had been lost.

The figures, however, never matched the legend. "There She Goes" came out in 1988 and reached number 59 in Britain; on the 1990 reissue it rose to 13, which is its best showing, and in the United States it made 49 on the Hot 100. The album stopped at number 30 in the United Kingdom. None of that is a failure and none of it is a phenomenon: it is a cult band in real time, while it was happening.

Seven producers and a collective repudiation

Recording that album took years and at least seven producers passed through it. Mavers rejected everything: equipment, rooms, entire takes, for reasons only he ever fully understood. The version that was released carries a credit for Steve Lillywhite and Bob Andrews — "There She Goes" is an Andrews production, remixed by Lillywhite — and it reached the shops because Go! Discs got tired of waiting and put out the material without the band's approval. That is the half of the story that almost never gets told: there is not only an impossible perfectionist, there is also a record company publishing over the heads of its own musicians.

Mavers's words about the result are harsher than any paraphrase: he said the record had ended up "all fucked up like a snake with a broken back" and he called it "a bag of shit". There is another line of his that always circulates misused. In the NME of 15 April 1995, asked by Paul Moody whether his absence had served any purpose, he answered that the closer you are to perfection, the closer you are to imperfection, and went on: the closer you are to God, the closer you are to temptation. The second half almost never gets quoted, and it is the one that changes the meaning: he was not talking about the record, he was talking about himself.

The silence, which was not all that silent

There was never a second album. Mavers became an almost ghostly figure, no interviews, with promised records that never appeared. But "he vanished off the map" is a comfortable exaggeration: there were band reunions in 1994 and 1995, another in 2005, another in 2011, and a concert in 2024. John Power, meanwhile, founded Cast and did well at the height of britpop.

There is something else the romantic version prefers not to look at. Mavers admitted having tried heroin in 1990, the same year as the record. Putting down three decades of silence exclusively to an ear that was too demanding is a pretty reading and probably an incomplete one. It is said here because the myth of the pure perfectionist is more pleasant to tell and serves everybody except him.

The disciples who did finish the job

A few years after The La's went out, another band from the north of England did with that same mould — classic melody, clean guitars, working-class pride — what they did not do: sell millions. And Noel Gallagher never hid it. He said there is only one songwriter in this country who frightens him, and that it is Lee Mavers, and he described Oasis's mission as finishing what The La's had started. It is not a line of courtesy: it is an acknowledgement of debt, spoken by the debtor.

What to remember

The La's left a record their band refused to sign off on and a song that got away from everybody: from Mavers, who considers it badly finished, and from the label that published it by force. "There She Goes" has been playing on radios, in films and in adverts for more than thirty years, and it still seems like a find rather than a piece of work. That is the paradox: what its author heard as a broken work is, for everyone else, the closest thing there is to a perfect song.

But the pretty version is worth resisting. It was not a lone genius against the entire world: the whole band repudiated the record, the label released it anyway, and the man who wrote it was going through things that the perfectionist legend covers up very well. An artist can be right about his work and still lose it. What was left was the record. What was not left was the second one.

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Sources

The La's were a band from Liverpool, England, founded by Mike Badger in 1983; Lee Mavers, singer, guitarist and main songwriter, joined in 1984, and John Power played bass. Their only studio album, self-titled, was released in 1990 after years of sessions with at least seven producers; the released version carries a production credit for Steve Lillywhite and Bob Andrews, and "There She Goes" corresponds to an Andrews production remixed by Lillywhite. The label Go! Discs mixed and released material the band regarded as demos, without their approval, and the record was repudiated by the group, not only by Mavers; John Power left the band on 13 December 1991. Mavers described the result in very harsh terms, among them that it had ended up "all fucked up like a snake with a broken back". In an interview with Paul Moody published in the NME on 15 April 1995, asked about the usefulness of his absence, he set out the reflection on the closeness between perfection and imperfection, which continued with a comparison between closeness to God and closeness to temptation. "There She Goes" reached number 59 in Britain in 1988 and 13 on its 1990 reissue, and 49 on the Billboard Hot 100; the album reached number 30 in the United Kingdom. Mavers admitted having tried heroin in 1990. The band did not release a second album, but had reunions in 1994 and 1995, in 2005 and in 2011, as well as a concert in 2024; John Power later founded the band Cast. Noel Gallagher has stated that there is only one songwriter in his country who frightens him, and that it is Lee Mavers, and has described Oasis's mission as finishing what The La's started. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from the NME, the Official Charts Company, The Guardian, Billboard, Wikipedia and other coverage.

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