Love Machine (1975)

[Marcio**]

This unreleased album has attained the status of the holy grail amongst the many devotees of Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's disco music. Recorded late in 1975 (shortly after Summer's first international hit 'Love To Love You') in Musicland Studios, Munich in a matter of weeks, the album drew heavily on Moroder's fascination with synthesizers and Summer's growing reputation for risque lyrics. The six tracks were written by Giorgio Moroder and Peter Bellotte with input from Summer, who was herself becoming increasingly involved with the songwriting after the unexpected success of 'Love To Love You Baby'. The album was produced by Moroder & Bellotte and synthesizers were programmed by Robby Wedel. The only other musician to appear credited on the album was Keith Forsey for 'electronic drums and percussion'.


The intended album sleeve, featuring a barely clad Summer skipping gaily between the printed circuitry of a monstrous machine, proudly stated that 'only the human voice and electronic musical instruments were used in this recording'. Sadly, the album was never to see light of day. Moroder's record label in the US, Casablanca Records, decided that the songs were too 'downbeat' and not 'commercially suitable'. This view was prompted, no doubt, by the poor critical response to Moroder's own synthesized 'Einzelganger' album for Casablanca a few months previously. The 'robot sex' theme contained in several of the songs was also subject to criticism and it was felt that it might not go down well with some of the large US retail outlets, who had previously balked at 'Love To Love You'.


Such rejection for Summer was not unusual - her 1974 pre-disco album 'Lady Of the Night' was not released in the US and, nearly ten years after that, her 'Rainbow' double album was also abandoned. (This now seems ironic given the huge success of Summer's 'I Feel Love' one year later, but even this massively successful song was nearly omitted from Summer's 1977 'I Remember Yesterday' album by Casablanca. On that occasion Moroder vociferously complained and pointed to the chart success of synthesizer hits such as 'Magic Fly' by Space and 'Oxygene' by Jean-Michel Jarre. Needless to say, on this occasion Moroder's view prevailed and 'I Feel Love' went on to become both a commercial and critical hit.)


Upon cancellation of the intended album Moroder set to work on a direct sequel to 'Love To Love You Baby' and within a few weeks he, Bellotte and Summer had written 'A Love Trilogy' which was much more to the liking of Casablanca, particularly with its soft-disco cover of Manilow's 'Could It Be Magic'.


Surprisingly, nobody at Casablanca noticed that one of the other tracks from this replacement album was entitled 'Wasted' - a thinly-veiled reference to both the rejected 'the Love Machine' and the hedonistic drug culture now in control at Casablanca.


Although 'The Love Machine' was never officially released, some advance pre-pressings were accidentally distributed - mainly to radio stations in Europe. Aside from these few hundred discs - which are now worth considerable sums of money - no further copies were produced.


Sadly, as with 'Einzelganger' Moroder now has little interest in seeing the album re-released. Fortunately (for disco aficionados) few of the album's songs were completely lost as some were later recycled on other Moroder/Bellotte-produced albums of the period.


Abridged from the American Music Almanac © 1985


:)

[BrunoRepublic]

This has since been revealed to be a hoax.