Completely agree. Dirty Little Secret, These Open Arms and Nothing were more authentic than Last Cigarrete, Novocaine, Story of My Life and Complicated. Wildflowers was a JBJ song. Unbreakable sounded artificial, ok, but it would still be fun to finish the album.

Yea, I've been reading all along and I agree too.

Also added, with Richie living in LA and Jon in NYC / NJ he's not going to have Richie come out for session work plus I'm sure he comes with a price.

Bobby being a local guy is more convenient and comes much cheaper. This has always been Jon's band and being that's the case, I would think he pays guys to come in and lay down tracks, even for demos. Unless they do it out of the kindness of their hearts. My guess would be sometimes yes, sometimes no.

That'd be sad reasoning on the band's part if that's the reason they use Bobby, to save money on a plane ticket. Demos sure, final album versions should never have outside players playing big parts. Weren't the four HAND additions LA tracks?

Jon should keep Bobby around for solo work only. Though I firmly think it's more Shanks playing the parts than it is Bobby.

I get a bit confused with Crossroad and These Days recording sessions. From what I quickly read here - Always and Saturday Night were recorded after These Days as its last recording session? And that was in March of 1994. Sorry, I might not have understood it correctly or just skipped something but it doesn't make sense. It's not a surprise for me that it was Hugh playing the bass but I thought Alec was fired/left after Crossroad was released, so it couldn't be mentioned in the article that Hugh replaced him. Why would they wait from March 1994 to June 1995 to release the album? March 1994 also doesn't make sense in terms of writing and recording for 11 months when KTF tour ended in fall of 1993. And it also couldn't be March 1995 because Always and Saturday Night had already been released by then.
Sorry too confused. Id there anyone who can retell the story with a proper timeline?

Btw, I love those stories, I love reading those old interviews where you can still feel the passion music. No mention of politics and crap like this. Just music. Awesome music.

Boxset - I wouldn't be surpised if it was tweaked in the studio. I still like even though there are many Jon's solo songs. I'd love to learn more about the whole process of preparation for release. Or would I? Knowing too much sometimes kills the fun. When I thought that Jon is the best singer in the world, the boys are a family where everyone loved each other and I had a few amazing live shows, I was much happier with music and the band itself than I'm now :D And it's being slowly revealed (for me) that there always were some issued between them or at least Richie and Jon, some of the fanclub magazines prove it. It hasn't always been so idyllic.

No, Always and Saturday Night were cut for inclusion as b-sides from a single from These Days, we're not talking about the original recordings.

So they simply re-recorded those two songs in March 1995? Now it makes sense, apart from that I don't know the reason why?

From the scans I understood that Saturday Night was originally meant to be on These Days and when the recording company convinced Jon to release a greatest hit album they used it there along with Always which had been written (and recording by Jon alone) during the KTF tour and was meant as something like Blaze OF Glory, Jon's solo soundtrack record. The lyrics were also written according to the movie. And because the movie being crap, Jon pulled it. However he liked it enough to make it a band song for Crossroad. That's probably why the lyrics don't correspond with the videoclip. It now kinda fits and makes sense :)

Yeah, as I read this they did "live in the studio-versions" of both Always and Saturday Night for inclusion as B-Sides on TD-related singles.
As far as I know only Always (live at A&M studios) saw the light of day on some This Ain't A Love Song singles, tough.

There's a What Do You Got demo floating around?

Don't underestimate studio pros. Solos are one thing, but emulating Richie's licks isn't that hard when the songs feature almost none of them.

There's an alternate version of What Do You Got that accidentally leaked online a few years ago. It was never confirmed to be a demo and it was a theory we all had here. My gut says Phil just played some rhythm work on the final version. That solo melody is pure Richie.

The "demo" version leaked online was recorded with Shanks during The Circle sessions... Phil X was brought in when they re-recorded the song with Howard Benson in August 2010.