The song release of "No More Lonely Nights" back in September 1984 to accompany the theatre release of "Give My Regards To Broad Street", gets my vote for being the most gruelling single to collect. I honestly now need a checklist to figure out how many different versions of this song are available. I recently had a similar problem counting the amount of single versions of 1982's "Tug of War" and "Take It Away" that had been released over the last 33 years. But, "No More Lonely Nights" takes the prize for multiple back-to-back different versions of the same song within a few months.
I have to briefly explain that some of these versions were edited for different audio formats on the Broad Street soundtrack albums(LP, CDs, Cassettes) due to including clips of film dialogue. That's another conversation(yes, it is!). I'm only going to moan about the song as a stand along single. At the moment I have four LP versions plus the Holland 45rpm(same track listing as one of the UK versions).
Apologies, someone thinks "foot bombing" my photo is the hight of comedy...
This past holiday weekend, I went with the "Photo Foot Bomber" to a relatives home. After about a half hour, I remembered that a vinyl copy of a McCartney single was on "Now 4" (a compilation series up to around Now 90) stored under the relatives old record cabinet. "Cool, it's got 'No More Lonely Nights' on it!", I said as I waved it around the room. But, no, it wasn't cool as I read the liner notes and found out there wasn't a playing time listed for the song.
Beep a duck, this was a version I had heard of and didn't have. This information is slightly incorrect because the Arthur Baker remix (AKA Special Dance Mix) was not on the original soundtrack(LP & Cassette). It would have been straight from a fifth version of the Lp single. I was kindly pemit to take "Now 4" home to figure out how long the song was on my own record player.
This version(Special Dance Mix) is supposed to be 4:21 mins long. I played the Lp along with the "same" Holland CD version. Turns out the Holland CD version is not 4:21(as listed), it's 4:18 and :06 longer than the "Now 4" version. These amazing :06 whole seconds features basically a "Yeah Baby!" and as a result makes the "Now 4" 4:12 version...yet another version.
Sure, I wanted to fling the LP out the window, but even Wikipedia's listing of the Special Dance Edit and Special Dance Mix is incorrect(Now 4 calls it the "Mix" but that's the actual "Edit" at 4:12, making the incorrectly named "Edit" the "Mix" at 4:18 or 4:21, for a few seconds of dead air.)
Are you still with me? I don't want to make declarations yet about the "Playout" versions, but the roundup of the different single versions can be summed up in the following way-It's Exhausting!
My "No More Lonely Nights" singles now horrid foot-free
Basically,
1.the radio version was released as the 4:30 min-ish "Ballad" version
1a. Somehow the Ballad is slammed together with a re-recording of "Silly Love Songs" (don't ask).
2. a 5 min-ish "Playout" version, 8:10 min-ish "Extended Version" 3. that 4:12-ish Arthur Baker(Special Dance Edit) and
4. 4:18 Arthur Baker(Special Dance Mix)
5. Another nearly 7 mins of an Extended Playout Version(it's listed wrongly as the Extended Version, and can't be correct as it's over a minute shorter than the 8:10 actual extented version)
6. The nearly 9 min Mole Mix.
Actually, it does look like I made some "Playout Version" declarations. I think I need both a metal and a monument for trying to untangle those versions.
Did I mention the mis-printed label version? Well, that doesn't change the song lenghts to even count at all. Some of these versions(as mentioned) were edited for the soundtrack releases, but as I mentioned also about the 1993 track listing error, It's a timing issue of editing official single releases rather than actual new versions.
No more lonely nights? Of course not, I've got a foot and vinyl singles to keep me company! (Help!)
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