Twisted Tales: La's Frontman Lee Mavers Squanders 'There She Goes' Buzz

Posted on Sep 26th 2008 5:00PM by James Sullivan
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You're a band of outrageously tuneful young rockers from Liverpool. You're not the Beatles. The pressure must feel like carrying a piano.

Those Brits sure know how to rush things. When a ragtag little skiffle group known as the La's – local vernacular for "lads" – started making demo recordings of their exuberant music in 1986, fans were instantly convinced it was the Second Coming. Industry types swallowed the hype, and the La's, led by frontman Lee Mavers, quickly signed with London's Go! Discs, home to Billy Bragg and the Housemartins.

Following an unsolicited Morrissey plug for the band's first single, a second release called 'There She Goes' was accompanied by a video of the group running helter-skelter through the streets of Liverpool. The implication seemed obvious: Superstardom, and a yellow submarine, were just around the corner.

'There She Goes' remains an iconic song today, appearing on several movie soundtracks ('Fever Pitch,' 'The Parent Trap') and covered by Sixpence None the Richer, the Cranberries and others. Yet for the La's, their coming-out song would also prove to be their swan song. Sessions for the band's heavily anticipated debut album were held up repeatedly, as Mavers squabbled with a series of producers. Finally, after two years and several lineup changes, the La's settled into a London studio with Steve Lillywhite, by then a big-name producer with albums by Peter Gabriel and U2 to his credit.

Having no more luck with Mavers than his predecessors did, Lillywhite eventually cobbled together an album's worth of material, and the self-titled LP was finally released in 1990. The outspoken Mavers quickly made it clear it was not the album he'd wanted to make. (It was, he said in one interview, "like a snake with a broken back.") Though a remix of 'There She Goes' reached No. 13 on the British charts, the band made only half-hearted efforts to promote it.

Bassist John Power, the only mainstay besides Mavers, left the group in 1992, pouring his energy into a new band, Cast. Mavers, meanwhile, dragged the latest versions of the La's onstage for rare opening spots with Oasis and Paul Weller before disappearing from the public eye by the mid-'90s.

Rumors about the songwriter's health and well-being have knocked around ever since, with fans openly speculating about a drug problem and claiming that Mavers swore never to record another album until the first was completed to his satisfaction. A brief 2005 reunion, with shows at the Glastonbury Festival and in Japan, featured still more lineup changes. A year later, Power told an interviewer that Mavers was working, at long last, on a followup. Just don't hold your breath, he said: "Whatever he does, whether it's in this lifetime or the next, it can't be rushed."

"He was burned by the 20th century," as Mavers sang on 'Son of a Gun,' the opening track on the La's' lone album. Evidently this pop recluse is in no hurry to expose himself to the 21st.