Disappointing Singles?

I would have to say that the worst hatchet job ever done to a song to
make it onto a 45 is Kiss' "Detroit Rock City." It's as if the engineer
cut the song up into several pieces, dropped them on the floor, and
put them back together without looking. Since the song isn't that
long, they should've just put the LP version on the single.

1) On Billy Joel's "My Life", it has a sloppy edit near the end, which we've talked about here before -- but I specifically don't like that it edits out the piano solo near the end, which I think many people have become accustomed to hearing on the radio during the CD era. So I took the 45 edit from "Greatest Hits" and inserted the piano break back in. Still shorter than the LP version, for me this is the "ideal single edit"! :)

2) On Bee Gees' "Nights On Broadway" I don't like the soft bridge being edited out on the dj 45. Still, I preferred a shorter version than the LP version. So I kind of combined the 2 approaches. I took the long version and made it like the dj edit with the exception of deleting the bridge. In other words, I did the one other edit, I sped up the song accordingly, and I did the same early fade as the dj 45.

3) REO Speedwagon - "Take It on the Run". I didn't have the single of this song, so I recently took a guess as to what it would be (I did my own edit) and was wrong. When I finally saw what they did for the edit, I personally didn't like it. I edited the long guitar solo in half but kept Chor 3 & 4 intact. They edited out one of the last two choruses but kept the long guitar solo. Both versions clock in at the same time. Everyone has their own tastes, I know, but I like the chorus so much more than the guitar solo, that I'd rather hear a shortened guitar solo than miss a whole chorus.

On a similar topic, I've also made my own customized edits when a long song never had a single edit! For instance, while Roberta Flack's "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" has a single edit, I was surprised to see there was none (and not even a dj edit) for "Killing Me Softly" which clocks in at 4:45, which was long for a single back in '72. So I did my own edit that clocked in around 4:10 if I recall. (I've done this for about a dozen songs. In a couple cases, I did this to long album cuts that were never singles. I made what I thought would be a nice single edit, had the record company ever picked these 7 minute songs as singles!)

Interesting -- because I just checked my custom edit of "Killing Me Softly" and it clocks in at 4:18! Surprising that theirs is 4:18 but an early fade, whereas I edited out one chorus (in a rather tricky, but unnoticeable spot).

I think my most 'Disappointing Single' was "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" by Crosby, Stills & Nash.
What a hack job! -Bill.

What? No mention of "Lyin' Eyes"?

I never thought the edit of "Suite Judy Blue Eyes" was that bad, granted it was never a favorite of mine. Back in 1969 WRKO aired a house edit of that which
ran more or less the same length as the single, but they'd removed the whole "Tuesday morning, Sunday in the afternoon..." part. For the longest time it didn't
sound right to me with that part intact. Not sure why they did it...maybe they were trying to scoop the competition on it, and edited the LP version down, and
just never replaced it when the single was released.

2) On Bee Gees' "Nights On Broadway" I don't like the soft bridge being edited out on the dj 45. Still, I preferred a shorter version than the LP version. So I kind of combined the 2 approaches. I took the long version and made it like the dj edit with the exception of deleting the bridge. In other words, I did the one other edit, I sped up the song accordingly, and I did the same early fade as the dj 45.

Just going from memory, a shortened intro, early fade, and removal of the bridge were what was done to create the promo edit on that. So was your end result
basically the full version with a short intro?