Here's the only FULL ARTICLE I've seen (TEXT PASTED BELOW) written about Going Home, "GOING HOME: HOPE & SYLVIA," an article reprinted in the book "Tell Me When It's Over, Notes From the Paisley Underground," Edited by Clive Jones, 2006. It's cited in the book as having first been published in Hartbeat magazine, Issue 5, 1987 (a UK mag)
The article includes a few interview quotes from David Roback about Going Home. I suspect the journalist also interviewed Hope & Sylvia for his article, though he chose not to quote them verbatim. But he cites in such detail some of each of their fave albums and songs, it would seem likely he'd have obtained such info directly from them.
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GOING HOME : HOPE & SYLVIA
by Nigel Cross
By any stretch of the imagination Los Angeles is a mega city, a sprawling metropolis of over ten million souls, reclaimed from the desert, encompassing countless ethnic cultures and thus possessing a contemporary music scene of staggering proportions. Since the early eighties it has led the rest of North America with
an explosion of talent that has created a multi-layered diversity - a rich soil, teeming with artists from X, the Minutemen, Black Flag to Jane Bond and Savage Republic, from Wanda Coleman to Los Lobos and back through the rock edge of the Unclaimed, Gun
Club, Three O'Clock, Last and Dream Syndicate. It's also acted as a magnet pulling in acts from Green On Red to the Giant Sand - all in all a fertile environment that should go on producing grassroots music for years to come.
One of the newest groups around town features two Mexican girls, both just turned twenty, Hope and Sylvia who collectively call themselves Going Home. David Roback (Opal etc), who turns up treasures like a beachcomber finds shells, discovered them and with long-time collaborator Kendra Smith has nurtured and encouraged them these past twelve months, helping them land spots at clubs like McCabe's and even offering them the support for Opal's show at Texas Records in Santa Monica last September.
Going Home's music is pure and very raw, just Hope's coolly sensuous, occasionally coy voice backed by Sylvia's no frills acoustic guitar folk chords. Their sound is hard to categorize, part of the appeal maybe. In a way it harks back to the Bleecker & MacDougal folk revival of twenty five years ago (but without the protest), in another it catches the feel of vintage Elektra records singer/songwriters but there is no conscious absorption from either. Though both girls cite Neil Young's "After the Goldrush" as a favourite, their tastes are divergent, from Syl's preference for "Hunky Dory" and Clay Allison's "All Souls" (an interesting reference point) to Hope's more orthodox love of "Let it Bleed", "Parallel Lines" and the Marine Girls' "Lazy Ways" (another possible point of reference if you're fumbling for comparisons).
In describing them to me, David Roback was typically cryptic, suggesting that they were charting the offbeat path Dylan was taking long before the motorcycle accident. Certainly there's a pervading bleakness reminiscent of "Hollis Brown" and a sense Of life's transience as in "Boots of Spanish Leather", both lyrically and in the alternately ominous/yearning chordings with which Sylvia colours the songs but this is tempered by their comparative lack of experience of life - there's none of Dylan's fatalism or sneering cynicism. Neither is theirs the wrist-slitting depression-filled poetry of beautiful losers Leonard Cohen and Dory Previn. That kind of world-weary solipsism is replaced by a naiveté, almost a child's eye-view of the universe with undercurrents of pains and a dawning awareness to avoid face values.
Last autumn David financed the recording of some of their songs for an album, possibly to be released on his own Serpent Records label. Eight tunes were duly completed but since lain unused...tragically. Despite their obvious quality, none of the London independent vinyl moguls have had the guts to take a chance, possibly because their imagination doesn't stretch beyond the boogie bands they're currently milking down to the bone (sic). Whatever does happen eventually to Going Home in terms of career opportunities this session is unique and though retrospectively it might only serve as preflyte baby pictures, it should reach the general public. Roback's comment on it was laconic but to the point: "It's just a live in the studio tape - very honest - just like Alan Lomax's live recordings of American blues singers in the 30's and 40's."
It's an even set of songs but "Scarecrow" towers like an aardvark in an ant colony as the choice cut - Syl's plunging dissonant guitar figures the informant to Hope's detached recollection of a meeting with a down and out. As she recounts the incident there's a lack of emotion, no sensationalism, the series of events unfurl as if viewed by a camera - even when the "Shadow dwelling man" reaches for his gun, puts it to his head and blows himself away, there's no real hint of sympathy. Instead the excuse of being too young to grasp what's happening is voiced. Only in the dying embers of the song does there emerge a flickering of understanding/identification in the repeated lines: "He was a lonely man". The structure of the song is so bared-back to the bone, so stark that it hurts: at once chilling, its iciness seems to be coming from beyond the frozen borderline. Its effect is redolent of Nick Drake's late work, but whereas "Black Dog" say, is introspective, this is outgoing, a brave attempt at articulating a tricky subject: death is so often glossed over in the glib world of rock'n'roll. Elsewhere the songs deal with varying themes of love - "War is in the Souls" is an essay on the pains of possession, with Hope warning her deserting partner that he's hers "and nobody else's", even though she knows reconciliation is beyond reach. "Come Down" with its mock gospel false intro also works well, the main body of the tune soaring on Sylvia's delightfully picked guitar strings - the voice and the guitar in perfect empathy both here and on every other track all part of Going Home's intrinsic magic.
There's been talk of further recording and the suggestion that maybe the pair go in with their favourite 45 A-side, Bobby Gentry's "Ode to Billy Joe", this time working with more instrumentation, possibly even a whole electric group. It's a tantalizing step to contemplate Hope's voice is certainly mature enough to handle the song and Syl's acoustic would blossom with a string quartet behind it.
Gentleness and subtlety are currently in very short supply - entrepreneurial producers like Jac Holzman and Joe Boyd who had the business acumen to harness these qualities and give them fashionable relevance are long gone. But Hope and Sylvia are very much the flesh and blood present, it might be an uphill struggle but I know they're going to make it - right now I'm just too impatient for the world to wake up to their talents.
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First published in Hartbeat Magazine issue 5, 1987
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Though the article is cited as having first been published in Hartbeat Magazine issue 5, 1987 (a UK mag), I suspect the article may have been written in 1986. If so, when the journalist writes:
"Last autumn David financed the recording of some of their songs for an album," that would refer to fall 1985, which would fit previous info I'd seen that cassettes of the studio session were distributed to friends of the band and others in 1985.
The journalist writes that Hope & Sylvia "both just turned twenty." I don't know about Sylvia, but Hope turned 20 on June 24, 1986. If the article had been written in 1987 instead of 1986, "just turned 20" wouldn't really fit Hope.
The article says David and Kendra, then in the band Opal, offered to have Going Home open "for Opal's show at Texas Records in Santa Monica last September." The 4-song live set I have (and put on yt) of Going Home opening for Opal is a Texas Records gig, maybe the same one the journalist refers to. But the recording I have has a date on it of April 22, 1985 (not September).
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There are two Going Home uploads on my youtube channel (plus are listed in the Boots list at this fan site). One is of 7-songs from the studio recording of Going Home produced by David Roback circa 1985. It never got an official release. The other is a 4-song live set recording of Going Home opening for Opal in 1985 (with Kendra Smith singing. Hope would later replace Kendra as Opal's singer in Nov. 1987).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeRtCew_TDY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1xwnNIHGxc
The Going Home studio recording I have has seven songs, but the 1987 article says there were eight in the version the journalist heard. He identifies the 8th one I'm missing by quoting lyrics from it and giving its title "War in the Souls." Luckily, the 4-song live set of Going Home I have on yt includes a live version of that same song that's missing from my copy of the studio recording session.
In Going Home, Sylvia played acoustic guitar while Hope sang. One voice and one guitar. Info gleaned from multiple interviews and articles discloses Hope and Sylvia started playing and writing songs together by the time Hope was 15 (1981 or 1982). By early 1985 they were gigging in the L.A. area. Their third gig can be dated to January 17, 1985 at the Anti-Club opening for Sonic Youth and The Minutemen, which suggests their first public gig was likely in late 1984 or in January, 1985.
In one article, a journalist claims it was Sylvia who gave David an early tape of Going Home in 1983 at a Rain Parade gig (Rain Parade was David's band at the time).
An alternate explanation is found in a direct quote from Hope from a 1990s mag interview by journalist Bruce Warren (Option mag, Jan. 1991), QUOTE: "Back in high school," recounts Hope, "my friend Sylvia Gomez and I were always depressed, and we'd just stay in the house and write songs. One day Kendra [Smith of Opal] came by, asked us to play some songs, and she liked it. We made a tape and Kendra gave the tape to David."
David Roback has said he was very impressed with what he heard and listened to the tape over and over. He decided he wanted to record/produce them.
Hope joined Opal as their new singer (replacing Kendra Smith) in late Nov., 1987, renamed Mazzy Star in 1989.
Sylvia's best known for writing the song "Give You my Lovin'" Mazzy Star recorded for their first album, 1990, and played live many times. It was originally a Going Home song. She played guitar on the Mazzy Star album, presumably on that song. She's named in the album credits as a performer, as well as a songwriter.
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The photo of Hope in a hat is by Luz Gallardo, from likely 2013. The photo of Sylvia was originally posted publicly and fairly prominently on a social media page (which is why I thought it would be safe to re-post it for this Going Home article). The photo's dated from 2014. There was originally a second person in the photo. I cropped it to show just Sylvia for this Going Home post.
It's too bad there's no photo I've seen yet of the two playing together as Going Home in the 1980s. I do know of one photo though of the two together as teens, apparently, though they're not performing. I wanted to share it, if possible, in this and other fan groups, as it's the only pic I've seen of the two together when they were young. I asked permission of the person who originally posted it if I could re-post their photo elsewhere. They said they prefer it not be shared though, unfortunately, so I will abide by their wishes re. the photo. With luck, another vintage Going Home pic will turn up that can be shared.
Thanks go to FB Group member Shaun Elvis Artist Dibs who found this article reprinted in the book "Tell Me When It's Over: Notes From the Paisley Underground, Edited by Clive Jones," 2006. He sent me photos of pages of some of the chapters from his copy. I previously posted two 1990s Mazzy Star interviews in the FB Group (& here at .fr) taken from Shaun's book pages. https://www.facebook.com/groups/6071129794
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GOING HOME SONG TITLES MYSTERY (there's still a mystery that needs solving as there are a few songs whose correct titles are still uncertain to me)
The Going Home studio session recording and the live set recording I have had tentative titles placed on the songs. The true titles to most of them were uncertain. I've gradually learned correct titles to most of the songs from various sources, including this article. The journalist helps ID three songs by giving titles and enough detail about each song so I know which song recording he's referring to in each case.
Here are titles and first lines of the six songs (out of eight) I believe I have correct song titles to:
1. Give You My Lovin' ["Give you my lovin'/ Seven days a week"] (later recorded by Mazzy Star)
2. Where Did You Go ["Nothin' from somethin' was a real great thing"] (also played live by Opal [with Hope] and Mazzy Star)
3. Dying ["Dying, she said I feel like dying / You know, I feel like dying"]
4. Scarecrow ["I was walkin' down a lonely road / And I was thinkin' about the wind and cold"]
5. Come Down ["Come down a dark deep hole / Come down and see / Come down and sell your soul..."]
6. War In The Souls ["The River is wide...Your water is clear for me /...You're mine, you're no one else's"] . (I have this song only in a live version. According to the journalist, it was also included among the studio session tracks. It's missing from the version I have. Mine has only seven songs. The journalist who heard the studio recording said there are eight, including War in the Souls.)
THE TWO SONGS WHOSE CORRECT TITLES ARE STILL UNCERTAIN to me have these first lines:
1. ["Love, does it bring you down? / Does it bring you up?"]
2. ["Come down, come down, come down and see / People, they're dyin'"]
