I’ve had Visions of Excess by the Golden Palominos in my collection for a long time. It sat on the shelf next to the other Golden Palominos records — I have eight of them — and I never thought much about it. It’s a good record. Experimental, a little all over the place, the kind of thing you put on when you’re in the mood for something that doesn’t hold your hand.

Then last week I actually looked at the credits.

Track four is called “The Animal Speaks.” The vocalist is listed as John Lydon.

John Lydon. Johnny Rotten. The guy who spat his way through “Anarchy in the U.K.” and then started Public Image Ltd and spent the next four decades being the most difficult man in British rock. He’s on this record. Singing. On a track written by someone named Robert Kidney, over a bed of music that sounds nothing like the Sex Pistols or PiL.

That alone would be worth a double-take. But then I kept reading.

The Guest List

Track one, “Boy (Go)” — co-written by Michael Stipe. Track two, “Clustering Train” — also co-written by Stipe. Both tracks have him on vocals. This is 1985. R.E.M. had just put out Fables of the Reconstruction. Stipe was still figuring out how to be a frontman, still mumbling his way through songs, still two years away from the breakthrough of Lifes Rich Pageant. And part of that figuring-out process apparently involved showing up at a studio in New York to co-write songs for a collective that most R.E.M. fans have never heard of.

Track five, “Silver Bullet” — the vocalist plays blues harp. That vocalist is Jack Bruce. Jack Bruce, the bassist and singer of Cream. The guy who played on Disraeli Gears and Wheels of Fire. Eric Clapton once called him the best bass player he’d ever worked with. By 1985, Cream had been dead for sixteen years, and Bruce was drifting through various solo projects and session work. One of those gigs was playing harmonica on a song for a band that also had Johnny Rotten and the R.E.M. guy on the guest list.

And it keeps going. The album credits list Richard Thompson on guitar — the Fairport Convention legend who’d been making some of the most intricate folk-rock of the decade. Bernie Worrell on organ — the Parliament-Funkadelic keyboardist who helped invent funk. Carla Bley on keyboards — the jazz avant-garde composer who’d worked with Ornette Coleman and Charlie Haden. Arto Lindsay on vocals and guitar — the No Wave guitarist from DNA who’d been making atonal noise since the mid-’70s. Chris Stamey from the dB’s on vocals, guitar, and piano. Syd Straw on vocals — who’d started her career singing backup for Pat Benatar before jumping into the indie world.

All on one album. All in the same room. In 1985.

How This Happened

The Golden Palominos were never really a band. They were a concept — the concept of drummer Anton Fier. Fier had played with the Feelies, Herbie Hancock, and the Lounge Lizards, and he had an idea that was either brilliant or insane: take the best musicians you can find from completely different genres, put them in a studio together, and see what happens. No fixed lineup. No rules about what it’s supposed to sound like.

The bassist was always Bill Laswell, who’d produced the first album and played on most of the rest. Laswell was a producer who heard no boundaries between genres — he’d worked with Herbie Hancock on Rockit, with Mick Jagger on his solo debut, and with Fela Kuti. He was the connective tissue that made the Golden Palominos possible.

For Visions of Excess, the method was simple: Fier and Laswell would write or select material, then call whoever they thought could make it interesting. The album was recorded at Radio City Music Hall Studio in New York — yes, that Radio City Music Hall, which had a recording studio in the building — with additional work at Evergreen Recording, Olympic Studios, and several others. The primary engineer was Don Hünerberg, with additional recording by Hahn Rowe, Rob Stevens, and Robert Musso.

What I want to know is: what was it like in that room? Did Lydon and Stipe ever meet? Did Jack Bruce and Carla Bley cross paths in the hallway? Was there a moment when the guy from Cream and the guy from the Sex Pistols were both standing in the same studio, waiting for their turn on the microphone?

The album doesn’t tell you. The credits just list the names, one after another, like it’s perfectly normal for John Lydon and Michael Stipe to be on the same record.

Why It Matters

I’ve been collecting these artists separately for decades. I have fourteen Public Image Ltd albums. Seven Sex Pistols records. Twenty-eight R.E.M. albums. One dB’s record. I bought them all at different times, from different stores, in different moods. I listened to them in their own lanes — Lydon’s post-punk sneer in one context, Stipe’s murmur in another, Bruce’s blues-rock roar in a third.

I had no idea they’d all been in the same room on the same afternoon in 1985, making a record that almost nobody bought.

That’s the thing about digging through your own record collection. You think you know what you have. You think you understand the connections. Then you actually read the liner notes and discover that the most improbable dinner party in rock history happened on a Tuesday in Manhattan, and you’ve had the evidence on your shelf the whole time.

Album: Visions of Excess — The Golden Palominos (1985, Celluloid Records) Key credits: John Lydon (vocals), Michael Stipe (vocals, songwriter), Jack Bruce (vocals, harmonica), Richard Thompson (guitar), Bernie Worrell (organ), Carla Bley (keyboards), Arto Lindsay (vocals, guitar), Chris Stamey (vocals, guitar), Syd Straw (vocals), Bill Laswell (bass), Anton Fier (drums, producer)

Sources: Discogs — Visions of Excess credits Wikipedia — Syd Straw Wikipedia — Visions of Excess