In Praise of : Cover Versions

So good they made them twice (at least)

You know when a product used to proudly claim on its label or advert: “the original and best!” or “accept no substitute!”?

Well, in the realm of the popular beat music combo, many would also claim “that ain’t necessarily so.” And arguably they have a case.

So I have been doing some trawling through my memory bank, old music charts and record collection to come up with a representative selection to prove the point; or at least to be put up there for comment and abuse. It’s all about opinions, and mine is just mine, it goes without saying.

I have purposefully resisted looking online at Youtube and suchlike for other people’s “definitive” selections of The Top Cover Versions, The Most Under-rated Covers etc as I just wanted to give my own view and not anyone else’s (as far as that is possible within the constraints of being a human). And I am certain that there will be some masterpieces I completely overlooked as well, for that very reason.

In which case you know what to do in the comments. I would be delighted to hear other music fans’ opinions.

Okay, so first things first. I needed to define for myself exactly what the criteria were for a tune to make the cut in a strictly limited rundown, which I will arbitrarily define as numbering a Top Twenty, pop pickers. Otherwise things could lose focus and one thing I will not tolerate in my lists is a lack of focus. Because then I would get dragged into an infinite vortex of selection torture and then….[brow-mopping thespian]…it was all a bit of a trial, dear reader.

And so, the simple criteria are :

a)The original must have been a hit in its own right, or at least be pretty well-known as a “turntable hit” or a well-played album track. As an example of this, I discounted Nilsson’s otherwise peerless recording of Badfinger’s “Without You” on the basis that the original wasn’t a hit or well-known itself outside of Badfinger fans, of which, sadly, there weren’t that many.

b)The cover version named cannot be deemed “better” if all it does is repeat the same arrangement as the original and is otherwise interchangeable apart from a different but more established band/singer. That’s just laziness all round.

For example, Celine Dion’s recording of Eric Carmen’s “All by Myself” is pretty much a copy-and-paste of the original arrangement so is disqualified. And Eric’s singing is better anyway. Yes, I know that even Eric Carmen’s record is already a sort-of-cover as it’s based on part of a Rachmaninov Piano Concerto, but let’s not go there, as my condition is currently stable..

c)The cover, ideally, should take the song to a different place in some way. A changed tempo or rhythm,or in a different musical style. But it must still be outstanding on its own terms, not just a silly novelty thing to be listened to a couple of times and forgotten.

d)A re-take might be quite faithful to the original in style and arrangement, but just seems to add a bit more of all the good stuff and also adds some very effective embellishments. For example a killer guitar solo or outstanding production which elevates the newer platter to a place in the rundown. I know that’s slightly nebulous, but I think it stands up in some cases.

That’s it! There is no order of preference either. That would just keep me obsessing for days and we’re all dead in the end…

A couple of artists have been given their own subsection for obvious reasons.

Such as :

The Beatles

1. Got to Get You into My Life - Earth, Wind and Fire

This starts out as one of their recognisably slick and complex brass arrangements that morphs into a jazz-funk groove, punctuated with staccato keyboards, before getting teleported into a big band crooner that Sinatra and Nelson Riddle would have been chuffed with.

Throw in a super-cool guitar solo as well because…well why not ? Completely bonkers, and it just works joyfully and perfectly.

This band dressed the way they sounded as well. “Flamboyant” hardly covers it. EW&F didn’t really do understated. Heck, they even called their Greatest Hits LP “Volume 1”.

That’s the definition of cocky. Brilliant.

2. With a Little Help From My Friends - Joe Cocker

An utter transformation of a mid-tempo pop ditty into a soul-wrenching, gospel rock hybrid that doesn’t even become recognisable as the same song until nearly a minute in. Everything has been said about how good this record is and why so I won’t bother. Who could honestly say this isn’t the definitive rendition? Not me.

Transcendently magnificent arrangement and vocals. Still goose-bump material when you haven’t heard it in a while.

3. Ticket to Ride - Carpenters

I am betting that a few readers will be completely unfamiliar with this lush take on our final Fabs entry here. And if so, I have to say it is a slow burn and might take a couple of listens to get past the baroque piano and silky strings of the introduction. But once Karen’s chocolate velvet vocals intone “ I think I’m gonna be sad….”, it all falls into place.

Richard’s arrangement takes the uptempo story of boy-loses-girl and increases the pathos count considerably, building eventually to a crescendo; before the orchestration comes to a dramatic stop and only the wistful stripped-back coda with its receding fade-out harmonies lead the listener home. Heartbreak should never be this gorgeous.

Bob Dylan

4. Mr Tambourine Man - The Byrds

I know. A bit predictable. If you are going to pick a Dylan cover off the top of your head, this would be the one that most fans would think of. And The Byrds did of course cover several of his songs, most of which I prefer to the originals. That’s not controversial, as anyone who isn’t a hardcore Dylan fan would probably pick any half-decent cover version over the man’s own recording.

I have to own up and say that I have been a bit elastic with my own criteria for inclusion here. Because Wiki informs that Dylan’s version hadn’t even been released when the Byrds picked the tune up from one of his demo recordings.

How one tells a Bob Dylan demo from the “finished article” in a lot of cases is another matter. In the event, the Byrds’ single and Bob Dylan’s recording were both released in Spring 1965, so the “original” wasn’t even widely known. Mea culpa. But it couldn’t be omitted on a technicality like that !

Again, this reading takes the song and changes up everything but the words, basic melody and the chord sequence, adding their signature lush 12-string Rickenbacker guitar parts and complex harmonies.

That jangling introduction riff is one of those instantly recognisable hooks that seems to lift your mood and take you to a mythical West Coast dreamscape which might or might not involve recreational substances, but no matter. It’s got to be right there in any Top Covers list. Sublime.

5. All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix Experience

Another prime upgrade. For me, the original, though lyrically intriguing and evocative of some impending dark happening of an unspecified nature, is musically just a bit….well…a bit of a dirge, over a simple three-chord riff which runs continuously through the whole short record.

But the genius of Jimi saw something and it became, as we know, a thing of sonic wonder, punctuated with some of his most innovative and experimental guitar work. The single was taken from the Electric Ladyland double album, which was Hendrix’s first self-produced record.

In fact on the sleeve notes, he also credited himself with “directing” the recording as well. Of course he did. You can only get away with that when you are sickeningly cool and supernaturally gifted. As James Marshall Hendrix unquestionably was.

6. A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall - Bryan Ferry

The opening track from his debut solo album, this rendition actually features most of his Roxy Music bandmates, as well as a girl backing-vocals group and a string section that starts the song off on the long fade-in and builds in prominence through the track.

So this one falls well in to the “taking it somewhere very else” category I outlined at the start.

The enigmatic lyrics seem to take on more force and urgency in this arrangement, and that’s probably fitting, as I recall reading that he penned the song during or shortly after the Cuban missile crisis.

The explanation for the seemingly unrelated selection of things listed was that each was an idea Dylan had scribbled for a whole song; but that he now feared he wouldn’t have time to write, due to imminent armageddon.

So he put them all down on paper and made one “final song” consisting of many meanings contained within one lyric. Or something like that. If you ask me, a lot of Bob Dylan’s lyrics are mystical/allegorical/borderline incomprehensible, but clearly I am a voice in the wilderness there.

7. Will You Love Me Tomorrow? - Carole King

Written with Gerry Goffin when she was still a part-time songwriter, it became their first big success as an uptempo hit for The Shirelles. This voice-and-piano recording came many years later on her landmark “Tapestry” LP.

The quiet intensity of this track and the album as a whole seems to have captured the essence of what we regard now as the zenith of the singer-songwriter era; all moody, introspective and sensitive. A well-thumbed sleeve sitting on the record player shelf of many a bedsit apartment alongside the Jackson Browne, James Taylor and Cat Stevens albums.

King’s piano arrangement is laden with catchy figures and hooks that keep the listener enthralled in spite of the spartan and maybe slightly claustrophobic recorded sound. Minimalist for maximum effect. To that end it’s absolutely complete and perfect.

8. This Flight Tonight - Nazareth

Nazareth liked a cover version, and they did some corkers, as any fan knows. This is probably their best-known internationally, and takes Joni Mitchell’s original with its simple arrangement of open-tuned acoustic guitar and barre chords, and drops the jaunty tempo down to a rock-steady stomp.

Add some tension-building chug-a-chug rhythm guitar and tasty slide licks and it all builds tantalisingly to the pay-off chorus. “Should not have got on….this flight tonight…” becomes a monster three-chord air guitar hook that you can’t wait to come round again.

Pop music legend has it that after hearing this rendition, Ms Mitchell would afterwards introduce “This Flight Tonight” by saying something like: “Here’s a Nazareth song for you.” Quite.

9. Woodstock - Matthews’ Southern Comfort

While we are on the theme of Joni Mitchell, we can get this one out of the way. “Woodstock” is a remarkable song, in that all three versions which achieved success as either a hit single or a widely-played FM album track are completely different in mood, style and arrangement.

I nearly plumped for the CSNY version, which was the biggest hit in the USA, and even has some lyric changes in the chorus which adds an extra line. It’s a stomping electric guitar-driven read on the dreamy and wistful sonic and lyrical palette of the original. But this version with its sublime pedal steel guitar does it for me.

The heavily reverberated harmonies and that stop-start guitar hook between verses and on the fade-out just complete the package.

10. Summer Breeze - The Isley Brothers

Not too much to say about this cover beyond the obvious. The Seals and Croft original is very lovely and beauteous in its own right. But when you add in the fuzz/phase guitar pyrotechnics of young brother Ernie Isley on “Pt 2”(sadly largely missing on the single due to the time constraints of the AM radio format) there is a clear winner, as the record morphs into a slow rock/funk instrumental wig-out that should never end.

11. The Man Who Sold the World - Lulu

It seems very in keeping with the eclectic and shape-shifting career of Bowie that (for your reviewer at least) the best cover version of his catalogue was recorded by…. David Bowie. Okay, lead vocals delivered capably by the already veteran Glaswegian singer, but arranged and produced by Bowie and Spiders guitarist Mick Ronson.

David also contributed the catchy saxophone lines and sang backing vocals to this altogether more poppy makeover of his cryptic early album track which in fact had only been released as a single B-side at the time of this recording.

It was a sizeable hit in the UK and many European countries, and even many inveterate Bowie followers grudgingly admit that they actually like this rendition. Is it better than the original? Tough call. Probably not, but who cares; it’s great rock-turned pop. Enjoy!

12. Baby I Love You - Ramones

The legendary Phil Spector revisits one of his untouchable classics with the most unlikely of accomplices.

On watching and listening for the first time in ages, I was struck at how awkward and ungainly the whole thing sounds with the somewhat stilted string arrangement right up in the mix. Well, there isn’t really much else there apart from bass, drums and vocal !

Also, it does rather stomp more than swing, in contrast with the fabulous original. And the production, such as it is, seems fairly minimal.

But that repetition of the last line of each verse is such a brilliant hook that it somehow makes everything work. I don’t know why, but there it is. Enough is as good as a feast, as they say.

13. The Sound of Silence - Disturbed

The only relatively recent entry in my personal countdown. When I first heard it, I was reminded of another cover version : “Mad World” by Gary Jules, which became a hit after being included on the soundtrack of the cult film “Donnie Darko”.

It certainly starts in that vein, with just voice and eerie, cavern-deep piano; but thereafter builds into an extraordinarily dramatic production. It’s an incredible and audacious rendition. And whether one prefers the original or not seems almost immaterial.

14. Love Hurts - Nazareth

Yes, here they are again. In fact the boys from Dunfermline, Fife also did great renditions of at least a couple of other hits: “My White Bicycle” by Tomorrow and “Shapes of Things”, originally from The Yardbirds.

This song has been covered by Roy Orbison, Jim Capaldi and Gram Parsons amongst many others. But Nazareth take a teen angst pop ditty and turn it inside out.

What emerges is a painfully slow, vitriolic lament shot through with regret, bitterness and pure bile at the injustice of it all.

So if your baby done left you, took that southbound train, you know what to to. crack open a beer, pull up a seat and stick this baby on repeat play. You’ll feel worse in no time.

On second thoughts, maybe take it easy on the beer. It’s a depressant, you know. And that’s the last thing you need with this soundtrack.

15. I Fought the Law - The Clash

I have to say I was a bit torn with this one. The reason being that the Bobby Fuller Four hit is so great as well, and I guess almost rebellious for its time, that it hardly seems fair. I didn’t know (cheers Wiki), but this was itself technically a cover version as it was written by Sonny Curtis of The Crickets.

Amazingly it was never released as a single, only making it as an album track and B-side for The Crickets. Wow ! A song as good as this, not being an immediate single. Almost unthinkable in today’s high-volume low-quality musical landscape. Something which I expanded greatly on in my previous post here, which new readers might find of interest.

But equally, I just think the Clash version fills my “more of everything” criterion in such exemplary fashion that it has to be here. The arrangement is pretty much the same, even down to the six-gun snare drum hook, and of course the clean, slightly anodyne guitar sound of the earlier era is jacked up in keeping with the New Wave aesthetic. Other than that they don’t mess too much with something great, which was a smart thing to do in my book.

16. Money - The Flying Lizards

I would bet that any reader outside the UK and maybe Europe has never come across this [coughs]… highly idiosyncratic take on a song made famous by The Fab Four as an album track but was a very early hit for Berry Gordy’s Motown label. It was released by Barrett Strong as far back as 1959.

Considering when this song was written, it’s such a cynical take-down of the whole story of modern adult human relationships, all told in a few simple lines. Or depending on where you are with these things, it just tells it like it is.

In any case, this was the first time I had heard it with a female singer. It makes so much more sense to me, as an unreconstructed sexist p*g..

Anyway, the girl doing the “singing” portrays the character to a tee : entitled, upper middle-class, high-maintenance, Daddy’s Girl (to put it bluntly) . She even spits out the lines with the appropriate bored disdain. Bad grammar in a cut-glass private education accent; deliberate incongruity to add to the off-kilter nature of the whole presentation.

I note that it was released at about the start of the 1980s Thatcher/Reagan greed-is-good financial boom years, which gives some additional socio-cultural context; or maybe I am talking tripe again.

Musically though, it is interesting. The drum sounds like a biscuit tin full of nails being hit with a rolling pin on a metal countertop, in a shipping container. And what seems to be the only other instrument apart from a few random electronic blips and squarts, appears on repeated listening to be some kind of child’s banjo.

If you haven’t heard this version, or even seen the video, you might find it unsettling.

Frankly, it’s left “bizarre” in the rear-view mirror. Strangely wonderful. Very British.

17. The In Crowd - Bryan Ferry

Odd how some artists seem to have a real knack for a new-and-improved offering, and here is Mr Cool again with a distinctly rock revision of Dobie Gray’s Soul/R’n’B classic.

There’s a lot going on in this record, listening back again after all this time in hi-fi rather than medium wave radio , such as was the most available at the time in the UK at least.

Lots of brass, electric piano and power-chord guitar underpins it all, and the finger snaps punctuate the beat like something from a modern West Side Story with the Sharks and Jets strutting their territory.

Ferry might have had a smirk to himself when he sang : “Other guys imitate us, but the original’s still the greatest..”.

Maybe not always, though.

18. Black Magic Woman - Santana

First of all, for me Fleetwood Mac (version one with the three guitars of Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer and Danny Kirwan) occupy a sacred place in music history, having recorded a large handful of some of the greatest pop/rock/blues records ever, in my not very humble opinion.

But I have to acknowledge that Santana’s super-slick rendition of what was already perfect, is every bit as deliciously seductive. It adds those latin/afro percussive embellishments that give an extra sensuous overtone in keeping with the subject matter.

Everything a creditable remake should be, and more.

19. (I Know) I’m Losing You - The Faces

To be honest, I was really struggling to come up with a Motown cover that I could say compared well to the original. Which says something about the consistent standards achieved by Berry Gordy and Co, given the huge output over those couple of decades.

Then I remembered this one, which I first heard on my first-ever LP purchase, Rod Stewart’s “Every Picture Tells a Story”. This is the one track where all The Faces played, I think, so it’s very much a Faces record.

I am fairly sure that particular “studio” version is pretty much entirely live. You can just sense the interplay between all the band members on the recording, and it sounds so clean as well (an indicator of a lack of overdubs in the days of analogue tape recording).

Ronnie Wood demonstrates how you play rhythm guitar and lead guitar at the same time; a rare skill.

Ronnie Lane and Ian McLagen are rock solid, locked into that repeating four-note bass run.

Kenney Jones’ drum solo syncopates , skitters and threatens to go off piste, but of course there’s no danger and he just digs into the groove and never lets go until a final stuttering chorus brings the whole thing to a an exhausted close.

The faces must be one of the all-time great live bands, and here is another actual live rendition that an enthusiast has managed to record from an archive BBC concert in 1972. Dynamite. Thank you, that man or girl.

and finally :

20. Over The Rainbow - Eva Cassidy

I know I said at the start of all this “in no particular order”. But, you know…It’s Eva. And in truth, there are other covers of hers that equally could qualify. Sting’s “Fields of Gold” is one, definitely. The old standard most famously recorded by Nat King Cole, “Autumn Leaves” is another contender.

In trying to put my finger on quite why Eva Cassidy had this gift of just “owning” so many of her re-craftings, I was reminded of an interview with Nick Mason of Pink Floyd after a show with fellow ex-Floyd man David Gilmour; where David Bowie came on as a guest at the encore and sang on “Arnold Layne”, a song the band had probably never played since its writer and singer Syd Barrett had left the Floyd in the infancy of their career.

David’s (no doubt) barely rehearsed performance was enthralling, and Mason remarked that Bowie seemed to have this way of making any song he sang “become” a David Bowie song.

I knew exactly what he meant, although nobody can say what that special magic is. It just IS.

And that seems to be what Eva Cassidy had. It wasn’t just the timbre and range of her vocals, I don’t think.

An ability to inhabit the lyrics and make the listener absolutely believe her when she poured out those words? Yes, that too.

An instinctive and innate grasp of the internal dynamics of a song; where to extend, where to hold back? Undoubtedly. I am a musician of sorts, but as far as singing goes, I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. So those are just my feelings, maybe clumsily expressed but hopefully clearly enough.

In the end, it’s just the great Eva. There forever, to be listened to, amazed by and grateful for.

That’s it, dear reader. Glad I finally got it off my chest after all the list-making, additions that came to me while I was doing manual stuff rather than sitting at a screen and keyboard; and also deletions of records that just didn’t make the grade after re-visiting.

But music best-of lists are a brutal business, as fellow pop nerds will appreciate, and only the cream survived the edit.

As usual, I would like to read any comments and suggestions of your own. Don’t forget to give it a “like” if you enjoyed the read and listen. Also subscribe for free if you like this kind of retrospective every now and then.

Long live Rock’n’Roll.