UNDER THE COVERS (Part 1 of 3)
There's nothing like the arrival of a boy band doing a cover version of some old rock and roll number to get the music cognoscenti all a-flutter. Accusations will fly about their "lack of originality*, their "inability to write their own material" and, of course, "the original was so much better".
But, what is an original song - and what is a cover? How can some artists take a song and make it into something special (such as Jimi Hendrix with Bob Dylan's All Along The Watchtower), whilst others will do a fair and decent replica and get slated?
That's what this next blog series is all about.
 |
| Dylan Song - Hendrix Hit |
Listen: Jimi Hendrix - All Along The Watchtower
I won't pretend to be an expert on cover songs, nor will I profess a joy and love of all things of a *borrowed* nature. But, I do have an interest in both the motivation for and execution of cover songs - as listeners to my radio show will know. The series runs to three episodes and in this first part, I look at an over view of this musical sub-industry. In the second and third parts, we'll dig in some more into a wider range of covers and try to make sense of this complex musical entity.
So, let's grab our song samples, add a bit of a twist - and see what results.
LIFTING THE LID
As with most forms of music, cover songs can best be defined as either *good* or *bad*, they either work - or they don't. The difficulty is determining what *good* actually means. Often, it's down to the listener's personal taste which varies widely from person to person. From my own experience with researching cover songs for the "Borrowed Songs" slot in my show, the proportion which are *good* is much smaller than that for most genres of music. I suspect this is partly because I have tight criteria (they have to pass muster alongside the rest of the show) and partly because they are easy to do badly. That might seem a broad generalisation, but so many musicians seem bent on "doing covers" before, perhaps, they've either mastered their own playing or been able to create their own music. There's nothing wrong with that provided there is some progression. The image of the journeyman muso busking away on the London Underground has almost become a stereotype, the anguished and tortured vocals, the two-chord strumming and the barely recognisable classic songs echoing along the corridors.
But, when a cover song is done well, there's nothing quite like it. The original song is still in there, but there's a new twist to it - perhaps a male vocal done by a female, an acoustic song becomes electric, a rock anthem becomes an atmospheric folk-based ballad or, a combination of all three. Sometimes, reworked cover songs out-sell the originals: how many people in 1974 buying Eric Clapton's single I Shot The Sheriff realised that the original was a terrific reggae tinged number by Bob Marley.
The Original: Bob Marley: I Shot The Sheriff
The Cover: Eric Clapton - I Shot The Sheriff
So why do bands and artists do covers in the first place? Here's my latest summary of the main types of cover song: it's only a generalist view, but it'll help us get to grips with some of the more esoteric examples of covers that we'll be looking at in the next couple of episodes. For the purposes of this summary, the emphasis is on artists actually recording the cover song although, mention is made of musicians who may earn their living from playing in covers bands.
1.Tribute Covers
Not to be confused with tribute bands, but these are established artists who for one reason or another record an old song in tribute to the original artist. They may have grown up listening to that artist, they may have been asked to do it by a record company seeking to recognise that artist - or it could be a heartfelt remembrance of an artist who may have fallen on hard times or has recently died.
Whatever the reason, the style of cover song will often try to reflect the essence of the original artist whilst also allowing room for exploration by the band doing the cover. This is most widely seen in the relatively recent increase in popularity of tribute albums - that is, a range of artists each tackling one of the songs on a classic album. One of the first such examples was released through the New Musical Express in 1988 to raise funds for the charity Child Line: this was a full reworking of The Beatles' Sgt Pepper and was retitled Sgt Pepper Knew My Father. Released on vinyl, it features such diverse performers as Michelle Shocked (Lovely Rita), Sonic Youth (Within You Without You) and The Fall (A Day In The Life)
Listen: Sonic Youth - Within You Without You
2.Tribute Bands
These are bands who exist to play the music of a particular band or artist, usually ones that are no longer recording or playing live. Some tribute bands have truly mastered the ouevre of their heroes - so much so that their live concerts are often more precise and organised than the originals. Popular acts include The Australian Pink Floyd Show, The Bootleg Beatles and the Yes tribute band, Fragile. Indeed, such is the skill with which they undertake their conceit, they have often allowed many more people to experience what "it must have been like" in days gone by than would have seen it first time around. The top acts record live concert albums, sell out major venues and are big favourites at festivals.
There's a middle ground of tribute acts too. They are professional musicians, many of whom also play in other bands, and see the tribute work as a way of earning a living (the tribute circuit has been popular in recent years) which then allows them the luxury of writing and performing their own material under a different band name. Some of the best examples are The Hamsters (playing both Jimi Hendrix and ZZ Top), T Rextacy (T Rex), Talon (The Eagles) and Limehouse Lizzie (Thin Lizzy).
The Original: ZZ Top - Sharp Dressed Man (Live)
The Cover: The Hamsters - Sharp Dressed Man (Live)
3.Cover Bands
These are pretty much the bread-and-butter bands of the gigging circuits. Here, one band will perform a range of numbers from different artists. Some are highly talented and professional, using the cover route to provide some income to (perhaps) fund their own work under another name. They probably enjoy what they do as a release from the creative process. Good covers bands will be "in demand" for commercial events, weddings, parties and so forth. They'll rarely record their cover songs other than by way of example for potential customers who wish to hire them.
There are also many other covers bands who are capable musicians, but don't really cut it in terms of their professional approach. But playing in a crowded pub and competing for attention with throngs at the bar, glasses being washed, chatter, shouting and laughter from the patrons is a difficult task and not conducive to the artistic muse.
4. Cover Song: A Question Of Record Labels
It's rarely the case today, but back in the late 1940s and through to the early 1960s, popular singers rarely wrote their own material. These were the days of the songwriting factories best exemplified by the "Brill Building Sound", a conglomeration of publishers and song writers in the heart of New York City. If a song was hit for Artist A on Record Label A, then often Record Label B would want a piece of the action and would employ Artist B to record a new version of the hit song. Thus it was that a song like Jambalaya (On The Bayou) recorded by Hank Williams on MGM Records very quickly saw covers by Jo Stafford (got to #3 on the Billboard Charts), The Meters, Jerry Lee Lewis and several others.
The Original: Hank Williams - Jambalaya (On The Bayou)
The Cover: Jo Stafford - Jambalaya (On The Bayou)
5. Cover Song: A Question Of Geography
There are two subsets here.
Firstly, songs that were popular in the USA in the late 1950s/early 1960s seeing new versions for the UK market. Part of this was grounded in the (then) racial divide in music in much of the States. Early R&B numbers and rock 'n roll songs were often created by black artists, but saw *safer* re-recordings for the mass-entertainment market by white artists. The other element was the arrival in the UK of limited numbers of some of these r&b/rock 'n roll records - often brought in by merchant seaman who had acquired them in the USA. They were then sometimes subject to a bowdlerized, anglicised version to suit the more conservative record-buying public - and these versions are often the ones that British music fans remember. Some songs were simply re-recorded in the UK because they were seen to be a "better fit" for a specific UK artist. Thus Dionne Warwick's hit Anyone Who Had a Heart was a hit around the world in 1963 - except in the UK where producer George Martin felt it better suited to Cilla Black. It became her biggest hit single and although Dionne Warwick's version was subsequently released here, it only managed to get to #47 in the UK singles charts.
The Original: Dionne Warwick - Anyone Who Had A Heart
The Cover: Cilla Black - Anyone Who Had a Heart
The second element relates to songs from non-English speaking nations where, occasionally, the melody or tune was felt to be strong enough to sell internationally. The lyrics were either translated or completely re-written and new artists found to record and promote the song. From a European perspective, this was often the case in the early 60s when British and American songs were re-recorded for the relevant non-English speaking country. At one level, bands such as The Beatles would re-record their own songs in, say, German, to reflect the large following they had as a result of their residencies in the clubs of Hamburg. However, at a more day-to-day level, songs would be re-written into the native language and given to a native artist to record.
This process also operated in reverse when the occasional European song was reworked into English: this was particularly prevalent in the 1950s and saw such songs as Volare, originally recorded by the Italian artist Domenico Modugno in 1958 covered in English by such performers as Dean Martin. As the years have gone by, this has become much less of a trend as the march of English as the language of business, science and popular culture presses onwards. Indeed, several European artists have recorded primarily in English, the most commercially successful example being the Swedish pop act, Abba.
The Original: Domenico Modugno - Volare
The Cover: Dean Martin - Volare
6. Cover Song: Revivalist Bands
In this context, a revivalist band is one that is inspired by a musical genre of years gone by. Their love of the music and songs shapes their own writing and performances and the hope is that their passion translates across into their fans and subsequent record sales. Such bands may create all-original material, but "in the style of", or they may do a mixture of covers and their own songs. Currently, rockabilly is enjoying a fashionable period with artists such as Imelda May and Those Darlins being some of the best exponents. Back in the 1960s, Sha Na Na had several years of fame with their classic recreations of Doo Wop, even to the extent of touring with some of the big rock acts of the day (Grateful Dead ) and appearing at the Woodstock Festival.
The Original: The Silhouettes - Get A Job
The Cover: Sha Na Na - Get A Job
7. Cover Song: It's A Legal Matter Now
There's sometimes a fine line between doing a proper cover song and creating your own song which has echoes of an earlier original. Today, original songs with samples of older songs are quite common and it was the world of Hip Hop that really embraced this phenomenon. This process - sampling - often uses pieces of the original recording which are then mixed into the new recording and strictly speaking, payment should be made to the publisher of the sampled song. This hasn't always been the case and there have been court cases when disputes requiring a legal solution have arisen.
However, prior to sampling, there were examples of new songs *accidentally* borrowing from an earlier recording, usually a tune or melody or sequence of guitar riffs. The most celebrated example of this was with George Harrison's 1970 hit single, My Sweet Lord which had an *inadvertent* similarity to The Chiffons' 1963 hit, He's So Fine. This ended up in court as the publishers of He's So Fine sued Harrison for "copyright infringement". The case was settled eventually and George Harrison was required to pay 75% of the royalty payments for My Sweet Lord sales in the USA together with a proportion of the royalties from the album All Things Must Pass on which it also appeared. It was a costly experience and although the judge agreed that Harrison had "subconsciously copied" He's So Fine, a payment of over $1.6m was made to the publishers of The Chiffons' hit.
Ironically, The Chiffons went on to record their own version of My Sweet Lord in 1975.
The Original: The Chiffons - He's So Fine
The Copy?: George Harrison - My Sweet Lord
8. Cover Song: Was There Ever An Original?
Finally in this set of "establishing principles" we come to songs that aren't in themselves covers, but bear more than a deliberate passing resemblance to an older song. This will include parody songs by artists such as The Rutles and Weird Al Yankovich - and conceivably by the popular 1960s UK band, The Barron Knights. But, it can also draw into its net a wider range of artists doing wildly differing versions of well known songs. Actor and comic Peter Sellers did a spoken-word version of The Beatles' Hard Days Night, his narration being done in the style of Shakespeare's Richard III. Across the Atlantic, Stan Freberg did several parodies of older songs in the late 1950s, one of the most well known being a beatnik version of Harry Belafonte's hit The Banana Boat Song.
There's a bit of a grey area concerning some parody songs: they are clearly based on a popular original, but they are also a different song with re-written lyrics and subtle changes to the chord structures or melodies. When does a parody cross the line and become a cover - and thus require royalty payments to be made? A fine case in point was with The Rutles, the Beatles parody band created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes. Innes himself had been part of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band and both he and Idle were friends with George Harrison - so one would have thought that the clever pastiche songs created by Innes would have stayed the right side of the line. Indeed, George Harrison supported the project and even appeared in the TV film version, All You Need Is Cash. However, the copyright to the Beates songs was held by ATV Music and they successfully sued resulting in 50% of the Rutles' royalties being paid to ATV and the song-writing credits to be changed to include both John Lennon and Paul McCartney as well as Neil Innes.
The Original: The Beatles - I Am The Walrus
A Parody: The Rutles - Piggy In The Middle
Next Time
We've done the groundwork in this look at cover songs - and next week, we'll look in a bit more detail at some of the musical genres and the best examples of "borrowed" songs.
Join me then.
Alan Dorey
6th March 2014
LIFTING THE LID
As with most forms of music, cover songs can best be defined as either *good* or *bad*, they either work - or they don't. The difficulty is determining what *good* actually means. Often, it's down to the listener's personal taste which varies widely from person to person. From my own experience with researching cover songs for the "Borrowed Songs" slot in my show, the proportion which are *good* is much smaller than that for most genres of music. I suspect this is partly because I have tight criteria (they have to pass muster alongside the rest of the show) and partly because they are easy to do badly. That might seem a broad generalisation, but so many musicians seem bent on "doing covers" before, perhaps, they've either mastered their own playing or been able to create their own music. There's nothing wrong with that provided there is some progression. The image of the journeyman muso busking away on the London Underground has almost become a stereotype, the anguished and tortured vocals, the two-chord strumming and the barely recognisable classic songs echoing along the corridors.
 |
| Bob Marley |
The Original: Bob Marley: I Shot The Sheriff
The Cover: Eric Clapton - I Shot The Sheriff
So why do bands and artists do covers in the first place? Here's my latest summary of the main types of cover song: it's only a generalist view, but it'll help us get to grips with some of the more esoteric examples of covers that we'll be looking at in the next couple of episodes. For the purposes of this summary, the emphasis is on artists actually recording the cover song although, mention is made of musicians who may earn their living from playing in covers bands.
1.Tribute Covers
Not to be confused with tribute bands, but these are established artists who for one reason or another record an old song in tribute to the original artist. They may have grown up listening to that artist, they may have been asked to do it by a record company seeking to recognise that artist - or it could be a heartfelt remembrance of an artist who may have fallen on hard times or has recently died.
 |
| 1988 - Sgt Pepper Knew My Father |
Listen: Sonic Youth - Within You Without You
2.Tribute Bands
These are bands who exist to play the music of a particular band or artist, usually ones that are no longer recording or playing live. Some tribute bands have truly mastered the ouevre of their heroes - so much so that their live concerts are often more precise and organised than the originals. Popular acts include The Australian Pink Floyd Show, The Bootleg Beatles and the Yes tribute band, Fragile. Indeed, such is the skill with which they undertake their conceit, they have often allowed many more people to experience what "it must have been like" in days gone by than would have seen it first time around. The top acts record live concert albums, sell out major venues and are big favourites at festivals.
 |
| The Hamsters |
The Original: ZZ Top - Sharp Dressed Man (Live)
The Cover: The Hamsters - Sharp Dressed Man (Live)
3.Cover Bands
These are pretty much the bread-and-butter bands of the gigging circuits. Here, one band will perform a range of numbers from different artists. Some are highly talented and professional, using the cover route to provide some income to (perhaps) fund their own work under another name. They probably enjoy what they do as a release from the creative process. Good covers bands will be "in demand" for commercial events, weddings, parties and so forth. They'll rarely record their cover songs other than by way of example for potential customers who wish to hire them.
There are also many other covers bands who are capable musicians, but don't really cut it in terms of their professional approach. But playing in a crowded pub and competing for attention with throngs at the bar, glasses being washed, chatter, shouting and laughter from the patrons is a difficult task and not conducive to the artistic muse.
4. Cover Song: A Question Of Record Labels
 |
| Hank Williams - Is he having fun on the bayou yet? |
The Original: Hank Williams - Jambalaya (On The Bayou)
The Cover: Jo Stafford - Jambalaya (On The Bayou)
5. Cover Song: A Question Of Geography
There are two subsets here.
 |
| Dionne Warwick - She's all heart |
 |
| Cilla Black - She had the UK hit with Anyone Who Had A Heart |
The Original: Dionne Warwick - Anyone Who Had A Heart
The Cover: Cilla Black - Anyone Who Had a Heart
The second element relates to songs from non-English speaking nations where, occasionally, the melody or tune was felt to be strong enough to sell internationally. The lyrics were either translated or completely re-written and new artists found to record and promote the song. From a European perspective, this was often the case in the early 60s when British and American songs were re-recorded for the relevant non-English speaking country. At one level, bands such as The Beatles would re-record their own songs in, say, German, to reflect the large following they had as a result of their residencies in the clubs of Hamburg. However, at a more day-to-day level, songs would be re-written into the native language and given to a native artist to record.
 |
| Dean Martin |
The Original: Domenico Modugno - Volare
The Cover: Dean Martin - Volare
6. Cover Song: Revivalist Bands
 |
| Sha Na Na - Doo Wop revivalists who played Woodstock |
The Original: The Silhouettes - Get A Job
The Cover: Sha Na Na - Get A Job
7. Cover Song: It's A Legal Matter Now
There's sometimes a fine line between doing a proper cover song and creating your own song which has echoes of an earlier original. Today, original songs with samples of older songs are quite common and it was the world of Hip Hop that really embraced this phenomenon. This process - sampling - often uses pieces of the original recording which are then mixed into the new recording and strictly speaking, payment should be made to the publisher of the sampled song. This hasn't always been the case and there have been court cases when disputes requiring a legal solution have arisen.
 |
| The Chiffons - 1963 - He's So Fine |
However, prior to sampling, there were examples of new songs *accidentally* borrowing from an earlier recording, usually a tune or melody or sequence of guitar riffs. The most celebrated example of this was with George Harrison's 1970 hit single, My Sweet Lord which had an *inadvertent* similarity to The Chiffons' 1963 hit, He's So Fine. This ended up in court as the publishers of He's So Fine sued Harrison for "copyright infringement". The case was settled eventually and George Harrison was required to pay 75% of the royalty payments for My Sweet Lord sales in the USA together with a proportion of the royalties from the album All Things Must Pass on which it also appeared. It was a costly experience and although the judge agreed that Harrison had "subconsciously copied" He's So Fine, a payment of over $1.6m was made to the publishers of The Chiffons' hit.
 |
| George Harrison - Not So Fine? |
Ironically, The Chiffons went on to record their own version of My Sweet Lord in 1975.
The Original: The Chiffons - He's So Fine
The Copy?: George Harrison - My Sweet Lord
8. Cover Song: Was There Ever An Original?
 |
| Weird Al Yankovic - What did Michael Jackson really think? |
 |
| Peter Sellers - A Hard Day's Night - 1964 |
.JPG) |
| The Rutles - The original Pre-Fab Four |
The Original: The Beatles - I Am The Walrus
A Parody: The Rutles - Piggy In The Middle
Next Time
We've done the groundwork in this look at cover songs - and next week, we'll look in a bit more detail at some of the musical genres and the best examples of "borrowed" songs.
Join me then.
Alan Dorey
6th March 2014
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