Cover versions have always been with us, but now that so many artists are trying to live off the kudos of other people's songs, is the music scene at risk of being run over by its own retreads, asks KEVIN COURTNEY
'THIS IS A song Charles Manson stole from The Beatles: we're stealing it back," announces Bono in a scene from the U2 movie Rattle and Hum, just before U2 launch into a ragged rendition of Helter Skelter. No wonder the McCormick brothers wanted to kill him, coming up with pronouncements like that. As cover versions go, though, it's not the worst. It's certainly not as bad as the movie's other cover, Bob Dylan's All Along the Watchtower, which U2 demolish with arrogant abandon. Still, at least they didn't accuse Jimi Hendrix of stealing that one.
Should U2 have just stuck with doing their own songs and left the classics well alone? Maybe, but it’s clear that, by referencing some of pop’s biggest touchstones (and a few blues legends), U2 were staking out their own place in the pantheon, hoping to prove to their growing US audience that they could jam along with the big boys. For them and for many other bands, doing the right cover version was a shortcut to kudos.
We are now living in a karaoke world, where every second song on the radio is likely to be a cover version, and young copycats parade their purloined wares on The X Factorand You're A Star.Every band seems to have a tribute band these days, and every pop star has a doppelgänger on every street. Some stars are even covering themselves: next month Kate Bush is releasing a new album, Director's Cut,featuring reworked versions of songs from two of her classic albums.
In a world awash with cover versions, is there any currency left in doing tunes other than your own? Well, if you can do it in a postmodern way, play it not too straight but not too ironic, and add just a dash of incongruity, it seems you can cover all your musical bases. Last week, for example, Neil Hannon (aka The Divine Comedy) staged a singular covers project at Dublin’s Button Factory, joining forces with Cathy Davey, Richie Egan (aka Jape) and Romeo Stodart from The Magic Numbers to recreate Vampire Weekend’s eponymous 2008 debut album. It happened on April 1st, but Hannon, never short of an original tune of his own, wasn’t doing it for a jape.
“The reason I’ve chosen it is because stylistically, it’s an ingenious marriage of indie pop, African rhythm and classical harmony,” he said. “But mostly it’s because it kicks ass and makes me happy!”
It used to be so simple: you were either an original artist who wrote your own songs, or you were a cover star, making your name off the back of other people’s songwriting talents. There was no in-between.
Except of course there was. We know now, with the benefit of rock hindsight, that some of the bands we believed to be originals were actually nicking their tunes from old blues artists, and some who started off as copyists turned out to be even better than the real thing.
Still, doing a cover version is a big decision, and the song you choose to interpret can define everything else you do. For some artists a cover version can become an albatross around their neck, the one song that will follow them to the grave. Simple Minds had been plugging away with their own material for years, but their international breakthrough came with Don't You Forget About Me, a song written by Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff for the movie The Breakfast Club– and no one lets them forget it. The Lemonheads wrote some great songs, but none has stuck in the popular consciousness quite as tenaciously as their cover of Simon and Garfunkel's Mrs Robinson.
Pop history is littered with the bones of bands who bit off more than they could chew. Callow ravers Candy Flip doing Strawberry Fields Forever– what were they on? M People doing Itchycoo Park– were they out of their tree? Ronan Keating doing Fairytale of New York– complete nightmare.
But when the right song is covered by the right artist in the right spirit, the result can make for a sublime reading. Johnny Cash's sparse version of Hurtis even more coruscating than the Nine Inch Nails original, and Jeff Buckley's Hallelujahmakes all other versions (bar Leonard Cohen's original, of course) entirely redundant. Some cover versions are so embedded in popular consciousness that hearing the original can be jarring. Listen to The Family's Nothing Compares 2 U,penned by Prince – you'll wonder what they have done to Sinéad O'Connor's song.
Doing covers is nothing new: The Beatles started off doing the rock'n'roll hits of their day before hitting the jackpot with their own tunes. David Bowie dropped obscure cover versions into his albums ( Fill Your Heart, It Ain't Easy, Wild is the Wind) but got a bit too big for his pixie boots in the 1980s, attempting, and failing, to do justice to Beach Boys classic God Only Knowsand Pixies track Debaser. Sid Vicious had a merry old time taking My Wayand kicking it to death.
A seminal album project in 1984, however, elevated the cover version into a new, arty realm. The album was It’ll End in Tears, and the band was This Mortal Coil, a loose collective led by 4AD supremo Ivo Watts-Russell. The album featured dark, gothic versions of songs by Big Star, Wire and Tim Buckley, and the singers included Magazine’s Howard Devoto, Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard, and Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins. This beautiful, eerie record echoed through a million bedsits in the mid-1980s, and proved that you could pay respect to your influences without sacrificing your integrity.
But respect soon gave way to irony and downright parody as artists staked out the indie and alternative rock scene in the hope of snatching some instant cred. Covering the latest Nirvana or Pixies song was a way for mainstream acts to prove they were down with the indie kids, and a way for fading MOR stars to give their careers a reviving jolt. Duran Duran released an ill-advised covers project that included Public Enemy's 911 is a Joke. Joe Dolan released Joe's 90s,featuring covers of songs by Blur, Pulp, Suede and Radiohead. Rolf Harris didgeridoo'd Stairway to Heaven, and Pat Boone did a swingin' Enter Sandman.
Some covers were deliciously unhinged, such as William Shatner's Shakespearean reading of Pulp's Common People, which harked back to his classic 1968 version of Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds. Others were just pointless, such as Coldplay done with pan pipes – you could hardly tell the difference.
Then came the young jazzers, who turned the joke in on itself by performing complex, improvised versions of popular rock tunes, issuing a dissonant challenge to the cosy conservatism of rock fans. Brad Mehldau spiced up his repertoire with versions of Soundgarden's Black Hole Sunand Radiohead's Everything In Its Right Place. The Bad Plus ripped up the rulebook by doing everyone from Aphex Twin to Yes to Radiohead (Thom Yorke and co are easily the most popular band to cover in a free-jazz style, perhaps because everything they've done since Kid A has been free jazz.)
French band Nouvelle Vague could have been a one-joke act, but instead they’ve managed to keep covers cool. Led by Marc Collin and Oliver Libaux, and featuring a shifting roster of breathy female singers, the band produce loungey, bossa-nova versions of new-wave songs by New Order, The Undertones, Bauhaus, Buzzcocks, Billy Idol and Yazoo.Nothing is sacred, and yet everything is. There’s a sense with Nouvelle Vague that there’s no in-joke. It’s just a simple concept delivered with minimum irony or tongue-in-cheek irreverence. It’s postmodern copyism, delivered with style.
This week a new album on Wall of Sound offers another left-field set of modern rock interpretations. Scala is a 200-strong all-girl choir from Belgium who, led by the classically trained Kolacny Brothers, perform choral covers of songs by U2, Nirvana, Metallica and Kings of Leon, mixed with original songs. Their version of Creep, by Radiohead (them again!) features on the soundtrack of The Social Network,and they've just played SXSW in Austin, Texas, creating an even bigger staging headache than The Polyphonic Spree ever did.
Meanwhile, German-American violinist David Garrett has just released his latest album, Rock Symphonies, featuring overblown classical-rock versions of Led Zep's Kashmir and Metallica's Master of Puppets, plus a mash-up of Vivaldi's Four Seasons and U2's Vertigo. Classical gas? Er, lemme hear that pan-pipes CD again.
Cover your ears? The good, the bad and the plain weird
GOOD
Butthole Surfers:
Hurdy Gurdy Man
Donovan's stoner-lite song gets the proper lysergic treatment.
The Futureheads:
Hounds of Love
Sunderland blokes give the Kate Bush song a run for its money.
BAD
Tori Amos:
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Crazy lady with piano scares away all the grunge kids.
Madonna:
American Pie
The original has tortured us enough without Maddy making it worse.
WEIRD
Laibach:
Sympathy for the Devil
Slovenian avant-industrial combo put the Stones through the dark satanic mill.
Ciccone Youth:
Into The Groovey
Sonic Youth and Mike Watt team up to deconstruct Madonna.
