Entertainment For Lively Minds
Can you build a Beatles album from cover versions?
I’m a bugger for a Beatles cover (or a Beatleg remixes) with more than is strictly necessary already in the collection - but being a feverish completist, have an almost clinical fear of missing any trophy tracks.
So a couple of questions - what your recommendations for quality or quirky Beatles reworks?
And is it possible to compile any ‘63 – ‘70 Beatles album (not comp’s) made entirely from independent covers – this excludes fully formed projects like The Smithereens ‘Meet The Smithereens’ (great as it is) or Robert Stigwoods Sgt. Pepper's Soundtrack (*shudders, goes cross eyed and faints*).
A few album openers for example
Please Please Me
I Saw Her Standing There – Little Richard
Revolver
Drive My Car – The Bo Street Runners
White Album
Back In the USSR - Ramsey Lewis (or Chubby Checker)
Abbey Road
Come Together – Tina Turner
And for no other reason than it's pure rubber soul...
Al Green - I Want To Hold Your Hand
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Tomorrow Never Knows
From the live album by Phil Manzanera and chums called '801 Live'.
Genius version.
Damn these Friday lunch meetings ...
that would have been my choice! None better.
Sorry, but I can't let this pass
Drive My Car is not on Revolver.
Ouch !
How did I do that it's Rubber Soul - clearly my anorak needs some adjustment
Great idea
I'll have a go at this when I'm not at the office - out of character for a Word blogger I know. But i'd immediately say Sugarbabes' cover of Com Together would be a contender over Tina.
These come to mind: -
A Hard Day's Night - Peter Sellers
All You Need Is Love - Echo & The Bunnymen
Day Tripper - Otis Redding
Do You Want to Know a Secret - Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas
Eleanor Rigby - Ray Charles
For No-One - Cilla Black
Hey Jude - Wilson Pickett
I am the Walrus - Oasis
I Wanna Be Your Man - The Rolling Stones
I Want You (She's So Heavy) - Booker T. & The M.Gs
I'll Cry Instead - Joe Cocker
I'm a Loser - Marianne Faithfull
I'm Only Sleeping - Suggs
Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand - The Beatles
Love Me Do - Sandie Shaw
Lovely Rita - Fats Domino
Revolution - Nina Simone
Sexy Sadie - Rachel Unthank & The Winter Set
She Loves You - Peter Sellers
She's Leaving Home - Harry Nilsson
Taxman - Junior Parker
With a Little Help From My Friends - Joe Brown
Yer Blues - The Dirty Mac
Yesterday - Chris Farlowe
Peter Sellers version?
A Hard Day's Night. Sorry PM, but that version is one that can be listened to once and then discarded.
Peter Sellers
Sellers' "Can't Buy Me Love" is his funniest Beatles cover.
No
She Loves You
Siouxsie and the Banshees
Helter Skelter
Dear Prudence
and
Earth Wind and Fire - Got To Get You Into My Life
The Wedding Present
The Wedding Present were always good for a cover. You're bound to get other nominations from Sgt Pepper Knew My Father, but their contribution of Getting Better was the hightlight for me - especially for the lyrical tweak "I used to be cruel to my brother, I beat him...etc".
Robert Palmer
Not A Second Time (from Clues)
We must be almost there for Revolver or Sgt Pepper's
A couple of personal faves are
Shirley Scott Horns - Get Back
Lee Moses - Day Tripper
The 5th Dimension - Ticket To Ride
Sandie Shaw-Love Me Do
almost
but getting an even halfway decent version of Tomorrow Never Knows or A Day In The Life Is never going to be easy. Not like Yesterday...
TNK and A Day In The Life
Phil Collins, and Neil Young
Neil Young
I love Neil, but that song is turgid wank.
Three days in the life
Jose Feliciano did a superb stripped down acoustic version
Lee Ritenour - has a 'jazz moods' mellow take on the 'I Got No Kick Against Modern Jazz' (which also features George Benson's 'The Long & Winding Road' and Diana Krall's version of 'And I Love Her')
But the bootleg remixer Soundhog mashed it with Mogwai and Kid Loco into an ambient after hours rumbler
A Day In Tracy's Life
I can offer up
Tomorrow Never Knows by Danielle Dax from the album Blast The Human Flower and has nobody mentioned The Damneds version of Help..
Uncut have done this
"The competition" have achieved this already. They've done the White Album (Julie Fowlis's Blackbird was haunting) and I think Revolver too (a lovely take on Here, There and Everywhere by a litle-konwn band called Belarus).
Sorry to promote Uncut. The mags weren't very good but the cover CDs were worth it. Incidentally I didn't get part 2 of the White Album set as Queen were on the cover and I have an aversion to them.
That was Mojo, not Uncut.
It seems de rigueur on here to slag off Uncut, which I think is harsh. I think it's a good mag, albeit not as good as Word (to hell with the definite article, I'm an old school fan from the first issue!). I'm glad both of them and Mojo are all around and long may they all stay with us. I do love reading about music and I think they all do a decent job.
This Bird Has Flown
There's been at least one tribute album recreating a whole beatles album, I have 'This Bird Has Flown', a 40th Anniversary Tribute to Rubber Soul which features a fantastic version of What Goes On by Sufjan Stevens and Low doing Nowhere Man.
Or from individual covers, I like Happiness Is A Warm Gun by The Breeders.
Also Rubber Folk
Which is a whole lot of usually not bad folkists doing not very good covers.......
Shouldn't have bothered!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rubber-Folk-Tribute-Beatles/dp/B000ECXT9S
....and don't forget the blues
The Blues White Album
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blues-White-Album-Tribute-Beatles/dp/B00005V0WW
I've got a few a project comps , themed abums and tributes
George Martin's 'In My Life'
'I Got No Kick Against Modern Jazz'
'Motown Sings The Beatles' etc..
But this is gathering up the the obscurities, oddities and overlooked classics and underplayed nuggets - tracks like The Crystalites reggae rework of..
Lady Madonna
Didn't appear on an album
...which is a real shame because my fave Beatles cover is Day Tripper by Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66.
"Don't Let Me Down" - Marcia Griffiths
My favourite reggae Beatles cover is Marcia Griffiths' "Don't Let Me Down" (NB. Not my record player):
Emmylou Harris.
Rather than Cilla, how about this?
I'm Looking Through You
from Rubber Soul is covered on Steve Eale's Train a Comin' cd.
It Won't Be Long
From 1,000 Years of Popular Music. By Richard Thompson.
Cornershop's version of
Cornershop's version of Norwegian Wood is worth a listen. And EWF's version of Got To Get You Into My Life is better than the original.
It's All Too Much
Steve Hillage
Elvis and the F word
I'm sure he adds a some effing and jeffing embellishment to 'make ends meet' line at 0:46
Strawberry Fields is my favourite Beatles song but
I can't stand any of the cover versions except a piano version by David Lanz. It's really simple but lovely. It's on a record called Songs From an English Garden, he also does I'll Follow the Sun and Girl as well as Ruby Tuesday and Ferry Across the Mersey.
I also rate Jeff Beck's instrumental version of A Day in the Life from the George Martin cd In My Life.
Big Daddy did an amusing song by song cover of Sgt Pepper. Booker T and the MGs did the same to Abbey Road. I haven't heard the latter but I think it's called McLemore Avenue.
Laibach - Let It Be (the album)
Superlative cover version of (probably) the Beatles worst album, although they miss off the title track for some reason.
Get Back is done pretty straight but to almost comic effect, but the rest are seriously re-worked, which strangely gives the impression that they really got to the heart of each song.
Maybe sticking my neck out a little, but I'd say it was clearly better than the original
Two of my favourite Beatles covers
1.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?i=13592834&i...
2.
This may be up your Abbey Road then
I mentioned it earlier but have just managed to tracked down embed of it, Lee Moses rip-roaring take on Day Tripper..
Oh, and I forgot
(Thanks, Dave - enjoyed that!)
More Taxes
A little known nugget from Go Home Productions - the grand master of mashups - where he bolts Taxman onto She Sells Sanctuary to create a perfect piece of Frankenstein pop
She Sells Tax_ Man.
Sgt. Pepper knew my father
An NME compilation from 1988 provided the bizarre combination of Wet Wet Wet and the Fall on the same CD. Sadly the Fall's version of A Day in the Life is not as good as you might imagine (or the original). I vaguely remember this provided Billy Bragg's highest chart position on a double A-side with the Wets. For Charidee, of course.
Three Wize Men - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Wet Wet Wet - With a Little Help From My Friends
The Christians - Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
The Wedding Present with Amelia Fletcher - Getting Better
Hue and Cry - Fixing a Hole
Billy Bragg with Cara Tivey - She's Leaving Home
Frank Sidebottom - Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Sonic Youth - Within You Without You
Courtney Pine Quartet - When I'm Sixty-Four
Michelle Shocked - Lovely Rita
The Triffids - Good Morning, Good Morning
Three Wize Men - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
The Fall - A Day in the Life
I am Sam, soundtrack
Beatles covers by (mostly) Word friendly artists
. Two of Us - Aimee Mann, Michael Penn
2. Blackbird - Sarah McLachlan
3. Across the Universe - Rufus Wainwright
4. I'm Looking Through You - The Wallflowers
5. You've Got to Hide Your Love Away - Eddie Vedder
6. Strawberry Fields Forever - Ben Harper, Ben Harper
7. Mother Nature's Son - Sheryl Crow
8. Golden Slumbers - Ben Folds
9. I'm Only Sleeping - The Vines
10. Don't Let Me Down - Stereophonics
11. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds - The Black Crowes
12. Julia - Chocolate Genius
13. We Can Work It Out - Heather Nova
14. Help! - Howie Day
15. Nowhere Man - Paul Westerberg
16. Revolution - Grandaddy
17. Let It Be - Nick Cave