I got word today that The Flaming Lips are working on a covers album, a fact that would stand alone in my version of the “good news” category. But get this: it will feature collaborations with none other than Yoko Ono and the Plastic Ono Band! Among others! Bon Iver just signed on, Nick Cave is down, Erykah Badu is mulling it over; this is a good line-up. Not sure what covers are being done, but one thing I love and have come to admire very much about The Flaming Lips is their strong talent for Lips-y covers (often performed live like nice little “price of admission” bonuses).
This love affair started when I heard their version of Nobody Told Me, the rested yet still feisty take on the state of things by the late great John Lennon. The first time I heard that song, I thought it was so god damned brilliant and it crystallized not only John Lennon’s predicament at that particular point in his life but the one we all find waiting for us when we get our heads out of our asses long enough to take a real look around. Flaming Lips were the perfect band to cover that song, with their themes of existential wonder and examination of human habit. As such, their version was a perfect cover.
What makes a perfect cover? In my mind it has to be done by a band who feels it, it has to show a definite respect for the original, but it has to also show the covering band’s distinction. It has to be something they love, done their way. Both those points MUST be obvious.
This got me to thinking about what covers I would say were perfect covers. I’m sure if I thought long enough, I could come up with eight pages worth. But in the interest of keeping things concise, the way I prefer things to be (except for sex, good meals, and the act of witnessing the plight of someone who has fallen in shrubbery and cannot right him/herself), I will limit it to the list I was able to make while I was at work today trying not to burn the place down.
I’ll start with the one I think is one of the big trophy takers: With a Little Help From My Friends by Joe Cocker. As a loyal disciple of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, I am extra hard on people who are galling enough to try on an item from the royal arsenal. It would be a rare thing indeed to hear me say a cover is better than the Beatles’ original. But this one….this one is actually better. Nothing against the pivotal Ringo tune, introduced by Billy Shears and starting the story arch of what was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but Cocker owns this with an incredibly important soul, one that you realize upon hearing it makes the whole song come alive. I saw him perform it when he opened for Tom Petty in 2010 and it brought the house down. It sounded nothing like the original but it loved it deeply. You could tell. Perfect. Cover.
And while I’m on the topic of the Beatles, let’s look at a few more bold bastards that got it right.
Imagine by A Perfect Circle. Covering Imagine is kind of like drinking out of the cup of Christ at a museum: you better make one hell of a toast otherwise people are just gonna think you’re an asshole. What I love about this cover is that it’s timely. It was featured on the 2004 album Emotive, an album that featured a healthy selection of covers that fit the hot topic message of the album. All of those covers could really be on this list, they are all pretty great. But Imagine was the standout. I fully believe that at that time in American history, John would have written it this way if it hadn’t been written already. Wounded, dark, shy, sorry, a little doomed yet not hopeless, with a message certainly more urgent, and piano at the end that sounds like John playing from the beyond. Perfect. Cover.
Across the Universe by Fiona Apple. Not only was this a great version of a song I hold VERY close to my heart, but it was done for the soundtrack of a movie that had such a profound message attached to it. One I think fit the song and the man who wrote it just dandy. The song came out as the single from the soundtrack to Pleasantville (a tremendous movie that must be seen by everybody). The video of the song even gets it right; a doe eyed Fiona Apple wandering around a world where black and white people want to destroy all the pretty colors, eyes fixed ahead and music in her ears while things smash around her. Lennon talked about feeling that way many times. But this version wears Fiona’s style of melancholy and premature wisdom undeniably. Perfect. Cover.
If one is going to make a list of great covers, one must recognise Marilyn Manson who is the king of injecting his juices into someone else’s song, but only if he really loves it. Manson’s version of Tainted Love made the lyrics much more snarling. But still using the signature synths from the original so you never lose sight of the inspiration. Cause Manson is like black liquorice and he could easily overpower any other flavour, but he took care to ensure it was sophisticatedly done. Perfect. Cover.
Also worth mentioning is his version of Personal Jesus. It’s perfect.
Manson’s former collaborator Trent Reznor is no slouch in…well ANY department. But his covers have always been really lovingly rendered meaty morsels. The first one I ever heard was Get Down Make Love, a Queen cover done double fisted. Not gonna even try to match blow for blow with Freddie Mercury’s extra-terrestrial vocal prowess, Reznor brings his own well formed and distinct purr to it as well as some crazed synthy heft. But he bows to the original by capping it off with a guitar sample from the Queen hit We Will Rock You. Perfect. Cover.
Reznor also nailed the difficult task of covering Zeppelin. With Zeppelin you can’t take the words and themes and cover it any ol’ way. Blues is like that; if you’re gonna cover blues, you gotta know what they feel like and what they sound like and what they do to your body. Wonderful Trent put together a cover of Immigrant Song for the soundtrack of the American take on Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with Karen O on vocals. This song is SO Zeppelin and everyone who tries to cover it fails. You can tell they either don’t follow blues or they have no time to really embrace the nerdy references with conviction. This version is well done in both respects but once again embraces the chest thrusting, gnawing, boiling-blood sweat-fest that is Trent Reznor…..ok, I need to stop and splash some cold water on my face, excuse me…anyway, Perfect. Cover.
And while we are on Reznor, let’s look at the Nine Inch Nails cover that led Trent himself to use my very requirements to describe why this was a perfect cover:
“[I felt like] I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn’t mine anymore… It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning — different, but every bit as pure.”
Perfect. Cover. He is of course talking about Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt. Behold.
Speaking of radically different eras with same sincerity and meaning, Rage Against The Machine’s cover of The Ghost of Tom Joad, a Springsteen tune inspired by the Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck, Springsteen, AND Rage were all examining a certain plight and a certain crossroads. All of them did it in their own distinct and sincere way. Rage though….Rage powered it home BIG time. When Zack starts in with the You’ll see me‘s, you tell me you don’t wanna cut free from the race for a while and see what life is like off leash. Perfect. Cover.
And while we’re talking about how the working man can write quite the tune, how about Proud Mary? Written by John Fogerty and performed by his band Creedence Clearwater Revival, this tune is all about momentum while fingers are worn to the bone. And along comes someone who knows a little something about how momentum, though hardest to achieve when you’re worn down, is where the power to get through it comes from. Tina fucking Turner. Owns it. Makes it hers. But does so from the same place Fogerty did albeit with different roads to get there. Perfect. Cover.
So that brings us back to the news at hand. The new Flaming Lips cover album. Do I think it will provide me with some perfect covers? I like the odds. Especially after hearing this perfect cover done by Tool front man Maynard James Keenan and the Lips’ own Steven Drozd.
In my mind, this is the best cover I have heard in a LONG time. It may be my favourite on the list. It needs no further talk. It is, simply put, a perfect cover.
I love those.
Words by: Jennie Orton
