{"id":28233,"date":"2024-10-03T05:30:25","date_gmt":"2024-10-03T09:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=28233"},"modified":"2024-09-19T08:30:03","modified_gmt":"2024-09-19T12:30:03","slug":"take-five-great-beatles-covers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/03\/take-five-great-beatles-covers\/","title":{"rendered":"Take Five: Great Beatles Covers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The soundtrack to The Beatles\u2019 first film, <em>A Hard Day\u2019s Night<\/em>, was released 60 years ago in the United States. Because of a licensing arrangement, that record wasn\u2019t released on Capitol, The Beatles\u2019 customary U.S. label. Instead, the soundtrack was released on United Artists, a label associated with the film\u2019s production company. (Capitol soon enough released <em>Something New!<\/em>, a compilation featuring some tracks from the movie).<\/p>\n<p>The <em>A Hard Day\u2019s Night<\/em> soundtrack would have been an unusual listening experience for Beatles fans, as it contained both Beatles tunes from the film as well as \u201ceasy listening\u201d semi-orchestral covers of Beatles hits. While those tracks were arranged and conducted by Beatles producer George Martin, they didn\u2019t represent especially memorable takes on the group\u2019s catalog.<\/p>\n<p>Happily, over the years, a number of artists have turned in credible \u2013 and occasionally even great \u2013 covers of Beatles classics. Here are five notable Beatles covers. (And no, nothing here from the \u201870s <em>Sgt. Pepper<\/em> movie. Blecch!)<\/p>\n<p><strong>801 \u2013 \u201cTomorrow Never Knows\u201d from <em>801 Live<\/em> (1976)<\/strong><br \/>\nA supergroup made up of some of the most adventurous musicians of the era, 801 released only one studio LP and one live record (made by vastly different lineups). More of a project than a group, 801 combined world-class playing with original songs and radical reinventions of other artists\u2019 works. The lineup of Brian Eno (ex-Roxy Music), Phil Manzanera (Roxy Music), Simon Phillips, Bill MacCormick, Lloyd Watson and Francis Monkman (Curved Air) created this hypnotic version of the groundbreaking <em>Revolver<\/em> classic. That\u2019s Eno on vocals.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/21VaXxyfZS0?si=I8Lo7VUnow48_Gca\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Herb Alpert &amp; the Tijuana Brass \u2013 \u201cAll My Loving\u201d from <em>South of the Border<\/em> (1964)<\/strong><br \/>\nThe co-founder (with Jerry Moss) of A&amp;M Records, Herb Alpert ruled the charts with his peppy, uptempo and Latin-flavored instrumental pop. In the studio, the TJB was a polite fiction; that\u2019s mostly Alpert and the \u201cWrecking Crew\u201d you\u2019ll hear on the Tijuana Brass records. But Alpert deserves credit for hipping the older set to the joys found in Beatles songs; he cut several \u2013 including a great take on a song the Beatles covered in their early days, \u201cA Taste of Honey\u201d \u2013 but this tune is among his earliest, recorded and released very soon after The Beatles hit America.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZGqvuWKqvEA?si=zkkXX3qYanjXRfYS\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeff Beck \u2013 \u201cShe\u2019s a Woman\u201d from <em>Blow by Blow<\/em> (1975)<\/strong><br \/>\nAs a member of The Yardbirds, Jeff Beck had been part of the \u201860s British Invasion alongside The Beatles. After going solo and trafficking in a number of styles, by the mid 1970s he had plunged headlong into fusion. His funky reading of \u201cShe\u2019s a Woman,\u201d however, leans into the melody and makes effective use of guitar effects, most notably the \u201cGolden Throat\u201d talkbox, a device popularized by fellow guitar hero Peter Frampton.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rkxqb33lAAM?si=zQAta2il8sEvwbkN\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Adrian Belew \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m Down\u201d from <em>Twang Bar King<\/em> (1983)<\/strong><br \/>\nAfter earning a reputation as a musician par excellence for his work with David Bowie and Frank Zappa, Adrian Belew came to wider fame as guitarist and lead singer in the 1980s lineup of progressive rock heroes King Crimson. But Belew has always been rooted in pop music. On his second solo album, he paid tribute to The Beatles with a reading of the then-comparatively-rare \u201cHelp!\u201d b-side, taking it at an even more frenetic pace than the original. Belew also added a trademark string-bending solo.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eQWzEQOyQhM?si=_jI9U30PoumWqvIU\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Residents &#8211; \u201cBeyond the Valley of a Day in the Life\u201d single (1977)<\/strong><br \/>\nOkay, strictly speaking, this one\u2019s not a cover. Instead it\u2019s a sampling\/mashup \u2013 years before those terms or concepts existed in the mainstream \u2013 by notorious Bay Area avant-garde musical conceptualists <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/20\/interview-roundup-the-residents\/\">The Residents<\/a>. The mysterious group compiled this cut-up work using snippets of Beatles songs, Christmas messages and outtakes, creating quite possibly the weirdest (and most inventive) reinvention of The Beatles\u2019 work ever attempted. Years ahead of its time in 1977, it remains a bracing, confounding listen to this day.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hPgAA_roCJA?si=s8ccBa08eN4PaxRb\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The soundtrack to The Beatles\u2019 first film, A Hard Day\u2019s Night, was released 60 years ago in the United States. Because of a licensing arrangement, that record wasn\u2019t released on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17812,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,132,278,3728,3627,1823],"class_list":["post-28233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","tag-96","tag-adrian-benew","tag-beatles","tag-herb-alpert","tag-jeff-beck","tag-residents","cat-27-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28234,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28233\/revisions\/28234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}