Bands/Artists that played mostly covers (interpretations)

[stoken6]

Before I joined my current UB40/reggae band I had always thought UB40 had wrote the songs themselves (never really delved much into this genre) I was surprised to find out most are covers.

 

I love the story that they heard King Tubby's (? iirc) cover of Red Red Wine, and thought that was a genuine, credible reggae song for them to cover. Then found out it's a Neil Diamond song.

 

Cheers, Mike

[RABid]

and maybe my favorite TDN cover...and a KILLER performance of it...

 

Just met Chuck Negron last week... very nice guy..

 

 

I was wondering about 3 Dog Night two weeks ago when I bought "Live at the Forum" on Amazon download. I had the LP and the 8-Track. One of my favorite live releases. Listening to them taught me how to play "rhythm" organ. A very handy skill whan playing rock in a band with a single guitarist.

[stoken6]

Ahem... The Blues Brothers?

 

(I'll get my coat).

 

Cheers, Mike.

[DulceLabs.com]

Rod Stewart did well with his "Reason to Believe", "First Cut is the Deepest" covers... and of course the "Great American Songbook" series.

[Stokely]

Van Halen did a few covers early on, but I think they're much more widely known for all their original stuff. You've got hits like Jump, Runnin' with the Devil, Panama, Hot for Teacher, Jamie's Crying, Right Now, etc. All of those were probably much bigger hits than any covers they did, and I'm sure I'm even missing a bunch. They're just a band did some covers, not a "mostly covers" band.

 

True, though Diver Down (5th album) had quite a few covers, and they were the biggest hits on there iirc (Pretty Woman, Dancing in the Streets, and I've heard Where Have all the Good Times Gone on the radio). Van Halen really van-halenized their covers though

[Joe Muscara]

Eddie hated that album because of all the covers. He felt that was a cop-out.

 

Five of the twelve songs on the album are covers, the most popular being the cover of "Oh, Pretty Woman", a Roy Orbison song. At the time, the record company thought it had a greater chance of a hit record if the album comprised songs that were already successful. In retrospect, it turned out to be one of the Van Halen brothers' least-favorite albums, with Eddie stating "I'd rather have a bomb with one of my own songs than a hit with someone else's." However, at the time whilst he admitted to the pressure the band was put under to record it, he was able to tell Guitar Player (Dec. 1982) that it "was fun": "When we came off the Fair Warning tour last year [1981], we were going to take a break and spend a lot of time writing this and that. Dave came up with the idea of, 'Hey, why don't we start off the new year with just putting out a single?' He wanted to do 'Dancing in the Streets.' He gave me the original Martha Reeves & the Vandellas tape, and I listened to it and said, 'I can't get a handle on anything out of this song.' I couldn't figure out a riff, and you know the way I like to play: I always like to do a riff, as opposed to just hitting barre chords and strumming. So I said, 'Look, if you want to do a cover tune, why don't we do 'Pretty Woman'? It took one day. We went to Sunset Sound in L.A., recorded it, and it came out right after the first of the year. It started climbing the charts, so all of a sudden Warner Bros. is going, 'You got a hit single on your hands. We gotta have that record.' We said, 'Wait a minute, we just did that to keep us out there, so that people know we're still alive.' But they just kept pressuring, so we jumped right back in without any rest or time to recuperate from the tour, and started recording. We spent 12 days making the album... it was a lot of fun."

[t9cstudio]

 

 

Yeah, you're right, though there have been many cases of covers in country music, of course. Many more than other genres, I think. But, probably not many bands or artists that did strictly covers of previously released tunes, unless you count the country gospel crowd.

 

Having your songs written by somebody else is little different than playing a cover though. In those cases, the song didn't officially "exist" previously (except probably in demo form). There's a term for this that's escaping me at the moment, but the performer usually is granted the exclusive legal right to create the first "version" of the song. This is to ensure that a songwriter doesn't give a song to one artist, then turn around and sell the same song to another artist.

 

When you "cover" a song, it implies that there's an established version of the song already in existence.