Ten Hits You May Not Know Were Cover Versions

[TheLoony]

http://www.cracked.com/article_19848...gest-hits.html

Can't sleep so I'm reading Cracked. Been at it for hours. Gods do I need a life.

35 Popular Songs That Don't Mean What You Think is the link. Pretty cool. Found this about The Trees from Rush which is new to me as I'd always thought it was about unions.

The lyrics relate a short story about a conflict between maple and oak trees in the forest. The lyricist/drummer Neil Peart was asked in the April/May 1980 Modern Drummer magazine if there was a message in the lyrics. Peart said, "No. It was just a flash. I was working on an entirely different thing when I saw a cartoon picture of these trees carrying on like fools. I thought, 'What if trees acted like people?' So I saw it as a cartoon really, and wrote it that way. I think that's the image that it conjures up to a listener or a reader. A very simple statement."

I went and looked at the lyrics for The One I Love and that's a tough one. Hard to interpret that as being a "incredibly violent" song. At least for me. I did know the Gangnam Style story which is funny as I've only heard about twenty seconds of it.

Then there's this link, 7 Famous Musicians Who Stole Some of Their Biggest Hits

http://www.cracked.com/article_19848...t-hits_p2.html

I never knew about Come Together. I thought that was interesting seeing Chuck Berry singing those words. Green Day ripping off the Kinks was odd as it seems so blatant that I wonder how they got away with it.

One other. Easter Eggs. There's Sigur Ros in there, some palindrome song. Never heard that band but have seen the name around here.

http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_6...r4=recommended

[Halmyre]

Years ago, possibly even before 'Hemispheres' came out, I read a short story in an SF anthology about two sentient forests fighting each other. I often wonder if Neil Peart read the same story, although the 'hatchet, axe and saw' denouement wasn't in it.

'Maples' and 'oaks' - Canadian vs. British? 'Hatchet, Axe and Saw' - HAS, anagram of 'ash', an ash tree is an ancient symbol of justice...I need a lie down...

[Gruno]

I think both "Pictures of Lily" and "Turning Japanese" are better songs than "She Bop".

Rick Springfield's "Bop 'Till You Drop" is a good one!

[Rune Blackwings]

Monster Magnet (who I worship on a shrine slightly smaller than that I have built to Rune Eriksen) have ripped off a crap ton of other artists, such as Hawkwind (whose shrine is next to Monster Magnet's) and Capatin Beyond. Case in point:





ironically, hearing "bummer" live made me realize MM was a bunch of Hawkwind fans and I fell in love with them immediately.

[Fracktured]

How about 10 hits that you knew were cover versions like:

Santana - black magic woman
Three dog night - liar
Eagles - ol' 55
The animals - house of the rising sun
Jimi Hendrix - all along the watchtower
Manfred mann - blinded by the light
Quiet riot - mama we're all crazy now
Heart - alone
CCR - Susie q
Eric Clapton - I shot the sheriff

[GuitarGeek]

How about 10 hits that you knew were cover versions like:

Quiet riot - mama we're all crazy now

First of all, it's Mama Weer All Crazee Now. And I think you're confusing it with Cum On Feel The Noize. Quiet Riot recorded both, but Cum On Feel The Noize was the huge hit for them.

[TheLoony]

I have a few minutes here. Getting ready to go out and had the television on for a few minutes. Watching Veronica Mars and golly gee, what song comes on? I Touch Myself. Frigging weird timing.

[Fracktured]

First of all, it's Mama Weer All Crazee Now. And I think you're confusing it with Cum On Feel The Noize. Quiet Riot recorded both, but Cum On Feel The Noize was the huge hit for them.

Yeah slade weird spelling but I remember them having a bigger hit with the mama song. Maybe I'm wrong but that's the way I remember it. The eighties are pretty much a blur to me anymore.

[GuitarGeek]

Yeah slade weird spelling but I remember them having a bigger hit with the mama song. Maybe I'm wrong but that's the way I remember it. The eighties are pretty much a blur to me anymore.

No, Cum On Feel The Noize was the much bigger hit for Quiet Riot. It was almost ubiquitous for a few months. It's the song that made Metal Health such a big record.

Mama Weer All Crazee Now was their attept to play the "Let's make another song just like the last hit single", except obviously sit the last hit single was a cover, they chose another cover by the same artist. I know Frankie Banali and Kevin DuBrow both said that they didn't want to do any Slade songs, but their producer pushed Cum On Feel The Noize on them because "Kevin's voice sounds a lot like Noddy Holder's, trust me, this'll work!". And I remember when Condition Critical came out, I read in Guitar World where Carlos Cavoso said "This is the last Slade song we ever do!", so I'm guessing that they weren't too thrilled about being pressured into doing another one.

And of course the sophomore jinx hit, Mama Weer All Crazee Now didn't even make it into the top 40 (not according to Wikipedia anyway), whereas Cum On Feel The Noize was number 5.

It probably didn't help that a few months before the Quiet Riot version, an Irish power trio called Mama's Boys had released their own (much better) version of Mama Weer All Crazee Now.

[TheLoony]

Cum On... was the hit for QR. That video, with the mask, was all the rage with us rockers at the time. Didn't hurt that EmptyV played it every two seconds. While Mama was somewhat popular it didn't do nearly as well as the COFTN.

I remember one of the cool dudes(those I never hung out with) at school raving about how cool the video was. Nowadays it's as goofy as they get. Funny how that works.

Wow, Mama's Boys. I had forgotten about that.

[Fracktured]

I still think it's ironic how Slade never made an impact in the US, but Quiet Riot basically covered Cum and Mama to sound just like Slade and they became hits. I used to tell people how it was originally a Slade song and they would say "who?"

[GuitarGeek]

I still think it's ironic how Slade never made an impact in the US, but Quiet Riot basically covered Cum and Mama to sound just like Slade and they became hits. I used to tell people how it was originally a Slade song and they would say "who?"

The only thing about the Quiet Riot versions that sound like Slade is Kevin's voice. Everything else on those songs is very different, arrangement wise. Listen to what Don Powell plays on Cum On Feel The Noize, which sort of follows the vocal melody (kinda like a Keith Moon trip), versus Frankie Banali's very basic drumming, which could have been slotted into any of a number of songs. And certainly, there's nothing in the entire Slade catalog that sounds like Carlos Cavoso's guitar playing.

I love the solo Carlos played on Cum On Feel The Noize, but the Slade version, I dunno, there's just something there, some kind of magic or something, that doesn't quite happen on the Quiet Riot version. And it's tough to top Noddy's "Baby baby baaaaaa-BY!" intro (which according to legend, was actually him doing a mic check before the track began, but because the tape was already rolling and it got recorded, they decided to leave it in).

[Fracktured]

The only thing about the Quiet Riot versions that sound like Slade is Kevin's voice. Everything else on those songs is very different, arrangement wise. Listen to what Don Powell plays on Cum On Feel The Noize, which sort of follows the vocal melody (kinda like a Keith Moon trip), versus Frankie Banali's very basic drumming, which could have been slotted into any of a number of songs. And certainly, there's nothing in the entire Slade catalog that sounds like Carlos Cavoso's guitar playing.

I love the solo Carlos played on Cum On Feel The Noize, but the Slade version, I dunno, there's just something there, some kind of magic or something, that doesn't quite happen on the Quiet Riot version. And it's tough to top Noddy's "Baby baby baaaaaa-BY!" intro (which according to legend, was actually him doing a mic check before the track began, but because the tape was already rolling and it got recorded, they decided to leave it in).

Can't say that I paid that much attention to the QR version other than it sounded like they were trying to copy Slade's sound. I think I only ever saw the video version on MTV at the time. Back in the 80's I was driving a truck with no radio and I pretty much didn't know a lot about what was going on in the rock scene. Turns out I didn't miss much.

[Dave (in MA)]

How about 10 hits that you knew were cover versions like:

Santana - black magic woman
Three dog night - liar
Eagles - ol' 55
The animals - house of the rising sun
Jimi Hendrix - all along the watchtower
Manfred mann - blinded by the light
Quiet riot - mama we're all crazy now
Heart - alone
CCR - Susie q
Eric Clapton - I shot the sheriff

Unfamiliar with these three, but have a hard time imagining most people not knowing that at least most of the rest were covers.

[GuitarGeek]

Can't say that I paid that much attention to the QR version other than it sounded like they were trying to copy Slade's sound. I think I only ever saw the video version on MTV at the time. Back in the 80's I was driving a truck with no radio and I pretty much didn't know a lot about what was going on in the rock scene. Turns out I didn't miss much.

Well, if you had been paying attention, and heard both versions of each song, the differences would have been obvious to any serious music fan. As I said, Kevin's voice was the only thing in Quiet Riot that was similar to Slade, and if we believe the story the band has been telling for 30 years now, that's more a case of happenstance than any deliberate attempt to sing like Noddy Holder. And if you listened to the rest of Metal Health, it's pretty clear that on their original material, they certainly weren't trying to sound like Slade.

If you weren't paying attention to rock music in the early and mid 80's, then you missed out on the last era when rock music was actually fun, before it got hijacked first by the boy band wannabes (eg Warrant, Firehouse, etc) and then by the "alternative" brigade. Oy!

[GuitarGeek]

Unfamiliar with these three, but have a hard time imagining most people not knowing that at least most of the rest were covers.

How's anyone supposed to know that Blinded By The Light or Black Magic Woman are cover tunes?! The original versions weren't hits but were recorded before the respective artists were huge. Most people don't read anything but the song titles on records, somehow, they don't even read the bylines (even though they're immediately below the song tiles). Most people don't realize or even care that Elvis wasn't a songwriter or that Bruce Springsteen wrote Blinded By The Light or that Fleetwood Mac recorded the original Black Magic Woman (most people don't even realize Fleetwood Mac even existed at the time).

Hell, most people, even Elton John fans, don't realize Bernie Taupin had a hand in writing We Built This City.

[ThomasKDye]

And if you think that's ridiculous, you can only imagine how silly I felt when I finally realized what Fat Bottomed Girls and Big Bottom were about.

And if you think THAT'S ridiculous, I didn't realize until i was seventeen that Madness's "House of Fun" was about a kid trying to buy condoms at a pharmacy. I never thought that a song with that subject matter would be #1 in England!

Anyway, back to the topic...

[bob_32_116]

What is your people's definition of "cover version"? To me it doesn't simply mean a song written by someone other than the performer. There has to be a previously recorded version that was a hit, or at least moderately well known. The song has already been tested in the market - it only remains to be seen whether the market will like the new version.

"I Heard It Through the Grapevine", written by Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield, was recorded - in chronological order - by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, and Gladys Knight and the Pips. I don't think of any of those as "covers". Smokey's, the first, wasn't even a hit. For that reason I wouldn't call Marvin's version a "cover". Nor would I call the Pips' version a cover, because they were the first to make it famous - it wasn't until later that Marvin's version, recorded before theirs, was picked up by DJs and became a hit in its own right.

Creedence Clearwater Revivial's version, on the other hand, definitely qualifies as a cover.

[TheH]

What is your people's definition of "cover version"? To me it doesn't simply mean a song written by someone other than the performer. "

As many well known performers have their hits written by others, I prefer the definition of "original performer".

If a song was written by a Songwriter for an artist, this artists version is the original.

Natalie Imbruglia's - Torn was written by Grunge band who had to sell it. It was never intended for Natalie Imbruglia
so it's a cover version. Had the Grunge band written the song with the Intention of selling ist it wouldn't be a cover Version.

The original

[Adrian]

I would say a cover is simply a new performance or recording of a song previously recorded by someone else. I don't think it matters whether the original was a hit or well known.

[Rarebird]

For the Dutch among us:
Herman van Veen - Hilversum III

is a cover of:
Haindling - Lang scho nimmr g'sehn

Don't think many people know this.

[Fracktured]

Is yes America considered a cover tune? It was rearranged drastically with added music.

[Progbear]

I still think it's ironic how Slade never made an impact in the US, but Quiet Riot basically covered Cum and Mama to sound just like Slade and they became hits. I used to tell people how it was originally a Slade song and they would say "who?"

I don’t know if it was a little boost from Quiet Riot having phenomenal success with their tunes, but Slade did get a belated punch of chart success in the USA circa the mid 80s with “Run Runaway” and “My Oh My.” Neither were huge hits, but they got a good amount of airplay.

[Dave (in MA)]

How's anyone supposed to know that Blinded By The Light or Black Magic Woman are cover tunes?!

Common knowledge. Maybe you're a bit younger than I am.

[GuitarGeek]

Common knowledge. Maybe you're a bit younger than I am.

What the hell does my age have to do with it?! Just because you and I know that Bruce Springsteen recorded the original version of Blinded By The Light doesn't mean the millions of Americans who listen to classic rock radio know it.

And I can promise it's not really all that "common knowledge" except to music geeks, just like it's not common knowledge to the average person that Hound Dog was originally sung by a woman.