Fabulously Flamboyant Fridays: Ivory Cutlery’s Day Off Pt. 4

Greetings pop pickers and please be welcome to tonight’s Fabulously Flamboyant Friday and another of our fortnightly mastications upon the marshmallowy pillows of musical magnificence.

Tonight, dear reader, as we mark World Spay Day (yes, there really is an international day to mark the chopping off of your pet’s nadgers), Ivory Cutlery (currently numb of buttock, sore of foot and tired of limb) will once again be taking the night off.

I’m afraid the onerous real-world pressure of being a full-time useless pillock has, once again, limited my opportunities for detailed, rigorous, fact-checked, Puffin-quality research.*

*a transparent tissue of lies – it’s all done on Grok

I am currently labouring in Ghey Paris, where my burdens are burdensome and my toiling, toilsome. Because of this, tonight’s missive will be a shoddy and shambolic affair; a puerile stream of consciousness, rapidly written in a succession of shabby hotels, sweaty backstage areas and deeply insalubrious French cafes.

And so, without further ado, laydees and gentlebodies, Fabulously Flamboyant Fridays proudly presents… um… some of my favourite… um… *shuffles frantically through notebook*… cover versions! Not Arf!

Tainted Love – an absolute corker of a cover to get us started. I’m really not a fan of Soft Cell, but that’s how you do a cover. It was originally recorded by Gloria Jones and became quite a significant hit on the UK’s Northern Soul circuit. However, it never really broke through to the mainstream and remained an underground success.

As a result, Jones is probably best remembered as the favourite squeeze of one Marc Bolan esq and, of course, the driver of the car in which Mr Bolan unfortunately popped his cloggs (after a spot of unplanned, up-close, high impact, tree inspection). Jones survived the infamous crash, but was seriously messed up and very nearly joined her boyfriend in the Great Green Room In The Sky.

She eventually recovered and was scheduled to appear in court to answer some rather pertinent questions with regard to the incident in which she was involved. Ms. Jones, however, apparently had other ideas – leaving the UK for a swift return to US before her court date materialised. Nevertheless, Tainted Love is a great track and I think Soft Cell’s version is probably the definitive one (although I confess to finding the above video somewhat unsettling).

So what makes for a great cover version? Well, for me, a great cover has to eclipse the original or at least bring something new, unexpected and interesting to the table, and I’m happy to say our next cover meets all those requirements with consummate ease. Stevie Wonder’s recording of For Once In My Life effortlessly eclipses the Connie Haines original and completely transforms what was a somewhat overwrought and turgid ballad into a thing of pure joy (and I shall make no cheap and tawdry #FF jokes about how the young lady in the video looks chuffed to have a firm grip on Stevie’s organ).

Our next cover for this evening is a track originally written and recorded by perhaps one of the most ill-fated bands in the business – Badfinger. I’m not saying they were getting regular notes of sympathy from Lynyrd Skynyrd, but, nevertheless, these boys had a pretty bad run.

Badfinger were a bunch of very talented lads from Swansea who (from 1968 to 1973) recorded five very fine albums for Apple Records and, as a result, were doing very well indeed, thank you very much: world-wide hits, successful albums, sell-out shows and big name artists starting to cover their compositions. Their future looked bright and assured.

Unfortunately, Badfinger became hopelessly entangled in the utter bloody shambles that was the disintegration of Apple Records in 1973. From that point on they struggled with a seemingly endless host of legal, managerial, financial and (understandably, given the circumstances) personal problems that eventually brought about the complete and utter destruction of their careers. Guitarist Pete Ham committed suicide in 1975, with his song-writing partner and the band’s bass player, Tom Evans, following his sad example just a few years later.

However, in happier times, Pete Ham and Tom Evans wrote and released Without You (it’s on their 1970 album, No Dice, a pretty decent album if you ever see a copy hanging around in a second-hand vinyl shop) and it has since been recorded by over 180 artists. However, the definitive version was probably the one released way back in the early 70s by Harry Nilsson.

Time for a spot of Frank Sinatra. His recording of My Way has apparently spent (fun fact, pop pickers) more time on the UK singles chart than any other record – 75 weeks on its original release and now, in total, well over two years of poptastic chartage. Pretty impressive really. Sinatra recorded his version in 1968, but the song was originally composed as Comme d’Habitude (As Usual) and was a big hit for the Egyptian-born French singer Claude François.

Back then it was quite common for Euro hits to be picked up by British or American publishers who would slap on a set of English lyrics and re-record the track for the English-speaking market. Comme d’Habitude was clearly a gorgeous melody, but a decent set of English lyrics were needed. David Bowie (deep into his Anthony Newley period) had a crack at it, but it wasn’t his finest lyrical performance and his efforts subsequently went nowhere. So the Canadian singer Paul Anka was asked to have a go. He came up with the lyric that became My Way, Frank recorded it, and the rest is history.

My Way went on to sell about a gazillion copies around the world, but Frank, apparently, wasn’t all that keen on it and got rather fed up of having to perform it. So which version should we play? Frank’s is undoubtedly the definitive version, but I’m quite tempted to play Claude François’ wonderful original recording. However, in the end, there can be only one.

And what, pop pickers, would a Friday night be without something from a genuine titan of the music industry and a much-loved Puffin favourite? We are of course talking about the all-round diamond geezer, actor, singer, Oscar winner and tub-thumper extraordinaire. The man, myth and mighty legend that is of course the one-and-only Mr. Phil Collins!! YAY!!

Collins has recorded many covers during his long, illustrious and much-loved solo career. Some, such as You Can’t Hurry Love, were (IMHO) bleedin’ ‘orrible – and as if his cheesy cover of that wonderful classic song wasn’t bad enough, it was accompanied by a toe-curlingly terrible video as well.

However, when The Blessed Phil wasn’t moving in mysterious (and very naff and embarrassing) ways, he was quite capable of performing mighty deeds, and one of these was his cover of the Genesis track. Behind The Lines.

The original track (which appeared on the 1980 Genesis album, Duke) was credited to Banks, Collins & Rutherford (the three remaining members of Genesis at that time) – so Collins was, in effect, actually covering himself. The original Genesis track was part of a very long and sadly unreleased piece called The Duke Suite, which was split up and re-worked into a number of separate songs. These songs would eventually appear on the Genesis album as Duke’s Travels, Behind the Lines, Duchess, Guide Vocal, Turn it on Again and Duke’s End.

Collins once again re-worked Behind The Lines, this time turning it from a somewhat turgid prog rock plodder into a rather splendid piece of funk. Collins’ version of the track appeared on his 1981 debut solo album, Face Value, and (for me at least) easily out-classes the Genesis original.

But what about cover versions I can’t stand? A few immediately spring to mind as tracks that don’t simply set my teeth on edge, but actually make me want to smash whatever device is spewing out the rancid bilge into teeny tiny little pieces.

Pre-eminent amongst these illustrious few are Rod Stewart’s appallingly dirge-like cover of the Sutherland Brothers track, Sailing; Sinead O’Connor’s ear-disturbingly ‘orrible cover of the Prince track, Nothing Compares 2U; and the wailing aural nightmare that is Whitney Houston’s cover of Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You. Put those three tracks onto an endlessly repeating mix tape and I suspect you could very quickly get me to admit my guilt to almost any crime in history, as long as my punishment included the sincere promise of a swift and merciful end.

Clearly, however, I’m completely out of touch with mainstream opinion, as a quick search on the interwebs for a list of all-time favourite covers utterly failed to uncover a mainstream list that didn’t include the terrible twosome of Whitney Houston and Sinead O’Connor. For anyone interested in the interweb’s consensus with regard the the top ten greatest covers of all time, it pretty much seems to be as follows:

1) Whitney Houston – I Will Always Love You (Dolly Parton)

2) Aretha Franklin – Respect (Otis Redding)

3) Jimi Hendrix – All Along The Watchtower (Bob Dylan)

4) Johnny Cash – Hurt (Nine Inch Nails)

5) Sinead O’Connor – Nothing Compares 2U (Prince & The Family)

6) Soft Cell – Tainted Love (Gloria Jones)

7) Jeff Buckley – Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen)

8) Joan Jett – I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll (The Arrows)

9) The Beatles – Twist & Shout (The Top Notes)

10) Tina Turner – Proud Mary (Creedence Clearwater Revival)

Two tracks stand out from that list to me as damn fine covers: Cash’s Hurt and Buckley’s Hallelujah. Both versions stopped me in my tracks when I first heard them, and both versions still have the ability to send shivers down my spine today. My problem with Hallelujah is that it has been covered by far too many singers of limited talent, who simply can’t do justice to Cohen’s magnificent original composition. As a result, I’m afraid overfamiliarity is very much in danger of breeding contempt.

I’m afraid we’ve barely scratched the surface of our chosen subject for tonight, so we may return to this topic again at a future date. But, for now, my pineapple quiche has been scoffed, my Campari consumed and my un-lubed lederhosen are beginning to chafe.

So I think that’s probably quite enough of my ramblings for this week’s Fabulously Flamboyant Friday and we’ll wrap things up for this evening with an absolute banger of a cover version. My favourite track from Bryan Ferry’s long, illustrious and cover-heavy solo career: his version of the Billy Page track that was first recorded and released by Dobie Grey in 1964 – The In Crowd.