brief BBCWS article

[Tom Roche]

Last Updated: Friday, 16 January, 2004, 01:39 GMT 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3376547.stm
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Cover versions: John Peel
All this week, BBC World Service's The World Today programme is 
looking at cover versions - songs re-recorded by another artist - to 
find what makes a great cover, and why.

John Peel is one of the most respected and lasting names in music 
broadcasting. Here he outlines what, for him, makes a good cover 
version.

I know loads of cover versions that are regarded as being better than 
the original.


Sometimes there has been a really good original and then an even better cover.

I like cover versions. I don't like cover versions when they're just 
a faithful replica of the original - you get an awful lot of that and 
it seems to me to be utterly pointless.

But when somebody comes along and does something original that you 
wouldn't have expected, then that is particularly welcome.

One of my all-time favourite records is a 12-inch by some people 
called Moloko. This was a single released in 1989, and it's a cover 
version of Wilson Pickett's In The Midnight Hour.

In The Midnight Hour is a great record, but this is In The Midnight 
Hour done soukous style. It was recorded in Florida, but it's got 
this extraordinary soukous guitar playing.

The Beatles and the Rolling Stones' first albums were both full of 
cover versions.

It's what they know - it's the tunes that they've been playing before 
they had the confidence to write their own.

The Who, The Kinks - all of those '60s bands started off doing loads 
of covers, and then they graduated into doing tunes that sounded as 
if they might have been written by the people whose records they'd 
previously been covering.

Then they developed their own characters.

Another great cover is a reggae version - by somebody called Merlene 
Webber - of A Whiter Shade Of Pale.

People spend a great deal of time describing music and explaining why 
they like it or don't like.

I prefer not to do that - mine is just an animal response to it. I 
wouldn't wish to be able to analyse why I like things.

But I do like reggae and I like Whiter Shade Of Pale. The lyrics - 
which were daft enough in the first place - have been learned 
parrot-fashion, and thereby have been rendered even sillier than they 
were originally.

That gives it an added charm.

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