When your recording of your own song is a cover version...
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Here's an interesting thought: How many songs can we name where the version done by the (more famous) artist who wrote the song was essentially a cover version?
I know of three off hand - Dandy (first released by Herman's Hermits, then by the Kinks), I Call Your Name (first released by Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas as a B-side of a single with another Lennon/McCartney track, Bad to Me, later by the Beatles bcause Lennon wasn't happy with the Kramer version), and Joni Mitchell's Chelsea Morning (first released by Fairport Convention on their debut album).
All three of those were the result of interlocking management - the Kinks and the Hermits were both managed/produced by Mickey Most at the time, the Beatles and Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas by Brian Epstein, and Fairport by USAian ex-pat Joe Boyd, who had bookd Mitchell for a UK tour with The Incredible String Band, got her a UK publishing deal, and shopped a 10-song demo around to his various clients, including Fairport.
Can anyone else think of any more? (Of course, it's easy to think of songs where a cover is better known than the original - All Along the Watchtower comes immediately to mind - but what im looking for here is, as i said, songs where the writers' own version was the cover...)
Ah - Bobby Russell recorded a version of Honey after Bobby Goldsboro had the hit.
Comments (22)
"As Tears Go By" was in some ways better in my humble opinion by the Rolling Stones than it was by Marianne Faithful.
Forgot that one. See? I bet there's lost of them...
Lost of them---those are all the relevant ones which I own but can't for the life of me remember.
Funkadelic released the George Clinton penned I Bet You in 1971, The Jackson 5 version came out in 1970.
Isaac Hayes wrote You Don't Know Like I Know and recorded in in '67 covering Sam and Dave's 1966 version
Sinead O'Connor did Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U in 1990, the purple one's version didn't appear til 93.
Even more!
Oh, Oh I got one… -- Because the Night - Patti Smith had a hit with it in '78, Bruce Springstein, who wrote it for Patti, released a live version of it in '86 on Live/'75-'85
There are literally scores of these in the Motown canon..
Brooce originally wrote Hungry Heart for the Ramones, but his manager (i think) persuaded him not to send it to them...
Ann Rice once tried to write songs for Cowboy Mouth, but, as far as i know, they never recorded any of them.
Well, Motown still ran under the sort of system as the rest of pop music had in the Brill Building days (or Hollywood in the days of the studio system), where you wrote a song and turned it in and the producers decided whether it would be best for you or for someone else under contract.
Stax/Volt was like that too, i think, which probably helps explain the Isaac Hayes stuff. (And Hayes was a producer/Music Director, too, so quit ;likely he'd hand his songs to acts he was producing.)
True, indeed fairport. Incestuousness helps.
It's not quite the same, but that pesky McCartney bloke always interferes with fledgling rock bands' just as they're about to hit the big time.
Iron Virgin were a Scottish rock band of the 1970s, who in image and style have been compared to contemporary glam acts such as Slade and The Sweet. Discovered by Decca Records producer Nick Tauber in Edinburgh, the band was signed to the label's "progressive" offshoot, Deram. Their first single was "Jet", a cover from Paul McCartney's Band on the Run album. Recorded in December 1973, the song was released in February 1974 and was getting decent exposure until McCartney himself decided to issue his version as a single, effectively smothering Iron Virgin's recording, and killing Iron Virgin's career.
Iron Virgin
I have the 7' single, and their interpretation isn't too bad.
Maybe. But that's the risk you take covering other people's songs.
But what i'm talking about is songs where the first release - whether LP or single or what - is by someone else. The single you're talking about is still a cover of McCartney's original LP release.
I'm not sure, but i'd say it's likely an even-money bet whether more non-Kinks fans would remember the Hermits' version of Dandy than the Kinks'... (If they remember either.)
A friend of mine I was talking to gave me a good one.."Crazy"..Patsy then Willie.
for waydutch:
my understanding is that Smith & Springsteen wrote that song together.
A quick bit of google-fu reveals, from Wikipedia:
The original song was recorded by Bruce Springsteen during sessions for his Darkness on the Edge of Town album. The Patti Smith Group was working on Easter in the studio next door, and the bands were exchanging tapes; Springsteen even composed some songs in the other band's style. With male-centered lyrics and a reported Latin feel, the original version of the song – a workingman's lament – wasn't finding a place on the Springsteen album. Smith took the song and recast it from a female perspective, and it was included on Easter, becoming the first single release from that album. Though it was never released on a Springsteen studio album, in concert beginning with his Darkness Tour Springsteen would often perform the song with his original lyrics, borrowing Smith's rock arrangement. The only commercially-released recording of a Springsteen version of the song was included on Live/1975 - 85.
So, basically, Brooce wrote the song, then passed it to Patti, who re-wrote it and recorded it.
Always eager to bring tragically undernoticed genius Eddie Hinton into a discussion, I poked around and was quite surprised to find that while he was a prolific songwriter, he almost never recorded his own versions of songs he'd penned for others. Eddie wrote "Breakfast In Bed," recorded by both Dusty Springfield and UB40 (with Chrissie Hynde); "Cover Me," er, covered by Percy Sledge, Jackie Moore and Paul Carrack; "Every Natural Thing," recorded by Aretha -- but he never put these on any of his own records.
However, I did find an exception: "Three Hundred Pounds Of Hongry" is a Hinton tune that swamp rocker Tony Joe White included on his well-reviewed 1972 release The Train I'm On. Some may be more familiar with Marcia Ball's recent cover of the song.
Okay...now I'll admit this might be a bit of a reach, but Hinton's own version of "Three Hundred Pounds" finally appeared on his Hard Luck Guy album in 1999. Admittedly, Eddie died in 1995...and admittedly, Hard Luck Guy was an arguably macabre studio restoration of Eddie's demo recordings embellished with supporting rhythm tracks by his old Muscle Shoals pals (Spooner Oldham, Johnny Sandlin, David Hood, Donnie Fritts and others), but it's still officially an Eddie Hinton album and it clearly came well after the Tony Joe White record.
Awright, enough rationalizing. Enjoy Eddie' version of his own song...with a little help from his friends.
Like "Hungry Heart," Pete Townshend's "And I Moved" was written for someone else (Bette Midler) but was either rejected or never sent to her, can't remember which. In either case, Pete's version, from Empty Glass, is just gorgeous:
All those old jazz songs have alot of this stuff going on. I always prefered "stormy weather" sung by etta james, but it was first sung by Ethel Waters, then covered by singers like ella and lena horne.
How about Different Drum? Written by Mike Nesmith released by the Stone Ponys in 1967 on Evergreen Volume 2, by the Nes in 1972 on And the Hits Just Keep on Comin'.
Also "I'm a Believer", which has an odd history, even in this company - Neil Diamond had already recorded his first album in 1966, and the song was on it.
Then someone - likely Diamond himself, who was one of the old "Brill Building"-type songwriters - pitched the song to The Monkees, who recorded it for their second album.
The Monkees' single (they being Very Hot, as opposed to Diamond, a virtually unknown singer-songwriter) was rushed out, shipping in November, 1966, while Diamond's album took a while to appear, and came out in 1967.
The Monkees' version went gold in two days (due to advance orders of over over 1,051,280), and was the biggest-selling single of 1967, with seven weeks at Number One.
All Diamond got out of it was a long and succesful career...
"My Little Red Book" might qualify.
"I Wanna Be Your Man" was first given to The Stones by The Beatles, I think The Stones recorded it before they did.
OK, forget "My Little Red Book", as Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote that, not Arthur Lee (Love) - Manfred Mann did the version that was in the movie (what movie?).
How about "White Rabbit" and "Somebody To Love", both covered by Grace Slick in the Jefferson Airplane after the songs (co-written by Grace) were recorded in the studio (and live, though released after the JA had the hits with them) by The Great Society.
Yeah, The Rolling Stones version of Lennon/McCartney's "I Wanna Be Your Man" was released (on a single in the UK) a few weeks before The Beatles "cover" was released.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Wanna_Be_Your_Man