Cash took someone else’s song and completely dominated it and made you forget that any other version ever existed. That’s what a cover song should be.

Thoughts inspired by two recent releases, Bryan Ferry’s all-Dylan album Dylanesque and Patti Smith’s all-covers album Twelve.
Cover versions of songs are an odd thing. When the modern rock era started, circa ’63 with the rise of the Beatles and the Stones, Dylan, Motown, the Beach Boys, it was almost all covers. The Beatles and Stones in particular persisted on a steady diet of Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Muddy Waters until Brian Epstein and Andrew Loog Oldham convinced them they could make a bit more cash if they cranked out their own ditties.

Very quickly, the scene mutated to the point where it was considered extremely uncool to do covers. Pop stars might sing show tunes, even jazz guys (and hell, who would dare to fault Coltrane’s version of My Favourite Things from The Sound of Music?) but rock stars, artistes if you will, were expected to come up with their own material. Anything less and they’d suffer a severe credibility gap.
Then in November 1973, two albums were released almost simultaneously that upset that little apple cart, because they came from stars with no shortage of original material. David Bowie’s Pin-Ups looked back a decade to songs that had influenced him. Bowie left off songs he’d recorded by Springsteen and Jacques
 Brel, choosing to focus on British beat and pop of the mid-’60s, covering songs from the Pretty Things, the Yardbirds, Them, the Who, the Kinks and others. The arrangements were beyond reproach and his version of the Mersey’s Sorrow is probably better known than the original.

Bryan Ferry’s first solo album, These Foolish Things, was a far odder affair. Roxy Music had just undergone a major shake-up with the departure of Brian Eno, Ferry assumed sole control of the band and quickly proceeded to do an all-covers solo album that, well, didn’t seem to fit in with what we’d heard from him to that point. With covers of songs so mainstream – Buddy Holly, Lesley Gore, Elvis, Motown – well, it was hard to know just what to think of it. Side 1 Track 1 was a Dylan cover, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. With every line punctuated with sound effects, it seemed more influenced by the Bonzo Dog Band than anyone else. Later in his career, Ferry actually became a notable interpreter of other peoples’ works. I’d venture to say that Roxy Music’s version of John Lennon’s Jealous Guy is more frequently played than the original.
Thirty-four years later, suffering from writer’s block as he attempts another album, he steps back and releases this all-Dylan album. Dylan, of course, is one of the most covered songwriters of all time.
On Dylanesque, Ferry sings 11 Dylan songs, primarily choosing classics from the ’60s.These are songs we’ve heard a million times by a million artists. Was anyone really clamouring to hear Ferry apply his vibrato to Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door? At least one can say that he doesn’t embarrass himself on this album. All of the versions are reasonably well sung and produced and show that a bit of thought was given to the arrangements (as opposed to Rod Stewart’s recent Still the Same atrocity).

Without a doubt, the greatest X sings Y album of all time is Famous Blue Raincoat, on which Jennifer Warnes sings the fuck out of nine Leonard Cohen songs. She had the added advantage of Cohen’s participation on the album and a great set of studio musicians including Stevie Ray Vaughan, not to mention finally material worthy of her voice. Yes, there are times when I’m in the mood for Cohen songs that I’ll reach for this elegantly produced 1987 collection rather than Cohen’s own stuff.
And then there’s Patti Smith, poetess and icon for more than 30 years. She’s written enough songs that people could be cutting tribute albums to her career. Yet she’s gone for wisely chosen covers throughout her career and has made almost every song her own, from Hey Joe on her first single to the amazing version of Van Morrison’s Gloria on her debut album to her great take on Prince’s When Doves Cry.
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Patti’s just made it into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame and has chosen to acknowledge it with the all-covers album Twelve. And given her track record, I was really looking forward to this. But as a lifelong fan of Patti Smith, after hearing it all I can say is, “Patti, you done us wrong.”

Oh, sure, it starts off strongly with an excellent version of Hendrix’ Are You Experienced. She sings it slowly, menacingly, snarling out the lyrics with a healthy amount of punk attitude. And then, on the second track, the album goes right off the rails, with the bizarre choice of the Tears For Fears song Everybody Wants to Rule the World. She does nothing with this and neither does her band. It is, as Simon Cowell is so fond of saying, nothing more than karaoke. Oh, she sings it sweetly, she takes the song straight and at the end, all you can think is, “What was the frigging point?”
The album never recovers after that. I mean, if anyone should have been able to do justice to Gimme Shelter, it should have been Smith. The original was one of the last times Jagger managed to sound authentically dangerous and Smith should have been able to pounce all over it but instead of inspirational we get the merely competent. Most of the rest fares similarly. What’s her big idea for Smells Like Teen Spirit? To have Sam Shephard play the banjo. Sigh. And sigh again.

I was re-watching the music video of Johnny Cash covering Hurt the other day. Before anyone heard the song but had heard about it, everyone laughed. Johnny Cash singing Nine Inch Nails? It was one of those “what the fuck?” moments you sometimes have in life. Yeah, people laughed, until they heard it and then it became a “what the fuck?” of a completely different nature. Cash took someone else’s song and completely dominated it and made you forget that any other version ever existed. That’s what a cover song should be. That’s why you do someone else’s song. Anything less and you’re Steve and Eydie singing The Candyman in Vegas.
Ferry’s version of Hard Rain and Patti Smith’s Gloria are remembered 30 years later because they were new and different. Dylanesque and Twelve are going on the shelf and will probably be forgotten long before 2007 is over. Judged just on the basis of
these two albums, one might suggest that Bryan Ferry and Patti Smith should team up as a lounge act in one of the Macau casinos. I’m not writing them off yet, I’m still eagerly awaiting their next ‘real’ albums.