Thought you’d appreciate, for the start of the week, hearing how other artists interpreted Beatles classics. Some of them are pretty spot-on, some of them are head-scratching confusing.
So, in no particular order, here are ten re-interpretations of Beatles hits – some of them were hits in their own right.
| THE STITCH IN TYME Got to Get You Into My Life The Stitch in Tyme were a Toronto-based rock group, they were in the studio putting together some tracks and, at the last minute, decided to cover this Beatles hit from the Revolver album. They added a little psychedelia to the end of the track, and it became a Top 10 hit in Canada. |
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| THE ZOOT Eleanor Rigby This Australian rock band’s lineup included a before-he-was-famous Rick Springfield, and had monster hits Down Under. This was their biggest hit. This was of course before Rick wished he had Jessie’s Girl. |
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| AEROSMITH Come Together Did you know that Aerosmith appeared in the mega-flop jukebox musical “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” as the F.V.B. (Future Villain Band)? Or that they covered this Beatles classic for the film? Meanwhile, Liv Tyler is laughing in that her Lord of the Rings films made more money in two days than the film her daddy was in has made in 30 years… |
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| DEL SHANNON From Me To You How’s this for an interesting fact – Del Shannon is touring England, and he gets his hands on this record by the then-unknown Beatles. He covers the song and has a minor hit in America with it – a few weeks before the Beatles’ version comes out! |
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| FIONA APPLE Across the Universe This was created as a tie-in with the motion picture Pleasantville, in which two teenagers enter a black-and-white sitcom world and slowly turn the world into color. By the way, whatever happened to this Fiona Apple girl? I seem to recall her making some statement at an awards show… and then poof.. |
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| REGINA SPEKTOR Real Love This was one of those “Threetles” songs – in which the three surviving Beatles added their vocals and instruments to John Lennon’s old demo tapes. Regina Spektor had a few hits a few years ago, and this should have been one of them. |
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| RAY CHARLES The Long and Winding Road Ray Charles could sing the Manhattan telephone directory and it would sound spectacular. Just as he did when he re-interpreted this Beatles classic. |
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| STEVIE WONDER We Can Work It Out Another classic performance by Stevie Wonder. I knew these Beatles songs had some Motown built into them one way or the other. |
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| ELVIS PRESELY Something Yes, it actually happened – the king of rock and roll recorded a Fab Four song as part of his Hawaii satellite concert. This video is from the rehearsal. Awesome. |
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| MICHAEL JACKSON Come Together I don’t think Michael Jackson could out-swagger Steven Tyler… but he sure makes a great effort of it, in this clip from Michael’s “Moonwalker” video. |
Yeah, I know I left off some of your favorites. This is a ten-list, not a 47-list. Feel free to add to the list – what are some of your favorite interpretations of Beatles hits, let me know – whether they’re reverent or offbeat, post away!
Chuck The Writer 
I love the Aerosmith “Come Together” (also found on their ‘Live Bootleg’ album) – it’s better than the original, IMVHO.
Also, Siouxsie and the Banshees do an amazing “Dear Prudence”.
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As much as I love the original version — and I love it a lot — I always have found Emmylou Harris’ interpretation of “Here, There and Everywhere” just gorgeous.
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Maybe one cover better than the original….Joe Cocker, With a Little Help from My Freinds.
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Ben Harper’s Strawberry Fields Forever is quite tasty.
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Elton John’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was pretty huge when I was growing up.
This is a really stupid one, especially since I know that “Glee” is looked down upon by so many (personally, I’m a big fan), but they did a version of “Imagine” (okay, not the Beatles) with the Glee kids and actors playing deaf students (or perhaps they were deaf students, I don’t know) that I really liked. It was pithy.
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I know I’m on an island, but I love all of these with exceptions for Fiona Apple’s “Across the Universe” (which I find to be a bit dull honestly) and Aerosmith’s cover of “Come Together” which I really, really don’t like.
The one cover that truly surpasses the original is Regina Spektor’s cover of “Real Love.” The original song’s a bit of trite Lennon nonsense that you can almost hear him half-heartedly dismissing. Spektor makes it her own, though, and adds her own haunting spin to it. It does sound more like a Spektor song than it does a Lennon song.
As for what happened to Fiona Apple – she’s got a fourth album coming out. It really wasn’t her statements that got her into trouble so much as her obsessive perfectionist tendencies: wht people thought was her label holding back her work was actually her being unhappy with the results of her third album, whose production dragged out for about five or six years.
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I definitely agree with you that Zoot’s version (written by Rick Springfield) is an amazing Beatles cover. Glad to see it made your list. 🙂 I am a Rick fan & feel he is an amazing musician and highly underrated, with a huge catalog of work (besides Jessie’s Girl!) I have the Zoot CD and Eleanor Rigby is one rockin’ cover with killer guitars and bass! So appropriate for Rick when he does Beatles covers since he is a die-hard fan of theirs. 🙂
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