Under the covers

i’ve grown up listening to my father’s Beatles tapes, that’s where my melodic soul come from, even if i later chose stronger and heavier tones.

yesterday i was a bit ill, and i spent a few hours surfing the web. i started looking for some great cover of one of my favourite Beatles song, “Eleanor Rigby”: it’s great both for music and lyrics. i suppose everyone know that song (“Ah, look at all the lonely people…”), even if it’s not one of the most famous.

i already knew the cover by Thrice, one of best one ever in my view, taken from the album “If We Could Only See Us Now”.

here they are some other good covers i’ve found on youtube:

• the Zoot, a 70’s australian band. even if i don’t really like glam rock, they re-arranged the song very well!
• Kim Weston, a sweet soul interpretation of the song
• Stanley Jordan, an incredible performance! he plays guitar like a piano
• London Symphonic Orchestra, quite similar to the original, due to the violins
• a Reggae mashup, with video

finally, i’ve found a lot of very bad just-scream-along metal versions. they probably don’t understand what a cover is: a re-arrangement, it’s not enough just to play with a different sound (as an ex-song-writer and musician, i’ve done the same mistake in the past). maybe, the only good one i’ve found is the old Realm cover, as performed in 1988.

it’s definetively a nice experiment to do, and it helped me forget my illness for a bit!