This year has seen an unprecedented trend in rock recordings, with the release of no less than five classic rock cover albums.
Ann Wilson (Heart), Queensryche, Tesla, Patti Smith, and Bryan Ferry have all released cover albums, with Poison recently announcing plans for their own, to be released next Spring. The key criteria, in my mind, for evaluating the success of these albums, is the same as for any cover. Is it a lazy copy or a re-interpretation?
Patti Smith's album, Twelve, released in April, is clearly from the first category. It is hard to believe that Punk’s Poet Laureate could create such a dreadfully boring album, failing to inspire, even in her rendition of R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts".
Her version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is phenomenal in its betrayal of the original song, sounding more like the bloke who played it at our local pub last week than one of the most influential women in the history of rock.
Tesla's effort is much the same, two CDs full of attempts at exact copies of originals, like "War Pigs" and "Honky Tonk Woman" that leave very little to the imagination.
Ferry Takes a Risk
Bryan Ferry's album, Dylanesque, released in March 2007, is far more adventurous. It's an enormous risk to record an album made exclusively of Dylan covers, given that this has been done an unbelievable number of times to date.
Ferry, however, pulls off a masterpiece, delving into the heart of each song, delivering in his normal classy way, but providing each with an unexpected emotional punch.
Queenryche's and Ann Wilson's albums have their moments, although they require the art of MP3 cherry picking. Queensryche’s Take Cover was released in November and takes the band in very unexpected directions.
"For the Love of Money" by the O’Jays? "Synchonicity II" by the Police? What were they thinking? The concept5 of this album alone is a revelation. It fulfills my belief that only liking one genre is okay when you're adolescent, but not a great sign of maturity in an adult.
It's wonderful that a band with as much a cult following as Queensyche can show what they really like, without fear. It also fulfills the reinterpretation criteria, with the highlights being "For What It’s Worth" (Buffalo Springfield) and "Heaven On Their Minds" (from Jesus Christ Superstar).
The gem on Ann Wilson's album is "The Immigrant Song". Given her status as a Robert Plant wannabe, you would expect hard-boiled rock. What you get is a folk treatment that heightens the fury of the song and sets her off as one of the best female vocalists of rock.
Sign of the Times?
What to say, then, of the value of this trend in rock? A cynical view is that there is a bandwagon effect, driven by record companies who see that they are onto a good thing.
My own view is that this may be a sign that time is creating a set of standards. Most of the Jazz and Blues standards of today were written almost eighty years ago. Perhaps the songs represented in these cover albums will also stand the test of time.
by Paul Rhodes
