10 songs that were saved by their guest stars

‘Always on the Run’ – Lenny Kravitz (Slash)

Lenny Kravitz always liked to toe the line between all kinds of genres. There are no rules saying that anyone has to stay within the genre rules, so it wasn’t that strange to see him working with everything from rock to R&B no matter what the track called for. But if it weren’t for Slash bringing in the central riff to ‘Always on the Run’, there’s a good chance that Mama Said could have turned into a very different album.

Although there are some great songs across the entire record, it doesn’t seem to have the same kind of bite as this tune. While Slash thought the initial riff was too funky to use for Guns N’ Roses, Kravitz gets to show off his chops as a rock and roll frontman a lot better here, trading in the Curtis Mayfield breaks that he was doing on ‘It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over’ for some Steven Tyler-style wails towards the end of the track.

There was a lot more work to be done on the next few records, but Kravitz was given the rock and roll credentials thanks to that one funk riff tying everything together. The seeds had been planted, now all that was left was for him to live out his Jimi Hendrix style dreams once he started working on riffs like ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’ and ‘Rock and Roll is Dead’ later down the road.

‘All of This’ – Blink-182 (Robert Smith)

Blink-182 isn’t typically the first band everyone thinks of when they talk about getting deep. I mean, this is the same band that made dick jokes half the time they were onstage and made complete songs with lines ripped straight out of George Carlin’s playbook. That kind of group doesn’t exactly show their feelings all that often, but if they wanted to make the move towards more emotional material, they would need the singer whose voice embodies pure musical despondence.

The final leg of Blink’s untitled album plays out like the end of a relationship starting with songs like ‘Easy Target’, but as soon as the track gives way to ‘All of This’, Robert Smith’s shaky voice is the perfect way to introduce a song of love lost. Compared to every other Blink love song or even ‘I Miss You’ from earlier in the record, Smith’s fingerprints are all over this melody, especially when he reaches the lines about always wanting to see his old flame when looking at his girlfriend.

And despite Tom DeLonge’s voice coming off as whiny in many respects, hearing him give the call and response with Smith is actually fairly seamless, especially with the guitar effects that seem like they are taken directly from Disintegration. A lot of people dismiss Blink as the kind of band that no one needs to listen to past the age of 12, but this is the moment where they seemed to completely grow up.

‘You Oughta Know’ – Alanis Morissette (Flea)

Anyone who’s been cheated knows the amount of vitriol that comes with being played for a fool. Not only do you want to try and humiliate the person that played with your emotions, but you want to make sure that they remember the scars that they left on your heart when you’re through. And while Alanis Morissette did have a lot to unpack about Dave Coulier, she brought some of the biggest names in alt-rock with her.

‘You Oughta Know’ is already a moody enough song with her vocal performance, but having Dave Navarro playing the piercing guitar solo in the middle of the track and Taylor Hawkins on drums is like rock and roll heaven for anyone trying to get a song that hits like a punch in the mouth. But the true nastiness comes with Flea on bass. Flea had already been a session player for people like Young MC, but this is the best example of him playing to the lyrics all the time.

Every time there’s a biting lyric, there’s normally a little bass pop that comes after it, and when the chorus ends, that little turnaround that he throws in is the perfect ear candy for people to latch onto. Morissette was already the kind of rising star that couldn’t be stopped, but getting Flea to lay down a bass line that’s ripped straight from the underworld certainly wasn’t going to hurt her chances on the charts.

‘Parklife’ – Blur (Phil Ochs)

One of the most oft-neglected parts of any great rock singer is their sense of delivery. Steven Tyler is one of the most impressive vocalists in classic rock history, but there’s a reason why ‘The Demon of Screamin’ isn’t normally given the James Taylor-esque ballads to sing. It’s important for everyone to know their place in the mix, and Damon Albarn knew pretty quickly that he was never going to do ‘Parklife’ justice.

For lack of a better term, Albarn’s voice was too sincere to come off as cynical as the lyrics of the verses come off as, so bringing in Phil Ochs was the perfect counterbalance to him. Albarn’s backing vocals and chorus are exactly what people remember from the song, but the idea of someone complaining about their everyday life and how monotonous everything has become needs to come out of someone who had done some living, and Ochs sounds like he could have easily popped in from off the street to rant for a while.

Blur would eventually get a bit more liberal with who was singing each song when Graham Coxon got behind the microphone, but this is one of the few cases when Albarn could have never made the tune work on his own. He’s a brilliant vocalist across the board, but there’s a reason why he sounds a lot better singing ‘Parklife’ in his later years than as the happy-go-lucky version of Ray Davies.

‘Blues Breaker’ – Brian May (Eddie Van Halen)

Many supergroups almost feel too good to be true when they first get together. There are always going to be a handful that don’t work and fracture friendships in half, but a band like the Traveling Wilburys is like the songwriting equivalent of a fireworks show half the time. But for any guitarist, the definitive supergroup only needed Brian May and Eddie Van Halen to melt minds in the early 1980s.

Yes, you heard that right. In between Queen projects, May had envisioned making an offshoot project called Star Fleet Project, which involved Eddie on guitar. While ‘Blues Breaker’ is nothing more than a Zeppelinesque jam, the entire song feels like a two-way conversation between both guitarists. There’s no words, so Eddie is left to do all the talking with his guitar, including a handful of tapping licks thrown in for good measure.

While Eric Clapton might not have been all that thrilled with hearing their take on the blues, that’s hardly a knock against the tune. ‘Slowhand’ has had more than his fair share of bad takes in the past, and when listening to Eddie and May play together, it’s not about trying to one-up each other. It’s two guitarists sitting in a room doing what they love to do, and that’s all that really mattered.

‘Passenger’ – Deftones (Maynard James Keenan)

Deftones don’t simply build songs on every album; they build sonic universes. Throughout each album, the alternative metal giants have reinvented what heavy music could sound like, whether it’s the shimmering majesty of Diamond Eyes or the full-throttle energy of Around the Fur. White Pony was already coated in a sleazy atmosphere, but right when Chino Moreno’s voice reaches its apex, we get one of the most pleasant surprises in metal history when Maynard James Keenan comes out of nowhere.

The band already had help from Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots on the record, but ‘Passenger’ already is the kind of Tool song that Keenan never officially wrote himself. From the hypnotic heavy riff to the different leaps in the vocal melody, no one could have done the song justice like him, especially when he gets to the end of his verse and reaches into that growling register that appeared on ‘Parabola’.

Although most of White Pony has to deal with the band’s drug-fuelled experiments, this is what ‘There is A Light That Never Goes Out’ would sound like if it came from hell. They’re both about despondent characters trying to get away from everything while driving in a car, but with Keenan in the seat next to you, it sounds as if the car is either going to become airborne, careen into oncoming traffic, or both.

‘The Garden’ – Guns N’ Roses (Alice Cooper)

Guns N’ Roses weren’t going to spare any expenses when making Use Your Illusion. They had become one of the biggest rock and roll bands that the world had ever seen, and it was about time they started sounding like it on record. But if Axl Rose could break out the piano ballads and throw in a handful of industrialised music that didn’t make that much sense, they could at least afford to bring in a living legend to narrate the band’s trip into hell.

Whereas ‘November Rain’ has enough cinematic moments to fill its own mini soap opera, ‘The Garden’ feels like waking up from a stupor before finding out that you’ve woken up in the roughest parts of Los Angeles. Rose already had that growl to his voice, but Alice Cooper coming in on the verses in between the guitar solo has the same effect that Vincent Prince had on ‘Thriller’ years before.

Not many Guns N’ Roses songs needed the listener to think all that hard to get the gist of what it was about, but the more Cooper talks, the more sinister the music feels. And by the time he screams ‘SO LONG’ at the end of the verse, all bets are off for the audience. The song has taken you to the deepest lows that the City of Angels has, and once you reach that level, there’s no hope of ever crawling out.

‘I’ve Got A Feeling’ – The Beatles (Billy Preston)

It’s impossible to think that anyone was magically going to make The Beatles sound better. The only person who seemed to have the musical sixth sense for what they needed was George Martin, but by Let It Be, Martin was more of a musical advisor than anything else. They needed a fifth member to help put everything into perspective, and the minute Billy Preston walked into the room, the entire vibe of the sessions completely changed.

Even though Preston rehearsed with them off and on for a few days, ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’ is where he really got the chance to shine. If you look at the Get Back documentary, the tune is merely a fragment that Paul McCartney brought in, but the subtle licks that Preston throws into the mix is more than enough to warrant a co-write on the song, especially when you notice Macca’s eyes light up when he starts playing.

But the biggest compliment Preston could have received came a few moments later in the documentary, when John Lennon talks about the possible idea of getting a fifth member in the mix. No matter how humble Preston was able to appear for the rest of his career, there’s a good chance that anyone who got one of The Beatles to ask them to join would never have to earn their respect from any other musician ever again.

‘Insider’ – Tom Petty (Stevie Nicks)

Tom Petty never strictly wrote music for himself. All songwriters see their music as a craft, and even if a song doesn’t work for their voice, that doesn’t mean that it can’t work for another singer that has the right range for it. But when Stevie Nicks passed on a tune he wrote for her, he ended up being gifted one of the most gorgeous harmonies to ever appear on a Heartbreakers record.

For all of the darkness that coats Hard Promises, ‘Insider’ is a ray of light in the middle of everything. Sure, the song has to do with a massive breakup and a man who’s committed his fair share of mistakes, but when Nicks sings a harmony beside Petty, it starts to feel like a two-way conversation. Both of these people have had their fair share of issues in their relationship, and while they aren’t ready to be forgiven, they’re at least on the road to recovery when they sing.

Since Nicks wanted a song that had more tempo to it, ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ was the one moment where everybody won out. Nicks got one of her first major smashes as a solo artist, and even if it killed Petty’s single upon release, Petty did get one of his finest ballads out of the deal.

‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ – Pink Floyd (Clare Torry)

By the early 1970s, Pink Floyd had become used to using the studio as an instrument. Syd Barrett dared them to dream bigger than the traditional pop songs everyone else was playing, but when records like Meddle came out, ‘Echoes’ was the perfect marriage of what they could do with effects when paired with the right musical pieces. That was the beginning of Roger Waters being empathetic in his writing, but sometimes the best emotions can’t be fully expressed through words.

Dark Side of the Moon was already about the hardships that come with everyday life, but ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ had no clear idea of what it was going to be with Richard Wright’s beautiful chords underneath. But when Clare Torry was brought in and asked to ad-lib a vocal, her anguished cries were exactly what the band were looking for. The whole song is about confronting death in many respects, and her wails could be a character that’s either terrified of their own demise or wearily accepting it.

While the ‘Celestial Voices’ segment of ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’ did give David Gilmour a chance to flex his vocal chops like this, there’s no other person who could have delivered a performance with this much gusto. All the guest stars answering questions on Dark Side of the Moon already gave the album a lot of atmosphere, but what Torry did was more than simply singing. This was the sound of her exorcising musical demons, and the rest of the band could only look on in wide-eyed amazement.