Shove it Mr Shankly: How a Smiths cover nearly ruined Deftones’ debut album
The fact that Deftones rose to prominence during the cultural point of bleach known as nu-metal is a legitimate tragedy.
For one thing, they predate the movement itself by about a decade, forming in 1988 if you can believe it. Secondly, comparing them to tasteless, witless jokes like Limp Bizkit and Papa Roach is like comparing Radiohead to Starsailor. No, more than that, it’s like comparing Radiohead to Fat Les, the Keith Allen and Alex James novelty act that gave the world ‘Vindaloo’.
Deftones were definitely influenced by hip-hop. They undoubtedly experimented with combining the genre with influences from the world of metal. However, for one, they actually understood hip-hop, unlike the vast majority of nu-metal bands. Why else would they ask for their masterpiece, White Pony, to be remixed in its entirety by DJ Shadow? For another, that was where the association began and ended. Hip-hop and metal were only two avenues of the band’s countless influences.
When listening to the band’s whole back catalogue, you realise they were actually kind of small avenues at that. Deftones were influenced by absolutely everything. Vocalist Chino Moreno is as likely to shout out Kate Bush and Depeche Mode as he is Metallica and Bad Brains. The band themselves had said many times how post-punk and shoegaze have shaped the band as much as anything else, with The Cure and My Bloody Valentine being two of their biggest influences.
However, one of the bands that shaped Deftones the most, and Moreno in particular, was The Smiths. Morrissey and Johnny Marr’s Mancunian mopers are, somewhat stealthily, among the biggest influences on the band due to the sheer emotional vulnerability of their lyrics and Morrissey’s defiantly melodic vocal style. This is a fandom that the band got pushback for a long time before the obvious reason, especially from the producer of their debut album.
Which Smiths song did Deftones want to cover?
The year was 1995. The year before, the biggest albums in hard rock and heavy metal were Soundgarden’s Superunknown, Korn’s self-titled debut album and Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral. Even at the top of the charts, things were dour, aggressive and proudly macho. Then Deftones came to their producer, Terry Dale, with a big idea. Among songs called ‘Fist’, ‘One Weak’ and ‘Nosebleed’, the band wanted to pay tribute to one of their biggest influences by covering The Smiths.
Dale, a dyed-in-the-wool metaller who had spent the last five years producing the work of Pantera, wasn’t convinced. This is putting it mildly, according to an interview Moreno gave to The Quietus in 2020. “We were in the studio trying to record a cover of ‘Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want’,” Moreno says.
Adding, “It was out of character for the record, so to him it just did not make sense. He just stood up half way through the recording and he said, ‘You guys, this is not working out. I don’t really want anything to do with this.’”
Despite the backlash from their own producer, the band pushed ahead and recorded a version for the record… that none of the band were happy with. Presumably to Dale’s relief, they shelved the cover and moved ahead with the album without it. Said cover did resurface, though, at first on their B-sides & Rarities album in 2005, then, to a certain set of their fanbase’s delight, the setlists of their 2024 festival run.
Perhaps the band weren’t ready to fuse that many disparate sounds at the time. However, with time and experience, the band have achieved a hallowed, enviable status in rock ‘n’ roll. The biggest they’ve ever been, nearly 40 years after they formed, and still going strong, following nothing more than their own creative vision. May we see many more artists as brave as they are in their wake.
