“I loved it”: The Beatles cover John Lennon adored
One of the strangest things about being an artist must be hearing other people sing your songs. Especially when music is so often deeply personal, and when it appears as a true and specific representation of a person’s creative mind and inner world, hearing it translated by someone else must be an odd experience. Sometimes, it’s a bad one as some artists have been quick to critique covers of their work, but John Lennon never felt that especially loving one take on a Beatles track.
When a person’s music really is the ultimate product of their mind, soul, talent, and skill, hearing someone butcher it must be devastating. Tom Waits called the Eagles’ cover of ‘Ol’ 55’ “antiseptic,” John Lydon called Mötley Crüe’s attempt at ‘Anarchy In The UK’ “hilarious,” and Billy Joel once hated Helen Reddy’s cover of ‘You’re My Home’ so much that he genuinely made her promise never to touch his music again.
There are some artists who simply don’t want to hear it. They don’t want their vision impacted or reworked. But then, for others, having other musicians take on their tracks is a true honour. “I’ve never gotten over the pleasure of somebody covering one of my songs,” Leonard Cohen once said about it. To him, it was an incredible compliment as he said, “I’m not there to judge it, just to say thank you.”
John Lennon seemed to adopt the same attitude, approaching covers of his music with joy, gratitude and enduring excitement to see how another person might play with his work. But, for a band with a legacy as looming as The Beatles, Lennon was aware that people saw it as intimidating to take on.
“People are afraid of Beatle music. They are still afraid of my songs. Because they got that big image thing: You can’t do a Beatle number … You can’t touch a Lennon song; only Lennon can do it… It’s garbage,” he said, adding, “Anybody can do anything.”
He encouraged people to take on his music, and, in this case, he even helped them do it as Elton John sang ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ and Lennon played guitar and sang backing vocals on the track. Released in 1974, John’s take is exactly what you’d expect of an Elton John track – it strips back the psychedelic aspects of the song to be more theatrical. But Lennon’s guitar sounds truly great, translating the original production details into electric guitar twangs on John’s version.
The fact that Lennon was so willing to help out and was so on board with John changing the track up proves how excited the Beatle got about people engaging with his music in their own way. Especially when it comes to an artist like John, Lennon already knew and respected him. They’d worked together on Lennon’s song ‘Whatever Gets You Thru the Night’ and performed together at Madison Square Gardens in 1974. So when John then wanted to tackle a Beatles tune, Lennon was all for it, concluding, “I love it. I was thrilled he [Elton] was doing it.”
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