The Beatles cover Paul McCartney thought was “mind blowing”
Out of any musician in history, The Beatles are the most covered. It feels like at any given time, in any given city, someone, somewhere, is singing a Fab Four tune. At open mic nights, karaoke bars, busking in the town centre, or even adopting some element of the band’s work into their own in a recording studio, the group has been rehashed and rehashed and rehashed. Likely, the members themselves were sick of hearing it, but there was one cover that truly struck them.
Imagine how many times The Beatles were forced to listen to other people sing their songs. How often still do you think Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are confronted with someone singing ‘All You Need Is Love’ at them? It’s believed that out of every piece ever written, ‘Yesterday’ is the most re-done tune, and surely, after decades, it begins to lose its impact, especially to the original makers of the song.
It must be a weird phenomenon in general, one that different artists seem to have different takes on. There are several feuds in music history, all born from an artist hating a cover of their work by someone else. Ray Davies put down Van Halen’s cover of ‘You Really Got Me’. Johnny Rotten had nothing nice to say about Motley Crue’s ‘Anarchy In The UK’ take, but whoever expected he would. Billy Joel once made an artist promise never to sing his song again as he was so offended by a bad cover he heard.
But music is such a personal thing. A song is so often the result of a deeply personal experience or a vulnerable release of feelings and emotions, so to hear someone else sing those words or perhaps even butcher them must be odd. Some artists feel fondly towards it, though. “I’m always pleased when somebody sings a song of mine,” Cohen once said, giving his blessing to the hoard and hoards of people who have covered ‘Hallelujah’. But being happy with people covering their pieces and an artist being moved by a cover of their track are two very different things.
There was one instance when The Beatles, especially Paul McCartney, were truly moved by a cover – and it came at them quickly. The Beatles released ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ in 1967, and then, in 1968, Joe Cocker shared a version that blew the band away.
Adopting the track to be the titular song of his debut, the cover played a major role in launching Cocker’s career. He took the tune and did a totally radical rearrangement, switching it from a fun little ditty to a big, soulful anthem. The band watching on was amazed.
“I remember him and Denny Cordell coming round to the studio in Saville Row and playing me what they’d recorded,” McCartney said of the moment when Cocker came to Apple Corps to get the band’s blessing. He got more than that, as McCartney said, “It was just mind-blowing, totally turned the song into a soul anthem, and I was forever grateful for him for doing that.”
Many artists had this experience with Cocker. The Sheffield-born artist had a true talent for taking songs and making them his own. With a voice so powerful, it seemed that he could sing a shopping list and make it impactful. Covering tunes from The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, The Box Tops, Bill Withers, and so many more, Cocker basically made himself a legend by blowing other legends away.
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