Hiding Under Covers

THE WEREWOLVES OF LONDON Warren Zevon  (1978) Warren Zevon was the renegade West Coaster. While his mid-seventies Los Angeles contemporaries were taking it easy and running on empty, Zevon’s albums swilled with troubling tales of mercenaries, psychopaths and bent lawyers. In 1975, Zevon signed to David Geffen’s Asylum label, on the promise that Jackson Browne would produce his first, self-titled, album. Around this time he began work on a song which would have to wait until the second album, Excitable Boy , for release. “The Werewolves of London” was written by Zevon, with the songwriter LeRoy Marinell and the session guitarist, Waddy Wachtel. Taking a title suggested to Zevon by Phil Everly, the three sat down one hot Californian afternoon.   Marinell had a guitar figure, which had been floating around unused for some months. It was translated into a piano vamp by Zevon, a classically trained pianist, and Wachtel ad-libbed some lyrics: “I saw a werewolf with a Ch...

THE MONSTER MASH Bobby (Boris) Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers (1962) It’s shifted millions of copies since its first release in 1962, but thanks to an initial ban by the BBC for being too morbid, it took eleven years to make the UK charts. Elvis Presley dismissed it as “the dumbest thing I’ve heard”. Bob Dylan, on the other hand, is a fan, featuring the crypt-kicking classic in his Theme Time Radio Hour. If Halloween has an official anthem, surely it’s “The Monster Mash”, one of the bestselling novelty singles of all time. “The Monster Mash” was written by Bobby “Boris” Pickett, who died in 2007. Back in 1960, Pickett had been part of a covers band, the Cordials, who played Los Angeles and even cut a couple of flop singles. One of their favourite live numbers had been a rendition of “Little Darlin’”, a 1957 hit for the vocal harmony act the Diamonds. In an effort to stamp his own personality on the song, Pickett took to ad-libbing through the spoken bridge in the style of ...

Genesis (1973) The Story of the Song (Updated October 2017) I’ve been listening to the Genesis album  Selling England by the Pound  now for 40 years. One track that I have always had something of a soft spot for is “The Battle of Epping Forest”. Although there are objectively better and more musically satisfying tracks elsewhere on the album, “Battle” kept my attention as a teenager; and still does. I love the witty lyrics, the double entendres and the cartoon-like characters with Bash Street Kids-style names.  I grew up in East Anglia and often went down to London, so I knew roughly where Epping was on the map. To me, then, the song appeared rooted in the real world. It seemed to report on real events, real-time, unlike the myth-laden (but equally attractive) romance of “Dancing Out with the Moonlit Knight” or “Firth of Fifth” or the rustic whimsy of “I Know What I Like”. “Battle” was packed with words and colourful characters, with humour and ...

THE POST OFFICE TOWER LONDON  Souvenir Brochure (1969) I'm standing on the Post Office Tower   So I can see all there is to see   --Paul Weller, ' Life from a Window ' (1977)  Through the Post Office Tower   Travel miles and miles of copper wire   --Fake Teak ' The Post Office Tower ' (2010)  I made this bomb for the GPO   To blow them all to Hell --Cressida ' Goodbye Post Office Tower Goodbye ' (1971) The Post Office Tower (now BT Tower ) in London's Fitzrovia was opened by Harold Wilson on 8 October 1965. It is 177 metres (581 ft) tall, with a further section of aerial rigging bringing the total height to 189 metres (620 ft). It's been my favourite London building since I visited it as a child in 1969. An excellent blog about the Tower including some  videos  and  images from the  menu  of its famous revolving restaurant can be found at  The Great Wen . This p...

This is an article I wrote for The Independent in 2006, to mark Paul McCartney's 64th birthday. Unfortunately it never ran so I'm posting it here to mark Macca's 71st birthday on 18 June. It's not intended to be definitive, nor is it a list of my personal favourites; just an illustration of  the variety of music Paul has written over 50 years, from rockers and romance to ambient and comedy. Maybe I’m Amazed (1970, 1977) If this is all  Paul   McCartney had ever written, we would still know his name.  The inspiration for this proud ballad was of course Linda Eastman, who Paul married  in 1969. Regularly voted one of the greatest love songs ever, it evaded single release until a live version made the charts in 1977 and has since been covered by, amongst others, Rod Stewart and Joe Cocker. Find it on: McCartney and Wings Over America Helter Skelter (1968) This White Album headbanger was inspired by the Who's song, “I Can See for Miles”. McC...

JAMES BROWN AT THE APOLLO (UNIVERSAL/POLYDOR  2013) Fifty years ago, the first of James Brown’s celebrated “live at the Harlem Apollo” albums hit the racks. Recorded during the heat of the Cuban missile crisis just a few months earlier, this landmark release almost never happened.  The album was nearly scuppered not by Khrushchev or Kennedy, but by Syd Nathan, the president of King Records. In the autumn of 1962, Brown, already a solid and dependable R&B star, approached Nathan with the idea of issuing a live recording of one of his popular shows at the New York theatre. The heart of what he did was his live act, he reasoned. Capture it on vinyl and they’d sell a million. Nathan pursed his lips, thought of the hit singles he could spend the money on, and refused.  So Brown stumped up $5700 of his own to fund the album and prove his label wrong. He hired the Apollo for a week, dressed its ushers in Tuxedos and groomed his backing singers – the Famous Flame...

VAN DYKE PARKS SONGS CYCLED (Bella Union, 2013) Van Dyke Parks albums are like comets. Excepting a collaboration with Brian Wilson in 1995 (the quaintly offbeat Orange Crate Art ), the last VDP offering – Tokyo Rose – flared over the horizon in 1989. So, let’s see, that’s 24 years ago. A quarter of a century between albums is unusual, even in the relaxed timetables of many of today’s recording artists, who may casually punt out an album every decade or so. 24 years. Rock stars are born and die in that time. If there is one thing that Van Dyke Parks isn’t though, it’s a rock star. From his perch in contemporary pop music – as producer, arranger, composer and lyricist – his solo output is stubbornly unfashionable, distinctly erratic and wilfully idiosyncratic. Van Dyke describes himself as a rusty nail, “just waiting to be hammered down by an intolerant bastard, with no room for what isn’t rockin’ or classically elite.” Since releasing Song Cycle in 1968, Van Dyke has rel...

DAVID BOWIE IS...  We made it down to the V&A a couple of weeks ago for the much-trumpeted  David Bowie Is... exhibition. What a great afternoon we had. It took almost three hours to work our way through the rooms. Highlights are the sombre Berlin room and the floor-to-ceiling video wall showing footage of the Philadelphia 74 concert (recorded for the David Live album). Fascinating archive material, though, including handwritten lyric sheets, pages from Bowie's diaries and of course costumes, costumes, costumes. 

Launch Party  For The 100 GREATEST COVER VERSIONS (published by McNidder & Grace ) The launch of my latest book took place on 19.01.13 at Farmer Browns  in central Norwich. This happened just after I guested on Liz Kershaw's BBC 6 Music show . Adam Buxton sat in for Liz (who was stuck on a train just outside London!). When Liz finally made it to the studio, we talked about The Damned's cover of ' Eloise ' (originally by Barry Ryan) and one of the 100 featured in my book. As it happens, Lu Edmonds once of the Damned is now guitarist in Public Image Ltd, as is champion bassist Scott Firth... Public Image Ltd 's Scott Firth playing his cover of The Meters' 'Cissy Strut' at the launch.