Early in the recording sessions for the Disraeli Gears album, Cream recorded a couple of versions of the blues song “Lawdy Mama”. They took one of those versions and rewrote the lyrics and melody to create “Strange Brew”. Basically, two completely different songs using the exact same backing tracks.
Are there any other examples like this of a band reworking one of their songs to create a completely different song?
I know that Frank Zappa used to take different tracks from different songs and layer them to make a new song, but that’s not exactly what I’m looking for.
The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album has two songs, Hang On To Your Ego and I Know There’s An Answer that have the same melody but slightly different lyrics. The biggest difference is the chorus.
ETA: The two songs might actually be one and the same, with just slight recording differences. They’re not both present on the original album, it seems.
Mike Love didn’t understand the original lyrics so he changed them. The original only showed up as a bonus track on CD releases. The first time I heard it with the original lyrics was a cover by Frank Black.
Correct. Exactly the same instrumental track. Original lyrics were “Ego”, Brian’s dig at Mike Love. Brian recorded and used the newer vocal track (“Answer”) instead.
ETA: I didn’t see it Fudd’s reply despite having looked right at it.
Oh I know. I didn’t mean to imply that they wrote it. Cream’s version was essentially a cover of a version of the song done by Junior Wells and Buddy Guy. It’s just that their version became a completely different song just by changing the vocal track.
Jim Steinman did this kind of thing all the time - in particular, he recycled bits of songs from his lone solo album, Bad For Good, into songs he wrote for other artists. The bridge from the title track was incorporated into “Nowhere Fast” in the movie Streets of Fire, for instance, and the intro to “Stark Raving Love” became the intro of “Holding Out For a Hero” by Bonnie Tyler.
Pete Townshend often reuses song parts, for example the synth fanfare in the chorus of “A Little Is Enough” for the bridge in “Uniforms (Corp D’Esprit)”.
When I was a kid, I owned an LP by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs and I could swear every other song used the same instrument track as “Hully Bully”. It was probably just a signature beat for the band like Bo Diddley had.
Oh, that reminds me of Big Joe Turner. After he had a massive, surprise late hit with “Shake, Rattle And Roll”, he followed it with “Flip, Flop And Fly” and finally “The Chicken And The Hawk (Up, Up And Away)”. All three are basically the same song with different lyrics.
Another one came to mind: The Kinks “Destroyer” is a late reworking of their classic “All Day And All Of The Night” (it also references “Lola”, but only lyrically):
