There’ve been separate mentions of the Rolling Stones and Dylan, but not together, unless I overlooked it. The Rolling Stones covered “Like a Rolling Stone” on their Stripped album (seems like a no-brainer, surprised it took the Stones as long as it did):
Bob Dylan covered “Brown Sugar” live:
The Black Keys covered Iggy Pop’s ‘No Fun’:
Iggy returned the favor on a Black Keys tribute album, covering ‘Lonely Boy’:
And, then, some years later, Jeff Lynne (who had written “Do Ya” for The Move’s final album) re-recorded the song on an Electric Light Orchestra album; my understanding is that Utopia was frequently playing the song in their concerts, to the point where people were starting to think it was a Rundgren song, and Lynne wanted to reclaim it as his own.
Heh - this took some tracking down. Billy Bragg and (The Late And Very Great) Kirsty MacColl - surely, I thought. Well yes, but the second half of this wasn’t at all what I was expecting.
First half - well known. Kirsty covers Billy’s New England. She had a UK hit single on her own, but the duet they did for a BBC session is better, so I’ll present that as evidence.
The second half - well, this was a surprise - another BBC session, it would seem:
Florence and The Machine ft. Billy Bragg - Fairytale Of New York
I’ve got nothing against Florence or Billy - rather like both of them, in fact. But to my mind that just serves as a reminder of how great Kirsty MacColl and (at the height of his powers) Shane MacGowan were.
j
Fun aside: Billy also covered a song by Ewan MacColl, Kirsty’s dad - Kilroy Was Here
I’m on a roll here: Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello
Nick does Elvis’ Poisoned Rose
And, of course, we all know who Nick Lowe And His Sound really was:
j
Graham Parker’s Black Lincoln Continental covered by Nick Lowe
Nick Lowe’s The Rose Of England covered by Graham Parker
j
@Treppenwitz, seems like you’re the master of this thread. Great examples, keep 'em coming.
Doing my best!
j
Oh, I have another one, also big names (like most ones in this thread), and again involving Dylan. We all know that Van Morrison with Them beautifully covered “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. I already knew that Bob and Van did some shows where they sang Morrison songs together, but I found a Dylan and band performance of “One Irish Rover” from 1989. (as an aside, can you believe that the tour this is from is still going on after 3000+ concerts?)
Well, it’s always good to rely on Dylan, because so many covered him, and he covered so many, so I found out that he covered Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho And Lefty”. Townes had covered “Man Gave Names To All The Animals” and “Little Willie The Gambler” aka “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie”, both were released on his wonderful “Roadsongs”.
Nothing to add WRT the OP, but gotta say how god it is to see the Supersuckers mentioned. What a FABULOUS group - especially live!
And almost inevitably…back to Dylan.
Bob sings Joni
Joni (and friends) sing Bob
Between Bob’s backing singers (and organist) and Joni’s instrumentation* I’m not sure who got the best of that exchange.
j
* - In mitigation, I suppose she didn’t have final say on that
The Beach Boys and Jan & Dean covered each other a lot. I’d have to research which songs originated with which.
“The Little Old Lady From Pasadena” is on the Beach Boys’ live album. Jan & Dean recorded more Beach Boys covers than I’m inclined to list; the most interesting being “Vegetables” recorded a year after Jan’s brain injury.
On a similar note, the Who didn’t release their recording of “Magic Bus” until after a band called The Pudding had heard Pete Townshend’s demo and recorded it themselves.
Never heard this song or of a band called the Pudding. Great piece of pop trivia!
Aaaand…surprised this hasn’t been mentioned yet with all the Dylen refs, but going back to the Dylan well, he and Johnny Cash were mutual admirers of each other’s work and collaborated on several of each other’s songs. Only one Dylan/Cash collaboration made it on the Nashville Skyline album, “Girl from the North Country”, but Dylan collaboration / covers of Cash songs circulated on bootlegs before being released on “The Bootleg Series Vol. 15: Travelin’ Thru, 1967–1969”
Yeah, I’m surprised of myself that I haven’t thought about the Dylan/Cash connection. And even before their 1969 collaboration, Dylan had covered “Folsom Prison Blues” (on the Basement Tapes) and Cash “It Ain’t Me Babe” (together with June).
Almost embarrassed to post these, but Weezer covered a couple Toto songs and Toto responded with their own Weezer cover. At least Weird Al was in the Weezer video (he also played the song live with them - accordian included).
Africa
Rosanna
Hash Pipe
The disconnect of fucking Toto playing a punk rock song is just too much… Though they really don’t do all that bad.
I’d put Weezer more in the pop punk category so Toto-adjacent 