I’m looking for examples where an artist left a group to go solo and rerecorded a song originally recorded by the original group. I’m excluding the artist performing the song live in concert. I’m talking about a new studio version of a song (whether or not it was released as a single ).
Some examples:
“Sentimental Lady” by Bob Welch. Bob was in Fleetwood Mac briefly in the early 70’s and he wrote and sang this one on FM’s Bare Trees album. He rerecorded it for one of his solo albums and had a minor hit with it.
“Behind the Lines” by Phil Collins. Originally done in a much slower fashion on Duke. Phil added Earth, Wind, & Fire’s Phoenix Horns and pepped it up a bit for Face Value.
Stevie Nicks wrote a song called Crystal. She and Lindsey recorded it for their 1973 album “Buckingham Nicks” with Lindsey on the lead vocal. Then they re-recorded another version of it for their first album with FM, the self titled “Fleetwood Mac” released in 1975, with Lindsey once again on the lead vocal. Then Stevie re-recorded it again as a solo artist, this time with herself on the lead vocal for the movie soundtrack of Practical Magic, somewhere around 1996 or so.
Tne of course there is the famous Silver Springs, but that song was done within Fleetwood Mac both times.
Roger Waters recorded a new studio version of “Another Brick in the Wall pt. 2” with his Radio KAOS-era band. It, to my mind, sucked.
I heard somewhere that John Lennon recorded a slower, more somber version of “Help!” (one that more closely matched what he’d originally meant the song to sound like) late in his life, but I’ve never heard the track itself (if it even exists).
This is kind of the reverse of what was asked for (and heavily obscure as well,) but Beverley Mahood cut “true love (never goes out of style)” on her debut album ‘girl out of the ordinary’, and then when she joined the trio Lace the group also recorded a version of it on their album.
The chronology is hard to track down, but Pete Townsend recorded “Pure and Easy” for a solo album. The same song was later released by the Who on their “Odds and Sods” compilation. But it’s hard to track down which version was first. It’s clear that “Pure and Easy” was recorded by the Who about the time they recorded **Who’s Next ** (“Pure and Easy” is a musical continuation of “The Song is Over.”), and Townsend’s **Who Came First ** was released later. OTOH, Townsend recorded Who songs as demos in his own studio to play them for the group.
Billy Idol re-recorded “Dancing With Myself”, which he originally did with Generation X.
Long John Baldry re-recorded a terrible, awful remake of his own “Don’t Try To Lay No Boogie Woogie On The King Of Rock And Roll.”
Those are the first two that come to mind, before I go do some research.
Nonsuch, John Lennon said he had originally conceived “Help!” as a slower ballad, but they went for commercial and kicked it up to frenetic for the released version. He did say later that there were some songs he would like to redo, including “Help!”, but it never came to pass. There are no slow versions of it, either at EMI or in his collection of demos, nearly all of which were played on the radio series “The Lost Lennon Tapes.”
David Cassidy recently did different versions of old Partridge Family songs, but it’s hard to say whether that counts, considering he was one of only two people actually singing in the original “band.”
Well, MBS, you’ve got me there. I have the GenX version. I’ve heard another version of it, with more modern production values, and a more polished rendition. I don’t have a Billy Idol album to compare, and allmusic.com lists the song under both of their names, but it’s impossible to tell by their listings which one is different. But AMG does list the running time for most tracks, and there are several different versions of this song on a couple dozen different albums. The most common running time in the GenX column doesn’t match any of the running times in the Idol column.
