Wait, that guy? Doing Motown? Phil Collins' disturbingly intense passion for '60s American R&B is no secret by now, but in 1982, it was, shall we say, not a musical style for which he was known. It would have been like Lionel Richie covering Jefferson Airplane. It shouldn't have worked. Many would say it didn't. But you won't find me among the many, because you know what? This is a cover version I can get behind.
Remember when I said that the problem with his cover of "Tomorrow Never Knows" was that it altered too much of the original without really re-inventing it enough? Well, Phil avoided that pitfall with "You Can't Hurry Love." I guess he figured he couldn't reinvent it, so instead he decided to be as faithful to the original as humanly possible. Here's his explanation, from Wikipedia:
The idea of doing 'Can't Hurry Love' was to see if Hugh Padgham and I could duplicate that Sixties sound. It's very difficult today because most recording facilities are so much more sophisticated than they were back then. It's therefore hard to make the drums sound as rough as they did on the original. That's what we were going after, a remake, not an interpretation, but a remake.
A remake! You got that? Don't dare call it an interpretation. "I want to smell the fumes of the Detroit auto plant in that bass. I want to taste the racial oppression in that tambourine." As far as precise recreations of highly era-specific sounds go, Lenny Kravitz is no slouch himself, but the champ would have to be Todd Rundgren and his album Faithful, in which the sonic obsessive reproduces all his favorite songs from 1966 and 1967, including disturbingly accurate renditions of "Strawberry Fields Forever," Dylan's "Most Likely You Go Your Way," Hendrix's "If 6 Was 9," and especially "Good Vibrations," where he regenerates every Beach Boy harmony and theremin solo down to the very last overdub. But Phil's version of "You Can't Hurry Love" is at least ... I don't know ... 85% of the way there?
Often a cover that's so similar to the original isn't worth listening to in its own right, but Phil put something tangy in the batter that makes this stand up as more than just a curiosity. His version has a certain snap to it, an appealing zip. If his goal was to "duplicate that Sixties sound," I think he failed - but he must have known he would fail. Despite Motown's recording studio being "state of the art" in 1966, most of the label's recordings from that era have a certain amount of unintended distortion and "fuzz" that would have been hard to reproduce even five years later, let alone fifteen. Just trying to record the song without consciously making it sound "80s" wouldn't have been enough. Phil would have needed to drag the tape through a gravel pit or something, like how comedy editors make a freshly-shot piece of film look "old." Everything sounds too clear, too pristine. But if it doesn't sound "exactly" like the original, I also must say that it doesn't sound very "80s" either, and with Phil Collins, that is really saying something. I don't remember hearing this cover as a child, and when I heard it on the radio in the '90s, I actually assumed it had been a much more recent recording! I thought it was post-superstar Phil indulging in Motown nostalgia, but it turns out it was pre-superstar Phil indulging in Motown nostalgia.
Of course, the perceptive listener will realize that as true to the original as this version is, it differs from the original in a number of ways, and I know, because I just played them back to back. First of all, his version is in a different key. Second, he adds a classy string section, which swoops and zig-zags nimbly in the background, whereas the original actually had no string section at all (although it might feel like it did). This could have been flirting with disaster, but I think it's a nice touch. Third, most shockingly, whereas the original featured a brass section, Phil's version has no horns at all. None! I mean, here's a song where the horns might have actually belonged. Phil piled on the horns every chance he got. What could have possibly led to this uncharacteristic moment of restraint?
Oh, and fourth, Phil loved this song so much that apparently he never bothered to learn what the real lyrics were. That's right. He spent hours and hours trying to painstakingly recreate every nuance from the original arrangement, but he couldn't take five minutes to go hunt down the actual lyrics. It's like he did the vocals in one take, and stuck with the same misheard verbiage he'd been using for years while singing along in the car. Whereas Diana Ross sings "I need to find, find someone to call mine," Phil sings, "I need to find time for someone to call mine." Come on Phil. Time is the one thing that the singer has plenty of. Don't you even know what this song's about? And whereas Diana sings "You got to trust, give it time/No matter how long it takes," Phil sings, "Just trust in the good time/No matter how long it takes." This was the easiest part of the job, Phil.
Finally, as if one video of Phil pretending to be a one-man band wasn't enough ("I Missed Again"), here's another. You'd think that, since they were all the same person, they could have timed their choreography a little more skillfully, but I guess not. Also, you can tell one of the back-up singers fancies himself a real rebel, because he's wearing sunglasses.
At any rate, Phil's charming story about paying affectionate homage to a cherished genre of his youth sounds nice, but his true motives for recording a cover of "You Can't Hurry Love" were a little less admirable. Many rock fans know the story behind Elvis Costello's Get Happy!! From Wikipedia:
Often a cover that's so similar to the original isn't worth listening to in its own right, but Phil put something tangy in the batter that makes this stand up as more than just a curiosity. His version has a certain snap to it, an appealing zip. If his goal was to "duplicate that Sixties sound," I think he failed - but he must have known he would fail. Despite Motown's recording studio being "state of the art" in 1966, most of the label's recordings from that era have a certain amount of unintended distortion and "fuzz" that would have been hard to reproduce even five years later, let alone fifteen. Just trying to record the song without consciously making it sound "80s" wouldn't have been enough. Phil would have needed to drag the tape through a gravel pit or something, like how comedy editors make a freshly-shot piece of film look "old." Everything sounds too clear, too pristine. But if it doesn't sound "exactly" like the original, I also must say that it doesn't sound very "80s" either, and with Phil Collins, that is really saying something. I don't remember hearing this cover as a child, and when I heard it on the radio in the '90s, I actually assumed it had been a much more recent recording! I thought it was post-superstar Phil indulging in Motown nostalgia, but it turns out it was pre-superstar Phil indulging in Motown nostalgia.
Of course, the perceptive listener will realize that as true to the original as this version is, it differs from the original in a number of ways, and I know, because I just played them back to back. First of all, his version is in a different key. Second, he adds a classy string section, which swoops and zig-zags nimbly in the background, whereas the original actually had no string section at all (although it might feel like it did). This could have been flirting with disaster, but I think it's a nice touch. Third, most shockingly, whereas the original featured a brass section, Phil's version has no horns at all. None! I mean, here's a song where the horns might have actually belonged. Phil piled on the horns every chance he got. What could have possibly led to this uncharacteristic moment of restraint?
Oh, and fourth, Phil loved this song so much that apparently he never bothered to learn what the real lyrics were. That's right. He spent hours and hours trying to painstakingly recreate every nuance from the original arrangement, but he couldn't take five minutes to go hunt down the actual lyrics. It's like he did the vocals in one take, and stuck with the same misheard verbiage he'd been using for years while singing along in the car. Whereas Diana Ross sings "I need to find, find someone to call mine," Phil sings, "I need to find time for someone to call mine." Come on Phil. Time is the one thing that the singer has plenty of. Don't you even know what this song's about? And whereas Diana sings "You got to trust, give it time/No matter how long it takes," Phil sings, "Just trust in the good time/No matter how long it takes." This was the easiest part of the job, Phil.
Finally, as if one video of Phil pretending to be a one-man band wasn't enough ("I Missed Again"), here's another. You'd think that, since they were all the same person, they could have timed their choreography a little more skillfully, but I guess not. Also, you can tell one of the back-up singers fancies himself a real rebel, because he's wearing sunglasses.
At any rate, Phil's charming story about paying affectionate homage to a cherished genre of his youth sounds nice, but his true motives for recording a cover of "You Can't Hurry Love" were a little less admirable. Many rock fans know the story behind Elvis Costello's Get Happy!! From Wikipedia:
During the American concert tour for Armed Forces in April 1979, Costello engaged in a drunken argument with Stephen Stills and Bonnie Bramlett in a Columbus, Ohio, Holiday Inn hotel bar, during which he referred to James Brown as a "jive-arsed nigger," then upped the ante by pronouncing Ray Charles a "blind, ignorant nigger." Costello apologized at a New York City press conference a few days later, claiming that he had been drunk and had been attempting to be obnoxious to bring the conversation to a swift conclusion, not anticipating that Bramlett would bring his comments to the press.
And so legend has it that Costello recorded Get Happy!!, an album steeped in the sounds of '60s R&B, in order to prove that he wasn't a racist. Although barely publicized at the time, Phil Collins fell into an eerily similar trap just a year or two later. From In The Air Tonight:
We were in Indianapolis on the Abacab tour. I had some time to kill, so after "riding the white horse," if you know what I mean, I headed over to a strip club. I was tripping like I'd never been tripping before, and in the mood for some tasty Midwestern flesh. I sat down at the bar and started counting out my dollar bills. Suddenly Don Henley walked in. That smarmy fucker. He waved hello and immediately wandered over.
"Hey, Phil! Didn't know you were in town!"
'Don, nice to see you." I really wasn't in the mood and was hoping to keep it brief. But Mr. Deadhead Sticker On A Cadillac wasn't taking the hint.
"You wanna go golfing tomorrow? There's some great links out by the Speedway."
"Thanks, but I got plans." Betty Lou was really doing her thing on stage, sporting a tie-dyed halter top and a lavender g-string. The Miracles' "Shop Around" came on the stereo system.
"Oh man!" Don slapped my arm in excitement. "Smokey Robinson! God, I love Motown, don't you Phil?"
The former Eagle and current douchebag was starting to get on my nerves. I just wanted him to shut his yapper and let me enjoy the show.
"No, I hate Motown."
He reared back in shock. "Hate Motown? Nobody hates Motown. Phil, you love Motown, I know you do."
"It's all crap."
"You don't mean that. You can't mean that Phil. What about Marvin Gaye?"
"Marvin Gaye was an uppity, smelly-assed n****r."
"Oh really?" Don looked as though I'd insulted his sister.
"Yeah! And Tammi Terrell was a skanky, thugged-up crackwhore n*****r bitch!"
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah! And Stevie Wonder was a talentless, braille-reading, harmonica-sucking cornrow-kneading coon!!"
The next morning, Don told all his buddies at the golf club what I said. When they called me to tell me I was a racist pig, I tried to explain that, you know, I was high on horse tranquilizer and I was just trying to get Don to leave me alone and let me enjoy the God damn pole dancing. But I saw that a more meaningful gesture was needed. So I did that cover of the Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love." Turned out pretty well, I have to say.
*****
Editor's Note: In an effort to take his professional/employment life a little more seriously, Little Earl has decided that he may not continue to post on Cosmic American Blog with the same level of frequency he has demonstrated in the past. One post every two weeks? One post every month? Shorter posts in general? Little Earl cannot say. But, contrary to popular belief, the blog and its ongoing series "Little Earl Loves The Music Of The '80s" may be highly enjoyable, but it is not particularly financially lucrative. If, one fine day, he finds himself in a more stable professional situation, he may return to his former prolificacy.
1 comment:
I can't find a source for the quote you attribute to Phil.
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