Performing cover versions

For many musicians, performing a cover of a song is the biggest form of sell-out there is, but overcoming this trepidation and making the song your own could really help you get in touch with your audience.

You've laid yourself bare, poured out your irreparably broken heart, revealed your most painful secrets, and shone the shameful light of truth through the cracks in your soul in front of a room full of complete strangers. There is a slightly awkward pause before you are rewarded with a smattering of absent-minded applause. Then, from the back, you hear the last four words any performing songwriter wants to hear: "Play something we know!"

But what is the point in playing cover versions? If they wanted to hear 'Hotel California' why didn't they just stay at home and put on a CD? The sign on the door says 'Live Music', not 'Karaoke Night'. And how can you express yourself through playing other people's music?

Mark Ronson's successful covers album, Version, proves that even recent hits are fair game for a reworking.

The first thing you need to realise is that your audience isn't there for your gratification; you are there to entertain them. That's why you are on the stage and they are the ones waiting to see what's going to happen next. If you find yourself feeling unappreciated, your choice is simple: find an audience who digs what you do, or do what they dig. If that sounds like tough love, then the second thing you need to realise is that playing the occasional crowd-pleasing cover doesn't have to feel like selling your soul.

Even just learning and rehearsing a few cover versions with no intention to play them live isn't a bad idea. Learning other artists' material will help you to develop generally as a musician, and doing this as a band is a great way of pulling all the threads together, especially when you first start up. Also, learning a short set of covers does mean you can always fall back on plan B if things turn ugly. Remember that scene in The Blues Brothers? You never know when knowing the theme from Rawhide will come in handy.

OK, so maybe you should at least take a look around you and do a quick lightbulb count. If your audience is demanding that you worship the evil demigod cabaret with perfectly recreated durges from 'Now That's What I Call Cheese', then feel free to familiarise yourself with the emergency exits. That caveat aside, all your typical cover-loving heckler really wants is something they recognise. The word you need to concentrate on here is not 'cover', but 'version'.

Artistically, creating a brilliant new version of an existing piece can be even more challenging than writing a new song from scratch, and so far as your punters are concerned, more impressive too. You're much more likely to grab the attention of your audience by showing how creative you can be with a song they think they know (until you challenge that perception) than by asking them to buy into something they've never heard before. If anything, trying to create a carbon copy can actually be quite dangerous, especially if you're covering something people really love. The closer to the original it sounds, the more critical the fans will be if you don't quite pull it off.

When it comes to choosing which tracks you are going to cover, there's no need to limit yourself to the '60s and '70s. Playing covers needn't be predictable; audiences love surprises. The recent mainstream success enjoyed by Mark Ronson — who has made a name for himself by putting a fresh spin on familiar tracks, such as his collaboration with Amy Winehouse on 'Valerie' by The Zutons and his brilliant motown version of Coldplay's 'God Put A Smile On Your Face' — proves that even recent hits are fair game when it comes to putting your stamp on someone else's song.

Eric Clapton's acoustic version of his own (as Derek And The Dominoes) 'Layla' track was one of the highlights of his Unplugged album.

Of course, there's no rule that says you either have to play all original material or all covers. If you can write your own songs, then you owe it to yourself to perform them. Mixing your own stuff up with a few imaginatively reworked covers should make for an entertaining and rewarding evening for both you and your audience. It's a great place to start and there's no shame in going fishing for approval with a couple of well placed crowd-pleasers. A lot of what we do as musicians has to be about self-promotion, and that certainly extends to our set lists. Gradually, as you build up a following, you'll hopefully find that you start getting requests for your own material, and with time the ratio of covers to originals in your set will shift.

Playing a cover version is also a great way of making a statement about who you are and what you represent. It can be two fingers up to the establishment, or simply the refreshing proof that you don't take yourself too seriously. The Arctic Monkeys' brilliant Radio One session performance of 'Love Machine' by Girls Aloud earned them kudos aplenty. And the Sugababes' cover of the Arctic Monkeys' 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor' did their street cred no harm at all.

You don't even need to confine yourself to your record collection when searching for inspiration. You can really grab your audience's attention by putting your own spin on something unexpected, like a kids' TV theme or a well-known jingle. Imagine how well a toe-tapping bluegrass version of the theme tune from Blind Date could go down at your next gig (don't worry, they'll be laughing with you). Or what about ending your speed metal set with a blissed out reggae version of 'Do The Shake And Vac'?

You can make pretty much anything sound credible if you break it down to its most basic elements, and the more unlikely the original is, the more impressive your performance will seem. Great music is everywhere. Often, it is just a matter of unlocking its potential and opening people's eyes to it. At this year's Bass Day UK in Manchester, virtuoso bassist Reggie Washington made this point with an inspired solo instrumental rendition of 'If I Only Had A Brain' from The Wizard Of Oz!

Michael Andrews and Gary Jules scored a Christmas number one with their stripped-down version of 'Mad World' by Tears For Fears.

The simple answer to that one is at the beginning. It sounds obvious, but the first thing to do is learn a few of the most basic elements of the song. Don't feel you have to learn the whole thing perfectly all the way through, though. Knowing the piece too well could actually stifle your creativity and make it hard for you to break away from the original. Sometimes, if you just know a key riff or the main melodic hook and maybe a verse and a half of lyrics, you can start to create your own version first, and then, if you feel the need, revisit the original to discover what the rest of it is supposed to sound like. When you know a song inside out, it is much harder to imagine it any other way, but if you only know a bit of it, you are forced to make up the rest. In other words, a little ignorance can be creative bliss.

The Arctic Monkeys performed a cover of 'Love Machine' by Girls Aloud on Radio One, and the Sugababes' cover of 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor' did nothing to harm their credibility.

A song is made up of four basic elements: melody, harmony, rhythm and lyrics. Typically, a song is most easily recognised by the melody and the lyrics. Keep these roughly the same as the original and that's the magic 'something we know' that your hecklers are looking for. Change the rhythm and they'll think you're a genius, bless them.

Finding an appropriate alternative rhythm is a matter of experimentation. You can generally apply looser rhythmic styles like swing and reggae to pretty much anything you like, but that's not to say it will always sound good. Usually, with swing, you're talking instant cheese. But if the original is an attitude-packed, emo-worshipped, suicide anthem — which also just happens to have a truly great bassline that you want your Dad to appreciate — then maybe that's exactly what you're looking for. Tighter styles like rock and funk can be harder to apply convincingly, but the myriad dance versions of top 20 hits pumped out by local radio stations every Friday night shows how easily any standard 4/4 ballad can be given an energy boost.

Eric Clapton's acoustic version of the Derek and the Dominoes classic 'Layla' on his MTV Unplugged session is a great example of how effective simply changing the groove can be. By slowing things down to a gentle swing and keeping an experienced ear on where the accents need to fall, Clapton created a classic out of a classic.

Of course, the other small change Eric made to that particular version of 'Layla' was to take a song based around one of the most recognisable electric guitar riffs in the history of rock music and perform it on an acoustic. After my article on the importance of dynamics in live performance (Performing Musician issue 1), a number of people pointed out that I had neglected to mention that simply unplugging and stripping everything back to an acoustic arrangement is a classic way of adding a little variety to a set. It is also a very obvious and effective way of creating an interesting cover version.

Often, the more elaborate the original production, the more effective the acoustic treatment can be, as composers Michael Andrews and Gary Jules found when their stripped-down version of 'Mad World' by Tears For Fears resulted in a UK Christmas number one. More recently, however, Newton Faulkner's version of Massive Attack's 'Teardrop' shows that no matter how minimalist, musically naked and beautifully haunting the original actually was, you can still make it your own by ditching the drums and playing an acoustic guitar with the lights off.

I don't know why, but I've never heard Carol King's 'You've Got A Friend' done electrically (if that is the opposite of acoustically). Perhaps it is the gentle life-affirming sentiment of the lyrics — you do need to think about what a song means before you start mucking about with it. Presumably, someone somewhere has had a crack at it, though, and I wonder what it sounded like. Just as you can tone things down, you can crank things up as well. Punk or heavy rock versions of traditionally acoustic performances can be very effective ways of grabbing the audience's attention, especially if you start off soft and slow like the original before suddenly launching it into the stratosphere.

This can be a tricky one to pull off, but who's to say you can't change the lyrics to a song? It's not as if it hasn't been done before. You might want to express your deep-seated political beliefs or, let's face it, just get a cheap laugh. A little humour goes a long way when people are already enjoying themselves.

If you're feeling brave and really want to start pushing the creative boundaries, one of the most effective ways of creating new from old is to mix things up a little. I once spent some time working with one band who had clearly realised how painfully 'white' they sounded when they tried to do justice to Stevie Wonder's 'Superstition'. Rather than abandon the idea entirely, they slowed it right down, slipped the bassline from 'Lady Marmalade' underneath, and had an instant showstopper on their hands.

Don't confuse this technique with compiling a Jive Bunny medley or simply rapping over a Queen song. Thinking this is easy is a surefire way of producing something truly dreadful (like Jive Bunny or Vanilla Ice, for example). Finding different pieces of music that really gel nicely requires a little more musical experience than simply speeding things up or adding a key change before the chorus. Sometimes, it happens almost by accident, when you realise right in the middle of a jam that whatever you're playing reminds you of something else. The combinations can become pretty elaborate. I've always wanted to hear a funk band playing Herbie Hancock's 'Chameleon' over the bass/clav line from Stevie Wonder's 'I Wish', with a flute playing the Bond theme over the top — but that's just me!

So, there you have it. Covering songs doesn't have to be a cop-out. If you can do it justice, it's art. And if you are left in any doubt whatsoever as to the artistic validity of the oft-maligned cover version, simply listen to Joe Cocker's version of 'With A Little Help From My Friends', and then compare it to the original. 0