Sept. 28: Come together

I used to think that Aerosmith wrote the song Come Together. I thought this because I owned their greatest hits cassette and it was the last song on side B. On that tape, Come Together was followed by a song called Remember (Walking in the Sand.) Both songs are covers. Remember was written by George Morton and it was performed, originally, by the Shangri-Las in 1964. Come Together, of course, was famously written by Lennon/McCartney.

How's this for treason? I like the Aerosmith version better.

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It's not wrong to say that you like the cover better than the original unless the original was (a) The Beatles or (b) a former member of the Beatles. This is why it's wrong to say you like Guns N Roses version of Live and Let Die better than Paul McCartney's and it's why it's very wrong to say you prefer Tiffany's version of I saw (him) standing there.



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Tiffany was a popular singer for about two months in 1988. She got famous for singing in shopping malls. Eventually, she signed a record deal and she was on the radio all the time. Tiffany was annoying but she wasn't as annoying as Britney Spears or Nicki Minaj. That's because Tiffany was modest. If Tiffany was your sister, you wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen with her in public. If she had pigtails she'd look like Anne of Green Gables or the girl you see in the Wendy's logo.

I think I'm a logo... there doesn't seem to be anyone around

But although people found Tiffany annoying, no one actively hated her. That's because she was never arrogant enough to claim her cover of I saw (him) standing there was better than the Beatles. The funny thing is that I saw him standing there isn't a very profound song. The lyrics could have been written by any 13-year-old in North America or Great Britain. Bob Dylan probably wouldn't have used the lyric sheet to wipe his bum.

And this made Tiffany safe. She was a teenaged flavour-of-the-week and she was covering a bubble gum pop song that Paul McCartney probably hadn't performed since before Tiffany was born. The Beatles had moved on by then. They'd grown facial hair. They'd started taking drugs and marrying actresses who appeared in James Bond movies. One of them was even abusive to his family and then had the audacity to write a song called Give Peace a Chance. Seriously, if they didn't care about letting Steven Tyler sing one of their more iconic songs, Come Together, then they probably could have cared less that a redheaded teenager from Norwalk, California, wanted to sing "Well my heart went boom..."

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So we've established that Tiffany is the polar opposite of the Beatles. Although the Beatles covered the Top Notes song Twist and Shout on their debut album, they were pretty much fountains of originality. The same cannot be said of Tiffany, who only had two really big hits - the other being a cover of the Shondells' 1967 hit I Think We're Alone Now. (Confession: When I was in Grade 10, I briefly dated a girl who looked like Tiffany, but with dark hair. I never told her that because she would have killed me. She was a Doors fan.)

The thing is that only ignorant teeanged girls would have said that Tiffany's version of either song was better than the original. People who knew their shit would have treated that opinion with the same degree of respect they reserve for four-year-olds explaining how Santa Claus can visit every single house around the world in just one night. They'd nod, smile, pat them on the head and ask them if they want a cup of Ovaltine before bedtime.

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I have no idea what Come together means. When I was a teenager, I giggled because the title itself was sexually suggestive. But the words have nothing to do with sex. Wikipedia tells me that each verse might have pertained to one of the Beatles. Personally, I think it's just a bunch of inside jokes. I have no idea what it is to shoot Coca-Cola or what a mojo filter is. I've never felt a disease by being held in someone's armchair. I've never known anyone to be afflicted with joo-joo eyeball or toe-jam football or monkey finger. I don't know why it's so hard to see good looking people (and I think you pretty much have to see them to decide if they're good looking or not.) I do, however, have feet below my knee. Most people do. Come together is a nonsense song and it deserves comparison with Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky.

And this may be why I like the Aerosmith version better. They are saying "We have no idea what this song means. All we know is that it's fun to sing."

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I have a friend who recently graduated from the Berklee College of Music (at least two members of Aerosmith also studied there.) She is the best violin player I have ever heard. Whenever she does a concert, she plays and sings Come Together. The first time I heard her do that was in a Catholic church.

She one "holy roller."

I think I like her version of Come Together better than the Beatles. My reason for saying that is the same. She probably has no idea what the lyrics mean. Like most people, she probably finds them vague, inoffensive, and fun to sing.

I quote David Lee Roth: "There are two rules of music. The first rule is that if it sounds good, it is good. The second rule is that there is no other rule."

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In 1985, David Lee Roth released an album of covers called Crazy from the Heat. Although it only had four songs, it contained two hits (thanks, in part, to some highly imaginative music videos that received tonnes of airplay on MTV and MuchMusic.) The songs were Just a Gigolo and California Girls.

Diamond Dave's version of the latter blows the Beach Boys 1965 original way out of the water. When the Beach Boys sing it, you get the impression that they're admiring the California Girls from a distance, that they could never work up the courage to talk to one of those bikini-clad beauties. That's not what happens when Dave sings it. Mr. Roth gets close and personal and he goes right up to the chicks and says "howdy." His California Girls video is probably the best music video of all time. California Girls is to music videos what the Last Supper is to paintings, Hamlet is to plays and War and Peace is to literature. Gay rights groups should probably work hard to ban it because any prepubescent boy who watches it guaranteed to turn out heterosexual.


Google image California Girls Video and all you get is Katy Perry shit!!!

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The point is that Come Together is a nonsense song and that's why no one blows a gasket when you mess with it. If you cover Imagine, you pretty much have to do it the exact same way John Lennon wrote it. It's the closest thing the atheist community has to a hymn so when you change "no religion too" to "all religions's true" like CeeLo Green allegedly did in 2012, you're going to get some backlash from people who think that the origin of the universe can be explained naturally and/or that Charles Darwin had a kickass looking beard. I can't say I fault them. If someone changed the lyrics to Amazing Grace to talk about how awesome Muhammed is, I'd probably be a little annoyed too.

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In the end, no one should be embarrassed about liking a cover better than the original. Leonard Cohen may be the best poet Canada has ever produced but - let's face it - he's a pretty awful singer. He doesn't really sing, he just kind of talks with a melody (the same way John Mellencamp does, only Cohen talks about sex and death while Mellencamp talks about farms.) Leonard Cohen probably doesn't sing scales everyday and probably doesn't wonder if he'll be able to hit high C.

Can't sing, but damn do I ever look good in this hat.

Hallelujah is a beautiful song and probably more people have covered it than the Star Spangled Banner - yet Leonard Cohen's own version is far from the best and far from the worst. The worst versions are probably by Willie Nelson, Jon Bon Jovi and 85 per cent of the people who were rejected for Canadian Idol. The best version is by kd Lang, who sang it when Leonard Cohen was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters' Hall of Fame in 2006. After the song, Cohen said that the song could be put to rest because "It's really been done to its ultimate blissful state of perfection."

Too bad the producers of Watchmen didn't take that advice before spoiling their movie with it.

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I don't ever need to hear the song I Will Always Love You.

Ever.

Again.

I have never seen the 1992 movie The Bodyguard, starring Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston. I don't want to. That's because I will probably have to hear that song and I don't want to hear it ever again.

Ever again.

Ever.

Again.

But there was a period in 1992 when that was everyone's favourite song. I was the only person in the whole universe who hated it. There was a story on the news about how a lady was cleaning her apartment and she was listening to that song over and over. Eventually, the guy who lived next to her got so fed up that he barged into her apartment, grabbed her stereo and threw it off the balcony.

But that song was almost 20 years old in 1992. Dolly Parton wrote it for her 1974 album, Jolene.

Today, most people will tell you they prefer Whitney Houston's version to Dolly Parton's. It used to be a popular song at weddings for couples who were too stupid to realize that the song was actually about two people splitting up for good. Dolly wrote it as a tribute to her former business partner who she was splitting from.

This is another reason why I don't want to hear I Will Always Love You.

Ever.

Again.

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My favourite Beatles song is probably Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. That's probably because when I was a kid, I thought "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes" was "the girl with colitis goes by." I knew a girl who had colitis and whenever I heard that song, I thought about that poor girl running to the bathroom.

I guess that makes me a sadist. I chose my favourite Beatles song because it makes me think of a girl who suffered from what is arguably one of the most embarrassing diseases in the world.

Maybe I am the walrus.