Johnny Thunders Archives

Johnny Thunders Becomes Soft and Acoustic in Kris Gruen’s Cover

Posted by Riley Haas at 9:00 am No Responses »

Nov 052020

kris gruen you can't put your arms around a memory cover

“You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory” is probably Johnny Thunders most well known solo track. The New York Dolls’ guitarist had one of the most successful solo careers of any of the Dolls, and possibly the most influential. Duff McKagan of Guns ‘n’ Roses covered this track for the Gunners’ The Spaghetti Incident and it’s also been covered most recently by Billie Joe Armstrong and Giant Sand, among others. Though a ballad, the original recording is typical Thunders, with a sloppy rock sound and a sing- or shout-along chorus. The latest cover, by Kris Gruen, is considerably softer and more ballady. Continue reading »

In Memoriam: Johnny Thunders

Posted by Jay Honstetter at 1:30 pm No Responses »

Jul 152020

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

When you hear a Johnny Thunders guitar riff, you know it’s Johnny Thunders. The sloppy Chuck Berry meets Dick Dale with a sprained wrist guitar solos combined with a Keith Richards meets Ray Davies rhythm – always punctuated with slides down the neck and hammer-ons – is as distinctly Thunders as is his voice – sarcastic, sweet, taunting, and offensive in one disheveled package. No other guitarist – whether it be The Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones or Guns N’ Roses’ Izzy Stradlin – could replicate his sound no matter how hard they’ve tried.
Continue reading »

In Memoriam: The Seeds’ Sky Saxon

Posted by Jay Honstetter at 3:30 pm 1 Response »

Jul 072020

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

“I don’t believe in death; there is no death,” Sky Saxon told the Austin Chronicle one week before he unexpectedly passed away. “In a higher understanding, none of us die; we leave our body. We’re going from one room to another room. Once you realize there’s no death, then you’ll live forever.”

On June 25th, 2009, when Sky Saxon traveled from one room to the next, he went arm and arm with Michael Jackson whose death was the day’s news. The King of Pop was celebrated and memorialized everywhere, while the King of Garage Rock died in obscurity. Continue reading »

Quarantine Covers 4: Chris Martin, David Gilmour, Angel Olsen, James Blake, Hayley Williams, and More

Posted by Ray Padgett at 9:00 am No Responses »

Apr 142020

It’s a strange circumstance: What has been awful for humanity at large has been pretty good for the world of cover songs. Even we would say that’s a terrible trade-off!

Nevertheless, we’ve been grateful that so many musicians have taken to Facebook, Instagram, etc to share their music and, in many cases, cover favorite songs that are helping get them through. So, for the fourth time and certainly not the last, we’re rounding up some of the best we’ve seen recently and encouraging you to add your own below.

One note: There are some obvious names you won’t see here. John Prine. Bill Withers. Adam Schlesinger. Kenny Rogers. So many wonderful covers are emerging to pay tribute to artists no longer with them that we’ll be rounding them up separately. We did the first set for Prine here. Continue reading »

Full Albums: Bob Dylan’s ‘Desire’

Posted by Ray Padgett at 2:00 pm 5 Responses »

Jul 262019

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

Back in May, we polled supporters of our new Patreon on which Bob Dylan we should Full Album-ify next. We’d already done most of the super-famous classics – Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks, etc. – so the options were more the gems adored by those in the know: 1997’s Time Out of Mind, 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and 1976’s Desire.

Time Out of Mind beat Desire by a single vote, and you can read our resulting cover-by-cover breakdown here. But – surprise! – today we’re tackling the runner-up as well. Continue reading »

Covers of Anthony Bourdain’s Favorite Punk Songs

Posted by Ray Padgett at 1:18 pm 1 Response »

Jun 082018

Others can offer more on Anthony Bourdain’s massive impact on the worlds of food, or travel, or recovery, or just living life to the fullest. But anyone who followed his work closely knew in additional to all that, he was a music superfan. He adored 1970s punk from his early days working in New York kitchens in particular; he wrote a must-read essay on that thirty years later for SPIN.

So we’re going to pay tribute the only way we know how: With covers of Bourdain’s favorite songs. Which we know from playlists he made over the years for Rolling Stone and KCRW. We hope he would have liked these covers of the soundtrack to his life. Continue reading »