In Memoriam Archives

In Memoriam : Brian Wilson

Posted by Seuras Og at 8:00 am 2 Responses »

Jun 162025

Songwriter Brian Wilson in Santa Monica California 1990

God only knows where we’d be without Brian Wilson.

If that sounds glib, a journalistic play on one of his best-known tunes, think it through. The footprint made by Brian Douglas Wilson, who died on June 11, nine days short of his 83rd birthday, is amongst the largest of any single musician from the 1960s, certainly of those born his side of the Atlantic. As a writer and producer his skill was exemplary, but remember also his angelic voice, arguably the second finest in his family (his brother Carl just one step ahead in those stakes, to my mind).

Whilst it had seemed he had been long gone, trapped in his own mind, if still being paraded out by management, friends and family, the pain of his actual departure from this world is both profound and shocking. Few musicians have had as much scrutiny over the years, with books and films aplenty, all documenting the highs and lows of a life lived largely in the public eye. From the start, the bedeviled saga of the Beach Boys has attracted equal parts adoration and opprobrium, the former usually reserved for Wilson, the latter for those who sought to take advantage of his often precarious mental health.

And what highs and what lows there have been. But we at Cover Me have come to praise his genius, rather than rake over those coals; there will be plenty of that elsewhere. One of only two musicians to get two birthday “salutes” from us, here and here, his legacy was also rightly celebrated in our deep dive into the best 40 covers of songs by his band, the Beach Boys. Sure, he didn’t write them all, but certainly had a hand in the vast majority of the best ones.

Add in a welter of album reviews for the myriad tributes to him, personally and/or The Beach Boys, and it is obvious as to quite how well regarded he was, here and everywhere. I typed “Brian Wilson” into our site search engine and it delivered 16 pages, with “Beach Boys” providing 31. Even if you allow for some duplication, that is quite staggering. As such we need, and Brian Wilson deserves, a last hurrah, a valedictory victory parade of the bounty left in his wake, with the Beach Boys and without. Here is a baker’s dozen of his best.
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In Memoriam : Garth Hudson / The Band

Posted by Seuras Og at 10:30 am No Responses »

Jan 282025

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

Whilst it is now many a long year since the last active members of the Band threw in the towel, it is surely now appropriate to give a collective eulogy to this epochal and iconic band, now that the last surviving member, also the eldest, has died. Garth Hudson, the extravagantly bearded professorial figure behind his faithful Lowrey organ, left the earth last week, aged 87. It would be nice to hope the rest of the band have had time to patch up their differences, and that Valhalla is shaking once more to the mighty sound of the five-piece in their prime. For Robbie Robertson (1943 – 2023), Levon Helm (1940 – 2012), Rick Danko (1943 – 1999) and Richard Manuel (1943 – 1986) were like no other band, before or since.
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In Memoriam: Phil Lesh

Posted by Curtis Zimmermann at 10:00 am No Responses »

Nov 012024

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

It seems only fitting that a band known as the Grateful Dead would have so many songs about death. In fact, whenever a member of the Dead universe passes, there’s no shortage of songs to pay tribute to the one newly departed.

Such was the case with the passing of Phil Lesh on October 25, 2024. In the hours and days afterwards, many bands took to the stage with heartfelt tributes to the Dead’s bass player. Perhaps most notable was the jamband Phish, who, that same night, performed a cover of “Box of Rain,” a song co-written by Lesh and Robert Hunter.

The song holds the distinction of being the last track the Grateful Dead ever performed live before the passing of Jerry Garcia. Lesh added it to the band’s July 9, 1995 setlist at Soldier’s Field because he felt the song “Black Muddy River,” another song about death, was too melancholy to end the show and the tour on.

While Lesh will first and foremost always be remembered for his time in the Dead as one of the most innovative rock n’ roll bass players of all time, it’s what he did in the 29 years after Jerry’s passing that might be his greatest legacy.

Lesh kept the spirit of the Dead’s music alive by playing and collaborating with multiple generations of musicians. He helped ensure that not only would the Dead’s music live on, but that there would be many great musicians to play the music in the band’s open-ended style.

“I continue to seek out multiple musical partners, in a quest for that elusive chemistry that comes and goes as it wishes,” Lesh wrote in his 2005 memoir. “Sometimes ‘it’ happens onstage, or sometimes in rehearsal, but it always leaves me breathless and wonder-struck.”

Cover Songs Recorded By Steve Albini

Posted by Ray Padgett at 3:01 pm 1 Response »

May 082024

Steve Albini died today. In addition to being a musician in his own right, he was a legendary engineer (he refused to be credited as “producer”) who recorded Nirvana’s In Utero, Pixies’ Surfer Rosa, and many others. He recorded hundreds of albums, for bands big and small, right up through his passing.

There are a million ways to honor him, but, for now, I thought I’d share some covers that he ~~produced~~ recorded. Not for his own bands like Big Black and Shellac—we may have a separate post devoted to that—but for other people’s.

The first couple covers are iconic, mainstays of “The Best Covers of All Time” type lists. The rest are more obscure. But they all have the Albini touch—which, as he would be the first to point out, was a light one. These lean towards the alt-rock and punk, with some weird-folk excursions, but ultimately as an engineer he worked to help the bands get the sounds they wanted. Including when they wanted to do covers. Continue reading »

In Memoriam: Karl Wallinger

Posted by Mike Tobyn at 8:00 am 4 Responses »

Mar 182024

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

Karl Edmond De Vere Wallinger: chorister and oboe player educated at England’s finest schools. Karl Wallinger: hippy, Beatles fanatic, multi-instrumentalist and “likable smart aleck.” Like Joe Strummer before him, also a product of a diplomat who had his children educated at Boarding Schools, Karl Wallinger took his music and his political passions in an individual direction.

Wallinger came from the small Welsh seaside town of Prestatyn. As the crow flies it is not far from Liverpool (although it is more of a trek by road than across the Irish Sea), and his sisters gave him a love of the Beatles and Merseybeat which never left him. Music engulfed him at a young age. He was a chorister at Eton College, a nursery for Royalty and Prime Ministers, and his skills earned him a music scholarship to another famous school, Charterhouse. In the latter he followed closely on the heels of Tony Banks and Peter Gabriel, as they started their path to the formation of Genesis. Gabriel gave one of the warmest tributes to Wallinger, noting that he had “the most creative and fun week I have ever had in the studio” during their time in a Real World Recording Week.

Always active in bands and musical movements, he first came to prominence as a member of The Waterboys. In many ways that does not distinguish you. Mike Scott likes to claim that The Waterboys have had more members than any other band, and he has some receipts to help make his case. However, Wallinger was more than a bit part rental player. He was a key part of the band’s most successful incarnation, at least commercially. Having talked his way into the band (Scott had advertised for a guitarist, Wallinger sold himself as a keyboard player), Wallinger was part of the “big sound” that marked the most impactful phase of the band’s career, including their biggest hit, “The Whole of the Moon.” Scott remains on better terms with his many, many collaborators (when compared with The Fall’s Mark E. Smith, for instance), and his love and respect for Wallinger never waned. “Travel on well, my old friend,” he wrote on his X/Twitter page. “You are one of the finest musicians I’ve ever known.”
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In Memoriam: Eric Carmen

Posted by Patrick Robbins at 8:00 am No Responses »

Mar 132024

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

Eric Carmen, one of power-pop’s pioneers as the frontman for the Raspberries and a successful adult-contemporary solo artist, passed away over the weekend. He was 74 years old.

Carmen was forever a man out of time. Even as he accumulated hit records (did you know he cowrote the Footloose love theme “Almost Paradise”?), his music was scorned for being too wimpy, too poppy, too much not what was cool at the time. But time marched on, and people found themselves returning to the songs he wrote, because of their messages – what could be more direct than “I wanna be with you so bad”? – and the feelings they stirred up. Try as the critics did to shame him for his career, he had a lot to be proud of.

When it comes to covers of Eric Carmen songs, the veins are rich, but they’re tapped a lot more rarely than you might think. According to Secondhandsongs.com, the most-covered Raspberries song, “Go All the Way,” has fewer than a dozen versions. If anything good comes out of Carmen’s passing, maybe it’s that people will discover what a true artist he was. Here are five artists who have already made that discovery.