Does Your Covers Band Change Songs? What Changes and Why?

[Sean]

My current covers band and previous covers band made changes to songs that I don't really understand and I don't know the origins of. I'm not talking key changes or replacing a sax solo with a guitar part,  I'm talking about structural changes. These changes include chord sequence changes, complete rewrites of sections, changing the way a song ends, changing the intro, etc

 

Now, these aren't avant guarde bands,  or artists doing reinterpretations. They're pub/club/function/festival covers bands. Some of it is so subtle it hardly seems worth it, some of it is just plain wrong, some of it seems like someone was just trying to be creative and add their own twist. I'm yet to come across one that is either an improvement or that is easier to reproduce than what is on the original. 

 

This must be a more common occurrence than I previously thought. I can't really remember dealing with it in the past. What's your experience of this sort of thing? 

 

A few I've experienced recently to get the ball rolling:

 

1. Mr Blue Sky (reprise at the end). Instead of 12 bars of Db then C then B etc there's a completely different ending that uses G A Bb with a riff.

2. Long Train Running. It goes G///|G///|Eb///|Eb/D/| at the end of the verses instead of G///|G///|Eb///|D///| I have to concentrate to not play it like the Doobies.

3. Message in a Bottle. Has a different ending that you'd never guess. 

4. Other songs: the chord sequence for the guitar solo is simplified. I see some logic but knowing the skills of the guitarists, I just can't see why they needed it simplifying. 

5. Summer of '69. After the guitar intro the band comes in on the A not the D.

 

 

Edited 4 hours ago by Sean

[tauzero]

Dirty Roses:

 

Summer of 69. Not an intentional structure change, it's just that despite us having done it for several years, the drummer still can't sort out a fill for the end of the middle 8. TBH, we really ought to drop it.

Tainted Love. Just an ending that works for us.

Twist and Shout/La Bamba. We just do it as a medley at the end of the night, it's generally fairly random where we switch from one to the other and where the lead breaks come.

Paranoid. No structure change, it's just that I think I only play about 90% of the notes because my fingers don't work fast enough. I'd love to drop it.

I think that's it.

 

Bonnevilles:

 

Born on the Bayou. Not sure if we've done a structure change or not, haven't listened to the original since we rehearsed it earlier and worked out what we would do.

 

Off the top of my head, that's it.

 

It's not just cover bands who change structures, if you have a listen to the original "Don't you forget about me" off Glittering Prize and compare it to the live version on Live in the City of Light, there's quite a major restructure. And then try and find a Youtube video where Simple Minds play it the same as they do on that live album, rather than yet another way.

 

And I really don't know why it happens. I know the guitarist in the Bonnevilles has commented on how I play Sweet Child O' Mine because I play it as per record with the correct hold of two bars on the A at the end of the Em C B A bit, as does everyone else I've played it with, but another band that he plays with does it some different length (stuff that, I'm playing it the right length!). So once a mistake has established itself, it's often difficult to extract it.

[uk_lefty]

There are some intros and endings we simplify or remove entirely because they might rely on a piano riff or something studio trickery but none of the shenanigans you mention in the op. That does seem quite odd and energy that could be spent on learning whole new songs.

[Sean]

23 minutes ago, uk_lefty said:

There are some intros and endings we simplify or remove entirely because they might rely on a piano riff 

We drop the 30 second organ intro to Faith but otherwise it's exactly like the record. 

[MacDaddy]

I'm not averse to changing bass lines if I can come up with something better than the coked-up indie halfwit who played on the original.

[Lozz196]

In my old punk covers band The Daves we were sure we played everything correctly, until we needed a new drummer. The new guy learned the songs correctly and we found a good few we played differently, with no ideas as to why the changes had been made. Maybe this happens in other bands as well?

Edited 4 minutes ago by Lozz196

[Dan Dare]

Depends on whether we think a change is needed or even whether, in our humble opinion, a change improves a song. The average pop song is not a work of great literature. It isn't sacrosanct. If changing it in some way improves it for your purposes, go for it.

[chris_b]

I've played in many bands where the band leader hadn't bothered to learn the song properly. Trying to get them to change just causes grief, so I shrug my shoulders and play their version.

 

I played with one idiot who couldn't get the arrangements right from one gig to the next! Several times his " impromptu changes" caught me out and it was very annoying to be told that I needed to learn the songs!! Apart from him it was a good band, with good songs and good players, so I stuck it out.

 

In cover bands I prefer to be playing the original because IME they never rehearse, so it's better that everyone sits at home learning the original arrangement and it's easier for deps to seamlessly fit in.