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

[Franticsmurf]

23 hours ago, chris_b said:

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.

I've had exactly the same experience. The Guitarist/singer took great delight in 'impromptu changes' which, he said, were the sign of a real professional musician and that we should be able to follow him if we were pros too. It was extremely annoying at the time, but I later realised that I had learnt to improvise almost instantly and as a result became more confident on stage. One night we let him improvise the opening to the act on his own and he made a right royal c*ck-up of it. We only joined him on stage after the silence had ended. 

 

In answer to the OP - In the band mentioned above, we played simplified arrangements (usually a reduced number of verses) as the 'professional' guitarist/singer rarely rehearsed, which may also have been the source of the 'professional impromptu changes'. We had a longer introduction to 'Psychokiller' which involved the solid bass and drum beat with some odd guitar over it - I quite liked it myself - and at the end of the song we would often swap between it and '500 Miles'.

 

In my current band, many of the arrangements have been modified to accommodate the range of instruments - usually involving a simplification of the rhythm for the ukes and brass - but the songs remain fundamentally the same. Last year we did a version of Pinball Wizard that didn't change key for the last verse because the singer couldn't hit those notes. I had no problem with that and it went down just fine with the crowd. 

 

I am not averse to rearranging a cover if there is some artistic merit to it  - say to fit in with a band style - but definitely not to showcase a single band member or to overcome the failings of band members to properly learn songs. 

[Lozz196]

That’s a great idea, PsychovKiller segue to 500 Miles

[asingardenof]

Any changes we make are usually as a result of a lack of talent for a band member, or where the intro goes on a bit and just leaves us standing around, but sometimes just for fun:

• Two Tribes - an extra bar inserted after the second verse (as the song goes chorus-verse-chorus-verse), increasing the quiet bit from three to four bars, because everyone (apart from me) loses count of where we are. I sometimes worry about the ability of some of my bandmates to count, especially our drummist, because we hardly ever seem to end this song in the right place as well
• Somewhere In My Heart - horn intro binned 
• Club Foot and Are Friends Electric - long, atmospheric intros shortened
• Dakota - outro extended to make it end a bit more enthusiastically

[Sean]

21 hours ago, Obrienp said:

Its pretty impressive that he manages to get the solos for Sultans of Swing and Come Up and See Me right, while playing them significantly faster than the originals, Lol!

We rehearsed Sultans last week and it was so fast that I was blown away by the dexterity of nailing the solos note for note.

 

I believe that a lot of songs "breathe" better at the right tempo or within a certain tolerance. 

With Sultans I found that my bass line sounded too busy at the tempo we played it whereas playing it at the "Alchemy tempo" sounds fine. 

 

I've found that vocalists struggle too when songs are rushed, their breath control goes completely and then their performance drops off.

 

In a previous band I used to nag about playing songs too fast all the time and was ignored, not even a conversation. I clocked Living on a Prayer at 151 bpm off one gig recording (it's 123bpm on the record), others were similarly fast, then one gig we had a dep drummer who played everything absolutely on the money and afterwards the other three wouldn't shut up about how well we played and how much a great groove we had, how we didn't make any mistakes etc.  

 

 

[Obrienp]

I agree with you. I always feel we sound frantic and the vocals do suffer a lot of the time. I’m all for playing stuff at dancing tempo but even the most dedicated dancer needs a breather every so often!

[tauzero]

On 20/01/2026 at 14:04, Sean said:

I'm currently getting my head around playing "those sections" of Times Like These in 4/4 time instead of 7/4. I can see the logic in making the decision but it's not difficult to count 3 / 4 then 4/4 to get to 7.  That one is a lazy shortcut and and is now 15 years ingrained into 4 people so I'm "re-learning" it. 

 

Oddly, it took months before I realised it was in 7/8 - I'd simply been playing what I heard on the original track and the guitarist was playing it right, it hadn't clicked that it didn't quite fit into normal length bars.

 

I was in a club band which went out in various forms, sometimes the guitarist was the singer and other times we had a singer. He could hit the right notes, in the right order, but song structures were a bit of a mystery to him, so the rest of us were quite adept at following him into a verse where there should have been a chorus, or vice versa, or bringing the vocals in seven bars into a 12-bar guitar solo. Still, that wasn't permanent structure changes, they were very very temporary.

[Nail Soup]

In my now defunct punk & new wave covers band we generally played it as per the record, with the exceptions:

• Instrument not available - example we replaced a harmonica break with a guitar solo. DI not attempt to mimic the harmonica break.
• Fade-outs - made up our own ending, or copied from a live version by the original band.
• An improvised-sounding solo or breakdown... make up our own.

Gives rare opportunity for creative freedom!

 

But never changed anything because we think we could just improve on the original.

[jensenmann]

Original bands often change their songstructures, why not a covers band, too. It has nothing to do with the intention to improve a "flawed" hit song. My band often moves parts, plays songs longer, give certain parts a different vibe. It simply catches the crowd´s attention, which is good.