Lindsey's Facination with the Stones
 

The GOS Survivor made me realize how many Stones covers Lindsey has done. Yes, The Rolling Stones were greatly influential and had some amazing songs, but I just find it odd that Lindsey keeps covering their songs. They just seem to be a little too mainstream for Lindsey's tastes.

I don't know... maybe some of the musical experts on the board can provide me with a little insight as to why they think Lindsey is fascinated with the Stones??

I don't know, Ali. Maybe the crux of the matter is akin to the painter of still life who isn't so much fascinated by the bowl of fruit in front of him as by what he intends to make of it.

Lindsey? Is that you?

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

thanks gazza, I'm really pissing my pants over here laughing!!!

LMAO! :laugh:

Imagine that.

I heard Cheri loved the stones and initially, he did Blue Turns to Grey and She Smiled Sweetly for her. However, doing so many other ones long after he and Cheri had crashed and burned is inexplicable to me. Indeed, I find it pretty lame.

At first I thought "Well, these are demos. He's having some fun. He surely wouldn't put them on an album." However, remember when SYW was going to be a double album, and Mick said something about including a "tribute to the Stones"? I wonder how many covers they would have included to warrant that term? One is excusable, but a "tribute" implies more than one. I would hope they would be embarrassed to do that but it sounds like they were planning on it. And Lindsey's inclusion of "I Am Waiting" on Soundstage - an ADDITIONAL Stones cover beyond the GOS ones - makes that implication even more likely.

Someone needs to sit Lindsey down and tell him, "Honey, you have original material. There is ZERO ZILCHO reason to go off on Stones covers. Do one if you adore them so much but any more than that is just odd." Seriously, guys, let's try to think of another major band/artist that's released a studio album containing even two covers songs originally recorded by another single band (excluding theme albums that consist entirely of covers). Not too easy, is it?

The next mac tour should end with Satisfaction!:]

Granted, I can't say that I have heard the orginal versions of the songs to compare, but still....did Lindsey really do something so brilliant with these songs that would make people stop and go, "wow, how magnificent!" I don't think so.

I agree with Nancy. I just don't understand what Lindsey finds in The Stones that is so facinating. There really isn't anything *that* special in the songs he did cover. The lyrics are ok and there is nothing great as far as the guitar work goes, imo. And as far as LB looking up to Mick Jagger or Keith Richards...I find that hard to fathom.

Wouldn't such brilliance -- if it be reached -- be in the eye of the beholder? Neither is every artistic goal reached satisfactorily. Who's to say whether Lindsey himself either had something to say or felt he said it well by reconceptualizing these old songs, howsoever miniscule the degree?
He'd need to tell us for us to know -- & even then we may not know completely. He worked up several of these old Stones songs, & submitted several of them to fellow producers & label heads, intending them for inclusion on a solo album at one point. Judging by that, he seemed happy with what he did -- or at least happy enough.

Maybe he was in a Stones sorta mood.

To someone who considers himself primarily an arranger (in its deepest sense) & a sonic painter, does it much matter who pens the lyrics & the chord progression?

Well what do YOU think, David? Do you think they are brilliant or crap? I'm assuming you've heard the originals, unlike myself.

LFMAO

I like the stones :wavey:

No, I haven't heard the Stones renditions. I don't think Lindsey's renditions are earthshakingly brilliant, no, but they're pleasant enough. My point, really, was that Lindsey possibly thought that those Stones songs had something for him to draw on, something to build his own statement on -- but he doesn't necessarily think they're the world's greatest songs, any more than he had to consider any of Christine's or Stevie's material great in order to fashion it into a personal studio statement for himself -- or at least for Fleetwood Mac.

You originally asked why Lindsey was so fascinated with the Stones or with these Stones songs, to which I suggested that he wasn't, necessarily -- but he may have been fascinated by the possibilities of reworking them.

I just find in ironic that Lindsey did relatively faithful arrangements of ALL the Stones tunes he covered, yet just majorly f***ed up the George Harrison song.

How many Bob Dylan songs has he done? I know about Love Minus Zero/No Limit.

Unless there are more "in the can" that haven't been discovered & circulated, that's it.

He also covered Donovan..."Try For The Sun".

That's all, I believe. I think that studio version is crap, too. Uninspired MOR, what was even the point? He did do a nice job of it at the AHI show in 2001, though.

I'm familiar with at least a few of the original versions of some of Lindsey's Stones covers, and I can try and figure out how to put some up on YouSendit later if anybody's interested in them. I like what Lindsey did with them, but as someboy else mentioned, they're fairly faithful renditions, just a little Lindsey-fied. I wonder if he just happened to be on a big Stones kick at some point and decided to use some of their mid-60s material as templates for some his own production ideas. Lindsey's versions are more headphones songs than the Stones' originals, and I'm guessing we lose quite a bit of that aspect of the productions with the compressed mp3s we've got, leaving us to think they're just quaint little covers. I wonder if there's much more depth to the sound in the top-quality copies Lindsey's got.

That's a bit more of a reinterpretation than a straight-up cover, though. He changed the lyrics around quite a bit to make it more Stevie-related.

But none of these songs were ever released bar I Am Waiting, which is the most likely candidate to have been the Stones' tribute on Say You Will. I don't think Lindsey's Stones obsession is lame as I personally believe he never intended to release more than one. He may have been experimenting to find the Jagger/Richards tune he liked the best, that suited him best. To me it's like any musically-minded Ledgie covering their favourite Mac songs, it's just Lindsey has the luxury of his recording his in his own studio.

Here's the tracklisting of GOS that David originally received, and the one people believe was submitted to the heads of Warner in 2001:

1 Someone's Gotta Change Your Mind
2 Miranda
3 Steal Your Heart Away
4 Red Rover
5 She Smiled Sweetly
6 Come
7 Down on Rodeo
8 Gotta Get Away
9 Try for the Sun
10 Shuffle Riff
11 Murrow
12 Gift of Screws
13 Bleed to Love Her
14 Twist of Fate
15 Go Insane
16 Say Goodbye
17 The Singer Not the Song

Three Stones songs there. Now it could be that some of these were just suggestions. After all, 17 songs is a lot for one album. Unless it was meant to be one of those double albums in terms of the vinyl era, like SYW with its 18 tracks is.

Then he should go and arrange someone else's work instead of trying to release a solo album of his own. Covering a bunch of songs because you'd rather arrange them than write your own lyrics and chording is inexcusable on any level except the theoretical. Has he no shame?

Sorry, I guess I was wondering why he would cover the songs from a musical sense...i.e. similar chord progression, similar writing styles etc. Even though I have played piano my entire life, this stuff still confuses me. But your suggestion makes sense too.

Good point there. Putting out one's own solo album generally requires one to attempt to make at least some statements in terms of songwriting rather than merely track-crafting.

But what if he covered these Stones songs because he liked what they already had to say? I really don't know what his reasoning was. I'm just suggesting possibilities outside the usual "Steviefied" realm of the lyrics being the sole vessel of meaning, or in this case the sole cause of Lindsey's reasoning.

Again, I don't know what his reasoning was -- or whether it even had anything to do with the songs' lyrical or chordal qualities.

Without knowing what Lindsey's reasoning was, we can still state pretty firmly that the chords of these songs aren't anything particularly different from what Lindsey is typically inclined to compose himself.

Really, not knowing that "Gotta Get Away" or "The Singer Not The Song" is a Stones tune, you'd more than likely assume it was a Lindsey Buckingham song, as I did before Les or somebody told me these were old Stones songs.

Lyrically, I have less of an opinion, mainly because I'm less familiar with how a typical Jagger/Richards lyric is distinguishable from a Buckingham lyric. Besides, lyric-writing styles are so frequently mimicked in rock that anyone would be hard-pressed to pin down authorship or influence in most songs.

Ali, you've started a marvelous thread & I really love you!

What are you talking about? Musicians record covers or new arrangements of other people's material all the time. What on earth is shameful about it?

You asked in an earlier post for artists who have released albums that weren't specifically covers-only projects (though I'm not sure why that would make a difference) but nonetheless contained multiple covers. The first one I can think of off the top of my head is a Canadian singer-songwriter called Feist who recently released an album that is half covers and half originals: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=music

If she's not "major" enough for you (though Lindsey solo is anything but major himself), then I'll mention Willie Nelson, whose last album included a handful of original songs, a handful of songs that other songwriters had written for him, and a few covers, including Tom Waits' "Picture in a Frame" and the Allman Brothers Band's "Midnight Rider." And then of course there are all of Johnny Cash's albums with Rick Rubin. Or will you say country musicians don't count for some reason?

But weren't these covers of songs by different artists? Was Willie covering multiple songs from one band/artist, as Lindsey is doing with the Stones?

What's the difference? Why does it matter who the songs are by, or if more than one song is by the same artist?

You don't think that's odd? I guess that's where we differ. I find it extremely odd to rely so heavily on one group/artist for material.

A hypothetical 3 songs out of a hypothetical 17 isn't exactly what I would call "relying heavily" on a single artist.

But what's so incredibly odd about it? The Byrds jump-started their career doing it; their first album was titled Mr. Tambourine Man and included an additional three Dylan tunes aside from the title track. And Manfred Mann revitalized his career in the mid-70s by forming the Earth Band and butchering at least three great Springsteen songs.

I'm a big fan of the Stones originals as well as the Lindsey covers. He made them truly unique, textural and interesting, which is saying alot because I personally find covers pretty tricky to pull off successfully. He brought something original to some already great songs and I fail to see that it was somehow a bad idea to rework songs that he happens to be fan of himself. Hell, he could do 10 more for all I care.

I wouldn't mind hearing a few more either.

Everybody's heard about the Scottish sheep farmer/dyslexic Stones fan who awoke one morning to find one his neighbors engaged in illicit activities with his prize animal, right?

He shouted, "Hey! MacLeod! Get offa m' ewe!"

Anyway, I'd like to hear Lindsey's take on that one...

Thanks David! :wavey:

Conveniently enough, Gotta Get Away, Blue Turns to Gray and Singer Not the Song are all on the Stones' December's Children album so that should get you up to speed. You'd be surprised by just how different they sound which is what I love. What's the point of a cover if you're not going to bring some vast originality to it?

After making a career of covering Dylan previous to that. And, I wouldn't exactly use the term "butchering"...I actually kinda like 'em. For their time, they were a pretty good band.

I refuse to use anything less. Ugh.

I'd like to hear lindsey's take on:

Honky Tonk Women

Waiting on a Friend

Let's spend the night together

Oh, and I HATE Miss You, but a Lindsey-take would be interesting, as would Jagger's Let's Work. (blergh-but not Buck's take!)