Re: Covers of Pinball Wizard

[Lev Polinsky <polinsky@husc.harvard.edu>]

> On a related note, I'm surprised that certain songs have rarely or never been
> covered, like just about everything on Who's Next or Quad, or any of John's
> songs (has only Boris been covered?).
> 
Well, the few covers I have heard of Who songs tend to sound pretty bad.  
Gorky Park's My Generation, for example, doesn't really work (and I 
understand the Russian refrains, which doesn't help me enjoy the song too 
much, either), the Scorpions' I Can't Explain falls flat because without 
the drummer playing lead, the song becomes just guitar, bass, drums, and 
background vocals all playing rhtyhm, and nothing but the vocals on 
lead.  Van Halen's WGFA is a bit better, but, then, it's not that easy to 
mess up that song.  Alex is not Keith Moon, though, as the pre-Shout 
intro amply shows.  Elton John's PW is decent, I think, although I still 
can't figure out what ICE is doing in the middle of it.  And I believe 
that the only other Who cover I've heard is Phil Collins/Genesis doing a 
snippet of PW at the 1990 Knebworth Silver Clef thing concert (Double CD 
for sale in virtually every used record store; don't spend more than $10, 
or, better yet, don't buy it at all -- you won't miss much.)  I didn't 
horribly like it, but then, how could it be good when, in an 11-min. 
medley, PC plays all of the good songs for about 20 sec. each and then 
spends what seems like an eternity singing some lame Genesis song?  Ugh.

And I've heard Eddie Cochran do 'Summertime Blues'--oh, wait, that was 
the Who covering Eddie, not the other way around.  But, as Pete says at 
Leeds (before Fortune Teller), 'ours is the most important version.'

---And we all know how painful THAT can be--L-e-v-