Covered in Folk: The Rolling Stones
(on coverage beyond blues, ballads, and basic rock & roll)
June 1st, 2010 — 10:42 pm
There’s little a humble folkblogger could add to the cultural conversation about the Rolling Stones. Heck, without a quick glance at Wikipedia, I can’t even name all the players, though after three and a half decades of modern radio culture, I can certainly hum along with their radio hits.
There’s certainly no dearth of Stones covers out there, either. Yet interestingly, though the songs of Jagger and Richards seem to lend themselves to soul, heavy metal, and both mainstream and alt-country wonderfully, I find few covers from the folkworld in my collection. Oh, sure: Wild Horses strips down wonderfully; Angie, too, though both are more often covered as rock ballads, or plaintive pianopop. But for a band so steeped in the blues and gospel traditions, it seems like there should be much more to offer from the acoustic side of the music world.
It’s tempting to point to the predominantly adolescent bent of the lyrical content, or the jangly rock framework which the Stones adopt in so many of their greatest hits, in explaining why the Jagger/Richards compositions are less obvious a choice for folk coverage than, say, Townes Van Zandt or The Beatles, or even R.E.M. Personally, I think the vast majority of their songbook is so guitar riff and beat-driven, and their performance so driven by Jagger’s over-the-top delivery, that boiling out these essentials doesn’t always retain the essence of the songs. At least one failed experiment in this vein - the utterly bloodless, comprehensively boring New Licks: A Tribute To The Rolling Stones - lends credence to my theory.
Perhaps its time for a renaissance, regardless. In the meanwhile, there’s plenty of authentic emotion to be found in these choice covers from the folkworld and its fringes.
- Ollabelle: I Am Waiting
(gorgeous contemporary folk with a hint of gospel from Ollabelle, 2004)
- Greg Brown & Bill Morrissey: You Can’t Always Get What You Want
(worldweary acoustic folk-blues from Friend of Mine, 1993)
- James Walsh: You Can’t Always Get What You Want
(ragged solo singer-songwriter folk live from SXSW, 2007)
- Cat Power: (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
(sparse, hushed indiefolk from The Covers Record, 2000)
- Patty Larkin: Ruby Tuesday
(live solo guitar electrofolk from the 2003 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival)
- Danny Barnes: Sympathy For The Devil
(weird and funky banjopunk bluegrass from Get Myself Together, 2005)
- Odetta: No Expectations
(soulful orchestra-driven pop from Odetta Sings, 1970 [out-of-print])
- Eleanor McEvoy: Mother’s Little Helper
(an Irish folkpop siren’s jazz turn from Love Must Be Tough, 2007)
- Stereophonics: Angie
(cracked solo unplugged rock from the Hurry Up And Wait single, 1999)
- Josh Bloomberg: Beast of Burden
(a sweet, flowing popfolk love song from How To Survive in Miami, 1999)
- The Powder Kegs: Dead Flowers
(jangly old-timey stringband folk from The Seedhouse, 2007)
- Calexico w/ Iron & Wine: Wild Horses
(hoarse and dreamy indie-alt-country live from the Triple Door, 2005)
- Charlotte Martin: Wild Horses
(lush, flowing pianofolk from On Your Shore, 2004)
- Susan Tedeschi: You Got The Silver
(tender yet gutsy country blues from Hope and Desire, 2005)
- Crooked Still: You Got The Silver
(smooth & fluid folkgrass from Some Strange Country, 2010)
Previously on Cover Lay Down:
- Pianofolk chanteuse Allison Crowe covers The Rolling Stones’ Shine A Light, and Danny Barnes covers Willie Johnson’s Let Your Light Shine On Me, alongside 10 more folk covers of songs about light.
- Bill Janovitz covers Blondie and The Rolling Stones as part of our All Folked Up megapost on seminal punk covers.