Great songs deserve to be free, not squeezed into hand-me-down trousers.
It looked like Jim Morrison was having a few for the road. He’d stepped offstage at the Borderline in London an hour or so earlier and slouched to the bar still in his blousy shirt, brown leather pants and trademark belt with its big silver medallions.
Jim Morrison had been dead 22 years that night. This guy, having sung a set of Doors songs with a band that looked and sounded uncannily like the Doors, told me in a suspiciously affected mumble they were off to play Paris the next day. I told him to be careful and went home.
You have to draw your own line with tribute acts. For me, with his excellent hair and accurate trousers and cultivated cool, this cat was on the wrong side of it.
It’s the in-character vibe that makes me nervous when I see, for example, an ad for Starman: The David Bowie Show, with the guy prowling in his orange bouffant and sleek jumpsuit promising an “uncanny” conjuring of the real deal. And it’s not only because he’s hotter than I am.
OK, full disclosure. My band plays David Bowie songs too. Nobody plays David though, and we do it on ukuleles. Not a tribute act; an art project, I tell people – often as they eye the exit. I get that. You have to draw your own line with art projects.
Great songs should be kept alive. A familiar title on a new album is usually where I drop the needle or point my mouse first. There’s the pleasure of recognition, followed by the fascinating question of what this particular person has found in it. Songs actually accumulate value that way.
That dub reggae version of Dark Side of the Moon? Fantastic. Hayseed Dixie playing AC/DC as bluegrass? Brilliant. A school choir singing Wichita Lineman? Shut up and give me a tissue. None of these require us to imagine the original artist has returned in a crap Halloween costume.
Nor does every cover need a clever new arrangement. Sing it straight, by all means. Just let me hear what it means to you. Somewhere in the gap between your voice and the one in my memory, there’s space for something unexpected. The smaller that gap, the more I’ll just notice what’s missing.
Lucinda Williams singing the Beatles on her From Abbey Road album and Chrissie Hynde singing Dylan on Standing in the Doorway remain unmistakably themselves. That’s the attraction: two people in the song, the one who wrote it and the one who’s finding something of herself there.
The impersonator, by contrast, is all about closing that distance. Every vowel, gesture and trouser line reassures us that we’re going somewhere we’ve been before. I do appreciate the dedication of the guy with Liam Gallagher’s haircut, anorak and top lip glued to the microphone. It’s just his ambition that leaves me cold.
This prejudice becomes harder to defend at the cinema, where impersonating a famous singer is considered an Oscar-worthy artistic undertaking. Jeremy Allen White becomes Bruce Springsteen. Marisa Abela becomes Amy Winehouse. Jennifer Hudson becomes Aretha Franklin. Joaquin Phoenix even becomes Johnny Cash.
We celebrate these musicians because they’re unique, then the vocal coach gets to work proving someone else can do it. Give me Angela Bassett miming to Tina Turner any day. At least I get to hear Tina Turner. Timothée Chalamet singing like Bob Dylan is a cute party trick that robs me of the only thing in the picture I care about: Bob Dylan.
Meanwhile on the street, ubiquitous tribute band posters are engaged in a shameless war of branding creep. Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles and Paul McCartney appear to be playing near me every other week, unless you’re stopped at the lights long enough to pull over, run across the road and read the fine print.
“We went to an ’80s tribute fest at Port Beach,” a mate of mine texted from Perth last week. “Pretenders and Style Council were awesome ... Pat Benatar really went for it. Mellencamp had a cowboy hat and was still only four foot tall.”
There’s a world of difference between singing somebody else’s songs and helping yourself to their name, logo and identity. “The Dire Straits Experience? I can assure you it’s not that,” Mark Knopfler grumbled last time we spoke. “I think they should do it on ice. Yeah,” he said, picturing the poster. “Sultans of Swing On Ice.”
That sounded like an art project I could get behind. As long as nobody’s wearing sweatbands.
Want more Verdicts?
- Hollywood nightclub scenes: Modern depictions are murder on the dancefloor
- Tom Cruise: It’s time to take the actor seriously
- Jeopardy!: The best thing on TV right now is a quiz show hosted by a Mormon brainiac
- Femme fatale: Why killer women are better than boring alpha men
- Nice guys finish first: Why this film is criminally underrated
- Binge-watching: Short seasons are ruining TV; bring back the 22-episode season
- Killer ballerinas: Why is Hollywood so obsessed with them?