Suzanne & Hope
Remember the giddy days when this blog used to be about music, rather than futile attempts to influence political machinations incomprehensibly bigger than ourselves? It was only a week ago, but it feels like fucking ages.
I don’t have a lot of new music to post at the moment, so I thought I’d mention this interesting little snippet. Last night on my Fresh Air show I played a couple of (relatively) obscure songs, along with the popular songs which they had inspired. Which, In fact, they Inspired so very much that writing credits were given to the writers of the first song, so heavily was it borrowed from.
The first one was pretty obvious: Creep by Radiohead borrows so heavily from The Air That I Breathe by The Hollies that they were credited on the album cover to Pablo Honey, and apparently everyone but me knew this until quite recently.
The second one, however, was a little more obscure. I bought R.E.M.’s Up back when it was released, in about 1998. I loved it then, and I still do; in fact I think it might be just about their most under-rated album. They had lost drummer Bill Berry and instead of trying to paper over the cracks, they seem to have decided to turn a potential failing into a virtue. The album is shot through with synths and drum machines, successfullly embracing the fact that it is largely drumless instead of just fudging through and hoping no-one would notice Bill was gone.
About halfway through this record is a song called Hope, which I think is brilliant, but when the sharp-eared (not in a Star Trek sense) young lady I was seeing at the time made some throwaway comment about it being pretty much a Leonard Cohen cover, I was completely baffled. I just couldn’t hear any Leonard Cohen in there, so we went back through his album and eventually tracked down Suzanne. It’s such a classic I am more than a little surprised I couldn’t hear the similarities to begin with, but you know what, I still can’t. If I hear them one after another then it’s pretty obvious, but if I try and just listen to hope in isolation I genuinely can’t make the leap in my head, even though I know it’s there.
R.E.M. actually credited Cohen for his influence on the song in their inlay card. I love both, frankly, and the French version of Suzanne by Francoise Hardy is also gorgeous. Enjoy.
Leonard Cohen – Suzanne
R.E.M. – Hope
Francoise Hardy – Suzanne
Keeping a low profile, DMCA-magnet wise, then, I see…
Just wondering…
DMCA – cheeky!
But your comments about “Up” are spot on. Hugely under-rated album.
with regards to Mr Cohen, there is a pretty good cd on the cover of the current issue of Mojo with a load of people covering his songs
Ian McCulloch covers Suzanne
Oh wow. That sounds excellent – must pop to the shops on the weekend. Not sure about McCulloch covering Suzanne but, erm, we’ll see how it turns out.
Dearie Me Matthew.
The fact that some of the lyrics in ‘Hope’ and ‘Suzanne’ are identical sort of gives the game away.
Ian McCulloch has a good track record of covering Leonard Cohen tracks – he’s also been known to incorporate snatches of them into Bunnymen songs.
But the best thing of all is that next Wednesday, I’ve tickets to see the great man himself in the reasonably intimate surroundings of the Armadillo in Glasgow….
I assume you mean Leonard Cohen.
And yeah, the Armadillo: so intimate he’ll be stroking your leg suggestively by the third song.
I don’t know about “Up”. Lyrically, it’s fantastic, but all the synth drives me nutty.
I’ve always thought I only liked Up in bits. I’ve spent my time with the album track-skipping to the songs I connected with earliest, such as Lotus, Walk Unafraid, and Why Not Smile, and kind of writing off the rest.
I’ve just gone back and given Hope another go, and that really is a magnificent vocal performance by Stipe. (Can I use this as an excuse to repeat my claim that Micheal Stipe’s voice is one of the most beautiful sounds in the world of music?)
I think it just shows how little attention I’ve paid the rest of the album that I didn’t spot the Suzanne connection on Hope.
“Up” is my favourite REM album.
Yes Neil, it’s right up there for me as well, although so different from their others that I wouldn’t state a definite preference.
Dylan – Parakeet and Sad Professor are brilliant as well. Give the whole thing a listen when you get the chance, I doubt you’ll be disappointed.
I wish I was going to see Laughing Len. I wish I’d gone to see him at Edinburgh Castle. I wish I was a little bit taller (and richer enough to afford rip off gig prices)
‘And richer enough’ says the professional writer. Not that I don’t know what you mean, having seen the Arcade Fire play the SECC, whilst perched in the cheap seats off to the side.
(sorry)
While I’m not proud of paying £75 for a seat (albeit quite a decent one), I feel its worth it as I’ve never seen the great man and am unlikely to do so again (i didnt go to Edinburgh Castle on the principle of never going to outdoor gigs).
It was the same when Neil Youmg came calling a few months back.
I listened to Up twice through today while bimbling about the flat on a day off work, and I find that my opinion of the album hasn’t really changed.
It is – by the high standards REM have set for themselves – a mediocre album overall, lifted by a couple of great bits.
With respect, it’s simply wrong to claim that it’s up there with their best work. You can’t stand this album next to the likes of Document, Lifes Rich Pageant, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Automatic For The People or Murmur and expect a positive comparison. Hell, it’s not even as good as Accelerate
Too often the band stretch for the unexpected difficult chord change, rather than opting for the natural progression the song expects. This smacks of a loss of confidence in the band and a case of collective writer’s block.
The void left by Bill Berry is not adequately filled by a few natty drum machine loops. A skilful multi-instrumentalist musician himself, not just a percussionist, I’m led to believe that Berry’s influence on the band had been to keep the more ‘artistic’ and ‘experimental’ leanings of the rest of the band in check.
Without Berry’s down-to-earth tempering, the band are adrift. Without the solid foundation their drummer provided, not only with his drumsticks but more so with his no-bullshit attitude to simple rock ‘n’ roll, country and punk-rock, REM are lost and confused.
There are great moments on Up, and Hope is one that had passed me by, so I’m grateful to Matthew for writing this post. However I still believe that REM only recorded one great album between New Adventures In Hi-Fi and Accelerate.
The trouble is they spread that one great album out over three separate LPs, and made us endure an awful lot of tiresome, drab filler while we rooted out the all too rare gems from Up, Reveal and Around The Sun.
Hi there,
thank you sooo very much for posting this wonderful SUZANNE-version by Françoise Hardy. I only knew her (not so very much expressive) “les filles et les garçons” and other chansons. In the beginning it’s pretty strange to hear that song sung by a female voice, but the more I hear it, the more I like it
Once more: thank you for posting!
Nontheless I must say that CREEP is a real briliant track – it’s like the soundtrack of my generation (alongside with Nirvana’s “Smells like teen spirit” – which contains, as much as I know, no allusion to another great artist?!?)
And – yeah, it’s true that in Radiohead’s “Creep” there’s a stunning resemblance to that “peace came upon me” sequence of “sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe”. Thanx for this, too
Greets, Sonia^^
My generation too. I love the Hollies song, but I’ll always have a special connection to creep. Teen Spirit too – they were on MTV all the time when I was *that age*, if you know what I mean.