The Waterboys, The Soul Singer
When asked by American Songwriter if the lead single from the Waterboys 2020 album, Good Luck, Seeker was based on anyone in particular, Mike Scott laughed. “There could be somebody specific and it also could be an amalgam of people,” he said. “There may even be a couple of bits of me in there as well.”
Scott was being a bit coy. Sounds to me like an affectionate send-up of one the most legendarily difficult artists in the music business.
“They call him curmudgeon, say he's a churl / Stories follow him 'round the world / Hear this one man, a humdinger / Ladies and gentlemen, the soul singer!”
Van Morrison, Jackie Wilson Said
And who might that curmudgeonly soul singer be? None other than the guy below. In this great 1972 rocker, Van Morrison sings the praises of R&B artist Jackie Wilson.
(As Mike Scott sang, “The great recordings still remain / From when his genius was uncontained / He's in there somewhere, that old gunslinger / Ladies and gentleman, the soul singer!”)
Paul McCartney and Wings, Too Many People
After the Beatles broke up in 1970, the band members mostly kept from public sniping, until two solo album releases from Paul McCartney and John Lennon, respectively. In the lead track from 1971’s Ram, Paul warbles about “two many people preaching practices,” which John took as a poison-pen lyric directed at him. A not altogether paranoid interpretation, given the album’s back cover photo of one beetle mounting another.
Great tune, regardless.
John Lennon, How Do You Sleep
This savage little number was Lennon’s studio response to Ram, on his otherwise luminous 1971 album, Imagine. In spite of this vinyl-melting bitchslap, the riff between the two ex-Beatles was mostly healed by the late seventies. Yet Lennon’s 1980 assassination cut short the dream of them ever working together again.
Ringo Starr, I’m The Greatest
It wasn’t all slings and arrows between the ex-Beatles, of course. John Lennon penned this high-spirited hit for Ringo Starr’s third and best solo album, in 1973.
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, (Are You) The One That I’ve Been Waiting For
“I was so surprised I almost dropped my syringe,” said the Australian singer-songwriter of the break-up phone call from musician P. J. Harvey. “Never one to waste a good crisis, I set about completing The Boatman’s Call.” The 1996 album, possibly Cave’s best, contains a number of powerful ballads inspired by the Goth singer’s relationship with Harvey, including the stunner below.
“I still had a certain amount of work to do on my understanding of the concept of monogamy,” Cave told The Guardian in 2019, “and Polly had her own issues, I suspect, but I think at the end of the day it came down to the fact that we were both fiercely creative people, each too self-absorbed to ever be able to inhabit the same space in any truly meaningful way…”
Some earlier evidence of the pair’s feelings for each other is seen in this dark little collaboration here.
Ian Hunter, Michael Picasso
When Mott the Hoople front man Ian Hunter connected with David Bowie’s lead guitarist in the early seventies, the result was instant friendship and a spectacular string of albums by the musical co-conspirators. Ronson’s premature death from of cancer in 1993 left a big hole in Hunter’s life, both personally and musically. Here’s the singer’s moving valedictory to his friend in a 2004 performance in London.
(Hunter also penned this about coming to terms with his friend’s death, which joins a string of his tributes to artists who left the world too early, including John Lennon, David Bowie, and his friend Freddy Mercury. He wasn’t quite as kind to The Sex Pistol’s Sid Viscious, however. )
The Waterboys, London Mick
Mike Scott’s also no slouch in honouring musical greats, having tackled Van Morrison (above) and Keith Richards. Here’s another good one, a warm-hearted shout-out to Mick Jones of The Clash, from 2019.
BONUS SONG
C.R. Avery, Folk Singer
Not so warm-hearted, this tune. A bag of flaming shit left on the doorstep of some nameless folkie who got on the wrong side of C.R. Avery. Makes “How Do You Sleep” seem like a scented Valentine.
It keeps amazing me how iconic Van Morrison is. In this line up of songs there was yet another one that I thought was the classic song of someone else; along with the Waterboys having covered Sweet Thing I now realize that Dexy's Midnight Runners were not the original authors of Jackie Wilson Said. But I tell ya, classic artists covering classic artists in a classic way is often a "sweet thing" thing ain't it; just think of where the Beatles and Siouxsie and the Banshees intersect.
You sure you're not a musician...?
You could write a book about them, that's for sure. Thanks for the tunes.