Solo Artists Playing Their Ex-Band's Songs

It helps if they wrote the material and contributed significantly to the playing of it. I mean, Sting's not gonna get up at a Sting concert and play a Stewart Copeland-written song. Does McCartney play "Strawberry Fields" or "Octopus's Garden"? I doubt it.

When the solo artist pretty much IS the band, whether it's Elvis Costello or Dave Matthews, who cares?

But when the song depends as much or more on an absent (but not dead) collaborator, it's less tenable. I recently picked up the Morrissey live CD, and the first track is "How Soon Is Now." WTF?

Case in point- McCartney doing "Something" on the last tour as tribute to George Harrison. Intentional or not, it came across as parody more than anything. Utter rubbish.

However, I believe Sting loses from the abscence of Andy Summers' signature sound on the old songs. If the solo artist IS their ex-band, you can easily forget about the other guys, EXCEPT when unmistakable sounds created the brand.

Sometimes the solo person is touring alone for the first time. How much ex-band material they bring out is up for discussion, if they've only got one album.

I'm pretty sure Tilbrook does Squeeze songs live. Colin Meloy plays mostly Decemberists songs (but then he pretty much IS the band). There's a lot of overlap between Jeff Tweedy's solo performances and the Wilco catalogue.

I'm trying to think of people who are really careful NOT to play their ex-band's songs. I saw Chris Robinson a while ago, opening for someone else, and he didn't even mention the Black Crowes.

Morrissey should know better. But who wants to pay a silly amount of money to go see him, and hear no Smiths songs? Not me.

George Harrison used to do "In My Life". It was a bit controversial because at the end, he'd sing "In my life, I love Him more..."

John Fogarty and Levon Helm soooooooo NOT to thread.

Did Brian Ferry play Roxy Music tunes when he went out solo?

Ditto Gabriel.

Paul Simon is a middle case. He's got enough solo material, but I don't mind him playing S&G songs (it helps that Garfunkel didn't write or play instruments). What I thought especially interesting is that on the various reunion concerts, Garfunkel sings on plenty of solo-Simon songs (including whole verses of "Slip Sliding Away").

I see no good reason for anyone NOT to play a song if it's in the their discography.

I think the idea of musicians only playing the new stuff is super lame. No one should be too embarassed to play their best material.

Yeah, well, that's a different topic. If Bono went solo and played "Sunday Bloody Sunday" with someone other than the Edge playing the guitar, I think the fabric of the universe might split.

I don't know whether Hindu Love Gods or whatever play REM songs.

I thought it was a terrible idea when they first started this back in 2001 or so, but now I'm like, fuck it, they wrote those songs, they might as well do them, I'd rather hear them do them than some other band do a crappy cover. Also, they play them really, really, really well.

Quite another when--like Johnny Marr--they're quite alive.

What about Roger Waters? Does he play "Money" live?

But I think it's an overstatement to say that Waters "wrote most of" "the entire Floyd catalog."

1998.

In the late 90s, the two songwriter chicks parted ways very bitterly. One of them, Nina Gordon, went on to put out a solo record, the other, Louise Post, kept the name Veruca Salt and formed an entirely new band behind the name. Veruca Salt then put out a record consisting of a few songs attacking Nina Gordon.

And this new version of Veruca Salt continued to play the old Veruca Salt hits, pretty much all of which were written by Nina Gordon (again, no longer in the band and hated by Ms. Post).

Andy Taylor did some Duran covers when he was doing gigs outside the band, too. But he had fewer solo songs to fall back on, so I would imagine these WOULD probably have been out of necessity rather than by choice.

Levon, Garth, and a couple of ghosts would really take umbrage at the last part of your sentence, Rock.

Yeah, I know what ASCAP says. It also says that Paul McCartney co-wrote "Give Peace A Chance".

As for the McCartney/Harrison thing: I understand that during George Harrison's '74 tour he not only took to covering Lennon's "In My Life" but even CHANGED THE FUCKING LYRICS to make it religious! ("In my life/I love G-d more.")

And this is kinda weird and amusing: Burton Cummings covering Bachman-Turner Overdrive's "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet", Cummings and Randy Bachman both being ex-Guess Who bandmates, and far from being friends. Has anyone else ever done this, ie. cover a song from a former bandmate's post-band career?

The lyric was "...I love Him more", as I mentioned in the tenth post of this thread.

All this Eagle talk on those other threads have been bringing back some odd memories for me lately.

-- Pleasant Plains /// (pleasant.plain...), May 5th, 2005

Oh screw that. Fogarty >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Creedance Clearwater Revisted.

Helm, who makes a pretty credible claim that he co-wrote many of The Band's songs that Robbie Robertson takes sole credit for, also refuses to play any of his ex-band's songs.

Playing some old hits live, because his fans want to hear them, I see nothing wrong about. For instance, when Paul McCartney is touring, a lot of his audience consists of 55 year-old women who have come to hear "Yesterday" and "Michelle", and why should he not give them what they want?
He usually just plays his own compositions though, no Lennon or Harrison ones.

See also Oasis...(if you count the Gallaghers as a single entity).

I've seen both Ian Brown and John Squire doing Stone Roses stuff. Both dud (though Squire less dud than Brown).

I wish he'd played more Soul Coughing stuff the other night -- the newest songs are horrifically reminiscent of Dave Matthews.

The American Hifi guy