Surprised no-one has mentioned Ferry yet, since he virtually invented the trend for re-interpreting songs like this in rock --- very much NOT a rock thing before --- with a Duchamp theory of found objects --- his 'scandalous' re-arrangement of Dylan's 'A Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall' is the obvious example, of many ---- (Ferry's all-cover albums influencing Bowie's Pin Ups)
But ultimately perhaps Ferry was ruined by his indulgence in cover versions, as he gradually converged with them, lost his modernist edge and became the very lounge bar e-z listening crooner he earlier part-parodied. Nick Cave another victim of the same syndrome: think of the difference between what he does to Leonard Cohen's Avalanche --- dragging it out of acoustic troubled quietude into a punitive percussion-scape anchored by Barry Adamson's cobra-coiled bass and scarred by Bargeld's ragged part-disassembled guitar --- and the more or less trad versions later on in his career --- pretty soon, his sound is so MOR that it is difficult to tell the covers from his own stuff ---
Magazine - 'Thank you falletin be mice elf agin' - can't decide if that has messed with the DNA or not --- I think the sheer fact of the Devoto vox change it out of all recognition
I know there are a few songs that I thought the covering band had written, and was surprised, even disappointed, to find that they hadn't --- but can't think of any e.g.'s atm
Most irritating trend in covers:
Indie rocking it up ---- most heinous e.g. of this I can think of atm is The Futureheads' student lager roughing up of Kate Bush's 'Hounds of Love' --- maybe it was Age of Chance who started this idiot trend --- in any case the idea that trampling all over non-rock subtlety with distortion pedals and amps turned up to 11 is the very height of crass cliche (anyone remember Robbie Williams doing a high speed guitar version of 'Back For Good' to prove that he is, like, cool and hard now?) They need to be disabused of the deluded notion that they are radicalizing the original (rather than the reverse)
--- was talking with I.T. the other day about the Goth/EBM tendency to do this sort of thing --- cf Marilyn Manson's 'Sweet Dreams' and 'Tainted Love', Rammstein 'The Model' --- and how misconceived it is --- how much more interesting it was for Johnny Cash to cover 'Personal Jesus' than it would have been for Depeche Mode to cover one of his songs ---