Peter Gabriel doing covers

 

          I have a few recordings of PG doing covers of other people's songs; some live, some studio.  I have studio versions of "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Summertime" and "Suzanne".  I have live versions of "Ain't That Peculiar" and "I'll BeThere".  The studio versions are impressive.  Anybody else have recordings of PG doing covers, and how are they?

 

                                                                                                  

Suzanne appeared on a various artists album Tower of song: the songs of
Leonard Cohen (1995)   (original recordings of Lenny are better IMO);

Summertime is on some disgusting (oversugared, featuring harmonica)
V. A. tribute album of George Gershwin songs, don't remember the name.

The two others I haven't heard of. I wouldn't be too enthusiastic of hearing an albumful of covers sung by Peter Gabriel, that are from different kinds of projects, not an original PG project as a whole (compare Tori Amos' cover album Strange Little Girls.)

FragileDT wrote: Where did you find these covers? I've never heard them.

As Easy Livin said, Strawberry Fields Forever is from the "All this and World War II" film and, considering it's the greatest song of all time and shouldn't really be touched, he does a pretty good job on it. He's probably the only person I can think of who could do it and not mess it up completely.

As for "Ain't that peculiar", I seem to remember I had that years ago on an album which (I think) was called the Bristol Recorder, which was a magazine/LP of new artists from the Bristol area. This was probably around 20 or more years ago so my memory of it is a bit hazy and I probably don't have the album any more.

Perhaps somebody else can confirm this?

I´ve only heard strawberry... sounds good

Best PG cover is the duet with Kate Bush on Roy Harper's magnificent song "Just Another Day," which was featured in Kate's 1979 BBC TV special called "Kate!"

he also covered imagine at the winter olympics this year, if you didnt see it

 

      To those who wondered:  all of these songs (and much more) are collected on a couple of CD's I picked up at a record convention years ago.  Titled "Sound Fruit" and "Post Script", these CD's came with fancy color artwork and good notes, and appeared to be "official" releases, but it's now apparent that they are not.  I believe they were made in Canada.

 

 

                                                                     

Guillermo wrote: nobody wrote: Guillermo wrote:  "Ain`t that peculiar": I never have listened to the original version, and I don`t know who was the original singer. That's a Marvin Gaye song, written by Smokey Robinson. I see that Peter Gabriel, like Phil Collins, likes very much Soul Music or Rhythm and Blues or Motown Music.

He's often said that seeing Otis Redding in the mid 60s was a formative musical experience, and Sledgehammer is his tribute to the great man.

A lot of the first generation of British prog musicians cut their musical teeth playing soul/R & B  covers(proper R & B, played by skinny white guys from Essex, not that rubbish they play on the radio these days) in mod clubs in the mid to late 60s. A lot of them dug deeper into jazz and blues, then psychedelia came along and somehow it all turned into prog.

I've seen him do A Whiter Shade of Pale, I Heard It Through The Grapevine  and Me and My Teddy Bear live - I'm guessing that there must be boots of those around somewhere, but I've never heard them.