I like a charity tribute compilation so when I saw a copy of Sgt Pepper Knew My Father dirt cheap 4 years ago, I grabbed it. Hailing from the late Cretaceous period* it was a NME compilation organised to support the Childline charity featuring 13 artists covering all the tracks on that quite famous LP by that lot from Liverpool, you know the ones.
Sgt Pepper Knew My Father is a bit of a pants title, surely there were so many better alternative Beatles ones available?
- Bungalow Bill Lived Next To My Nan
- Maggie Mae, Or Maybe Not
- My Mum Was Doctor Robert’s Receptionist
- Auntie Rita Used To Be A Traffic warden
- A Day In the Wife
- Martha My Dermatologist
- I Named My Raccoon After A Boxer
The list of contributors is, as always on these things, a touch on the random side, rendered doubly so by the fact that the perma-sneering NME stacked it with their favourite mumbling hipsters and then clearly realised that if they wanted to sell more than 37 copies and actually do some good they’d need to chuck a few chart artists in there too. I quite like the tension of having Sonic Youth and the Fall snuggling up next to Wet Wet Wet on an LP. Maybe that’s just a me thing.
Instead of glorifying in a namecheck in ‘When I’m 64’ Vera, Chuck and Dave, the alleged cover artists, should have assumed a low profile. I know it’s a charity LP, but come on dudes I’d have done better given 8 minutes and a leaky blue biro.
Sgt Pepper Knew My Father opens appallingly with The Three Wize Men, a south London rap trio who sound uncannily like Homer Simpson rapping as Poochie the dog, way back when**.
Wet Wet Wet make a pretty good fist of ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’, although I am so allergic to Marti Pellow’s vile smirk that even typing his name then made me violently ill in my trousers. Twice.
The Christians, who I do like^ give us a straightforward ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’, which is okay and I could cut and paste the comment for Hue & Cry’s cover of , that proctological favourite, ‘Fixing A Hole’. There is something endearingly grudging about the Wedding Present & Amelia Fletcher^^ version of ‘Getting Better’, I like it far better than anything I have ever endured by them before. Top stuff.
Best of all is Billy Bragg and Cara Tivey’s rather stunning rendition of ‘She’s Leaving Home’, the original is a song that impresses me more with each passing year. It is plaintively and starkly done, heartache from every angle and with no optimism for any good outcomes. In contrast Frank Sidebottom’s ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite’ is as oddball and wacky as the song richly deserves, the right artist covering exactly the right track.
Sonic Youth kick down the doors of Side 2 with a stonking, energetic version of ‘Within You Without You’. It’s a faithful attempt and the band’s way-out guitar heroics fit nicely and naturally into the track. It’s still not a patch on the original, my very favourite track on Sgt Peppers, but it is a great attempt to reach up towards the unattainable.
The Courtney Pine Quartet’s take on ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ suffers from a nasty 80’s production sheen and just leaves me very cold. The Triffids sound a bit half-arsed on ‘Good Morning Good Morning’ and I could have done without any reprise of the Three Wize Men.
All of which grumping leads me to another two good ones. Firstly, Michelle Shocked gives us a very good ‘Lovely Rita’ somehow giving a real throwaway track some substance and kick – is her other stuff any good? I have no idea. The Fall close proceedings with a typically curmudgeonly take on ‘A day In The Life’, Mark E Smith actually singing, rather than mumbling and sticking ‘uh’ at the end of every line. Wonders will never cease, it actually sounds like a tribute.
Sgt Pepper Knew My Father is a typical curate’s egg of a tribute LP and like all such albums, at its best, it makes me want to go and listen to the original versions again anew. I certainly got my £2.50 worth from Sonic Youth, Billy Bragg & Cara Tivey, Michelle Shocked and Frank Sidebottom in particular.
Did I ever tell you about the guy I used to work with who’s cousin’s wife’s mum used to babysit for the guy who’s unmarried sister’s friend used to do Eleanor Rigby’s hair? True story.
1023 Down.
PS: Working in Liverpool you get treated to a lot of those ‘cousin’s wife’s mum’ stories about the fab 4. Some of them are actually true too.
*1988
**voila:
^one of whom shoes a friend of mines’ horses.
^^eminent British economist and link to the Pooh Sticks.