COVER ME
Look, I won’t ever damn anybody, especially a musician trying to make a living. If you’re not ripping anybody off–a fellow music maker, your bandmates, or the audience–have at it, I say. But I just read today that Lynyrd Skynyrd is going out for a 2024 tour and other than one small detail, there are no original band members left flapping the old “Freebird” anymore. (For those ready to call out me out for specificity, yes I am well aware of Rick “Rickey” Medlocke, playing guitar in LS presently. The long blonde-haired musician played drums and sang some lead as a session player for Skynyrd from 1971 to 1972. He’d go on to more acclaim in the band Blackfoot)
Let’s face it, Lynyrd Skynyrd is not the only classic rock act presently perpetrating the shouldn’t-they-just-be-considered-a cover-band-by-now swindle. Even one-third of my beloved Emerson, Lake and Palmer, the only member still alive, drummer Carl Plamer, is going out…without the departed Keith Emerson and Greg Lake (don’t you just hate it when your band members can’t join a tour because they are no longer part of the living; God what nerve!) Palmer is touring with his band but also (take a minute to swallow this) with videos of Lake and Emerson playing live that he plays along with so he can celebrate more than a slightly ghoulish 50th anniversary of his famous trio.
Or how about ABBA building a theatre and show in England last year that employed a hologram performance, and not the real Swedish pop-makers at all?
As I said, this isn’t the first time I have been bothered by this admittedly small world concern. Especially covering the more ‘mature’ acts one encounters in the vintage rock firmament, as I often do, it isn’t unusual to find a band that has undergone some personnel changes over the decades if it has managed to survive. As I made clear from the outset of his screed, I champion anyone making a living, trying to catch the slippery and consistently dwindling revenue stream that comes from live music making, enduring the drudgery of the road at any age.
And those tribute acts/cover bands often make a very good living, have the act they are copying down to a tee. So, I’m not down on them either. Hell, any one of can make for a free solid summer night’s entertainment down at any of our local town band shells.
But as I marvel over the sky-high price of tickets for bands with maybe one original member or an old backdrop in their midst, when I have seen this same band across the past decades with its original members playing with the ferocity of youth that can never be recaptured, when I hear fans profess their love for some act that perfectly plays and looks like the band that the band is copying, or even how amazed listeners are that this group trolls out songs the actual band they are emulating never tackled live, I have to cry foul. Even the best younger hired guns standing aside one old original member or some perfect tribute act with the very best period costumes can never, ever, best what I saw, loved, and built my love for music around well back in the day when the bands I loved were the best versions of themselves.
Hearing the songs, is not enough for me. Sorry.
Story: Ralph Greco, Jr.
Ralph Greco, Jr. is the devilishly clever nom de plume of professional writer/musician Ralph Greco who lives in the wilds of suburban New Jersey. He is also a podcast co-host, but as everyone has a podcast these days, this fact is of very little consequence.
Ralph can be reached by writing ralphiedawriter@gmail.com
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