Copy Cats

eceu:

mp3: Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth) - Elliott Smith (George Harrison cover)

This is how I like to think of Elliott, honestly.  Not some guy who was continually mopey and depressed, nor some guy who knew all the answers.  He was complicated, like all of us, but he was also unlike most of us in one important way: he was a musical genius.  He could take his pain and his happiness, his sorrows and his joys, and shape them, mold them into three to four minute songs that could nod your head or break your heart on a regular basis.  But even when he took on someone else’s songs, as he does here with this old George Harrison number, his emotions - his voice, always - poked through.

It was often telling what he chose to cover, as well.  Elliott clearly knew his stuff, and his tastes ran all over the map musically - but whenever it came down to actually picking out covers to play on tour, he had a very singular, exacting standard.  Even when he was covering Oasis (which he did, “Supersonic”) or Blue Oyster Cult (yep), he added other layers to it, provided another level for it to be read on.

Or maybe I (we) just did?

It was when he tackled songs like this one, though, that we musical obsessives knew he was really one of us.  This one let us know that he actually listened to records, that he knew songs not just hits.  For there are certainly many more obvious Harrison-penned songs to cover - and, once in a while, he did - but this was the one he took out on tour with him and played for nearly a year straight.  I’m sure more than a few people at the shows assumed it was a Smith original, and in a way it almost was.  Go back and listen to Harrison’s version some time, then compare it with this.  Listen to the difference, not in melody (for Elliott was certainly reverential enough to keep Harrison’s original melodies and harmonies intact) but in tone, in emphasis.  Listen to how Elliott strips it down and makes it his own: a weary happy-sadness in the delivery that changes the song’s impact in many ways.

We lost him six years ago today.  And in so many ways, that still makes no sense at all to me.