Watch Jeff Lynne, Joe Walsh and Dhani Harrison cover The Beatles classic ‘Something
‘Something’ is without a doubt one of the top five Beatles songs and I’ll happily fight the fool who pleads otherwise even if they have a perm and a pet snake. The song swoons towards the sultry with sweetness and sincerity that is hard to quantify. Never soppy but always sweet, this dreamy almost-drunken ode could give goosebumps to a blade of grass, and then there’s that middle eight that could knock the socks off of Gandhi.
Pattie Boyd was the benefactor of that loving gift, and it is perhaps indicative of the song’s pining clutch that it actually represents the dying embers of her relationship with George Harrison. As she writes in her memoir, “George wrote a song called ‘Something.’ He told me in a matter-of-fact way that he had written it for me.”
Continuing: “I thought it was beautiful and it turned out to be the most successful song he ever wrote, with more than 150 cover versions. George’s favourite version was the one by James Brown. Mine was the one by George Harrison, which he played to me in our kitchen.”
The anthem is the sort of Beatles epitome whereby it has become so transcendent that many others have repeated that same kitchen situation. And Jeff Lynne of ELO is another who clambered aboard the life-changing bandwagon. “Well The Beatles changed my life,” he said while introducing a cover of ‘Something’ at a Beatles event afore the likes of Jeff Bridges and Paul McCartney himself.
Continuing: “When I was first recording an album in 1968, I was somehow wondrously invited in Abbey Road Studios to watch The Beatles record. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know how I got in there. I couldn’t sleep for days. They were amazing in that they had this aura about them. I never dreamed that one day I would work with them, and then one day I would produce them. So, I’m really chuffed about that—it’s the greatest thrill of my career.”
He is joined on stage for the brilliant cover by Harrison’s son Dhani and Joe Walsh of The Eagles and Ringo Starr & His All-Star Band. Their rendition might miss the sultry, soothing point of the original somewhat, but it still has its own quality of stellar musicianship. Not quite as ethereally feathery, the gang go at it a bit heavier, but the result remains a solid one.
