Cover Tuesday: God Save the Queen and Other British Stuff

By Justin Cates

Ryan Adams is a man of many tastes musically speaking.

He's worked with country legends like Willie Nelson, founded the alt-country groups Whiskeytown and The Cardinals, played loads of rock and just recently announced the formation of a new punk rock group called Pornography.

Given that, it shouldn't come as any surprise that he covers some interesting songs.

"Wonderwall" is one of the myriad of hit singles form the classic Oasis album (What's The Story) Morning Glory?

The New Musical Express (NME), Britain's most popular music magazine named Adams' cover of "Wonderwall" the number one Oasis cover.

I was going to feature three songs from the list, but most of them are pretty bad. So instead here's a loosely related list.



Now here's Noel Gallagher of Oasis performing The Beatles' classic, "All You Need Is Love".

I can't tell how much of the rest of the band is there, but if you look closely you can see his brother Liam just chilling in the background. Probably so they would shut up and stop fighting for three minutes.



Finally, playing off that British connection we finish off with a pair of covers because i didn't want to show preference to one of John Lennon's kids.

The first is a cover of classic cut "Julia" performed by Sean Lennon, John and Yoko Ono's son.



The final track to be featured is from Julian Lennon, the only child from John's first marriage.

"I Need You" was released by the band America in 1972. It's a powerful song, especially when you consider it in the context of a father/son relationship. Julian sounds much more like his father vocally and I've always felt bad for him.

John wasn't much of a dad to him until later in life. In fact, Julian was much closer with Paul McCartney.

Paul and I used to hang about quite a bit...more than Dad and I did. We had a great friendship going and there seems to be far more pictures of me and Paul playing together at that age than there are pictures of me and my dad. -Julian Lennon

Julian was the direct inspiration for three Beatles songs, "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds", "Hey Jude" and "Good Night".

McCartney wrote "Hey Jude" (originally titled, "Hey Jules") to console Julian during the divorce of his parents.

So here we are at the end of a random jaunt through British music. Here's hoping you enjoyed it.

Cheers.