Joe the leppard, YEAH! YEAH!…
Regular visitors to these pages over the past few years will know just how big a fan Joe Elliot is of David Bowie’s music. Indeed, he was kind enough to let me interview him about his Bowie fandom for BowieNet back in 2001, (07.09.2001 NEWS: EXCLUSIVE – JOE ELLIOTT SPEAKS TO BOWIENET) when he released a whole album of Bowie cover versions as the singer of Cybernauts. You may remember the band included the rhythm section of a group called The Spiders From Mars…or something mad like that.
Anyway, under his more familiar guise as singer of
Here’s the songs they chose:
01 20th Century Boy – Originally recorded by T REX / UK No. 3, March 1973
02 Rock On – Originally recorded by DAVID ESSEX / UK No. 3, September 1973
03 Hanging On The Telephone – Originally recorded by BLONDIE / UK No. 6, November 1978
04 Waterloo Sunset – Originally recorded by THE KINKS / UK No. 2, May 1967
05 Hell Raiser – Originally recorded by SWEET / UK No. 2, May 1973
06 10538 Overture – Originally recorded by ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA / UK No. 12, August 1972
07 Street Life – Originally recorded by ROXY MUSIC / UK No. 9, December 1973
08 Drive-In Saturday – Originally recorded by DAVID BOWIE / UK No. 3, April 1973
09 Little Bit Of Love – Originally recorded by FREE / UK No. 16, July 1972
10. The Golden Age Of Rock ‘n’ Roll – Originally recorded by MOTT THE HOOPLE / UK No. 17, April 1974
11. No Matter What – Originally recorded by BADFINGER / UK No. 6, February 1971
12. He’s Gonna Step On You Again – Originally recorded by JOHN KONGOS / UK No. 5, July 1971
13. Don’t Believe A Word – Originally recorded by THIN LIZZY / UK No. 13, February 1977
14. Stay With Me – Originally recorded by FACES / UK No. 6, January 1972
It’s a great album and the band’s enthusiasm for the songs shines through. It’s also clear they had a lot of fun making this record.
Here’s an excerpt from Joe’s liner notes regarding his memories of the original Drive-In Saturday:
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David Bowie, along with Marc Bolan and Mott The Hoople are the three main reasons I wanted to be in a band.
Some of you will be aware that in 2001, myself and Phil covered a whole lotta Bowie on our Cybernauts project, so we were somewhat limited with our choice of material. However, and I stress this, we probably would have picked this one anyway because it was the natural choice of all five us!!
I remember seeing DB do Drive-In Saturday on the Russell Harty show back in 1973 and genuinely thinking he was an alien!!! The earrings were a bit of a give-away though…no way would anyone from Mars wear that sort of thing.
He scared our parents in a way that would be difficult to explain nowadays to a Slipknot or a Marilyn Manson fan, but with this song he showed a softer side of his many characters, which had a charm all of its own. Probably my favourite track on YEAH!
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With over half the songs on YEAH! representing the glam rock era, who better to take care of photographic duties than Michael Rock himself. Mick was responsible for the recreation of several classic sleeves for the CD’s booklet.
Joe obviously plumbed for Ziggy Stardust, recreating the iconic telephone box shot (above) based on Brian Ward‘s original Ziggy back cover.
Mick must have had a strong feeling of déjàvu while shooting Rick Savage as Freddie Mercury on the sleeve of Queen II, Rick Allen as Lou Reed on the cover of Transformer and Phil Collen as Iggy Pop on the front of Raw Power, seeing as he was responsible for all three of the original sleeves.
Elsewhere Vivian Campbell was the subject for the astonishingly accurate reproduction of Electric Warrior, and the whole band fill the centre pages of the booklet with a less flamboyant version of the inner gatefold of Roxy Music‘s For Your Pleasure.
Finally,
01 American Girl – Originally recorded by Tom Petty
02 Backstage Interview #1
03 Search & Destroy – Originally recorded by Iggy & The Stooges
04 Backstage Interview #2
05 Space Oddity – Originally recorded by David Bowie
06 Backstage Interview #3
07 Dear Friends – Originally recorded by Queen
08 Heartbeat – Originally recorded by Jobriath
Apart from the 8-track CD being sold instore, the tracks are also available individually as downloads on the
I spoke to Joe about his version of Space Oddity: “I originally recorded the song as a present for my dad’s 73rd birthday. Believe it or not it’s his very favourite song of all time, which I always thought was pretty cool.
I play every instrument on this myself, from the drums and bass through to the guitars, mellotron and the vocal harmonies, the lot. I tried to stay as true to the spirit of Bowie’s original as I could, as that was the version my dad liked.
Anyway, he seemed pretty pleased with it and I think I did a pretty good job of it considering I was on me tod. So when they asked us for extra tracks for the three YEAH! bonus CDs, I dusted off Space Oddity, tarted it up a little, and hey presto!”
Well, as the man says, he did do a pretty good job on it…a very good job actually.
The band kicks of it’s European tour on June 3rd, which runs in to a North American tour right through to the end of September.
Check out the