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Tuesday, June 25, 2024

Santana covers a Beatles Classic

What came across my fB feed but a video of Santana's cover of the Beatles classic "While my guitar ..."

What's sad about this version is that the song is sardonic in its very intention ["I look at the floor, and I see it needs sweeping ..."]  It's not a lovesong, by any stretch of the imagination!

In the original, sung by George Harrison, the guitar solo, where the 'weeping' happens, still makes sense, though it isn't George playing it; it's Eric Clapton.  In Santana's cover, he has a woman singing the words, and there is a feeling of humor in it that may or may not be intentional!  

This song---and this is not why made the remark about Santana's cover---is considered important above and beyond its intrinsic significance as advancing the Beatles'style.  Some rock musicologists claim that it is the birth of Heavy Metal.  I don't really know what heavy metal is; of course I know, in a vague way, what it's considered to be, but in a question about the birth of something, you have to know precisely what the thing is.  That extended guitar solo might or might not be the mother of the sub-genre of Heavy Metal, but it is an interesting thought.

Well, to quote the immortal words of Forrest Gump: That's all I have to say about that.

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