A couple days ago I saw this on the Twitter box:
I think every musician/band everywhere, ever should cover Australian Crawl’s “Reckless”.4:26 PM Dec 31st, 2009
Despite the fact that the writer appeared to be challenging Mozart, Glenn Miller and even Fred Durst to cover the song, I was intrigued. I had never heard of the band before, let alone heard the track, but when somebody lays down a decree like that my interest is piqued. I quickly found the song on YouTube and it turns out Australian Crawl hails from the heyday of New Wave, a time very close to my musical heart. Apparently a number one hit in Australia in 1983, “Reckless” is one of those vaguely 60s-influenced pop tunes, with a Righteous Brothers bassline and marvelously spare verse and a soaring lead vocal for the chorus. After a reasonably sane opening few lines, the lyrics begin to make even less sense than Simon LeBon’s stream of consciousness blatherings (ferries? guns? Scott of the Antarctic? rhyming arctic with Antarctic?). Needless to say, I dug it. And as it turned out I needed a project for the end of the week so I took the gauntlet and ran with it.
My first thought was to approach it in the spirit of another chart-topping Aussie group dear to me, the Bee Gees. I sketched out a draft inspired by the Gibbs’ work on their early 70s album Trafalger, complete with – as I realized this morning – a parodic lead vocal, a little too heavy on the vibrato. After reconsidering, I kept the vocal harmonies but sang it more like myself and replaced a lachrymose piano with a glockenspiel and tied it all up with some acoustic guitar. As it’s a long song, I opted not to do the whole thing with its spanish guitar solo and chorus repeats. But I may end up completing a more concise version sometime in the future. For now, here ya go:
Reckless (mp3)
And the original:
In the interest of full disclosure I’m probably a bit biased, but that being said I liked your version a lot better than the original. Saying ‘every’ band should cover it seems a bit…farfetched, but here’s one case in which it was a good idea.
Bias, shmias – thanks, Taylor! I’m definitely a fan of their production but I like where I took it, as well. I’m looking forward to checking out more Australian Crawl stuff. Apparently this song is a bit of an anomaly.