When he first heard the title track, a cover from his Freedom album, he wordlessly got up and began slow dancing with his wife Pegi. Neil Young himself came to New Orleans to be a part of the Emmylou Harris album Wrecking Ball. It’s an exceptional cover that remains as relevant today as the day it was recorded. Hearing her belt “How long is it gonna last?” is enough to make you want take to the streets. On her self-titled 1971 record, she recorded a blistering, funky cover of Young’s “Southern Man.” As an African-American woman with an earth-shattering voice, Clayton turns the song in full-fledged call to political action. Merry Clayton will forever be known as the singer who rocked the Rolling Stones’ world and out-sung Mick Jagger on “Gimme Shelter.” Beyond her legendary work as a backing vocalist, Clayton is an accomplished frontwoman in her own right. Both versions, in different ways, capture the melancholic yearning of the song. Meanwhile, the Pixies version, originally released on 1989’s tribute album The Bridge, tends toward the band’s mellower side and is sung as a duet between Kim Deal and Black Francis. However, their similar differences pay off wonderfully in this cover of Young’s “Winterlong.” An unreleased track given an official release on 1977’s great Decade compilation, the original has an almost ’60s girl group feel with a country rock overlay.
Pixies – Winterlongīoth Young and the Pixies are known for using fuzzy electric guitars, yet in very different contexts. Their 20-year track record of covers ranges from this to Kraftwerk. They have played at proper reggae festivals like Sun Splash, being given the nod by Jamaican artists like Ken Boothe and the Skatalites. However, rather than the frantic ska-punk thrashing around so common to sweaty fratboys, the Bluebeaters seem a more studied institution. Throw in a production faithful to the sound of Studio One in Kingston, Jamaica, and it might surprise you that this group are Italian, based in Turin. But this is no novelty it does work, again proclaiming the truth of a good tune. The Bluebeaters – Everybody Knows This Is NowhereĪpart from when Neil himself ill-advisedly started playing “Cortez the Killer” with a reggae backbeat, there can’t be many Neil Young covers in this style. Instead, they seamlessly work in a reinterpretation of that song’s opening verse as this song’s bridge, culminating in repeating “some stupid with a flare gun” hollers that brilliantly lead back into “Like a Hurricane.” A huge song, made even huger. At a certain point, they switch into “Smoke on the Water.” Not the riff or the chorus you’d more easily recognize. What pushed “Like a Hurricane” ( the live version on their Death Valley Days compilation, not the album cut) to the top was the ferocity and stamina they pummel into it – a requirement with a song this long – as well as a surprising addition I didn’t notice for years.
The fact that they never recorded a full Neil tribute album seems a minor crime. If they hadn’t recorded “Like a Hurricane,” we would have included their stunning “On the Beach.” If that didn’t exist either, their “Albuquerque” would be a shoo-in. No band competed more with itself for a spot on this list. Cassandra Wilson’s cover, on her also lunar-titled album New Moon Daughter, slows the song down to a contemplative crawl, backed in part by what sounds like the insects that you might hear when you’re lying outside on a warm night, staring at the moon. The title song was a gentle love song to his then-wife Pegi (who just died on New Year’s Day, a few years after the couple divorced), and features Linda Ronstadt on backing vocals. In recording a “sequel” to 1972’s Harvest, one of Young’s most popular and iconic albums, he could have done a lot worse than 1992’s Harvest Moon, an acoustic record prompted by the tinnitus that Young’s developed from the loud Ragged Glory tour.